The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - Samuel Andreyev

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00:00:55.520 Welcome to the Jordan B. Peterson podcast. This is episode 8, a conversation with composer Samuel

00:01:09.260 Andreev. You can support these podcasts by donating the amount of your choice to Dr. Peterson's Patreon

00:01:16.120 account, which can be found by searching Jordan Peterson Patreon, or by finding the link in the

00:01:22.400 description. Dr. Peterson's self-development programs, self-authoring, can be found at self-authoring.com.

00:01:32.920 So I'm talking today with Samuel Andreev, who's a composer, a Canadian composer, who's currently

00:01:39.760 residing in Strasbourg, where he's working as a composer, and we're going to talk today about music.

00:01:45.280 So, but I think we'll start off by having Sam talk a little bit about his career and position

00:01:51.780 himself so that we can move into the conversation and provide a bit of context for everybody who's

00:01:58.580 watching and listening. So take it away. Well, I'm a composer. I'm from Canada originally,

00:02:04.760 and I lived there until I was 22, and I decided actually fairly early on that I wanted to live

00:02:11.100 in France. And so I moved to Paris, where I studied for quite a number of years at the Paris

00:02:17.700 Conservatory. I remained there for 12 years and moved to Strasbourg two and a half years ago,

00:02:23.820 and I've been here ever since. So I'm mainly a composer, but I do a lot of other things as well.

00:02:29.040 I'm also a poet. I'm also a teacher. I'm also a performer.

00:02:33.240 So tell me a little bit about your experiences in North America first as a composer.

00:02:37.700 Well, I should start by saying that because I left so young, I didn't really have the opportunity

00:02:42.200 to put together anything resembling a professional career when I was living in Canada.

00:02:47.160 But what I can say is that I started out in music by producing songs when I was a teenager,

00:02:55.140 and that became something of an obsession. I was very interested in a sort of unusual branch of the

00:03:02.400 sort of singer-songwriter tradition that involved paying attention to avant-garde manifestations of

00:03:08.240 music and trying to incorporate those into the pop song format. And there is a very fascinating and

00:03:17.740 lengthy history of that. And so that was sort of my initial foray into music. So I made a total of

00:03:25.080 about eight or nine albums of songs. And as I was going along with that, I became more and more

00:03:33.700 interested in forms of musical expression that were not easily compatible with the song format.

00:03:40.640 And that resulted in a kind of interesting tension. And so towards the end of my sort of very

00:03:46.220 short-lived career as a singer-songwriter, it became obvious to me that I couldn't resolve the

00:03:51.580 contradictions between sort of popular forms of expression and the sorts of things that were

00:03:57.800 really starting to fascinate me and just keep me up at night in the format of the pop song. So that

00:04:03.420 resulted in a kind of schism at a certain point where I was making songs that really didn't sound

00:04:08.840 like songs at all. And it was, from that point, it was a fairly straightforward matter just to

00:04:14.740 abandon ship, so to speak, and basically take up full-time composition.

00:04:22.800 You said that you were trying to incorporate avant-garde elements into your songs. And so

00:04:29.000 I think maybe the first thing you could do is define for the listeners the difference between a song and

00:04:34.460 other forms of composition, because it's not self-evident to people standing outside the

00:04:39.120 professional musical universe, and also what you mean by avant-garde forms and why you were trying

00:04:44.600 to incorporate them.

00:04:46.560 Well, essentially, the song is a vernacular format. It's a form of expression that deals with materials

00:04:52.860 that are familiar to everybody and that are accessible to everybody. So in other words, the standard pop

00:04:57.500 song has three chords for the most part. And so these are very easy materials to master. So anyone

00:05:03.440 who's interested enough in it can take the trouble to learn those three chords and put together

00:05:08.820 something resembling a pop song. They might not be very good at it, but you can still, you can access the

00:05:14.000 basic fundamental building blocks of the pop song fairly easily. Whereas other branches of composition

00:05:21.620 are primarily written. They're not primarily things that come out of a performance tradition necessarily.

00:05:28.220 In other words, they might be initially encoded as a score, and then only after the score is written do you

00:05:35.220 have, hopefully, a performance tradition coming out of the piece. Whereas in pop music, it's the opposite.

00:05:40.900 You start with the instrument, you start with performing, you start with the sort of immediate

00:05:45.220 sort of tactile relationship you have to your instrument, and the music sort of flows out of that.

00:05:52.900 But you don't begin with the score, with the written document.

00:05:56.360 And these avant-garde elements that you were talking about, two things. What got you interested in them?

00:06:01.960 Why did you think it was useful? And explain a bit more about what happened when you started pursuing them.

00:06:09.160 I didn't think of it in terms of utility. It was something that literally just grabbed me by the throat.

00:06:14.120 Because one thing that started to happen was, in the 60s particularly, you had this very brief

00:06:20.360 cultural moment when there was a kind of crossover between what the post-war avant-garde were doing and

00:06:27.160 the sort of most broadly popular rock acts. So for example, the Beatles on the White Album famously

00:06:34.280 included the track called Revolution Nine, which is a sound collage. It's a piece of sonic art. It is

00:06:40.840 in absolutely no regards a rock song. And they did that because John Lennon and Paul McCartney were

00:06:47.080 interested in Stalkhausen and things like this. And that's an extraordinary cultural moment. And

00:06:52.120 the Beatles were far from the only ones to do that. So if you get interested in that kind of music

00:06:58.360 from that year, from the 60s and onwards, and you look at it closely, you can't help noticing that

00:07:03.960 there's a kind of shadow world that's peeking through via these sorts of manifestations. And a lot of

00:07:11.080 groups did things like that as well. The Doors did that. They did very strange sort of collage,

00:07:18.680 avant-garde poetry and all sorts of things that you can't easily square with the demands of the pop

00:07:24.120 song format. So as I was listening to these things when I was 12 or 13 years old, my attention was

00:07:30.760 instinctively drawn to the more unusual elements of those records, which is interesting because when they

00:07:37.720 came out, those were usually the tracks that everybody skipped. Right, right. But, you know,

00:07:42.200 I was instinctively fascinated by them. I always thought that Jim Morrison's foray outside of the

00:07:47.160 song format was generally unfortunate. But, and I was confused, of course, when I listened to

00:07:52.120 Revolution No. 9. Although I thought that in the context of that album, it was very interesting because

00:07:57.800 that, well, it's a double album, which was a very remarkable album. And it seemed oddly enough to fit

00:08:03.160 in some strange way. I mean, that whole double album fits together in a remarkable way, even though

00:08:08.840 there's quite a diverse range of, of song formats that are incorporated into it. So why do you think

00:08:16.760 the, so let's do a couple of things. Why don't we define what constitutes avant-garde, period.

00:08:21.960 It's not necessarily a term that people, they've heard it undoubtedly, but people hear all sorts of,

00:08:28.200 what would you call them? Let's call them terms. They hear all sorts of terms that they're not

00:08:32.840 necessarily that haven't been well defined. So you could tell us about the avant-garde.

00:08:37.160 Tell us why it attracted you. Do you think as well? Well, first of all, to define the avant-garde,

00:08:43.480 I mean, it's, it's a military term and it simply means the unfortunate souls that are the first to

00:08:48.040 go into battle. They're on the front line, so to speak. And so I suppose that in the, in the artistic

00:08:53.320 domain, it simply means people who are, who are engaging in, in forms of artistic expression that are

00:08:58.520 as yet untested. Now there's a, you can certainly debate whether that term is at all historically

00:09:04.680 valid anymore. And there's a strong case to be made for saying that the avant-garde in a certain

00:09:10.360 sense basically no longer exists because it's been so thoroughly institutionalized and written about

00:09:16.600 and discussed. And it's very, very difficult these days to make a work of art that actually shocks

00:09:21.080 anybody. You know, that's a kind of an interesting thing. And that's a very recent phenomenon also.

00:09:25.000 I mean, you can do absolutely outrageous things and, and, and have them be installed in, in public

00:09:31.240 places and it'll generate a certain amount of civic controversy, but nothing even remotely close

00:09:35.800 to what would have happened 60 years ago, even. Right. So that's the first thing.

00:09:39.640 Right. That's an interesting phenomena in and of itself.

00:09:43.240 Right. So there's a kind of extraordinary tolerance for all sorts of artistic expression. You could also

00:09:50.200 argue that it's a form of societal indifference as well. You could say that, well, the reason nobody's

00:09:55.000 rioting and no one's shocked and seeking to have these sorts of cultural forms banned is because

00:10:01.640 it, it simply doesn't matter. The sort of arts have been declawed in a certain sense. I mean,

00:10:05.960 there's an argument you could make in that sense as well. Well, people are so flooded with sounds and

00:10:09.960 images now too, that the sheer volume of those sorts of things that we're exposed to, I also think

00:10:15.080 uh, inoculates us against, or also inoculates.

00:10:23.480 Welcome to the Jordan B. Peterson podcast.

00:10:27.800 This is episode eight, a conversation with composer Samuel Andreev. You can support these podcasts

00:10:38.040 by donating the amount of your choice to Dr. Peterson's Patreon account, which can be found

00:10:43.000 by searching Jordan Peterson Patreon, or by finding the link in the description.

00:10:49.880 Dr. Peterson's self-development programs, self-authoring, can be found at self-authoring.com.

00:10:55.640 So I'm talking today with Samuel Andreev, who's a composer, a Canadian composer, who's currently

00:11:04.920 residing in Strasbourg, where he's working as a composer. And we're going to talk today about music.

00:11:11.160 So, but I think we'll start off by having Sam talk a little bit about his career and position

00:11:16.920 himself so that we can move into the, into the conversation and provide a bit of context for

00:11:23.000 everybody who's watching and listening. So take it away. Well, I'm a composer. I'm from Canada

00:11:29.000 originally, um, and I lived there until I was 22. And I decided, um, actually fairly early on that I

00:11:35.560 wanted to live in France. And so I moved to, to Paris, where I studied for quite a number of years at

00:11:42.520 the Paris Conservatory. Um, I remained there for 12 years and moved to Strasbourg two and a half years

00:11:48.600 ago. And I've been here ever since. So I'm mainly a composer, but I do a lot of other things as well.

00:11:54.040 I'm also, uh, a poet. I'm also a teacher. I'm also a performer.

00:11:58.200 So tell me a little bit about your experiences in, in North America first as a composer.

00:12:03.160 Well, I should start by saying that because I left so young, I didn't really have the opportunity to

00:12:08.280 put together anything resembling a professional career when I was living in Canada.

00:12:11.480 Uh, but what I can say is that I started out in music by, by producing songs when I was a teenager.

00:12:20.840 And that became something of an obsession. I was very interested in a sort of unusual branch of the

00:12:27.560 sort of singer songwriter tradition that involved paying attention to avant-garde manifestations of

00:12:33.320 music and trying to incorporate those into the pop song format. And there is a

00:12:41.160 very fascinating and lengthy history of that. And so that was sort of my initial foray into music.

00:12:48.760 So I made a total of about eight or nine albums of songs. And as I was going along with that,

00:12:57.640 I became more and more interested in forms of musical expression that were not easily compatible

00:13:04.840 with the song format. And that resulted in a kind of interesting tension. And so towards the end of my

00:13:10.760 sort of very short lived career as a singer songwriter, it became obvious to me that I couldn't,

00:13:15.720 I couldn't resolve the contradictions between sort of popular forms of expression and the sorts of

00:13:22.280 things that were really starting to fascinate me and just keep me up at night in the format of the pop

00:13:27.880 song. So that resulted in a kind of schism at a certain point where I was making songs that really

00:13:33.480 didn't sound like songs at all. And it was, from that point, it was a fairly straightforward matter

00:13:39.480 just to abandon ship, so to speak, and basically take up full-time composition.

00:13:48.280 You said that you were trying to incorporate avant-garde elements into your songs. And so

00:13:54.440 I think maybe the first thing you could do is define for the listeners the difference between a song and

00:13:59.960 other forms of composition, because it's not self-evident to people standing outside the

00:14:04.200 professional musical universe, and also what you mean by avant-garde forms and why you were trying to

00:14:09.880 incorporate them. Well, essentially the song is a vernacular format. It's a, it's a form of expression that

00:14:17.080 deals with materials that are familiar to everybody and that are accessible to everybody. So in other words,

00:14:21.800 the standard pop song has three chords for the most part. And so these are, these are very easy materials to

00:14:27.480 master. So anyone, you know, who's interested enough in it can, can take the trouble to learn

00:14:32.040 those three chords and, and put together something resembling a pop song. They might not be very good

00:14:36.360 at it, but you can still, you can access the basic fundamental building blocks of the pop song

00:14:42.040 fairly easily. Whereas other branches of composition are primarily written. They're not primarily things

00:14:50.760 that come out of a performance tradition necessarily. In other words, they might be

00:14:54.280 initially encoded as a, as a score. And then only after the score is written, do you have

00:15:01.160 hopefully a performance tradition coming out of the piece. Whereas in, in pop music, it's the

00:15:05.560 opposite. You start with the instrument, you start with performing, you start with, with the sort of

00:15:09.960 immediate sort of tactile relationship you have to your instrument. And the, the music sort of flows out

00:15:17.000 of that. But you don't begin with the score, with the written document.

