Monday, July 21, 2008

"These are the points:

  • Creating music that refers to the "world" with its (acoustic) conditions - nevertheless, these are caused by the inside, that means by social mechanisms, or by being forced upon people by another culture or power; from the outside to the inside;
  • Composing music that is not only referring to an obsolete reality but - at least subliminally - to people, their feelings and their health;
  • Composing music that refers to and deals with existing problems in society instead of neglecting, covering or even idealizing them;
  • Composing music that shows social gashes and intensifies problems in society, even referring to them in a toxic way;
  • Composing music that strengthens resistance and sharpens the emotions and ways of thinking instead of creating illusions of harmony and happiness;
  • Composing music that refers to its own specific qualities and that offers food for the mind and soul in a multilayered (which does not mean complicated) way. Music should expand cognitive and emotional perception instead of reducing the reception of music to a level of animal-like reactions to superficial sentimentalities;
  • Composers who do not capitulate at the sight of existing problems, but deal with diseases by transferring them into their work. Composers who provoke, shock and cause irritations in order to destroy social crusts and to show perspectives that lead to a free and broadened perception of social phenomena in society;
  • Composers who develop clear positions and show alternative worlds to a daily routine - creating systems that refer to a change of existing conditions in an allegorical way;
  • And composers who try to do these things with a certain verve, enthusiasm, fantasy, and serenity in order to open positive rooms, "alternative rooms and skies" (Luigi Nono); And
  • An audience that is willing to open its minds and to be curious;
  • An audience that replies to provocations and disturbances with its own engagement and thoughts;
  • Listeners who learn to decipher musical contexts and to integrate these auditory experiences in their ways of thinking as a part of cognitive and emotional knowledge. And, as a consequence: listeners who increasingly react to acoustic environmental pollution - as caused by the worldwide tendency to background music, by noises directly or by music creating dull feelings - in allergic ways;
  • An audience that is basically able to enjoy unsolved phenomena, and listeners who formulate questions without expecting definite answers. As a result, we have music characterized by specific places and situations and at least dealing with material that embodies everyday experience as well as its historical conditions and its meanings for the future;
  • Composers who consider questionable phenomena as an important, even most decisive principle and who try to create a basis for opportunities to sharpen the senses. Questions - when answered - should at least cast new questions.
  • An audience that demands these points and expects new music to refer to the past from a present point of view. The past tried the same in its times and as a result it developed out of the same principles."

- Gerhard Stäbler