BLIND DATE in Gent, with Ictus
A few questions by Wannes Gyselinck
Remember: the exaltation in your youth when a lot of very good music (Goldberg Variations! Morton Feldman! Zappa! In a silent way! Scelsi!) was still new to you. Unheard of. Remember when this newness still had a physical impact – lying on the bed with headphones on / paralyzed by sound / literally transpiring because of esthetical shock).
- Do you still have access to this maiden-experience? (Do you envy young people’s sincere enthusiasm for aforementioned names?)
Yes i remember very well these moments, where #2 by Soft Machine, or Roxy and Elsewhere by Zappa made me sweat and jump and cry. However, i don't have it anymore with these music (the doses must be more intense now, so i need more of a full length Tristan & Isolde to have this sort of enchantment), and i don't know any youngster who has shocks with these musics. Which is perfectly understandable, they have other fascination subjects.
Is the following correlation one that applies to you (and one that frightens you): the more you know about music (or: the more music you know), the more exclusive your taste becomes, in short: the more you know, the less you like (proportionally). Also: the better you understand, the more cerebral listening becomes.)
No i don't believe in that. It can be true if there is no fresh blood, or no input, but i don't think intellect and passion and tastes are contradictory. On the opposite, i think that obsessional temperaments, people who collect and think a lot about their passion (like me) are very emotional with it, although they also are very rational and intellectual.
I suppose that getting older, the tastes are more narrow, but i'm not sure it's a musical question. If the environment or the life and so are narrowing, then the tastes will get the same.
about intellectual and emotional listening, some experiences are instructive ; for instance one can be amazed by a piece, having a clear intellectual picture of the structure of this piece, little by little. And the amazment disappears.
On the other hand, in the case of other pieces, the structure never gets clear, (it's the case with Beethoven, for instance), and the amazment never ceases, because the intellectual absorption of the piece is never completed.
Some good-old epistemology: since it is said (but do you agree?) that music does not refer to anything but itself, music is devoid/free of significance (music can only resemble other music or sound, but cannot comment on it <or can it?> or develop a discourse about it <or can it?>).
i suppose that there is a continuum : on one extreme, music is completely understood, integrated, so narrow in signification that one can say that it is translatable. On the other side of the continuum, music as self refferring, free of significance and so, does exist. Every piece of music has a different position on this continuum, and some have a very wide span.
In any case, we all pretend, and that's the most important.
That's the reason which makes talks about "The Audience" in general, necessarily demagogic.
The predicament of predicates: which predicates do you use the most often when you talk (appreciatively or disapprovingly) about contemporary music: interesting / beautiful / challenging / confronting / boring / imitative (or even worse: epigonal) / pure (unlikely, but still: it had some centuries of fervent use) / (sth. else?)
depends on the music !
But i can say that there are terms i never use : boring, challenging, confronting.
And what do they reveal about your esthetical criteria (when do you say: ‘I like it’)?
i say 'i like it' when it looks like mine, but in a better way !
In short: while listening to a piece for the first time, when you like/dislike it, do you measure it against any explicable criteria of quality? Or do you ‘simply’ know good music when you hear it?
there is no good or bad music ; there is music which matches your criterias or not. I suppose i can explain why i like some things and why i don't, but i'm also very cautious : there are external factors ; the quality of the performance, the quality of the sound, the order in the concert, the people you are with, all that has an influence on concentration and emotional response...
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