00:15:21.560 And these avant-garde elements that you were talking about, two things, what, what got you

00:15:26.440 interested in them? Why did you think it was useful? And, and explain a bit more about what

00:15:32.120 happened when you started pursuing them. I didn't think of it in terms of utility. It was something

00:15:36.920 that, that literally just grabbed me by the throat. Because one, one thing that started to happen was,

00:15:42.440 in the, in the 60s particularly, you had this very brief cultural moment when there was a kind of

00:15:47.240 crossover between, between what the, the post-war avant-garde were doing and, and the sort of

00:15:53.240 most broadly popular rock acts. So for example, the Beatles on their, on the White Album famously

00:15:59.480 included the track called Revolution Nine, which is a sound collage. You know, it's a piece of

00:16:04.200 sonic art. It is an absolutely no regards a rock song. And they, they did that because the,

00:16:10.120 you know, John Lennon and Paul McCartney were interested in Stalkhausen, and, and things like this.

00:16:14.680 And that's, and that's an extraordinary cultural moment. And the Beatles were far from the only

00:16:18.680 ones to do that. So if you, if you get interested in, in that kind of music from that year, from the

00:16:24.440 60s and onwards, and you look at it closely, you can't help noticing that there's a kind of

00:16:30.520 shadow world that's, that's peeking through via these sorts of manifestations. And a lot of,

00:16:36.120 a lot of groups did, did things like that as well. The Doors did that. They did very strange,

00:16:42.120 sort of collage avant-garde poetry and all sorts of things that, that, that you can't easily square

00:16:48.200 with the demands of the pop song format. So as I was listening to these things, you know, when I was

00:16:52.600 12 or 13 years old, I, my attention was instinctively drawn to the, the more unusual elements of those

00:17:00.840 records, which is interesting because when they came out, those were usually the tracks that everybody

00:17:04.920 skipped. Right, right. But, you know, I, I was instinctively fascinated by them. I always thought

00:17:10.200 that Jim Morrison's foray outside of the song format was generally unfortunate, but, and I was confused,

00:17:16.360 of course, when I listened to Revolution No. 9. Although I thought that in the context of that album,

00:17:21.720 it was very interesting because that, well, it's a double album, which was a very remarkable album.

00:17:26.280 And it seemed oddly enough to fit in some strange way. Um, I mean, that whole double album

00:17:32.200 fits together in a remarkable way, even though there's a quite a diverse range of, of, uh, song

00:17:37.640 formats, uh, that, that are incorporated into it. So why do you think the, uh, so let's do a couple

00:17:43.400 of things. Why don't we define what constitutes avant-garde period? It's not necessarily a term

00:17:48.600 that people, they've heard it undoubtedly, but people hear all sorts of, what would you call them?

00:17:54.920 Let's call them terms. They hear all sorts of terms that they're not necessarily, that haven't been

00:17:59.400 well-defined. So you could tell us about the avant-garde. Tell us why it attracted you,

00:18:05.880 do you think, as well? Well, first of all, to define the avant-garde, I mean, it's, it's a military

00:18:09.800 term, and it simply means the unfortunate souls that are the first to go into battle. They're on the

00:18:14.680 front lines, so to speak. Um, and so I suppose that in the, in the artistic domain, it simply means

00:18:19.480 people who are, who are engaging in, in forms of artistic expression that are as yet untested.

00:18:24.680 Now, there's a, you can certainly debate whether that term is at all historically valid anymore,

00:18:30.680 um, and there's a, a strong case to be made for saying that the avant-garde in a certain sense

00:18:35.960 basically no longer exists because it's been so thoroughly, uh, institutionalized and, and written

00:18:41.480 about and discussed, and it's very, very difficult these days to make a work of art that actually shocks

00:18:46.280 anybody. You know, that's a kind of an interesting thing, and that's a very recent phenomenon also. I mean,

00:18:50.600 you can do absolutely outrageous things and, and, and have them be installed in, in public places,

00:18:56.920 and it'll generate a certain amount of civic controversy, but nothing even remotely close

00:19:01.080 to what would have happened 60 years ago, even. Great. So that's the first thing. Right. And then

00:19:05.640 an interesting phenomena in and of itself. Right. So there's a kind of, uh, extraordinary tolerance

00:19:11.320 for, um, all sorts of artistic expression. You could also argue that it's a form of societal

00:19:17.400 indifference as well. You could say that, well, the reason nobody's rioting and no one's shocked

00:19:21.800 and, and seeking to have these sorts of cultural forms banned is because it, it simply doesn't

00:19:28.120 matter. The sort of arts have been declawed in a certain sense. I mean, there's an argument you

00:19:31.880 could make in that sense as well. Well, and people are so flooded with sounds and images now too, that

00:19:36.920 the sheer volume of those sorts of things that we're exposed to, I also think, uh, inoculates us

00:19:41.800 against, or also inoculates, inoculates us against shock, but also makes it more and more difficult

00:19:47.720 to be sufficiently original to actually have that effect on people. I mean, it's not like people

00:19:53.400 have dropped all their taboos because you see that the, the taboos about what can be said,

00:19:59.560 for example, just shift around. But it certainly does seem to be the case that it's harder for artists

00:20:04.760 to, to, to play a, to play a role that, it also, I suppose, speaks to some degree to the degeneration

00:20:12.520 of cultural norms around, around all sorts of different areas. Because if there are strongly

00:20:18.040 established norms, it's a lot easier to violate them. And that's pretty interesting, because it

00:20:21.720 also means you can't be a revolutionary unless there's a half-decent tyrant around to hand me in.

00:20:26.520 So, right. Yeah. So why do you think the avant-garde attracted you instead of, it's, I mean, it, it,

00:20:33.480 it would have been more typical, let's say for someone who started out composing pop songs to

00:20:39.720 continue in that vein, not to go down the rabbit hole of the avant-garde, which is a very strange

00:20:43.960 thing for anyone to do. Yeah. A couple of reasons. The first thing is that the, the, the pop song

00:20:50.520 format is interesting in that it, it, it only works if you stay relatively close to its parameters.

00:20:57.960 And if you start to stray too far outside of them, then what you're doing basically no longer functions

00:21:03.000 as a pop song because it's no longer vernacular. And so I have a, a fascination with all sorts of

00:21:10.040 forms of music. And the pop song is an incredibly difficult medium to work within again, because you,

00:21:17.000 first of all, it's, it's completely unforgiving. You're working in basically a, an extremely compressed

00:21:21.720 format. It's very rare for pop songs to be too much longer than three minutes. So you, you don't really have

00:21:26.360 much room to maneuver. Um, and you certainly don't have any room to maneuver structurally. I mean,

00:21:31.000 you pretty much have to stick to the verse, chorus, verse, chorus thing for the immense majority of pop

00:21:36.680 songs. There's been very little variation in that since, since rock really, since the fifties. Um, where

00:21:43.240 did that come from? I mean, I know the three minute length was, that was actually a commercial imposition,

00:21:47.880 if I remember correctly, but that structure verse, chorus, verse, chorus, what, out of what did that

00:21:53.080 originate? Well, that's a, that's an extremely old form. And you certainly have, uh, there's a,

00:21:58.440 there are Baroque forms such as the Rondo or the Rittonello that have an extremely similar

00:22:03.160 form where you, you alternate one fixed element that keeps returning the same way, essentially,

00:22:08.200 and then a secondary element that, that sort of gives you a certain degree of relief, a certain degree of,

00:22:12.920 uh, uh, contrast with the preceding element. Okay, so that's a chaos, that's a chaos order

00:22:19.400 interplay, I guess, of sorts. At least that's the way I would interpret it. And why the three-chord

00:22:23.880 structure? Why, why do you think instead of two chords or four chords, why, why do you think that's

00:22:28.840 dominated? Well, a three-chord structure is the bare minimum that you need in order to have any kind

00:22:34.920 of harmonic tension, basically. Uh, in, in, in music, generally speaking, you, you, in, in tonal music,

00:22:41.640 anyway, you, you have a very simple and effective polarity between the, what's called the tonic and

00:22:47.320 the dominant degrees. And that's, that's something that was, that basically structured the entire

00:22:53.480 classical period, the Baroque period as well to, to a certain degree as well. Okay, so unpack that,

00:22:57.240 unpack that for, that's, that for us and tell, tell us what that is and why that, why that, why that works

00:23:02.920 musically and why it works aesthetically. Well, it, it's, it's one of many possible strategies

00:23:09.560 for music. And in fact, if you, if you go beyond the Baroque into, into Renaissance music or,

00:23:14.760 or, or even earlier, you don't have this sort of strong polarity between two opposing harmonic

00:23:21.000 regions. That was something that really came about during the 17th century, basically.

00:23:25.240 Is that conversational? Do you think that, like, one of the things that I've noticed about many pieces

00:23:30.120 of music is that they sound like dialogues. There's an announcement on the one hand, and then there's

00:23:35.160 a response on the other, and then there's an announcement, and then there's a response. It,

00:23:38.440 it seems to me to be, be based in dialogue, based analogically, metaphorically, maybe,

00:23:44.760 in dialogue. And you hear that in many classical pieces as well. So I, I would say that it's, it's,

00:23:50.760 it's a way of setting up an extremely rudimentary story, an extremely rudimentary form of narrative,

00:23:56.040 in the sense that you start with a region that is established, that you, that you basically

00:24:01.160 have as your home base, essentially. And then you, you modulate to a different, a different harmonic

00:24:07.560 region. And through this process of modulating, you move from your home base to somewhere else.

00:24:13.720 And that creates a tension, it creates nostalgia, and it creates a need for resolution.

00:24:20.200 There are plenty of other ways you can do that.

00:24:21.960 Right, right. Well, okay. So that's interesting. I mean, for a variety of reasons, one, one thing that

00:24:26.520 made me, that, um, made me think about right away is the proclivity of small children to do that with

00:24:32.360 their, their mother in particular. So the space around the mother is defined as home territory,

00:24:38.280 partly because mother is familiar, but also partly because if something goes wrong and mother is there,

00:24:45.320 mother can fix it. So, so there's, there's a zone around the child when the mother is there,

00:24:51.880 there, where there is access to immediate resources that will fill in where the child's skills are

00:24:58.360 lacking. And then what the child will do after obtaining sufficient comfort from being in the

00:25:03.720 presence of mom is to go out far enough into the world driven by their curiosity, which, which has an

00:25:10.520 underlying biological manifestation. There's an exploratory system that drives the child out there

00:25:16.200 to discover new information and to extend their skills by pushing against the unknown. And then

00:25:22.920 when that, when they either get tired or when they go out far enough so that negative emotion as a

00:25:27.800 consequence of threat predominates, they run back to their mother. And so, so it reminded me of that.

00:25:34.760 And it's also a microcosm of the hero's journey, right, which is the journey from a safe and, and

00:25:40.520 defined place out into the unknown and then a return. And that is, well, I wouldn't even say

00:25:46.840 that's the simplest story. That's the simplest story that also involves transformation. So it might

00:25:51.080 be the simplest good story, something like that. But I hadn't mapped that onto that chorus.

00:25:58.920 What did you call it? Verse chorus. Yes, yes, yes. So that, and that return to stability. So,

00:26:05.400 so you think, so does that make sense, that mapping as far as you're concerned? Absolutely,

00:26:09.720 because one of the, one of the main tenets of the, of the, the, the tonal harmonic system is that you

00:26:16.040 have an eventual return to where you started out at the end. So there's, there's always the promise

00:26:20.920 of a return at the end. And, and that's the essential structure that you see in pop songs as well.

00:26:26.360 So it's, it's fundamentally a, it's a directional, it's a teleological sort of structure. And that's

00:26:34.120 extremely different from, from Renaissance music, which basically has a very, very weak degree of

00:26:40.200 directionality. It doesn't seem to want to particularly go anywhere. It sort of floats.

00:26:46.200 And that's, that's an interesting thing that, that music sort of went off in this other sort of

00:26:53.240 direction. Did you have any idea why that transformation occurred?

00:26:56.600 Well, I think it's because there was a, a need for a more dramatically intense form of music.

00:27:01.960 And that certainly, that certainly took, took place during the Baroque. And of course,

00:27:06.040 that's related to the power and cultural influence of the Catholic Church and the, the need to create

00:27:11.160 forms of artwork that would be extremely dramatic and expressive. And in Baroque music, you have this

00:27:17.320 intensification of musical expression. That's, that's quite striking. In a sense, you could say that,

00:27:21.880 that, that, that, that strongly directional thrust that you get in music developed even further in the

00:27:28.520 classical and then in the Romantic periods as well, to the point where it, it, it becomes this sort of

00:27:33.160 constant push towards ever more cataclysmic forms of expression until it actually ruptures the fabric of

00:27:40.760 music itself. You, you no longer can contain this, this level of expressivity.

