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This post is my response to Paul’s post at TAE, entitled, On Musical Form: is one way better than another?
In the post, the author contrasts the Tennessee way of music-making (verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-verse-chorus) with an artist named Herva, who works “with my heart and my hands, to paint or write (or whatever) with my insides (intelligence, spirit, guts, soul) guiding my choices.” Given the contrast, the author asks, “Is there a right kind of way to make music? Is there a correct way to paint a painting? Or should the questions be reworded, “Is there a better way to make music, or a painting?”
So here we go with my response. I think it’s the wrong question to ask, and that no way is entirely “better” than another.
In music, the usual format is easier to remember. More obscurely composes music has other qualities that Paul (and I, too) find attractive. My argument is that some methods are better for some ends than others. It depends upon your priorities.
In the 1950s, there were art events that were often called Happenings. The author of my art history book writes,
“Happenings were definitely the “in” thing for a period. Everyone sensed the excitement and vitality of a genuine revolution in the definition of art. Yet because they did not leave museum objects and their lifespan was short, they may seem less important in retrospect than they actually were.” (Fineberg 191)
Claes Oldenburg, Pie a la Mode, 1962. Muslin dipped in plaster over a frame of chickenwire, painted with enamel, 13 x 20 x 19in. Collection, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Photograph by Squidds & Nunns.
What’s important to the maker may or may not resonate with the priorities of others. It’s something I wonder about. Will people like my work? Sure, why not. They do now. Will people want to buy my work? Not always, and not necessarily, the same story. Claes Oldenburg had a storefront full of his own art open for two months, called The Store. Apparently his work was well-loved, but after those two months (in the summer of 1961) “The Store closed with a net loss of $285.” (Fineberg 198) And Yves Klein supported himself by teaching Judo.
And I was once told that the Butthole Surfers play some mean bluegrass (from a guitar-maker that’d sold them some instruments) but played in their genre because people will pay to see it.
This to say: creative people have to make a living, too, and they make decisions on how to do it. There’s a place in the world for the formulaic song just as there are for abstract noise-compositions. One could argue, too, that a narrow format (take the sonnet, for example) spurs creativity within boundaries. This isn’t to excuse bad art or bad music, but to argue that mere format isn’t the determining factor.
Yves Klein, Anthropometrie de l’epoque bleue (ANT 82), 1960. Pigment in pure synthetic resin on paper mounted on canvas, 5ft 1-5/8in x 9ft 3-1/4in. Collection, Musee National d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris. Copyright: ARS New York / ADAGP, Paris.
End note: I have forgotten how to do proper MLA punctuation when supplying references, and I don’t have a copy of Harbrace. Immler forgive me!
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Didn’t know I was making an argument, but your response is still valid, no way is necessarily entirely better than another in the context of artistic media or expression.
Is music different, though, perhaps, on account of being so easy to reproduce and distribute? Something I still have to think on . . .
Comment by pcNielsen 08.19.10 @ 8:13 pmOops, I knew you weren’t making an argument… phrasing edited appropriately. 
Your comment on ease of reproduction and distribution makes me wonder if anything else falls into the same category. But it gets hairy in a hurry. Written text, music, 2-d art, sure. Time-based 3-d art, performance art, sculpture… not quite so easy. And at the less-than-rock-star level, it’s relatively easy to reproduce and distribute music, but artwork that wasn’t in a digital format to begin with… not so easy. So I’m not sure that line of thought got me anywhere.
Just to make trouble… what about hymns? Verse-verse-verse-verse. Or maybe verse-chorus-verse-chorus-verse-chorus-verse-chorus.
Comment by Julie 08.19.10 @ 10:28 pmHymns are actually one of the first places I noticed my own musical tastes changing, noticed that I tended towards a little more variety in a composition. I realized at some point that I really preferred the ones without choruses (Be Though My Vision, When I Survey, Come Thou Fount…). Granted the verses are still quite repetitive, but the lyrics less so.
And, if I can play my own devil’s advocate, some of the music I began listening too during the transition, so to speak, was very repetitive. Electronica, Steve Reich compositions…
The idea of repetition isn’t bad, of course, not at all. One of the many lessons I still remember from Pete Pinnell’s ceramics classes was when we talked about theme and variation. He played a few minutes of a classical work to demonstrate the idea to us as prospective potters. And the idea extends beyond pottery, with its practical roots, to what are traditionally called the fine arts. Iteration is important for craft and concept.
Comment by pcNielsen 08.20.10 @ 7:54 amLeave a comment
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