“Music is 'significant form,' and its significance is that of a symbol, a highly articulated, sensuous object, which by virtue of its dynamic structure can express the forms of vital experience which language is peculiarly unfit to convey. Feeling, life, motion and emotion constitute its import.” FeelingsFormLanguageEmotionMusicVirtueObjectsMusic IsStructureSignificantSymbolsSignificanceImportsSensuous Author:Susanne Katherina Langer
“In order for music to free itself, it will have to pass over to the other side - there where territories tremble, where the structures collapse, where the ethoses get mixed up, where a powerful song of the earth is unleashed, the great ritornelles that transmutes all the airs it carries away and makes return.” EarthSongOrderSidesPowerfulMusicAirReturnStructureCarrieTerritoryCollapseUnleashed Author:Gilles Deleuze
“It appears to me that the subject of music, from Machaut to Boulez, has always been its construction. Melodies of 12-tone rows just don't happen. They must be constructed....To demonstrate any formal idea in music, whether structure or stricture, is a matter of construction, in which the methodology is the controlling metaphor of the composition...Only by 'unfixing' the elements traditionally used to construct a piece of music could the sounds exist in themselves--not as symbols, or memories which were memories of other music to begin with.” IdeasMatterHappensUsedSoundMemoriesMusicPiecesSubjectsElementsStructureMetaphorSymbolsToneMelodyConstructionCompositionFormalConstructsMethodology Author:Morton Feldman
“At this time the fashion is to bring something to jazz that I reject. They speak of freedom. But one has no right, under pretext of freeing yourself, to be illogical and incoherent by getting rid of structure and simply piling a lot of notes one on top of the other. There's no beat anymore. You can't keep time with your foot. I believe that what is happening to jazz with people like Ornette Coleman, for instance, is bad. There's a new idea that consists in destroying everything and find what's shocking and unexpected; whereas jazz must first of all tell a story that anyone can understand.” PeopleFirstsBelieveIdeasStoriesSpeakI BelieveMusicFeetFashionBeatsHappeningsStructureJazzNotesInstanceUnexpectedRejectsDestroyingNew IdeasShockingMonkJazz MusicPretextIllogicalDestroying Everything Author:Thelonious Monk