i think the definition of “genre” in music can be specified to imply not just a style of music, but the type of emotion it’s meant to invoke. And i use the word emotion lightly, because the intended / unintended effect could be anything, even something trying / causing no emotional affect whatsoever.
It’s like when people play pretty piano music, people with an untrained ear / people who are not closely scrutinizing will just think, “oh…piano music” in the back of their mind. Because we as human beings have been exposed to so much, when we hear one piece, we hear it as all the others. We can’t help it. Because there is so little novelty within genres it becomes more and more difficult to enjoy a greater diversity of music. Because we aren’t paying attention.
Furthermore, i think this “genre” of emotional response can be widened to include really any art form. For instance, in poetry there is a definite difference in the translated feeling of Walt Whitman verses Bukowski. (for which, i have no doubt, Bukowski would be fine with.) But when I say emotional response, I don’t mean happy and sad, I mean more specific ‘genres’ of feelings.
It’s like how people can associate colors with emotions, the purpose of the color isn’t to clearly and specifically say an emotion, it is meant to draw a link between two senses or two human faculties. To create a tie between a conscious idea and an abstract concept.
But this is most important in music. In any other category
it’s just a side note. A trivial fact. But with music it allows to objectively
look at how music is made, take a step back, and make new music.
(Hypothetically this really could be true of any other art form, but tonight it
is music.)
At this point, modernism would say that there are very few
creative options left. Well you can argue you that for hours, but the point is,
we started using things like the twelve-tone chart as an attempt to force
creativity. If we apply this concept of what I would like to call
scale-color-landscapes, (meaning broad genres painted with one color) to music,
we can see that it is no longer the content that is chiefly the subject: it’s
the presentation. This is what leads to the travesty that is things like
prepared piano and zany existentialist pieces where a clock is the only instrument
and the crowd becomes conflagrated and kills the composer in a rage.
But things like this generally or at least usually are not
objects of beauty. They aren’t trying to be. At least not the typical blonde
bombshell beautiful. Because composers
have over analyzed this idea of making beauty something hard to see because
maybe they listened to one too many late-in-life Beethoven fugues. (he says in a kind, satiric tone) But I think the battle is better waged by
finding new ways of making sound. I will not fool myself into thinking this is
an original idea, but it is one I believe is at the very least not embraced
enough. What the music world needs is novelty. The emotions can be old, but the
music must be new. And I don’t mean new chord progressions, at least solely, I mean
put away the piano and pull out the garbage cans. New instruments. New sounds.
New experiences. Music has the opportunity that no other art form has: to
translate the untranslatable. To turn pure emotion into some tangible and real,
and the best way to do that is appealing to a sense of novelty.
This got all preachy and I don’t like it, so I’m going to
leave it at that. Peace love and hand grease tout le monde!
No comments:
Post a Comment