Miles Davis on reflection of his study at Julliard: “You have to learn all that stuff in order to be able to forget it.”Soul_of_Shu wrote: ↑Wed Nov 24, 2021 2:12 pm I've been thinking of starting a topic on the connection between music and metaphysics/ontology, whether as being immanent and integral, or more contingent, but I've been struggling to actually articulate the basis for a discussion. Then with the usual synchronicity, inspired by some recent comments about music by Jeffrey and Ashvin in the 'Criticism' thread, this interview popped up in the youtube feed, which may well serve as an initiator of that discussion better than any articulation that I can offer ... or not as the case may be, but surely worth a try ...
An interesting discussion between two brilliant people. I have a different take. My background includes two years of formal study of theory and composition, classical and jazz flute, and a ten year career playing jazz and blues guitar - that is mostly improvisation but with a classical education as well. The further I got into theory and analysis, the thinner the actual music became. When we abstract, we lose the ground from which music emerges. I finally gave up that study, and as Miles suggested, forgot it in a way. But also, that knowledge stayed in the background and at times aided my being able to translate what I heard into what I played. But unlike most so trained, I never consciously thought in patterns, forms, or analysis.
I saw three types of musicians surrounding me in jazz and blues: 1. At the lowest level, those who practiced a “vocabulary” of riffs they used to construct their performance; 2. Those who heard music in their heads which they consciously translated through their instruments; 3. The highest level of those who are acutely sensitive to the “vibrations” in the room and channel them unmediated by theory or artifice of any kind. Like Miles or John Coltrane. They barely even hear what they are playing, but are rather a pure conduit through which Being speaks. I have seen the same among the best poets, who afterwards couldn’t even tell you what the poem means. Rilke’s writing of the Duino Elegien is a great example - written in a matter of days and inexplicable to him afterwards.
I had several occasion where I experienced playing as a conduit to the vibrations, or ambient mood, and it was beyond description and by far the best I ever played.
In the recent past, music lost its ground, and therefore its reason for Being, culminating in the dreadful appearance of mathematical composition - the 12 tone row, now rightly forgotten. To me, music shows the true nature of Being and the impossibility of ever defining, categorizing, or capturing it in the eternal victory of the great musicians to defy all the prevailing rules. I see the history of Western music as the history of Being continually escaping these constraints, from the fussiness of Bach’s huge libido sublimated through Luther’s liturgy, to the atheist Beethoven revealing the overwhelming power of Being, from twinkling of the stars to the deeply disturbing movements of the bass, to the triumph of freedom we begin to see now, laughing at the sad foolishness of Schoenberg.
