Posted on 22. Aug, 2012 by admin in Blog
Minimalism — Dictionary.com defines the movement as “a reductive style or school of modern music utilizing only simple sonorities, rhythms, and patterns, with minimal embellishment or orchestrational complexity, and characterized by protracted repetition of figurations, obsessive structural rigor, and often a pulsing, hypnotic effect.”
Two years ago, I wrote a blog post about the experience of hearing Philip Glass’s “Mad Rush” at a concert, and noted back then that this was music that could be extremely beautiful both in its attractive textures, consonance, and hypnotism. On the other hand, I found it an extremely limited musical language […]
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Posted on 31. May, 2012 by admin in Blog
I think it’s fascinating to see the degree to which different kinds of artists are inspired by music. In literature, poems like T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, techniques like the sprung rhythm in Victorian poet’s Gerard Manley Hopkins’s sonnets, or the novella The Kreutzer Sonata by Leo Tolstoy are testament to that fact. But what about visual art? We’ve already seen in John Cage’s Notations that the visual element can be an important aspect in these composers’ attempts to represent sound. It’s equally fascinating to see how various visual artists were likewise inspired by music. […]
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Posted on 28. May, 2012 by admin in Blog
I think it’s really easy to give composer John Cage a bad rap. Water Music? 4’33”? This is music that seems to be deliberately purposeless; avant-garde to the extreme. Much of his music can be likened to the practice of throwing paint on a canvas and surveying the chaos. It’s controversial. It’s confusing. It can be very difficult to listen to or enjoy.
It’s also incredibly exciting in its own ways for its own reasons, and even though it’s rare to see John Cage programming, John Cage has his enthusiasts. Check out this blog post about by Norman Lebrecht of Slipped Disc about a recent programming of John Cage’s Europeras 1 and 2. All six performances were (surprisingly) sold out […]
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