Wednesday, April 11, 2012

John Luther Adams and the Difference Between Cage's Music and "Traditional" Music

While preparing for my project on John Luther Adams, I found this YouTube video where he explains his beliefs about the purpose of music.  I especially love a quote he has towards the end where he says music emerges from situating himself in a "real place" - that beauty, like Saito said, has a localized quality.  Like Scruton's take on democratic disinterest and how beauty is an experience, Adams then observes that music means different things to different people depending on their mood, etc.  Interestingly, he makes several Zen-like points where if he had a definite purpose in creating music a certain way the music would lose its meaning.  Music and Life, he said, can only be understood in retrospect.  Very interesting.

Still, I personally wonder why he gravitates towards realistic, "un-harmonized" based on the idea music is experience.  At least from my opinion, "traditional" music is all about translating human emotions gathered from a sense of beauty.  Traditional music is communication, telling a story about human experience to an audience by eliciting certain emotions and triggers and creating empathy.

For example, it would be very difficult - if not impossible - to get an "easy going," "giddy" emotion from Pachelbell or the Alleluia Chorus as one does from Jazz music like "In the Mood."  One almost is forced to experience a building sense of glory, power, awe.

Of course, perhaps this is what John Luther Adams and Cage are trying to transcend.  Their music functions like nature and communicates life untranslated, uninterpreted by an artist.  "Ordinary" music is an interpretation rather than a raw experience which can be construed by individual minds democratically.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoOfyNZQsUE

(Blog 11)

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