I believe one of the functions of great music and great art is that it asks tough questions. Often times some of most successful artists are the ones who are willing to polarize their audience. To my eyes the contemporary classical composers Elliott Carter and Philip Glass are in fact opposite sides of the same coin. Both composers elicit strong likes and dislikes about their music from music students.
I have been thinking about this within the context of how does one develop and grow as both a composer and artist? As a teacher I always try and encourage my students own individuality as much as I can. While it is inevitable that I will have and have my own biases, I often ask them about the music that they like so I can plan lessons that will expand their knowledge while heading in the musical direction they want to go. A very common response is “I just want to play something that sounds good”. What that statement means has often sparked my curiosity. Similarly my students will often stay to when first learning to improvise is that they don’t want to play the wrong notes. “Are there wrong notes?” I often ask. I recall how my teachers had the same conversation with me many years ago. I would always marvel at how my teacher could start with any note and turn it into something that sounded amazing me.
So the point I’m trying to make is often we want to sound good, and not sound bad. We want to play the right notes, and to avoid the wrong ones. Because if we sound good and play the right notes that will demonstrate our mastery of our craft “virtuosity”. If we sound bad and play the wrong notes no one will like us, we have failed, people will laugh, and our fears will be true – we were never any good in music anyways.
We need to have the courage to move beyond this. Looked at from another angle this approach has several shortcomings.
- we learn faster and deeper by making mistakes.
We only learn other peoples “answers” by staying within a comfortable circle of familiarity. It is important to move beyond this so we can learn to ask our own questions. I believe one of the functions of great music and great art is that it asks tough questions
