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Re: [microsound] Fwd: Paul Lansky pulls the plug
I certainly understand the yearning to make music that people
spontaneously enjoy. The strange thing for me, or maybe it's a strange
thing *about* me, is that I genuinely, spontaneously enjoy electronic
and computer music, even the "abstract electronic sounds", so it puzzled
me to read that Paul Lanksy really doesn't like to listen to it:
From the article:
He even came close to admitting a dirty little secret: "I basically
don't like electronic music. I like to compose it. I'm just not a big
fan of it." Later he elaborated in an e-mail message. Lansky said he
had less interest in abstract electronic sounds than in "machine-made
music that attempts to comment on the familiar sounds of the world,
sounds made by people hitting, plucking, bowing, blowing, talking,
driving, etc."
I wasn't being sarcastic when I wished Paul Lansky much joy in the world
of acoustic music, and I have a great deal of respect and gratitude for
his pioneering work. However, it seems to me we are fortunate to live
in a time where computer-using performers are capable of subtle, rich
and expressive *live* music, played in complex social situations. It
seems to me Paul Lansky is jumping ship just as it nears the goal of the
type of music he professes to be interested in.
In the bigger picture, what drives the need to divide the music world
between computer and "analog" instruments, anyway? A violin is also a
music-making machine. It is difficult to get a beautiful and subtle
performance from this machine, and it takes a great deal of practice and
refinement of technique to produce music people want to hear. I find
the same to be true of silicon-based musical instruments. Perhaps it's
easier to dismiss them as an inferior subclass than to admit that they
are just as difficult to master.
Phil Stone
Jan Larsson wrote:
He is talking about a somewhat different kind of computermusic than
what you get at your warehouse parties.
I think he just wants to make some music an ordinary music-interested
listener might actually want to listen to (not just a bunch of other
"computer music" composers).
In fact even eletronic music pioneer Pierre Schaeffer hade similar
thoughts at the end of his life, "Unfortunately it took me forty years
to conclude that nothing is possible outside DoReMi... In other words,
I wasted my life."
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