There was a composer a half century ago who started adding longer and longer sections of solos in his pieces eventually considering the idea of presenting the solos as the pieces without heads as per the usual form. In essence the listener encountered free form music. Some people enjoyed the new music others were baffled. How could the famous composer present something so hard to follow? Didn’t he care about his fans? His previous melodic songs won awards and admirable reviews, wasn’t that what it was all about? Some of the fans studied the pieces and if they found anything resembling a repeated phrase, clung onto it as though the music now was understandable. But in fact they were distorting the whole premise by trying to place these improvisations into an understandable box or to put it another way, trying to make what was free, have rules. For them, it made no sense, which in fact was exactly how the composer intended to position the listener. Finally those listeners felt vindicated when the composer died and then their opinions couldn’t be contradicted.
Previous Post: meta assignment
Next Post: Barry Knowledge