I've been reading up on the philosophical orientation of artists in the contemporary era and I came across some interesting things. One was in a book about ancient philosophy and feminism. They tell the story about how Diotima teaches Aristotle and Plato-that it's natural for people to be attracted to beauty but she would like them to see the beauty of philosophy, mathematics and science which all represent the pursuit of truth which some have represented with the symbol for Saturn because it's a difficult path.
The appreciation of sensual beauty is easy. The appreciation of theory and analysis is harder. But truth without beauty is too austere and beauty without truth is hedonistic. A hero must have both a sword and a harp. The compass must point between the heart and the intellect.
Plato also teaches we don't want to merely copy nature but guide it's forces. Pigs and monkeys will make themselves falling down drunk from engorging themselves on fallen fruit that has fermented on the ground. This allows lions to more easily catch them so they won't eat any more of the tree's fruit which the seeds need to fertilize the ground around the seeds. Do you want to copy pigs and monkeys? They're a part of nature but we shouldn't want to copy them. Perhaps they're also being used by the tree to help spread it's seeds. Do you want to be a tool of lower life-forms?
Also, for Plato, musicians and artists, as well as scientists and mathematicians remember the music of the spheres, the colors and forms in heaven along with the perfection of numbers so they are attracted to singing praise to the gods, painting their beauty, and discovering the secrets hidden within the universe.
The artists job is to share the wisdom of the difficult truth that we must appreciate each other in the short time we're given and make death beautiful as well as life. To express the true nature and beauty of the universe through art, music, science, mathematics, literature or whatever you must apply yourself diligently to the mastery of the tools for doing that. In the end you will not only perfect your expression of the divine, you will perfect yourself. So, if people want you to make music to sell soap, throw the money changers out of the temple.
William Russo says he would like music that has more heart than the avant-garde and more wit and wisdom than popular music. he calls it populist. Sounds good to me.
When the libraries at Alexandria were burned, plunging the Western world into one of several dark ages, it was run by a temple priestess, a sacred prostitute. The ancients used people's natural interest in sensuous beauty to guide people to greater knowledge and wisdom: to spiritual beauty.
A piece of art, photography, dance, architecture, literature, mathematics, philosophy, science, or music is a space through which light can enter. Hopefully the light of wisdom.
Imagination is reproductive, productive and anticipatory. It enables us to shape future expectations which may or may not be confirmed by events but which may sometimes influence them nonetheless. Imagination allows us to create philosophical utopias (like the democratic relationship of pitches in 12 tone music) Imagination allows us to operate from the conceptual world of human beings and not from the stimulus/response of beasts.
People have been trying to break out of painting traditional subject matter, with traditional materials, with traditional techniques. When Marcel painted “Nude Descending a Staircase” was a turning point. He was representing a single subject at various points in time.
Later, people represented the same subject from different viewpoints using various techniques such as collage. And we already talked about putting opposite ends of a street on the same canvas.
Abstraction has also been important for giving artists something to paint which is not the traditional subject. In fact, it’s said that all practical theory is based on metaphor which is all abstraction is. That's what Total Serialism is. It's an abstraction of the order of pitches to creating rhythms, articulations, expression markings etc...
The other thing is that artists have been trying to remove the distance between the observer and the artwork. There are several modern techniques for doing that. One is to paint the atmosphere between the viewer and the object, bringing the very air to the surface of the canvas, only as far away as the viewer is standing from it. Another method is to put something translucent or netting on the canvas, or take a photo through a somewhat translucent object or through rain.
For music one of the ways of breaking out of traditional subject matter is not to make the music thematic and to only present chords, arpeggiations and textures. Music also has been eliminating the separation between high and low art and even bringing in objects which had only been considered mere handicrafts and found objects like discarded soup cans etc… 12 Tone was a new technique that eliminated use of the old techniques simultaneously.
In gamelan, the musicians are all playing variations of a theme which never actually is played. This is similar to presenting a subject from different viewpoints simultaneously or of painting an object blurry as is done in certain kinds of abstraction.
One way to remove the distance of the music from the audience is to place the orchestra around the audience. This was a natural development of Serialism since composers naturally tried to extend the serialization process to where musicians playing certain instruments are supposed to sit for a performance.
The traditional score has also been thrown out and graphic scores have been created.
The trend in art, literature and architecture to break free of traditional limitations has had a force on the changes which have happened in music. It's the reason for John Coltrane exploring all of the inherent possibilities within jazz for example the height of which was his tune Giant Steps. And for Chick Corea blending the most advanced developments of late Romanticism with jazz and rock instrumentation.
Recently, I’ve made what I call a “Grimoire Ars”, a Grimoire of the Arts, based on all the ideas that I’ve found such as the stuff about Plato and modern techniques in music composition. If anyone is interested I can share what was just sitting there on the internet waiting to be discovered. Some of the information is so important I’ll post it up regardless and some of it is just interesting. The table of contents looks like this;
Philosopher’s Compass
Triaxium
Correspondence Codex
Multiplication in Music
Nature and Math
Growth of Algae and the Fibonacci
Curves
Koch Curve
Cantor Dust
Sierpenski Triangle
Additive Processes
Structural Pitches and Texturre
Quadrite Symmetry in 12 Tone Music
Frequency of Pitch Motion in Tonal Western Music
Most Common Diatonic Solutions
Phrase Development for Bass Drum
Bass Motion/Grounds for Preludes
Relative Weight of Pitches
Well Formed Rhythms
Diffraction and Pixelation/Phased-Detuned and Pointillism
Abstraction in Music
Random Numbers
Gene Music
Jazz Chord Progressions
Common Solutions for Melodic Rhythm
Digital Patterns from Math
Phrase Lengths
Return To Forever’s Performance Practice
Preludes
Techniques of Late 20th Century Composition
Articulation
Chord Clusters
General Techniques of Composition
How to Compose Jazz Chord Progressions
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