Blogging as Self-Demolition

It is certainly no original insight of mine that writing is a process of self-discovery. Like many compulsive writers, I often write in order to find out what I think. I started out my essay "The Complexity Issue" with a number of points to make, some of which got in and some didn't, but I mainly started with the first two propositions and attempted to see what would logically follow. I didn't anticipate mentioning Aaron Copland, though he became the article's lynchpin; I had some hogwash in mind about the composer's ethical attitude toward society, but it turned out to be superfluous, so I only included the hogwash I needed. The connection I drew between complex music and grad school surprised me, as did the fact that the article (which I thought would be mostly about complex music) became largely a meditation on how our tastes change with age. When people react negatively to something I say in these long thumbsuckers, I want to react with, "Why look at me? I was as surprised as you are!" My articles in this blog are not policy pronouncements ex cathedra, but a kind of thinking out loud in public. In fact, I said something to that effect in the post with which I initiated this blog, so I hope you were all reading carefully. What I came up with in this case was a phenomenologically accurate explanation for why I haven't paid much attention to Grisey, Lachenmann, and their ilk in recent years, but it wasn't a promise that I would never pay attention to them, and the mere act of focusing on them roused my curiosity.


So it will gratify some of you to know that I am now listening to Grisey's Quatre chants pour franchir le seuil for the second time this evening - if only to nettle the less mature Kyle Gann of two days ago. I was dogmatic in my youth, but at some point many years ago I started a campaign to cultivate flexibility, and I still surprise myself.


July 25, 2008 9:31 PM | | Comments (0) |

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Sites To See

Postclassic Radio! - Kyle Gann's internet radio station that accompanies the blog; see the playlist at kylegann.com

American Mavericks - the Minnesota Public radio program about American music (scripted by Kyle Gann with Tom Voegeli)

Kalvos & Damian's New Music Bazaar - a cornucopia of music, interviews, information by, with, and on hundreds of intriguing composers who are not the Usual Suspects

Iridian Radio - an intelligently mellow new-music station

New Music Box - the premiere site for keeping up with what American composers are doing and thinking

The Rest Is Noise - The fine blog of critic Alex Ross

William Duckworth's Cathedral - the first interactive web composition and home page of a great postminimalist composer

Mikel Rouse's Home Page - the greatest opera composer of my generation

Eve Beglarian's Home Page - great Downtown composer

Just Intonation Network - a meeting place for people interested in alternative tunings

Erling Wold's Web Site - a fine San Francisco composer of deceptively simple-seeming music, and a model web site

The Dane Rudhyar Archive - the complete site for the music, poetry, painting, and ideas of a greatly underrated composer who became America's greatest astrologer

Utopian Turtletop, John Shaw's thoughtful blog about new music and other issues

About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by PostClassic published on July 25, 2008 9:31 PM.

Class Action was the previous entry in this blog.

West Coast Meets Hudson Valley is the next entry in this blog.

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