Author: Markus Wenninger
Date: 2004-10-18 07:24
Allen,
It´s about the running, and not about pulling a wagon. This perspective You´re employing is exactly the one overridden by free improvisation; if Your metaphor can be beaten to making some meaning in this respect, it´d be about assembling a vehicle whilst running along, w i t h o u t tethering anybody or anything. Ears are usualy so cluttered up and crustinated by all that tonal metaphysical it´s-always-been-like-that that it takes quite some shakes to make one realise that a run isn´t done by fencing in but by assembling lightweight constructs, en passant, exactly as nomads do, impromptu structures which are to be dissociated just as swift and easily, and not at all by before-you-play-you-have-to-learn-the-rules. "most knowledgeable players"? -well that´s hearsay, really, since what makes them renowned is just how well they fit into that Procrustes-bed and that´s that; impressive if they do, but music is not to be gained by jumping as high as they´re said to. And don´t believe a mysterious thing like "central focus", whatever that´ll mean exactly, is missing with a free ensemble; the actual sound-Gestalt is no longer to be pinned down whether it was second to a score or composed on the spot by the performers (this is one more thing which makes posttonality so frightening to the conservative musician), the sole difference remaining is the myth of repeatability, which itself is a logocentric powerplay if there ever was one. But structuralist´s days are done with, if there´s a possibility to talk about progress in human/cultural sciences and the arts expecially, and compositions depend on the individual performer to the extreme. So, let them do the run, with the reins they find on the way, hitting the ground just as often, scrambling up again and resume it, there´s no prestabilised direction, the teams are not selected afore, they´re of instabile number and tuning and vector, drifting, and there´s, most important, no road any more, it´s just about the joys and difficulties of the run.
I didn´t say the rules are arbitrary, but they are just opinions of self-appointed authorities, not laws of nature (although I´ve read quite some treatises trying exactly to prove that, all together superficial and highly exclusive appellations, nothing more) - what makes a work sucessful is only by very small degree dependent on its worth as a work of art, there are just too many factors like how doggie-trained the actual audience is, how rigid tradition is both on performer´s and audience´s side, how demanding the urge to stage something that´s not been done countless times before, to come up with the sounds inside the performer´s own heads, the historical plateau etc. It´s not about art there, not much anyway.
Markus
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