00:27:45.800 Okay, so let's, let's go back a little bit to the, so lots of the people that are listening, I presume,

00:27:51.240 won't know the, the temporal relationship between those periods of musical development that you

00:27:57.320 just described. So why don't you go back to the, to the medieval era and then just lay out the

00:28:02.200 periods of time across which music developed. And then we'll go back to that idea of this

00:28:06.760 cataclysmic upheaval that sort of shattered the structure of music, say in the 20th century.

00:28:11.880 Well, there's only so far you can go back because music has only begun to be written down in a way

00:28:17.000 that's, that's reliably retrievable since the late 14th century or so. So if you, if you try to go too

00:28:23.960 much farther back than that, you, you end up with documents that are extremely hard to decipher. We

00:28:29.480 don't really know exactly what these things sounded like. We've got about 600 years. Yeah, we've got about

00:28:34.520 600 years. So roughly speaking, the, the Renaissance period extends to about 1600. So roughly between 1400

00:28:41.960 and 1600. And the Baroque is usually said to end with the death of Bach in 1750. Then you have a kind

00:28:49.640 of no man's land that lasted 20 or 30 years, where there was a sort of in-between period of, of

00:28:56.680 generalized experimentation, but there wasn't yet a strongly characterized style yet. And then you have

00:29:02.440 classicism that starts really towards the, well, in the second half of the, of the 18th century.

00:29:07.880 And romanticism is a little bit more difficult to pin down, but, but Beethoven is considered to be

00:29:14.920 one of the earlier exponents of, of a, of a romantic style. He died in 1827. So that more or less takes

00:29:22.760 us to the end of the 19th century. Then you have something that you could plausibly call late

00:29:27.880 romanticism, although that's very difficult to define. And that sort of dovetails with modernism.

00:29:32.360 So can you set out some of the defining features of each of those, set out the defining features of

00:29:38.280 each of those epochs, let's say, and then maybe you can walk us through this, this idea that you

00:29:45.480 expressed about increasingly cataclysmic changes, and then that resulting in, in say 20th century

00:29:53.000 music. That takes us back to the avant-garde as well.

00:29:55.320 Right. Well, the first thing I would say is that these sorts of categorizations are, are, are

00:29:59.080 generalizations. I mean, you can't, you can't take 200 years of human cultural endeavor and reduce

00:30:04.360 them down to a single word. And of course, these things are constantly flowing and, and, and

00:30:09.320 transforming. And, and there are all, there are also all sorts of overlapping, um, contrasting

00:30:16.920 movements happening at, at any given time. So this is really just for the sake of convenience. But,

00:30:21.400 but if you wanted to make a generalization, you could say that during the Renaissance, music was

00:30:25.320 essentially linear, it was essentially melodic and, and contrapuntal. In other words, that you would

00:30:32.600 have, you would have individual voices, individual lines that would be flowing along together.

00:30:50.600 is

00:31:03.720 is

00:31:13.880 a

00:31:15.640 But music was not yet primarily thought of

00:31:25.940 in terms of vertical or harmonic sonorities.

00:31:30.120 That really starts to happen with the Baroque

00:31:32.340 early in the 17th century.

00:31:35.440 So Baroque music has a much stronger

00:31:38.720 harmonic dimension to it.

00:31:42.440 You could argue that it's harmonically somewhat simpler

00:31:45.280 than Renaissance music because it's more codified.

00:31:48.380 That's when you start getting the first tretises on harmony,

00:31:51.420 the first theoretical writings on music,

00:31:54.640 also is in the Baroque period.

00:31:56.800 It's also characterized by the use of highly stylized

00:32:00.600 and very strong dance rhythms.

00:32:15.280 The classical period is essentially a simplification

00:32:34.500 of the Baroque style in a certain sense.

00:32:36.700 Music became strongly divided between what you would call

00:32:40.660 foreground and background elements.

00:32:42.680 In other words, you would have a very prominent melodic line

00:32:46.400 and then you would have an accompaniment.

00:32:48.800 But the two are not necessarily of equal importance,

00:32:51.320 whereas in the Baroque and in the Renaissance,

00:32:53.200 the voices would have tended all to be of basically equal importance.

00:32:56.980 There's very little foreground-background distinction

00:32:59.060 in Baroque and pre-Baroque music.

00:33:02.360 So the classical style is a simplification.

00:33:05.460 It's also a codification of musical forms.

00:33:07.880 That's when you start getting the symphony,

00:33:10.180 the string quartet, the concerto.

00:33:12.900 Well, the concerto is also a Baroque form,

00:33:14.380 but it starts to take on the characteristics

00:33:16.260 of other classical forms,

00:33:18.800 such as the sonata in the classical period.

00:33:22.400 So you get this codification

00:33:25.060 and this simplification of the basic tools of music

00:33:28.400 in the classical period.

00:33:29.300 And the classical period is quite extraordinary, actually,

00:33:32.840 because it was a rather short-lived period

00:33:36.920 in which for a very brief span of time

00:33:41.180 there was an overlapping of popular and savant styles.

00:33:47.700 So you had sort of a vernacular dimension

00:33:51.080 in the classical period.

00:33:52.780 You had very simple popular forms

00:33:56.420 and popular forms of expression,

00:33:57.540 and you also had the absolute highest degree

00:34:00.140 of musical science,

00:34:01.060 and they were combined.

00:34:02.820 Not in every composer,

00:34:04.160 but certainly the one that comes to mind

00:34:06.500 as having been the highest manifestation

00:34:08.280 of that combination of the different qualities

00:34:11.200 is Mozart.

00:34:11.700 And that's probably a unique historical phenomenon,

00:34:41.580 I mean, there aren't very many composers

00:34:43.540 that can achieve that.

00:34:45.680 And in a sense, you have to be historically lucky.

00:34:48.360 The state of the musical language when you're alive

00:34:50.540 has to coincide with your own need

00:34:55.180 to push the boundaries of your art.

00:34:58.360 And so that's an amazing thing.

00:35:01.280 And romanticism more or less puts an end to that

00:35:04.520 because it puts a tremendous degree of focus

00:35:08.040 focus on the individual.

00:35:09.000 It's an exacerbation of the idea of the self.

00:35:12.680 And it elevates the subjective emotional impulses

00:35:17.600 of the artist to a very high realm.

00:35:22.680 And so you get these forms of individual expression

00:35:24.660 that begin to not really jibe

00:35:28.700 with the underlying rules of the art.

00:35:31.180 And that's when things really get complicated.

00:35:35.200 Okay, so that moves us into the,

00:35:37.900 you just talked about the classical period.

00:35:40.040 The next one that comes along is romantic.

00:35:43.760 Right.

00:35:44.420 Okay.

00:35:44.980 What happens during the romantic period?

00:35:47.180 And you said Beethoven was an early manifestation of that

00:35:50.440 with his sort of cataclysmic music.

00:35:53.500 Well, Beethoven starts off writing music

00:35:55.220 that's strongly influenced by Haydn,

00:35:56.740 who's one of the most important classical composers.

00:35:59.380 And by the end of his career,

00:36:01.380 he's doing pieces that basically are destroying

00:36:05.660 these forms from within.

00:36:07.160 It's very, very interesting.

00:36:08.140 If you listen to late Beethoven works,

00:36:09.480 like the Hammerclefier Sonata, for example,

00:36:11.280 or the late string quartets.

00:36:12.240 He's basically pulling apart these forms,

00:36:28.240 in a rather ruthless way and just pulverizing them.

00:36:45.620 There's an analogy between that

00:36:47.200 and what happens in other fields of endeavor,

00:36:49.520 you know, that the philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn

00:36:52.120 talked about and also the developmental psychologist Piaget

00:36:56.100 with these revolutions in stages, you know.

00:37:00.560 And so for Piaget or for Kuhn, you know,

00:37:05.360 scientists were working within,

00:37:07.980 let's call it an axiomatic theory.

00:37:10.580 And then they could accrete new data into that theory

00:37:13.260 without disrupting the axioms.

00:37:14.780 But now and then some data would come along

00:37:18.040 that didn't even fit within the axioms.

00:37:21.220 And then that data would generally be ignored for a while

00:37:24.360 because no one knew what to do with it, you know.

00:37:26.320 And it isn't reasonable to leap to the conclusion

00:37:29.600 that if your theory doesn't predict something

00:37:31.300 that it should immediately be scrapped

00:37:33.520 because there's always the possibility

00:37:35.120 that the data itself is wrong.

00:37:37.920 But anyways, now and then something new comes along

00:37:41.040 that's enough to collapse the science in some sense

00:37:43.680 all the way down to its unstated assumptions

00:37:45.700 which then have to be recast.

00:37:48.180 Now, Piaget thought of something similar

00:37:50.740 in terms of developmental stages in children and in adults,

00:37:54.480 that the same thing happened

00:37:55.400 when we were organizing our internal representations of the world.

00:37:59.320 But Piaget, Kuhn seemed to be a bit of a relativist

00:38:02.580 in that he believed that paradigms could be incommensurate,

00:38:06.480 that you really couldn't speak between them.

00:38:08.640 It makes him a precursor in some ways to postmodernism.

00:38:11.760 But Piaget's point was that each stage transition

00:38:17.460 in human cognition, which was accompanied by, by the way,

00:38:20.780 by a descent into chaos of some sort,

00:38:24.560 as the anomalous data accumulated,

00:38:28.180 each stage that emerged was superior to the one before it

00:38:31.840 because you could do everything you could do in that stage

00:38:34.740 plus you could do more.

00:38:36.220 And so for Piaget, there was actually progress

00:38:39.440 along the stage transformations.

00:38:43.080 Whereas for Kuhn, although I think Kuhn is less

00:38:45.920 emphatic about that,

00:38:48.980 that many of his readers seem to think,

00:38:51.160 whereas for Kuhn, it was more like lateral transformation

00:38:53.780 or something like that.

00:38:54.660 I mean, it's been a big debate.

00:38:56.200 But it sounds very much to me like something similar

00:38:58.600 is happening as musical forms develop.

00:39:01.420 Oh, sure.

00:39:02.060 It would be impossible to make the argument, though,

00:39:04.220 that this constitutes in any way a progression

00:39:08.140 or an improvement over time.

00:39:12.320 You can't really make that argument about musical forms

00:39:14.480 because there are always checks and balances,

00:39:16.600 there are always pluses and minuses

00:39:17.820 that are attendant with any novel form of musical expression.

00:39:22.060 Well, that's one of the things that seems to distinguish

00:39:23.880 art from science in some sense,

00:39:25.840 is that it isn't obvious that art is improving.

00:39:30.660 Right.

00:39:31.300 Right.

00:39:31.620 Whereas, at least in principle,

00:39:33.060 it seems obvious that science is improving

00:39:35.040 in that Piagetian way,

00:39:36.860 is that we could do everything we could plus more.

00:39:39.840 But art, so maybe art really does have that structure

00:39:42.720 that Thomas Kuhn talked about,

00:39:44.380 where the paradigms are incommensurate

00:39:46.440 and there's no progression,

00:39:48.520 whereas science has the more Piagetian structure,

00:39:52.680 where there is actually something that you could regard

00:39:54.820 as genuine progress.

00:39:57.400 Well, what you do have is a constant oscillation

00:40:01.480 between two fundamental states in music history,

00:40:03.940 which is you have periods of expansion,

00:40:07.200 periods in which axioms are tested and rethought,

00:40:11.300 and periods of consolidation,

00:40:12.560 in which you strip away and you simplify.

00:40:15.780 And that's a permanent feature of music history.

00:40:19.220 It's a very interesting thing.

00:40:20.640 When things start to get a little bit too wild,

00:40:22.460 there tends to be a counter-reaction

00:40:23.840 and a tendency towards simplification.

00:40:26.560 Certainly, that's what happened in the classical

00:40:28.360 with regards to the Baroque period.

00:40:30.360 Now, it's interesting,

00:40:31.220 because it kind of implies that the entire system,

00:40:34.160 over time, is oscillating around some sort of golden mean

00:40:37.160 or something like that.

00:40:38.500 I mean, not that that thing actually exists,

00:40:42.160 in some sense, because it would move,

00:40:44.320 you know, where the appropriate place is

00:40:47.580 is going to be dependent on the nature of the landscape

00:40:49.680 at that point.

00:40:50.680 But the case you're making is that,

00:40:52.500 despite that, there's some boundaries on the movement.

00:40:56.320 There is too much chaos,

00:40:57.800 which would be, I suppose,

00:40:59.220 too much revolutionary transformation.

00:41:01.120 And I suppose that the degeneration there would be,

00:41:04.080 the experimentation could be so extreme

00:41:06.760 that it would actually break the boundaries

00:41:08.360 of what people are willing to accept as music.

00:41:12.640 There has to be a social contract

00:41:14.260 between the artist and the public,

00:41:17.060 unless you're making a totally hermetic art,

00:41:18.940 unless you're making an art

00:41:19.880 that is not necessarily intended for public consumption.

