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Ok here's a poll. But first some background info.
Shostakovich was considered a modern composer (though many would argue he lived in a postmodern age).
A quote from Testimony: "There are no general, standardized rules of conduct. Everything depends on the situation and on the person. A turn of events is possible in which murder is not a crime. You can't approach everything with the same measure."
This is a very postmodern idea.
THE POLL:
1) Does being modern composer imply being a modernist?
2) Is there a rift concerning intellectual ideologies between the art world and the philosophic world?
3) Am I missing something?
PLEASE post comments! I can not currently reconcile this.
"Phil Spector's greatest idea was to create a whole mystery around himself, in which artists would sink. He was more an businessman than a producer, never touching the controls, leaving the engineers do that dirty work.
We don't do the same job, I work in communion with the bands, without a gun.
-Nigel Godrich,
from this interview on greenplastic. A good read for anyone interested in the music biz. Nigel Godrich is my idol.
Another good quote from the article is:
"I remember asking Pavement on the phone: 'Do you want me to make you sell a lot of records? Because it doesn't look like your aim!' And I was surprised to hear them say: 'Sure, we wanna sell records.' 'Oh good, 'cos I thought you only want to piss people off by messing up your songs!'
hahaha... Nobody wants their songs hidden in the biz, and that is a fact.
And another good one, which I sorta align myself with:
"Sometimes on [OK COMPUTER] I prove a total lack of professionalism, voluntarily plugging instruments any old how. The courage comes from Radiohead, a band that will never get out of fashion because they make the fashion. And when the others follow, they are already somewhere else, far away."
which is sorta related to:
"My technique is to set the environment to make creative accidents easier. And then all I have to do is pick the right whim of fate."
This is what I'm working towards. But the projects i'm involved in are always so rushed its hard to do it. The closest i've gotten is on the House stuff and my won projects, but my own projects don't count because the whole point is for someone else to surprise you. If I know where I'm going I always get off there. Still, that's where I'm going. Lack of proffessionalism. Happy accidents.
at the top of an arrangement of the trumpet voluntary, it appears as though Henry Purcell dedicated the piece to his husband Jack, "for his neverending support and encourangement." That's quite progressive for those days.... But more to the point:
O Henry Fricken' Purcell. Why are you important?
Justify your existence and your fame. I DARE YOU.
What's this?? I think I hear a ghost, and he's talking about music history!!
"I am bloody well VERY important to music history, you fool!!! I wrote the first opera in the english language!!!"
Henry, my dear, ethereal Henry... You only wrote Dido and Aeneas in English because you were working as music director for a private all-girls school then, who probably had TERRIBLE french diction! How do you plead?
"You are twiceforthwith a fool! I am in the Norton CHWM, so you better DARN WELL respect me, even if I have no real artistic merit (which I do, by the way). I will forever be taught as important in the minds of millions of students, thus making me important, for all practical purposes. Why do students study Purcell? So they can teach others about PURCELL someday!!! Mwahahahaha!!!!!"
I will parry. You are thriceforsuethwithmanshireingtion a FOOL'S fool!!! You really aren't very good, Purcell, I'm sorry. The world was smaller back then, that's all. Nowadays we call your works "chamber opera for amatuers." You have failed to justify your existence, so you do not exist in my mind.
::Poof::
And the idea of Henry Purcell vanished in a puff of logic.
And then made more rice and ate it because I was hungry.
So I've got a huge, dark red hickey on the left side of my neck. I guess that's just what happens when you make out with an exquisite, beautiful italian woman named Rosalynd for too long. She will not let her love be a secret.
I'm sorry everyone for three posts in a day. My reading has just been too good today, and I need to post iit if for no other reason than to make sure I remember it. So here we go!!
"For some reason, people think that music must tell us only about the pinnacles of the human spirit, or at least about highly romantic villians. But there are very few heroes or villians. Most people are average, neither black nor white. They're gray. A dirty shade of gray.
"And its in that vague gray middle ground that the fundamental conflicts of our age take place. it's a huge ant hill in which we all crawl. In the majority o cases, our destinies are bad. We are treated harsly and cruelly. And as soon as someone crawls a little higher, the's ready to torture and humiliate others.
"That is the situation that needs watching, in my opinion. You must write about the majority of people and for the majority. And you must write the truth - then it can be called realistic art. Who needs the tragedies? There's an Ilf and Petrov story about a sick man who washes his foot before going to the doctor. When he gets there he notices that he washed the wrong one. Now, that's a real tragedy.
Oh beautiful.
From Testimony.
"And one more Meyerhold rule helped me to be calmer in the face of criticism of my work. This is Meyerhold's third lesson, and it is useful for others, not just me. Meyerhold stated it more than once: If the production pleases everyond, then consider it a total failure. If, on the other hand, everyond criticizes your work, then perhaps there's something worthwhile in it. Real success comes when people aruge about your work, when half the audience is in raptures and teh other half is ready to tear you apart."
For the first two lessons, see Kate's Blog. Its in the comments.
John Brit and I were talking. We talked of many things. Here is a conclusion I (we?) came to:
Logic... oh you logic. You Chesire Cat. You are a paradox.
Here's why. Logic leads to developing a "system" of thought. Any philosophy, any belief, any system. I told kate that I think if I went insane, my brand of insanity would be to take everything to its logical extreme. And systems are just BEGGING to be taken to their extremes to see what they mean,
But if you take any system to its logical extreme, logic runs away. Logic, it seems, is a man afraid of commitment. Niche went insane taking his own system to its illogical extreme. Phaedrus. How many others?
This is why Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance changed my life. You must make a system out of integrating systems without using a system, and then not follow that system completely. You can not trust logic. It will not be ruled by you. Your mind will not allow itself to be divided for long.
Anyway I thought that was interesting.
I am lonely. Three people called me a genious today. I am still lonely.
I think I will go to sleep presently.
::sigh::
Beautiful Dreamer by Stephen Foster. I have decided that this is the most beautiful song of the 20th century.
You Are My Sunshine by two guys in need of a state song for Louisianna. Harmonica solo, anyone??
late-night-we're-losing-an-hour-of-sleep-anyway-so-what's-the-point-in-trying? recording. have fun.
Oh oh oh Daft Punk, why are you so cool?
For all the greenville guys (that includes you katie), I think Daft Punk must be my guilty pleasure. Discovery just plain fricken rules.
After Google's bot crawls this site again, I will be the fifth person on the entire google-indexed internet to have used the phrase "charmingly inconsistent." I feel like a super-hero again. In the words of Kate, 'that's very beautiful."