11 October 2009 - This statement was written to open the debate on the future of composed music during the Nederlandse Muziekdagen. 441 words.
MAIN TEXT
According to me, the importance of art music in society is undermined by the over-appreciated intellectual qualities of music. A glance at the program of the Nederlandse Muziekdagen makes it clear: the perspective is directed towards the composition’s structural conception and towards the work’s intellectual background. With this, composers and programmers create a vacuum around a hermetic musical world to which the listener has no access.
For the listener, music is urgent at the moment it is made to be heard. Music is immediate and physical by nature, it engages in a direct relationship with the entire body and excites the nervous system. In my vision, music thus belongs primarily to the domain of sensitivity, of feelings, of the sublime. I am convinced that music does not work well as conceptual or intellectual art, music does not need not be 'understood', it 'is' - unpronounceable.
When the composer shapes a musical idea, the elements of utmost importance in the creational process are at best a footnote to the listener. Composers should be aware that in music, structure and concept is not only troubled in its manifestation, but that music that needs to be ’understood’ principally ignores an important dimension for the listener. Because it is the listener himself who would like to be understood.
If a composer is convinced that his music needs to be heard in a pure form, without interference of complex dimensions of the outside world, then who am I not to respect that choice! However, in this case I think there should be no illusions about the audience willing to listen to these works, the resources available and the influence of the composer’s innovative force in society. All of these will be highly limited.
Someone once explained to me that the composer’s responsibility is to liberate the listener as an individual. It seems to me that we have been more than liberated and are now looking for what connects people together again. In order to establish these connections, I choose to confront my musical ideas explicitly with the world around me. As a result, purely composed concert music has become foreign to me. Instead, I create for a great variety of musicians, media and audiences and integrate their influence in the creation of the work.
My experience is that there is a great curiosity, across the most dispersed layers of society, for encounter with the surprising, with the unknown, indeed, with the innovative that the composer can express in his music. I would like to see that composers conquer this curious world.
Paul Oomen 2009 English translation by Sara Zorandy
Read this article in Dutch on mcnforum.wordpress.com
When the composer shapes a musical idea, the elements of utmost importance in the creational process are at best a footnote to the listener. Composers should be aware that in music, structure and concept is not only troubled in its manifestation, but that music that needs to be ’understood’ principally ignores an important dimension for the listener. Because it is the listener himself who would like to be understood.
If a composer is convinced that his music needs to be heard in a pure form, without interference of complex dimensions of the outside world, then who am I not to respect that choice! However, in this case I think there should be no illusions about the audience willing to listen to these works, the resources available and the influence of the composer’s innovative force in society. All of these will be highly limited.
Someone once explained to me that the composer’s responsibility is to liberate the listener as an individual. It seems to me that we have been more than liberated and are now looking for what connects people together again. In order to establish these connections, I choose to confront my musical ideas explicitly with the world around me. As a result, purely composed concert music has become foreign to me. Instead, I create for a great variety of musicians, media and audiences and integrate their influence in the creation of the work.
My experience is that there is a great curiosity, across the most dispersed layers of society, for encounter with the surprising, with the unknown, indeed, with the innovative that the composer can express in his music. I would like to see that composers conquer this curious world.
Paul Oomen 2009 English translation by Sara Zorandy
Read this article in Dutch on mcnforum.wordpress.com
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