00:41:23.000 So that's a very delicate balancing act, of course,

00:41:25.260 because artists have the natural inclination to explore,

00:41:28.760 and audiences have the natural inclination

00:41:30.620 to stay close to things that are familiar to them

00:41:32.480 and that are already satisfying to them in some manner.

00:41:35.960 So what do you think that contract is exactly?

00:41:38.140 Because obviously the audience also doesn't want to stay

00:41:42.040 exactly where they are.

00:41:43.520 It's very difficult to speak in general terms of audiences

00:41:45.900 because they're made up of individuals,

00:41:47.460 and individuals have wildly different approaches to music

00:41:50.340 and wildly different tastes in music as well.

00:41:53.020 I mean, one of the extraordinary things about music

00:41:55.880 is that it has so many different functions simultaneously.

00:41:59.020 If you were to take all the different functions

00:42:00.760 that music fulfills and abstract out the music part

00:42:03.640 and then try to understand what phenomenon

00:42:05.500 could possibly cover all of those different functions,

00:42:08.900 you'd be very hard-pressed to think of anything.

00:42:10.620 I mean, music is a science,

00:42:13.500 but it's also a form of entertainment.

00:42:15.860 Okay, so you were just speaking about

00:42:17.560 the actual function of music,

00:42:20.200 and so let's pick it up there

00:42:21.500 because that's a really interesting issue,

00:42:23.540 and the function and meaning of music,

00:42:25.380 and I would really like to hear your thoughts on that,

00:42:27.600 so let's go from there.

00:42:29.560 You can't speak of the function of music

00:42:30.920 because music has so many different functions.

00:42:32.880 They seem, on the surface of it,

00:42:35.120 to be almost completely incompatible.

00:42:36.960 So you have music that functions

00:42:38.220 as a form of an expression of religious devotion,

00:42:42.420 but you have music as well

00:42:43.940 whose primary focus is to get teenagers to go out on dates.

00:42:47.980 You have music that is crassly commercial.

00:42:51.200 You have music that is meditative and sublime.

00:42:54.340 You have music that represents

00:42:55.520 the highest aspirations of mankind,

00:42:58.220 and music that is piped in through elevators.

00:43:00.360 I mean, that's just a very, very partial list.

00:43:03.420 I could go on and on and on.

00:43:05.000 So, again, it's an absolutely amazing phenomenon

00:43:08.000 in terms of the sheer number of functions that it covers.

00:43:12.320 It's also good to dance to.

00:43:14.920 It's good for movies.

00:43:16.840 It's anything you can possibly think of.

00:43:19.580 There's been some form of music devised.

00:43:21.200 Each of those functions is actually a little universe.

00:43:23.440 I mean, the fact that music seems to be useful in movies

00:43:28.840 is a strange phenomena, you know,

00:43:30.700 because if you go see a movie that lacks music,

00:43:34.060 you actually become aware quite rapidly

00:43:36.260 that it lacks music,

00:43:38.040 and it's much more two-dimensional in some sense that,

00:43:42.000 I mean, you can do it,

00:43:42.860 but it's much more two-dimensional.

00:43:44.200 It's much more difficult.

00:43:45.560 What the music seems to do

00:43:46.780 is to fill in somehow for the lacking context.

00:43:50.280 You know, it makes it rich and more real,

00:43:54.460 which is even more surprising.

00:43:56.180 And it partly does that by exaggerating, I think,

00:43:59.280 the emotions that are being portrayed.

00:44:01.760 But, well, obviously,

00:44:03.880 if you could say completely

00:44:05.000 what the music is doing in a movie,

00:44:06.600 then you wouldn't need to put the music in

00:44:08.620 because you could just incorporate it in a story.

00:44:10.620 But you talked about elevators, dancing, and movies,

00:44:14.480 among many other things,

00:44:15.560 and those three things are extraordinarily different

00:44:17.540 because, obviously, what's being piped into the elevator

00:44:20.700 is there to, what, calm the awkward silence?

00:44:25.780 It's something like that with something familiar.

00:44:28.020 Maybe it takes the edge off being locked in an elevator

00:44:30.520 with, you know, multiple other primates

00:44:32.440 that you've never met.

00:44:34.200 And people make fun of it, too,

00:44:36.480 because it's denatured music in some sense.

00:44:39.320 But, obviously, there's a demand

00:44:42.020 and a requirement for it and a function.

00:44:43.780 So, well, anyways, okay.

00:44:46.440 So we've talked about the multiple contradictory

00:44:50.280 and paradoxical roles that music can play.

00:44:52.780 But let's go a little deeper.

00:44:54.400 Why don't you tell us what you think music is doing

00:44:59.720 and why it's so important?

00:45:02.280 Assuming it is, in fact, important.

00:45:03.860 It certainly seems to be.

00:45:05.640 Well, again, it's very difficult

00:45:07.740 to talk generally about that.

00:45:09.000 And if you look at non-Western cultures 0.98

00:45:10.740 and the role that music plays in them,

00:45:12.840 it's often extremely different from what we do with it.

00:45:16.660 So, for example, South Indian music

00:45:18.420 is very, very long and drawn out

00:45:22.100 and it's essentially melodic.

00:45:24.640 There's no harmony in it.

00:45:26.060 These are extremely long forms

00:45:27.780 and you can't listen to them

00:45:29.740 if you only have five minutes.

00:45:31.000 It's an entire experience.

00:45:33.140 Tibetan music is very closely tied up

00:45:35.000 with ritual, for example.

00:45:36.980 It's a way of reinforcing

00:45:38.600 a certain order of doing things in.

00:45:41.060 So, there are all sorts of examples.

00:45:44.520 I think in more traditional societies

00:45:46.360 or more archaic societies,

00:45:48.240 the music is rarely divorced

00:45:49.680 from the surrounding context.

00:45:51.440 It's not divorced from dance.

00:45:52.920 It's not divorced from masks.

00:45:54.520 It's not divorced from the religious context.

00:45:57.320 And one of the things you see

00:45:58.640 as cultures differentiate, let's say,

00:46:01.620 you could say develop,

00:46:02.660 but let's say differentiate,

00:46:03.640 is that there's a fragmentation of phenomena

00:46:07.940 into their higher resolution subcomponents,

00:46:11.660 you know.

00:46:11.980 So, the language of biology, for example,

00:46:14.860 continues to expand

00:46:15.840 as we develop higher and higher resolution

00:46:17.920 models of the world.

00:46:19.600 And as a society has more and more dimensions,

00:46:23.000 it's possible to specialize more

00:46:25.120 in each of the sub-dimensions

00:46:26.320 and that also both breaks things apart

00:46:28.580 but also allows for their further manifestation.

00:46:31.980 So, we could say as a general rule,

00:46:33.580 maybe as you go back into the past,

00:46:36.160 the number of things that is happening

00:46:39.140 simultaneously along with music

00:46:41.460 explicitly probably increases.

00:46:44.380 You know, and I've been struck by,

00:46:46.780 oh, one of my friends told me

00:46:48.280 about going to a Led Zeppelin concert in Sweden

00:46:51.420 and everyone was sitting politely.

00:46:53.720 You know, he was from a culture

00:46:54.860 where everybody would have been standing up

00:46:56.320 and cheering and dancing and clapping

00:46:57.880 and dancing, essentially, right,

00:46:59.920 because of the music.

00:47:01.080 But that was frowned upon there,

00:47:02.580 which is very, very interesting

00:47:04.200 because it's an indication of that kind of

00:47:06.660 almost artificial fragmentation.

00:47:09.520 Right.

00:47:10.080 Well, I think that analysis is absolutely accurate.

00:47:12.660 If you look at Baroque music, for example,

00:47:15.220 what you have is a generalized,

00:47:17.520 a kind of stylized version of dance.

00:47:19.740 It's not the same as music

00:47:21.840 that you would actually dance to,

00:47:23.820 but the entire Baroque period

00:47:26.820 really rests upon dance rhythms.

00:47:30.100 And that goes for pretty much everything

00:47:32.660 Bach ever wrote,

00:47:33.740 from the cantatas down to the fugues.

00:47:36.840 I mean, they're all based on dance rhythms,

00:47:38.420 fundamentally.

00:47:39.460 That's a very interesting thing

00:47:40.600 because obviously nobody dances to a fugue.

00:47:43.440 I mean, I suppose you could,

00:47:45.440 but that's not really its primary function.

00:47:47.260 So a very interesting thing happens

00:47:50.240 where you get music

00:47:51.360 that is no longer explicitly devotional.

00:47:55.260 That is, it's not explicitly meant to be performed

00:47:57.280 as part of a liturgical service of some kind,

00:47:59.500 but it's not necessarily meant to be dance to either.

00:48:02.900 And that's...

00:48:03.920 Going online without ExpressVPN

00:48:06.520 is like not paying attention

00:48:07.940 to the safety demonstration on a flight.

00:48:10.040 Most of the time, you'll probably be fine,

00:48:12.200 but what if one day

00:48:13.340 that weird yellow mask drops down from overhead

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00:50:51.160 If you look at music

00:50:53.380 as being a phenomenon

00:50:54.320 that's easily existed

00:50:55.520 for 10,000 years,

00:50:56.580 I mean,

00:50:56.860 the span of time

00:50:59.200 during which

00:50:59.620 that's been the case

00:51:00.480 is just a drop

00:51:01.940 in the bucket.

00:51:02.740 This is a very,

00:51:03.380 very recent thing.

00:51:04.240 The idea that you would get

00:51:05.620 several hundred

00:51:06.400 or several thousand people

00:51:07.480 to go and sit quietly

00:51:08.500 in a room

00:51:09.100 while someone's playing

00:51:10.540 and just sit there

00:51:11.540 and listen,

00:51:12.720 that's extremely recent.

00:51:14.200 That really only starts

00:51:14.980 to happen

00:51:15.400 really in the romantic period.

00:51:18.440 The idea of a concert

00:51:19.780 per se

00:51:20.260 where there's nothing else

00:51:21.180 attendant

00:51:21.520 on the experience

00:51:22.680 of the music.

00:51:23.940 Right.

00:51:24.280 Well,

00:51:24.460 and in pop concerts,

00:51:25.720 rock concerts,

00:51:26.400 a lot of that additional

00:51:27.480 material has been put back in.

00:51:30.000 You know,

00:51:30.580 in the form of light show

00:51:31.660 and sometimes

00:51:32.400 in more dramatic forms

00:51:33.540 than that

00:51:33.940 but the light show

00:51:35.140 I suppose

00:51:35.620 is as close

00:51:36.860 as you can get

00:51:37.660 to representing

00:51:38.380 what music is doing

00:51:39.380 in a visual format

00:51:40.420 and I mean,

00:51:41.280 that was,

00:51:41.760 that was conscious.

00:51:42.900 I know that

00:51:43.340 it was,

00:51:44.300 if I remember correctly,

00:51:45.320 it was Ken Kesey

00:51:46.240 and his,

00:51:46.740 in his band

00:51:47.320 of Merry Pranksters

00:51:48.220 that first started

00:51:49.420 to experiment

00:51:50.040 with electronic lighting

00:51:51.160 and that sort of thing

00:51:51.920 in California

00:51:52.560 when they were experimenting

00:51:53.800 with LSD

00:51:54.480 back in the 60s

00:51:55.520 and they were interested

00:51:56.620 in synesthesia

00:51:57.500 and I know

00:51:57.940 there were classical composers

00:51:59.100 who were playing

00:51:59.940 with that much earlier

00:52:01.120 and I suppose as well

00:52:03.140 that in the non-electronic format

00:52:05.400 you could chase that

00:52:06.240 back an awful long way,

00:52:07.440 the idea of spectacle

00:52:08.720 encompassing music.

00:52:10.640 So,

00:52:11.360 okay,

00:52:11.840 so,

00:52:12.080 so let's circle around

00:52:13.160 the musical element

00:52:14.860 a bit more

00:52:15.480 and I mean,

00:52:16.100 you've thought a lot about this

00:52:17.260 and you also write poetry

00:52:18.500 and I also want to get back

00:52:19.960 to the periods

00:52:20.540 after the Romantic

00:52:21.540 because we never did finish

00:52:22.940 that discussion about,

00:52:24.980 you know,

00:52:25.180 the cataclysmic restructuring

00:52:26.760 of musical forms

00:52:27.740 up into the modern period.

00:52:29.360 So,

00:52:29.760 but let's,

00:52:30.400 let's start by pursuing

00:52:32.360 the meaning issue.

00:52:34.420 So,

00:52:34.940 you were gripped by music

00:52:35.940 and the avant-garde

00:52:36.900 and you've thought about it

00:52:38.400 for a while

00:52:38.860 and you've laid out

00:52:40.120 some of the,

00:52:40.800 like the ordering functions

00:52:42.080 of music for example

00:52:43.220 but there's a disordering function

00:52:45.120 of music as well.

