http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrOK98q_ILA-the Black Page
title says it all, from the late. great Frank Zappa, hope you enjoy this milestone of the evolution of his compositional style (this piece is said to be from some time during the eighties, when Zappa started to compose music that would be too dificult for human performance, hence the synclavier, and this piece displays this increasing difficulty in his compositions) also, I will leave you with something I mentioned in a presentation I gave on the evolution of his compositional style: One of the main views on his compositional style is that he basically evolved his style into oblivion (listen to "Civiliztion: phase iii in its entirety then go back in his career and listen to earlier works) and that his later compositions didn't really say anything. I ask you all to look at this evolution from another perspective- he wanted to see music (possibly as a whole) transcend its current state and reach the next level (what would really be considered the next level? twentieth century composers such as Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Nancarrow, Ligeti, Webern, Babbit, the list goes on, already broke through many barriers with their compositional styles and twentieth century inventions (such as atonality, aleatoric (chance music, John Cage) music, pointilism (klangfarminmelodie, or in Zappa's words- klangfarbinmusic, this list also goes on) and set these "quasi-boundaries" that I think Zappa wanted to push through himself for music's sake and its further evolution) and he wanted to write compositions to aid in the preservation of music because he loved it so much and dedicated his ENTIRE life to it; he came pretty damn close with "civilization: phase iii" (keep in mind that this is my personal opinion on the matter and there are as many other opinions on his compositional style out there)
the twentieth century was great for the music industry and not only
ReplyDeleteFrank Zappa is awesome. I'm not one for trying to interpret a message through music, though. It's cool if it means something to you, but usually music means something different to everyone. It's weird to try and convince people your interpretation is "right" you know what I mean?
ReplyDeleteyes; music is entirely subjective, which is what I'm trying to pass on with this post: to look at music from different points of view, not only from "his style evolving into oblivion" and "his style almost transcended the "quasi-boundaries" set by other 20th century composers, but also in any other ways you can think of, like "his music shows the mindset of someone who is insane," or "his music shows the mindset of a genius," there are so many ways to interpret music and so many ways that music is interpreted, there is no wrong or right take on it (unless you think of something way out there that doesn't have anything to do with the piece or any form of intelligent interpretation because of ignorance or just to troll); also it is a blessing that there are people out there who can easily point out the subjectivity found in music, as opposed to those who can't, e.g. "Metallica is the best because they write the best music!" "What makes their music the best?" "Uhhh....IT ROCKS! THAT'S WHY!" quite a few people these days only focus on the name of some act and say that their music is the best-chances are it's only because the name is extremely popular and they want to fit in, unaware of the completely subjective entity that is music, and unable to view music from different perspectives other than their own, which could have been entirely formulated from their own ignorance when it comes to music because of the inability to recognize music as subjective (whew, dat tangent on the ignorance of the masses when it comes to music)
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