Klarinet Archive - Posting 001104.txt from 1998/01

From: denise & charlie <dbroadhu@-----.edu>
Subj: Modern Music
Date: Mon, 26 Jan 1998 11:18:01 -0500

This topic is certainly on the warm side of dead, so I'll add just one and
a half more coals to the fire. First, unless there was a similar comment
made, my original statement said that as a composer, I write music in
dialogue with the _music_ AND the people of my time, not just the people.
But beside this, I came across an interesting passage last night in a book
I'm reading on Leonardo da Vinci: "It is possible to distinguish two kinds
of artists or writers [or composers]: those who say everything openly,
bare their hearts and inflict on the spectator or reader a complete
picture of their sorrows and desires; and others, more rarely encountered,
who hang back, set up screens, suggest instead of describing, and make the
spectator look for things....These artists do not spare the public the
effort; instead, they call on it to participate." (Discovering the Life of
Leonardo da Vinci, Serge Bramly)
This statement seems a fair starting point for discussion of any art of
any era, although I have to admit that the two sides of this argument
represent, to me anyway, two ends of a continuum. I agree that art can or
should have levels, which seems to be absent from this argument, and that
an artist can move from one end of this spectrum to the other according to
his or her feelings at any given time.

Charlie Griffin
Composer, Forest Hills, NY