00:52:46.720 So,

00:52:47.340 so,

00:52:47.980 give us some more

00:52:48.860 of your thoughts

00:52:49.340 about exactly

00:52:50.000 what music is doing

00:52:51.040 for people

00:52:51.540 and in the deepest

00:52:53.760 possible sense.

00:52:55.780 Well,

00:52:55.920 one of the fundamental

00:52:56.940 aspects of music,

00:52:58.560 if you were to try

00:52:59.260 to define music

00:53:00.060 you would probably

00:53:00.880 have to conclude

00:53:01.680 that it has two

00:53:02.520 essential components.

00:53:04.640 One is time

00:53:05.140 and one is sound.

00:53:06.920 It's,

00:53:07.400 it's difficult

00:53:07.900 to give too much

00:53:08.800 of a higher resolution

00:53:09.800 definition of music

00:53:11.440 than that

00:53:11.860 because it,

00:53:12.320 it very,

00:53:13.040 very quickly

00:53:13.560 starts to,

00:53:14.280 starts to exclude

00:53:16.020 all sorts of things

00:53:16.800 that are,

00:53:17.200 that are thought of

00:53:17.680 as music.

00:53:19.020 But,

00:53:19.760 that's,

00:53:20.280 that's the essential

00:53:20.960 basis of it.

00:53:22.920 I would say

00:53:23.460 that between the two

00:53:24.460 probably the temporal

00:53:25.460 dimension is the most

00:53:26.380 important.

00:53:27.440 And fundamentally

00:53:27.980 I would say

00:53:28.740 what music allows you

00:53:29.740 to do

00:53:30.100 is to experience

00:53:31.080 forms of time

00:53:33.040 that we cannot

00:53:33.800 experience

00:53:34.520 in,

00:53:35.020 in so-called

00:53:36.020 real life.

00:53:37.840 So,

00:53:38.280 for example,

00:53:38.820 in,

00:53:39.000 in music

00:53:39.780 you can have

00:53:40.480 a sort of

00:53:41.320 distension

00:53:41.880 of,

00:53:42.440 of actual

00:53:43.080 lived time

00:53:43.800 or a contraction.

00:53:44.880 you can have

00:53:45.800 multiple things

00:53:46.440 happening simultaneously.

00:53:48.280 You can have

00:53:49.420 people

00:53:50.000 enter into

00:53:51.620 effectively

00:53:52.120 a trance state

00:53:53.460 where they're,

00:53:53.960 they're no longer

00:53:54.540 aware of time.

00:53:55.660 That's an amazing

00:53:56.480 thing also.

00:53:57.820 You know,

00:53:58.100 a lot of music

00:53:58.860 has that explicit

00:53:59.760 function to it.

00:54:00.820 Well,

00:54:01.000 the idea,

00:54:02.260 you know,

00:54:02.860 music has always

00:54:04.340 struck me as

00:54:05.000 something like

00:54:05.480 a four-dimensional

00:54:06.200 sculpture

00:54:06.780 that's manifesting

00:54:07.860 itself in three

00:54:08.640 dimensions.

00:54:09.320 Like,

00:54:09.500 when I,

00:54:09.780 when I listen

00:54:10.260 to music

00:54:10.820 and stereo

00:54:11.700 listening,

00:54:12.580 of course,

00:54:12.900 enhances this,

00:54:13.960 you can see

00:54:14.500 these notes

00:54:15.260 spread out

00:54:16.340 spatially

00:54:17.060 in the,

00:54:18.820 in the three

00:54:19.300 dimensions that

00:54:20.100 you're capable

00:54:20.840 of perceiving

00:54:21.500 from an auditory

00:54:22.280 perspective.

00:54:22.900 And so there are

00:54:23.260 these patterns

00:54:23.880 that manifest

00:54:24.540 themselves

00:54:25.180 moment by moment,

00:54:26.960 but the entire

00:54:28.380 pattern stretches

00:54:29.200 across time.

00:54:30.480 And,

00:54:30.580 and so for me,

00:54:32.420 and then there's

00:54:33.520 pattern upon

00:54:34.260 pattern as well.

00:54:35.480 And then there's

00:54:36.160 transforming patterns

00:54:37.480 upon transforming

00:54:38.440 patterns.

00:54:39.020 And to me,

00:54:40.040 that's a very

00:54:40.640 close analog to

00:54:41.600 what the world

00:54:42.140 is like in its,

00:54:42.980 in its multiplicity

00:54:44.080 of layers

00:54:44.580 that are all

00:54:45.180 interacting.

00:54:46.580 You know,

00:54:46.980 insofar as anything

00:54:47.840 is real,

00:54:48.580 it constitutes

00:54:49.180 a pattern

00:54:49.760 that repeats

00:54:50.540 either spatially

00:54:52.020 or temporally.

00:54:53.540 I mean,

00:54:54.380 things like smoke,

00:54:55.380 for example,

00:54:56.360 a cloud of smoke

00:54:57.120 is sort of pseudo-real

00:54:58.360 in that sense

00:54:59.080 because it doesn't

00:54:59.700 really have any borders,

00:55:00.720 it doesn't have

00:55:01.100 any real repetition.

00:55:02.620 But most things,

00:55:04.000 although it does

00:55:04.580 persist across moments

00:55:05.940 of time,

00:55:06.520 which is a form

00:55:07.220 of,

00:55:07.580 of patterning,

00:55:09.860 but most things

00:55:10.880 that we interact

00:55:11.580 with do repeat

00:55:12.840 at least to some

00:55:13.720 degree,

00:55:14.880 that's what object

00:55:15.640 permanence is,

00:55:16.440 is the repetition

00:55:17.140 of something

00:55:17.700 across time.

00:55:18.460 And music seems

00:55:19.420 to model the

00:55:20.740 persistence

00:55:21.200 and the transformation

00:55:22.240 across multiple

00:55:23.220 levels all at the

00:55:24.040 same time.

00:55:25.360 And what you said

00:55:26.180 about the distension

00:55:27.060 of time is interesting

00:55:28.180 because Mircea Eliade,

00:55:30.700 who's a great historian

00:55:31.600 of religions,

00:55:32.340 and Freud himself

00:55:33.980 both talked about

00:55:35.340 the transformation

00:55:37.280 of time

00:55:38.160 and the transcendence

00:55:39.460 of time

00:55:39.880 in certain states.

00:55:41.580 Freud noted

00:55:42.240 that dreams

00:55:42.820 were really good

00:55:43.460 at compressing time

00:55:44.440 or extending time.

00:55:45.620 And, you know,

00:55:46.320 so people have

00:55:47.320 that experience

00:55:47.880 sometimes.

00:55:48.520 They'll hear their

00:55:49.060 alarm go off

00:55:49.840 in the morning

00:55:50.260 and instead of it

00:55:51.480 waking up,

00:55:52.320 they'll incorporate

00:55:53.040 the alarm sound

00:55:54.440 into a dream

00:55:55.360 that seems to have

00:55:56.600 gone on way,

00:55:57.540 way longer,

00:55:58.160 sometimes hours longer

00:55:59.340 than the alarm itself.

00:56:01.420 And Eliade,

00:56:01.960 it talks about the,

00:56:03.340 he concentrated mostly

00:56:05.000 or much on the dream

00:56:06.420 time of the,

00:56:07.360 of the original

00:56:08.520 Australians.

00:56:09.820 And they viewed

00:56:11.360 normal time

00:56:12.500 as sort of ensconced

00:56:13.860 inside of an eternal

00:56:14.880 time that was

00:56:16.040 always present

00:56:16.940 that,

00:56:17.780 that seems to be

00:56:19.360 something like the

00:56:20.120 time in which music

00:56:21.200 unfolds,

00:56:22.460 something like that.

00:56:23.600 Obviously,

00:56:24.040 these are ridiculously

00:56:24.860 complicated things.

00:56:27.040 So...

00:56:27.380 Well, musical time

00:56:28.160 is a,

00:56:28.560 is a very complicated

00:56:29.620 thing.

00:56:30.140 I mean,

00:56:30.380 if I,

00:56:30.600 if I listen to a piece

00:56:31.440 of music that's

00:56:32.020 three minutes long,

00:56:33.500 in no way have I,

00:56:34.780 actually experienced

00:56:36.020 three minutes of

00:56:36.800 real duration,

00:56:37.980 I mean,

00:56:38.260 that's a,

00:56:38.620 that's an extraordinary

00:56:39.240 thing.

00:56:39.720 This,

00:56:39.960 this actually allows

00:56:41.100 me to connect

00:56:41.560 to your question

00:56:42.140 about the avant-garde

00:56:43.020 because one of the

00:56:43.700 things that,

00:56:44.500 that fascinated me

00:56:45.560 when I was a teenager

00:56:46.460 was I would,

00:56:47.080 I would be listening

00:56:47.620 to a piece,

00:56:49.940 a 20th century piece

00:56:51.320 that might be

00:56:52.200 extremely short,

00:56:52.980 it might be two

00:56:53.440 minutes long,

00:56:54.000 but I would,

00:56:54.880 I would not be able

00:56:56.760 to comprehend it.

00:56:58.000 And that,

00:56:58.360 that,

00:56:58.580 that fascinated me.

00:56:59.520 The idea that I,

00:57:00.480 I would not be able

00:57:01.260 to comprehend a piece

00:57:02.120 of music.

00:57:02.560 Now,

00:57:03.080 obviously that's,

00:57:04.080 that has something

00:57:05.020 to do with my,

00:57:05.640 my personality.

00:57:06.520 Not everybody's going

00:57:07.280 to be fascinated

00:57:07.860 by a piece of music

00:57:08.640 that they,

00:57:09.160 that they find

00:57:09.580 impenetrable,

00:57:10.220 but in my case I did.

00:57:11.360 There's also something

00:57:12.100 else to note there

00:57:13.040 is that because

00:57:14.260 you're musically gifted,

00:57:16.420 it's going,

00:57:16.860 you're going to have

00:57:17.400 to go a lot closer

00:57:18.380 to the edge

00:57:19.160 of what's regarded

00:57:20.100 as,

00:57:20.960 let's say,

00:57:21.440 conventional,

00:57:22.060 or even the edge

00:57:22.760 of what's regarded

00:57:23.360 as music

00:57:23.940 before you encounter

00:57:25.080 something that's

00:57:25.860 impenetrable.

00:57:26.900 Whereas for the

00:57:27.640 average listener,

00:57:28.580 let's say,

00:57:29.200 which,

00:57:29.460 and in that category,

00:57:30.360 I would certainly

00:57:30.960 include myself,

00:57:32.500 I don't have to go

00:57:34.040 that close to the edge

00:57:35.100 before I run into music

00:57:36.540 that's complicated enough

00:57:37.680 so that I at least

00:57:38.840 have to listen to it

00:57:39.780 multiple,

00:57:40.480 multiple times

00:57:41.200 before I understand

00:57:42.640 the patterning

00:57:43.480 and the repetition.

00:57:44.480 And it's a lovely

00:57:45.560 thing to experience

00:57:46.560 when you listen

00:57:47.180 to something complex,

00:57:48.720 say the fifth

00:57:49.320 or sixth time,

00:57:50.520 and pieces of it

00:57:51.420 start to fall together.

00:57:52.680 I really had that

00:57:53.380 experience with Bach's

00:57:54.560 well-tempered clavier,

00:57:56.060 which I had to listen to,

00:57:57.480 geez,

00:57:57.840 maybe 20 times

00:57:58.800 before I would say

00:57:59.700 I had anything remotely

00:58:00.920 like enjoyment

00:58:01.800 as a consequence.

00:58:03.360 And that clicking together

00:58:04.980 of those patterns

00:58:05.800 also seems to be

00:58:07.540 beautiful in some sense.

00:58:09.720 It's like you meet the music

00:58:12.440 with your understanding,

00:58:14.260 and in that meeting

00:58:15.660 of the music

00:58:16.360 with your understanding

00:58:17.480 is that tremendous

00:58:18.920 revelation of beauty

00:58:20.420 and depth

00:58:21.720 and harmony

00:58:22.840 and all of those things

00:58:24.220 that are so good about.

00:58:25.640 and it's more than that.

00:58:27.700 It's life-affirming,

00:58:29.400 which is a very strange

00:58:30.600 thing about music as well.

00:58:32.260 And I've noticed

00:58:33.040 that psychologically,

00:58:34.280 like even nihilistic people,

00:58:36.460 deeply nihilistic people

00:58:37.780 and hopeless people,

00:58:39.440 still,

00:58:40.340 they have to be

00:58:41.060 pretty damn depressed

00:58:42.320 before music loses

00:58:43.940 its vibrancy

00:58:45.280 and savour

00:58:46.000 and life-affirming properties,

00:58:48.640 which is a really

00:58:49.280 magical thing.

00:58:51.100 I would say that

00:58:51.740 being open to the possibility

00:58:53.080 that you could enjoy something,

00:58:54.520 even though

00:58:55.000 perhaps it's difficult going

00:58:57.420 the first few times

00:58:58.300 you listen to it

00:58:58.940 is probably a key aspect.

