SAY SOMETHING ABOUT MUSIC...
Type
Publication
Authors
Category
Article
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Publication Year
1999
URL
[ private ]
Abstract
In Site of Sound: of Architecture and the Ear, by Brandon LaBelle & Steve Roden, eds., published by Errant Bodies Press, 1999
" "Say something about music" was one of the guidelines for guest editorials of the Canadian music magazine SoundNotes, for which a shorter version of this article was written originally.
I imagine the reader looking at this page. All ear. Listening to these words. Hearing this writing. Listening to the sounds I am making at this moment on this page.
I am hearing many words. So many words. Spoken by so many voices. Inside me. I am listening to them. At this moment while they move from inside to outside. Incomprehensibly.
I imagine the meeting of these words with those ears. So many meetings in so many places. Words wanting to resonate. Ears wanting to be nourished. In the place where they meet.
Listen to the meeting. Is it about music? Is it saying something?
About Stravinsky's Music
I remember attending lectures about Stravinsky's music while studying in Germany in the late 1960s. Not knowing much about 20th-century music at that point, I had probably only heard one or two pieces by Stravinsky. Most other students were in a similar situation. The whole semester was devoted to his music, but not once did the professor play a musical example. He said a great deal about it, with much detail and knowledge, even passion. But since his words did not hook on to a musical sound in my memory they also produced no meaning for me.
Needless to say, I have remembered nothing of that lecture series. The professor had made the assumption that we knew the music, that it was deeply entrenched in our inner hearing, so that as soon as we heard the word Stravinsky we would "hear" the characteristic sounds of his music during the lectures..."
" "Say something about music" was one of the guidelines for guest editorials of the Canadian music magazine SoundNotes, for which a shorter version of this article was written originally.
I imagine the reader looking at this page. All ear. Listening to these words. Hearing this writing. Listening to the sounds I am making at this moment on this page.
I am hearing many words. So many words. Spoken by so many voices. Inside me. I am listening to them. At this moment while they move from inside to outside. Incomprehensibly.
I imagine the meeting of these words with those ears. So many meetings in so many places. Words wanting to resonate. Ears wanting to be nourished. In the place where they meet.
Listen to the meeting. Is it about music? Is it saying something?
About Stravinsky's Music
I remember attending lectures about Stravinsky's music while studying in Germany in the late 1960s. Not knowing much about 20th-century music at that point, I had probably only heard one or two pieces by Stravinsky. Most other students were in a similar situation. The whole semester was devoted to his music, but not once did the professor play a musical example. He said a great deal about it, with much detail and knowledge, even passion. But since his words did not hook on to a musical sound in my memory they also produced no meaning for me.
Needless to say, I have remembered nothing of that lecture series. The professor had made the assumption that we knew the music, that it was deeply entrenched in our inner hearing, so that as soon as we heard the word Stravinsky we would "hear" the characteristic sounds of his music during the lectures..."
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https://www.hildegardwesterkamp.ca/writings/writingsby/?post_id=66&title=%E2%80%8Bsay-something-about-music
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