00:59:01.040 That brings me back

00:59:01.960 to this contract

00:59:02.880 between the composer

00:59:05.020 and the listener.

00:59:06.020 Like,

00:59:07.100 you see,

00:59:07.520 I think what stops

00:59:08.540 a lot of people,

00:59:09.780 and I would again

00:59:10.660 include myself in that,

00:59:11.800 maybe particularly

00:59:12.780 with regards to

00:59:13.640 vanguard art,

00:59:15.040 is that

00:59:15.540 in order to

00:59:17.400 put in the time

00:59:18.440 and effort

00:59:18.860 that would be necessary

00:59:19.940 for me to understand

00:59:21.260 and appreciate

00:59:22.120 something like

00:59:22.920 the well-tempered clavier, 0.99

00:59:24.160 let's say,

00:59:24.700 I have to trust

00:59:25.960 that there's actually

00:59:26.780 something there

00:59:27.660 and that I'm not just

00:59:28.480 having the wool

00:59:29.100 pulled over my eyes 1.00

00:59:30.000 and that I'm some kind of fool. 0.99

00:59:31.760 And the problem 0.97

00:59:32.560 with a lot of avant-garde,

00:59:35.100 at least the potential problem,

00:59:36.520 is that it's very difficult

00:59:37.600 to dismiss the notion

00:59:38.960 that you're being played 1.00

00:59:39.920 for a fool 1.00

00:59:41.120 by tricksters 1.00

00:59:42.680 and jokesters 0.77

00:59:43.340 and frauds.

00:59:44.260 And of course,

00:59:44.720 you are more likely

00:59:45.500 to be in that situation

00:59:46.600 if you're listening

00:59:47.180 to something new.

00:59:49.200 So,

00:59:49.560 I think part of people's

00:59:53.280 hesitancy

00:59:54.080 and unwillingness

00:59:56.500 to throw themselves

00:59:57.420 into something

00:59:58.260 that's truly new

00:59:59.100 is the suspicion

01:00:00.980 that the emperor

01:00:01.700 has no clothes

01:00:02.620 and that they're being 1.00

01:00:03.360 played for a fool. 1.00

01:00:04.680 But you, 1.00

01:00:05.460 so how did you decide,

01:00:06.900 how did you know

01:00:07.900 what you should

01:00:09.020 continue to listen to?

01:00:11.520 Well,

01:00:12.040 let's pull that apart

01:00:14.180 for a second

01:00:14.680 because if you look

01:00:16.340 at things like

01:00:16.840 the historical avant-garde,

01:00:18.060 in other words,

01:00:18.680 avant-garde movements

01:00:19.440 that took place,

01:00:20.160 let's say,

01:00:20.440 100 years ago,

01:00:21.220 just for the sake

01:00:21.740 of argument,

01:00:22.520 it's no longer avant-garde.

01:00:23.700 It's been thoroughly

01:00:25.520 picked apart

01:00:26.120 by historians.

01:00:27.460 There's been

01:00:27.940 a sort of

01:00:29.560 extended

01:00:30.500 critical process

01:00:31.900 that's already

01:00:32.460 taken place

01:00:33.180 and that's sort of

01:00:34.500 sifted out

01:00:35.320 these artifacts

01:00:35.980 and decided

01:00:36.680 what's worth discussing

01:00:37.740 and what's not worth

01:00:38.500 discussing.

01:00:39.500 So,

01:00:39.680 I mean,

01:00:40.220 one of the

01:00:41.240 incontrovertible facts

01:00:42.300 of music history

01:00:43.760 or art history

01:00:44.520 in general

01:00:44.960 is that

01:00:45.440 the works

01:00:46.600 that are no longer

01:00:47.800 able to communicate

01:00:49.700 something vitally

01:00:50.640 important

01:00:51.800 that addresses

01:00:53.320 a present concern

01:00:54.540 tend to fall out

01:00:55.900 of favor.

01:00:56.820 History is merciless,

01:00:58.280 right?

01:00:58.580 It's absolutely merciless.

01:01:00.240 And I mean,

01:01:00.760 think of the

01:01:01.540 tens of thousands

01:01:02.640 of composers

01:01:03.720 that were active

01:01:04.620 during the Baroque period.

01:01:06.080 How many have we retained?

01:01:07.920 There's maybe

01:01:08.340 a dozen figures

01:01:09.260 that are

01:01:10.060 sort of

01:01:10.760 still regularly

01:01:12.020 performed

01:01:12.520 and discussed

01:01:13.520 and generally

01:01:15.080 known to the public.

01:01:16.220 So,

01:01:16.420 I mean,

01:01:16.700 there's an absolutely

01:01:17.820 ruthless selection process

01:01:19.260 that goes on

01:01:20.200 and of course

01:01:20.620 one of the fundamental

01:01:21.600 difficulties

01:01:22.140 of addressing

01:01:22.760 contemporary

01:01:23.940 or modern

01:01:24.700 forms of art

01:01:25.480 is that

01:01:25.820 that process

01:01:26.620 of selection

01:01:27.640 hasn't taken place yet.

01:01:29.300 So you as a listener

01:01:30.220 are necessarily

01:01:32.040 engaged with that process

01:01:33.600 to a certain degree

01:01:34.400 because the

01:01:35.520 process

01:01:37.720 of selection

01:01:39.200 hasn't taken place.

01:01:40.860 There is an

01:01:41.360 overwhelming likelihood

01:01:42.300 that what you're

01:01:43.760 going to hear

01:01:44.460 might not be

01:01:45.940 of the highest standard.

01:01:47.100 That's just statistical.

01:01:48.520 If you figure

01:01:49.240 that there are

01:01:49.800 just to throw

01:01:51.300 out a number

01:01:51.700 100,000 composers

01:01:53.840 active in the world

01:01:54.580 today

01:01:54.940 how many of them

01:01:56.120 are geniuses?

01:01:56.900 How many of them

01:01:57.380 are producing work

01:01:58.120 of the highest order?

01:01:59.540 You know,

01:01:59.680 it's going to be

01:02:00.180 a vanishingly

01:02:00.960 small percentage.

01:02:02.600 So that's not

01:02:03.640 to say that

01:02:04.740 none of them

01:02:05.560 are doing

01:02:05.980 extremely good work.

01:02:07.600 It's just that

01:02:08.260 if you're coming

01:02:08.720 to that world

01:02:09.340 for the first time

01:02:10.200 and you're not

01:02:10.960 familiar with it

01:02:11.780 and you don't

01:02:13.640 sort of have

01:02:14.280 the context

01:02:15.840 to be able

01:02:16.280 to navigate

01:02:16.720 through that space

01:02:17.600 with a reasonable

01:02:18.440 degree of certainty

01:02:19.180 that you can

01:02:19.640 sort of sniff out

01:02:20.280 the good from the bad

01:02:21.080 then yes,

01:02:22.240 it's difficult.

01:02:23.320 There's no question.

01:02:23.620 Well, it's a good

01:02:24.240 expansion of the

01:02:26.780 metaphor of the

01:02:27.480 avant-garde

01:02:28.040 because what that

01:02:29.500 means as an

01:02:30.220 avant-garde listener

01:02:31.140 is you're more

01:02:31.680 likely to be killed

01:02:32.620 so to speak

01:02:33.340 like the avant-garde

01:02:34.340 in a battle

01:02:34.900 and it's the same

01:02:36.040 if you're laboring

01:02:36.820 on the edge

01:02:37.360 of musical composition.

01:02:38.500 The probability

01:02:39.240 that you're going

01:02:39.860 to survive there

01:02:40.840 in a real sense

01:02:42.560 and I mean practical

01:02:43.600 like day-to-day

01:02:44.640 if you're going

01:02:45.040 to make any money

01:02:45.780 but also that

01:02:46.760 you're going to

01:02:47.140 survive into the future

01:02:48.180 is extraordinarily low.

01:02:50.440 So it's a high-risk game.

01:02:52.560 So why play it?

01:02:53.360 I would say

01:02:54.360 well for the typical

01:02:56.000 listener who doesn't

01:02:56.880 know anything about

01:02:57.820 Baroque music

01:02:59.320 or classical music

01:03:00.260 or romantic music

01:03:01.380 you know who has

01:03:02.120 who's afraid of it

01:03:03.140 or who's afraid 0.99

01:03:04.540 of being made a fool 1.00

01:03:05.900 of for their ignorance 1.00

01:03:06.820 when they first

01:03:07.520 enter into it

01:03:08.280 which is

01:03:08.660 which can easily

01:03:09.820 happen and which

01:03:10.500 is quite sad

01:03:11.240 why should they

01:03:12.580 go to the

01:03:13.200 who should go

01:03:14.840 to the effort

01:03:15.360 of listening

01:03:15.820 to what's truly new

01:03:17.060 and why should

01:03:17.860 they do it?

01:03:19.000 I mean you're

01:03:19.440 you've got

01:03:20.160 overwhelming musical

01:03:21.300 capacity so

01:03:22.260 you know it's clearer

01:03:23.340 in your case.

01:03:24.600 Well first of all

01:03:25.220 the sort of career

01:03:27.240 aspects of writing music

01:03:28.700 that as you say

01:03:29.500 lies sort of

01:03:30.620 on the edges

01:03:31.100 of what is

01:03:31.580 recognizably musical

01:03:32.560 to a broad public

01:03:33.540 well is it a

01:03:35.280 higher risk game?

01:03:35.980 That's an interesting

01:03:36.640 question because

01:03:37.280 if I were to say

01:03:38.160 try to start

01:03:39.940 a rock band

01:03:41.020 you know

01:03:42.160 and write

01:03:43.900 songs that were

01:03:45.560 in a conventional

01:03:46.540 format

01:03:47.000 you could certainly

01:03:48.340 argue that I would

01:03:49.300 have just as much

01:03:50.020 trouble if not more

01:03:51.020 establishing myself

01:03:52.100 than if I were

01:03:53.100 writing in a

01:03:54.160 form of musical

01:03:54.720 expression that's

01:03:55.540 more esoteric

01:03:56.560 simply because

01:03:57.600 the crushing

01:03:59.460 amount of

01:04:00.100 competition is

01:04:01.240 actually probably

01:04:01.900 a lot greater

01:04:03.120 in that domain

01:04:04.400 than in much

01:04:05.220 more highly

01:04:07.520 individualized forms

01:04:08.680 of musical

01:04:09.060 expression in a

01:04:09.820 sense.

01:04:10.220 So in a way

01:04:11.360 you could argue

01:04:12.120 that it's

01:04:13.300 that's a difficult

01:04:15.720 argument to make

01:04:16.460 because it is

01:04:17.020 very difficult in

01:04:17.820 any case to have

01:04:18.880 a career as a

01:04:19.380 composer but

01:04:19.920 it's probably

01:04:21.440 somewhat easier

01:04:22.700 to carve out

01:04:23.320 a space for

01:04:23.980 yourself if

01:04:25.280 you're working

01:04:25.720 in a rather

01:04:26.980 individual musical

01:04:28.160 idiom than if

01:04:29.220 you're doing

01:04:29.540 something that the

01:04:30.380 overall culture is

01:04:31.320 already completely

01:04:31.960 saturated.

01:04:32.360 Right, right, fair

01:04:33.260 enough, fair

01:04:33.800 enough.

01:04:34.580 Well then what

01:04:35.180 about the listener

01:04:35.840 though?

01:04:36.380 So I buy your

01:04:37.820 argument but then

01:04:38.940 the listener like if

01:04:39.880 I go back and

01:04:40.680 listen to only those

01:04:41.740 composers that

01:04:42.620 time has

01:04:43.420 conserved which

01:04:46.220 by your own

01:04:47.040 admission are

01:04:47.880 composers that in

01:04:49.020 some manner, some

01:04:50.020 mysterious manner

01:04:50.980 still have something

01:04:52.240 to say which I also

01:04:53.400 don't understand.

01:04:54.300 It's like what does

01:04:55.120 it mean that Bach

01:04:56.180 still has something

01:04:56.940 to say?

01:04:58.040 I mean it's the

01:04:58.880 same as Shakespeare

01:04:59.700 I suppose but it

01:05:02.020 isn't obvious what

01:05:02.940 it is that remains to

01:05:04.540 be said.

01:05:05.220 I don't get that.

01:05:06.460 It's got to be

01:05:07.560 something like the

01:05:08.360 culture has not 0.98

01:05:09.320 fully incorporated

01:05:12.020 all of the perceptual

01:05:14.760 genius that that

01:05:15.720 person had to offer

01:05:16.860 it like Bach hasn't

01:05:18.540 been transformed into

01:05:19.640 cliche or into

01:05:21.780 implicit assumption

01:05:23.300 or something like

01:05:24.140 that but you know

01:05:26.680 because I think that

01:05:27.360 one of the things

01:05:27.960 that artists do

01:05:28.800 visual or auditory is

01:05:30.280 they teach people to

01:05:31.320 see or hear.

01:05:33.920 You know the

01:05:34.660 impressionists are a

01:05:36.000 good example of that

01:05:36.860 because obviously

01:05:38.140 their works well

01:05:39.100 maybe not obviously

01:05:39.940 but their works

01:05:40.640 produced riots when

01:05:41.920 they were first

01:05:42.620 publicly displayed

01:05:44.280 and it's a particular

01:05:46.060 way of seeing the

01:05:46.860 world that has more

01:05:47.660 to do with light

01:05:48.320 than with form

01:05:49.120 but for most people

01:05:51.400 it's easy to look at

01:05:53.060 an impressionist

01:05:53.720 painting now.

01:05:54.620 It seems

01:05:55.040 it seems

01:05:56.240 it's so embedded

01:05:58.400 into our visual

01:05:59.260 language that there's

01:06:00.260 nothing about it

01:06:00.960 that seems shocking

01:06:01.860 and so I think

01:06:02.780 we've learned that

01:06:03.820 and I guess part of

01:06:06.320 the question is

01:06:06.960 do composers teach

01:06:09.740 us to hear

01:06:10.940 and once we've

01:06:12.000 learned everything

01:06:12.600 they had to say

01:06:13.560 do we not need

01:06:15.860 their lesson anymore?

01:06:17.060 It's got to be

01:06:17.660 something like that.

01:06:20.180 Right.

01:06:20.740 Well the first thing

01:06:22.540 I would say about

01:06:23.120 that is we've used

01:06:24.540 the word avant-garde

01:06:25.160 quite a lot.

01:06:25.740 I actually don't like

01:06:26.720 that term very much

01:06:27.580 and the other thing

01:06:28.120 I would say is that

01:06:28.860 just because something

01:06:29.900 is unfamiliar it

01:06:30.880 doesn't therefore

01:06:31.500 follow that it's

01:06:32.240 avant-garde.

01:06:32.740 So I mean there are

01:06:34.280 forms of music

01:06:35.300 that would be

01:06:35.860 difficult for a

01:06:37.900 certain listener

01:06:38.500 to assimilate

01:06:39.340 but it might be

01:06:41.000 something that was

01:06:41.700 written 150 years ago

01:06:43.260 and it might be

01:06:45.300 something that has

01:06:46.060 in a certain sense

01:06:46.840 been thoroughly

01:06:47.440 absorbed since

01:06:48.280 by let's say

01:06:50.160 certain listeners

01:06:50.840 who are familiar

01:06:51.700 with it or people

01:06:52.820 who are familiar

01:06:54.600 with the history

01:06:55.760 of music.

01:06:56.840 But for someone

01:06:57.680 who's never heard

01:06:58.280 anything like that

01:06:59.100 take someone for

01:07:00.340 example who is

01:07:01.280 living in a

01:07:01.760 complete indifference

01:07:02.720 to art music

01:07:04.640 in general

01:07:05.120 and has never

01:07:05.560 heard Bach

01:07:06.340 I mean if you

01:07:06.940 played them

01:07:07.340 a 20 minute

01:07:09.180 collection of fugues

01:07:10.220 they might find

01:07:10.940 the experience

01:07:11.440 completely intolerable.

01:07:13.320 So I mean

01:07:13.800 Yeah so that's

01:07:14.880 interesting.

01:07:15.600 So one of the

01:07:16.400 things that you're

01:07:17.000 suggesting is that

01:07:17.980 the older

01:07:20.260 great composers

01:07:21.240 are still sufficiently

01:07:22.980 let's call them

01:07:24.120 avant-garde

01:07:24.840 for the bulk

01:07:25.900 of the population

01:07:26.820 so that there's

01:07:28.780 still hunger

01:07:29.740 for what they

01:07:31.460 were able to

01:07:32.020 achieve.

01:07:32.840 It still doesn't

01:07:33.520 answer the question

01:07:34.180 of why those

01:07:35.100 people in particular

01:07:36.220 I mean we'd like

01:07:37.320 to think that they

01:07:38.000 were the greatest

01:07:38.620 exponents of their

01:07:39.700 art and maybe

01:07:40.740 they were.

01:07:42.520 I'm sure many

01:07:43.580 great exponents

01:07:46.040 have died

01:07:47.460 unrecognized

01:07:48.900 and some ones

01:07:50.120 that are maybe

01:07:51.460 not comparatively

01:07:52.300 mediocre have been

01:07:53.320 brought forward.

01:07:54.100 I don't think that

01:07:54.780 happens very often

01:07:55.700 but we would

01:07:56.640 Well here's

01:07:57.220 here's a potential

01:07:59.420 way to answer

01:08:01.340 that question.

01:08:02.620 I would say that

01:08:03.000 the great composers

01:08:03.720 are the ones that

01:08:04.500 fundamentally

01:08:05.080 they own their

01:08:06.900 material more

01:08:07.760 thoroughly and

01:08:08.680 in a more

01:08:09.740 deeply personal

01:08:11.260 way than other

01:08:11.960 composers.

01:08:12.480 In other words

01:08:12.780 there's a minimum

01:08:13.320 of what you might

01:08:14.060 call neutral

01:08:14.660 material in their

01:08:15.400 music.

01:08:15.780 In other words

01:08:16.040 material that is

01:08:16.740 essentially that

01:08:18.340 already exists that

01:08:19.380 is almost like

01:08:20.020 found material in a

01:08:21.080 sense and that

01:08:22.880 you don't have to

01:08:23.440 work very hard

01:08:24.080 to fashion into

01:08:24.800 something resembling

01:08:25.580 a coherent piece.

01:08:27.180 A great composer

01:08:28.240 invents forms.

01:08:29.840 They invent a

01:08:30.440 language.

01:08:30.860 They invent a

01:08:31.440 universe.

01:08:32.500 They take enormous

01:08:33.820 risks and I mean

01:08:34.880 these composers

01:08:35.840 that we talk about

01:08:36.900 that are familiar

01:08:37.500 names to a very

01:08:39.560 wide swath of the

01:08:40.860 public, Beethoven

01:08:41.540 for example, was

01:08:43.120 an absolute

01:08:44.000 avant-gardist in

01:08:45.360 his time.

01:08:45.960 I mean the first

01:08:47.360 performances of a

01:08:48.380 lot of his pieces

01:08:48.960 were truly shocking

01:08:49.980 and truly upset

01:08:50.760 people.

01:08:51.160 It's a very

01:08:53.920 relative phenomenon

01:08:54.920 all of this,

01:08:55.920 right?

01:08:56.180 So I mean Bach

01:08:57.280 was considered to

01:08:58.240 be a composer by

01:08:59.760 the end of his

01:09:00.120 life who was

01:09:00.600 writing overly

01:09:01.760 thick, turgid

01:09:02.840 music that was

01:09:03.580 impossible to

01:09:04.220 listen to, that

01:09:05.040 was sort of

01:09:05.880 tortured and

01:09:07.380 ridiculously complex.

01:09:09.820 So I mean any

01:09:10.560 composer you can

01:09:11.420 think of that is

01:09:12.560 considered today to

01:09:14.280 be among the

01:09:14.800 greats as at

01:09:16.600 some point being

01:09:17.400 horribly denigrated

01:09:18.840 and humiliated

01:09:19.960 and spoken

01:09:20.800 badly of by the

01:09:21.740 public of their

01:09:22.220 time.

01:09:23.060 So that's just a

01:09:24.480 permanent feature of

01:09:25.520 music history.

01:09:27.860 It's what you'd

01:09:28.700 expect too though

01:09:29.600 because someone who

01:09:31.300 is let's say going

01:09:32.340 in the right

01:09:32.800 direction but who

01:09:33.620 is way ahead of

01:09:34.340 everyone else is

01:09:35.440 it's very difficult

01:09:38.020 for them to

01:09:38.560 communicate what

01:09:39.180 they're doing and

01:09:39.780 it's very difficult

01:09:40.440 for them to

01:09:41.040 distinguish themselves

01:09:41.980 from the naked

01:09:43.100 emperor.

01:09:44.960 Right.

01:09:46.360 Well Ezra Pound

01:09:47.360 has a great quote.

01:09:48.360 he says that

01:09:48.860 artists are the

01:09:49.520 antennae of

01:09:50.460 mankind.

01:09:51.140 Right, right.

01:09:51.640 I think of them

01:09:52.260 as pseudopods, you

01:09:53.420 know, like.

01:09:54.360 Right, exactly.

01:09:56.000 And some of those

01:09:56.640 pseudopods get

01:09:57.340 bit off.

01:09:59.060 And many of them

01:09:59.660 don't find anything

01:10:00.580 of any value but

01:10:01.560 now and then

01:10:02.160 everyone moves in

01:10:03.300 that direction.

01:10:05.020 Right.

01:10:05.860 Yeah, well it's

01:10:06.700 akin to Jung's 0.97

01:10:07.600 idea that dreams

01:10:08.540 and fantasy are

01:10:09.520 the pseudopods of

01:10:11.360 the mind.

01:10:12.800 It's the same 0.53

01:10:13.480 kind of idea.

01:10:14.600 It might be the

01:10:16.000 same idea in

01:10:16.840 fact.

01:10:17.180 So, all right,

01:10:18.740 so let's go back

01:10:19.460 to your contention

01:10:21.440 that, you know,

01:10:22.880 of this explosive

01:10:23.700 transformation that

01:10:24.960 finally resulted

01:10:26.940 in the radical

01:10:28.720 transformations of

01:10:29.660 music into the

01:10:30.280 20th century.

01:10:31.120 Do you suppose

01:10:31.520 those transformations

01:10:32.320 are any more

01:10:33.080 radical than the

01:10:34.000 preceding transformations

01:10:35.220 had been?

01:10:37.200 That gets us

01:10:37.960 past this.

01:10:39.180 They're faster.

01:10:40.060 They happen more

01:10:40.520 quickly.

01:10:41.180 They happen exponentially

01:10:43.320 more quickly.

01:10:43.900 If you look at

01:10:44.420 the expansion and

01:10:46.080 the development of

01:10:46.680 musical language

01:10:47.300 from medieval

01:10:49.160 times onwards,

01:10:50.380 it happened very,

01:10:51.400 very slowly for a

01:10:52.820 very long period of

01:10:53.580 time, for centuries.

01:10:55.020 And then you could

01:10:56.340 argue that it more

01:10:57.520 or less coincides with

01:10:58.460 the Industrial

01:10:58.860 Revolution.

01:10:59.600 It starts to, at that

01:11:00.840 point, it really

01:11:01.400 starts to accelerate

01:11:02.200 at an extraordinary

01:11:03.360 pace.

01:11:04.000 And so, let's take

01:11:07.260 that analogy further.

01:11:09.180 I mean, many, many

01:11:10.160 things start to

01:11:10.940 accelerate at an

01:11:11.780 incredible pace in

01:11:12.680 the Industrial

01:11:13.120 Revolution.

01:11:14.380 People get far

01:11:15.480 wealthier and far

01:11:17.100 faster than they

01:11:17.920 ever had likely in

01:11:19.040 the history of

01:11:19.620 mankind.

01:11:20.920 So, and then

01:11:22.200 perhaps that allows

01:11:23.520 for the funding of

01:11:24.620 more orchestras and

01:11:25.580 the funding of more

01:11:26.440 full-time musicians

01:11:27.400 because, you know,

01:11:28.920 you have to have a

01:11:29.680 pretty rich society in

01:11:30.820 order to have any

01:11:31.520 musicians that are

01:11:32.480 actually doing that

01:11:33.980 and nothing else.

01:11:35.220 And they have more

01:11:35.980 leisure time as well.

01:11:37.760 Right, right, right,

01:11:39.100 right.

01:11:39.360 So that's all working

01:11:40.300 in a positive feedback

01:11:41.560 loop.

01:11:42.520 Yeah.

01:11:43.680 Yeah.

01:11:44.020 Okay, so it's

01:11:45.020 happening faster.

01:11:46.080 All right.

01:11:46.440 So walk us through

01:11:47.440 the post-romantic

01:11:48.460 period and tell us

01:11:49.400 what's happening and

01:11:50.720 maybe we can then

01:11:51.900 get into the modern,

01:11:53.620 like, I mean modern

01:11:54.840 by contemporary period

01:11:56.160 and we can talk a

01:11:57.260 little bit about your

01:11:57.900 attraction to that.

01:12:00.300 Well, in a sense,

01:12:01.200 you could say that

01:12:01.680 the structures that

01:12:03.000 had been coalescing

01:12:03.840 since the Baroque,

01:12:05.100 the forms and the

01:12:06.120 genres and so on,

01:12:07.000 start to, they start

01:12:08.020 to break up in the

01:12:09.240 Romantic era.

01:12:09.940 They become highly

01:12:10.860 personalized.

01:12:11.720 You get composers

01:12:12.280 that have highly

01:12:12.880 individual projects

01:12:14.380 and also, very more

01:12:15.780 importantly, you have

01:12:16.660 composers that are

01:12:17.920 starting to break away

01:12:18.880 from the patronage

01:12:19.740 system, from being

01:12:21.200 essentially the servants

01:12:22.660 of the nobility

01:12:24.140 and start having

01:12:25.580 something akin to

01:12:26.920 an individual career.

01:12:29.220 And Beethoven is

01:12:29.940 often thought of as

01:12:30.620 being the sort of

01:12:31.760 exemplary figure of

01:12:33.340 that, the sort of

01:12:34.120 one of the first

01:12:35.300 composers in music

01:12:36.100 history to do that,

01:12:38.440 to write pieces

01:12:39.360 strictly out of his

01:12:40.960 own volition, out of

01:12:41.880 something that he

01:12:42.760 wanted to express,

01:12:44.900 regardless of whether

01:12:45.760 there was someone

01:12:46.260 necessarily who wanted

01:12:47.360 to pay for it or not,

01:12:48.320 or even who wanted

01:12:49.000 to listen to it.

01:12:50.580 So that's a very,

01:12:53.100 very fundamental

01:12:53.780 change of perspective

01:12:55.080 when that starts to

01:12:55.860 happen.

01:12:56.100 Yeah, well, that's

01:12:57.880 sort of the, maybe

01:12:58.960 that's the dawn of the

01:13:00.280 idea of the individual

01:13:01.320 genius that, that, and

01:13:03.960 maybe that rises in,

01:13:05.780 maybe that rises in a

01:13:08.360 conceptual space also as

01:13:09.720 a consequence of the

01:13:10.600 ideas of the

01:13:11.220 enlightenment, because

01:13:12.220 the enlightenment, what

01:13:13.340 the enlightenment did, or

01:13:14.140 the renaissance, maybe

01:13:15.020 even more accurately, the

01:13:16.180 renaissance started to

01:13:17.480 dignify creative

01:13:19.820 individuals with the

01:13:21.020 same status that, that

01:13:22.340 before that, sort of

01:13:23.640 canonical deities had.

01:13:24.940 And I think you see

01:13:26.000 that transformation in

01:13:27.020 visual art in, in the

01:13:28.120 medieval period, the

01:13:29.500 archetypal figures have

01:13:30.920 this very, what would

01:13:34.280 you call it, abstract,

01:13:36.320 almost, almost, almost

01:13:38.240 anim, like modern

01:13:39.320 animation, like

01:13:40.360 representation.

01:13:42.140 And it isn't until the

01:13:43.560 renaissance kicks in,

01:13:44.500 especially in northern

01:13:45.160 Italy, where the divine

01:13:48.060 people, Christ, say, and

01:13:51.360 Mary, start to take on 0.71

01:13:52.920 recognizably human forms.

01:13:54.640 They become individuals,

01:13:56.160 identifiable individuals.

01:13:57.840 And I think that's a

01:13:58.560 two-way process, is that

01:13:59.860 not only is the deity

01:14:01.720 becoming identifiably

01:14:03.860 individual instead of

01:14:05.120 formulaic and abstractly

01:14:06.600 represented, almost like a 0.51

01:14:07.660 hieroglyph, but the

01:14:09.020 individual is becoming

01:14:10.120 deified at that point as

01:14:11.560 well.

01:14:12.600 And that, and that

01:14:13.940 seems to me to coincide

01:14:15.220 with the idea of the

01:14:16.080 great artist and the

01:14:17.260 great independent artist,

01:14:18.580 which is a very, it's a

01:14:20.120 very strange concept.

01:14:21.020 And that's got to be also

01:14:22.100 a function of wealth, the

01:14:23.480 mere fact that that

01:14:24.300 conceptualization is even

01:14:25.520 possible.

01:14:26.740 You know, I mean, if you

01:14:27.320 go back to history and you

01:14:28.600 look at maybe the master of

01:14:32.520 the undifferentiated artistic

01:14:35.860 and religious form might have

01:14:37.280 been something like the

01:14:38.220 shaman.

01:14:39.220 But the shaman was

01:14:40.220 fundamentally a healer and

01:14:41.520 that was his, that was his

01:14:42.940 role.

01:14:43.440 And I suppose how you could

01:14:44.860 say in a sense how he made

01:14:45.960 his living, he just used all

01:14:47.480 these cultural tools to do

01:14:48.860 that.

01:14:49.620 But, but his economic base in

01:14:53.000 some sense was a lot wider.

01:14:55.080 So, all right.

01:14:56.280 So, okay.

01:14:56.840 So we're in the 20th century

01:14:57.920 and we're, and we have this

01:14:59.100 plethora of novel musical

01:15:01.000 forms and that's happening

01:15:02.340 because there's a lot more

01:15:03.360 musicians and there's a lot

01:15:04.600 more listeners.

01:15:05.260 So the speed takes off.

01:15:06.920 And I guess another thing

01:15:08.580 that, that happens is that

01:15:09.820 leaves the typical listener

01:15:11.080 more and more in the dust.

01:15:12.980 Well, again, not necessarily.

01:15:14.580 You have plenty of composers

01:15:15.800 even in the Romantic period

01:15:17.200 that are writing essentially

01:15:18.040 vernacular music that doesn't

01:15:19.220 push the boundaries terribly.

01:15:20.880 And the ones that we've

01:15:21.580 retained, again, are the

01:15:22.580 ones that contributed the

01:15:23.560 most and, and are the ones

01:15:24.840 that deviated the most from

01:15:26.360 the, the sort of standard

01:15:27.620 operating procedure of the

01:15:29.080 day.

01:15:29.600 So we simply, we don't, we

01:15:31.680 don't retain the ones that

01:15:32.840 were average, the ones that

01:15:34.060 were operating safely within

01:15:36.940 the bounds of what was, what

01:15:38.100 was accepted conventionally to

01:15:39.680 be music.

01:15:40.680 So that's, that's the first

01:15:41.820 thing.

01:15:42.200 So we have a view of history

01:15:44.460 that is extremely filtered in

01:15:47.420 that sense.

01:15:47.860 We have no idea what it was

01:15:48.820 like actually to be alive in,

01:15:50.460 in, in 1870 and, and see

01:15:52.420 things from that perspective.

01:15:53.340 So, so that's, that's the

01:15:54.940 first thing I would say.

01:15:55.640 Yeah, well, that's a funny

01:15:56.880 thing too, because even with,

01:15:58.340 even with, say rock music or

01:16:00.480 any other genre, when you hear

01:16:02.760 a band that was once

01:16:03.800 considered creative, but you

01:16:05.840 hear them 20 years later, you

01:16:07.240 can't tell that they're

01:16:08.280 creative because if the

01:16:09.980 creativity was of any

01:16:11.100 reasonable sort, it's been,

01:16:12.320 it's been, it's become, I

01:16:14.280 wouldn't say necessarily

01:16:15.220 cliched, maybe that's what

01:16:16.780 happens to the artists that

01:16:18.020 aren't retained, is their

01:16:19.600 contributions become

01:16:20.620 cliched because everyone else

01:16:22.280 picks it up and you hear it

01:16:24.020 implicitly in every other

01:16:25.440 piece of music that's being

01:16:26.460 done.

01:16:27.180 And so you listen back in the

01:16:28.300 past and you think, oh,

01:16:29.220 there's nothing in that that I

01:16:30.260 haven't heard before.

01:16:31.820 And so it seems to me that the

01:16:33.540 Beatles are a good example of 0.57

01:16:34.820 that.

01:16:35.880 At least for me, when I listen to

01:16:37.720 them, I wouldn't say so much

01:16:39.480 their earlier stuff, although it's

01:16:40.860 got a vitality that, that is

01:16:42.340 still somewhat compelling, but

01:16:44.640 their later music still strikes

01:16:46.520 me as sufficiently surprising.

01:16:50.060 It hasn't all been incorporated

01:16:51.440 into the, into the rock lexicon.

01:16:54.240 So.

01:16:54.820 Truly great music has a, has a

01:16:56.400 depth and it has a, it has a, a, a

01:17:00.760 semantic overload in a sense that,

01:17:03.160 that no matter how many times you

01:17:04.920 listen to it, you can't actually

01:17:06.140 exhaust it.

01:17:06.840 That's an extraordinary thing.

01:17:08.200 I mean, there are, yeah, that's

01:17:09.320 a certain thing.

01:17:11.320 Well, how can that be?

01:17:12.540 I mean, it, it leads me to

01:17:13.740 conclude that the, the piece must

01:17:15.760 contain more than the composer

01:17:17.300 knowingly put into it, in a sense.

01:17:19.580 I mean, it's, it's, it's an amazing

01:17:21.100 thing for me to think that a, a

01:17:23.100 cantata that Bach would have had to

01:17:24.940 write in less than a week, you know,

01:17:27.660 could, could I, that I could listen

01:17:29.160 to that hundreds or thousands of

01:17:31.080 times and never get to the bottom of

01:17:32.540 it.

01:17:32.720 Yeah.

01:17:33.400 I mean, it's an, it's an absolutely

01:17:34.380 amazing thing to think about.

01:17:35.200 Part of that is that he put in his

01:17:36.560 30,000 hours, right?

01:17:38.420 His musical, his depth of musical

01:17:40.420 capacity was so immense that he

01:17:43.320 could put a lot into a very little

01:17:45.040 space.

01:17:45.860 But you see the same thing with

01:17:47.340 great visual, you see the same thing

01:17:48.840 with great art, period.

01:17:50.320 The greater the art, the more it's

01:17:51.620 inexhaustible and, and it seems

01:17:53.240 surprising.

01:17:54.020 And the, the counter example of that

01:17:55.500 is propaganda, I would say.

01:17:57.320 Right.

01:17:57.540 And, you know, or, or, or the

01:17:59.740 really crassly commercial music,

01:18:01.340 which capitalizes on what everyone

01:18:03.220 knows and takes it that tiny step.

01:18:05.340 It varies at some tiny step.

01:18:07.500 So it's, it's playing to the, it's

01:18:10.400 playing to the almost already sated

01:18:12.740 crowd.

01:18:13.360 And there's a niche in there because

01:18:14.880 it's good for people who want to be

01:18:16.640 pushed a very, a very tiny amount,

01:18:18.940 but it dies very quickly because

01:18:21.600 everyone can incorporate its new

01:18:23.720 message almost immediately.

01:18:24.960 But that, yeah, that, that whole

01:18:26.640 notion of inexhaustibility in art is

01:18:28.920 an amazing thing and it has

01:18:30.200 something to do with the depth.

01:18:32.400 I mean, I, I saw a great

01:18:34.340 representation of the Bible at one

01:18:36.040 point, a visual representation that

01:18:37.880 showed along the bottom was a graph

01:18:40.620 showing, uh, each different chapter.

01:18:43.080 So imagine a, a graph with, with a

01:18:45.060 line at the bottom and there's the,

01:18:47.580 however many thousand chapters there

01:18:49.220 are in the Bible, each one represented

01:18:51.620 by a bar, tiny bar stretching

01:18:53.860 downwards, and the length of the bar

01:18:55.800 was proportional to how many times

01:18:57.580 that chapter or verse, I think it was

01:19:00.320 chapter, doesn't matter, was cross

01:19:02.480 referenced in the book.

01:19:04.420 And some of those were cross,

01:19:05.580 cross referenced a tremendous amount,

01:19:07.660 but then there were curves drawn on

01:19:09.640 top of that, linking all the cross

01:19:11.100 references together.

01:19:12.100 So you have this amazingly complex

01:19:13.920 hyperlinked document where everything

01:19:16.980 in it refers to everything else.

01:19:18.760 And that gives it this insane depth.

01:19:21.340 There's just no way of exhausting it

01:19:23.040 because there's an infinite number of

01:19:24.660 routes through it in some sense.

01:19:26.900 Right. Yeah.

01:19:27.720 Well, that's, that's certainly true of

01:19:29.160 great works of music.

01:19:30.060 It's the, they're like, they're like

01:19:31.560 iridescent luminous objects that, that,

01:19:34.440 that you, that, that say different

01:19:36.220 things depending on the angle at which

01:19:37.860 you look at them.

01:19:39.020 And so, you know, you can, you can, you

01:19:41.280 can listen to a piece of music 10 times

01:19:43.620 over the course of a week and think that

01:19:44.900 you've more or less exhausted it in

01:19:47.120 terms of what it, what it can say to

01:19:48.420 you. You go back to the exact same

01:19:50.160 piece 10 years later and you won't,

01:19:51.900 you might not recognize it at all.

01:19:53.300 You might hear it in a completely

01:19:54.640 different way because you, you

01:19:56.460 yourself have changed in the

01:19:57.620 intervening.

01:19:58.360 Right. Well, that's the other thing is

01:20:00.000 the music is, the music actually exists

01:20:02.400 in the space where you need it.

01:20:04.300 And so your additions of life, what

01:20:06.460 you've listened to, your mood, and,

01:20:08.820 and also the way you choose to go

01:20:10.540 through it, especially if it's complex

01:20:12.180 because you can concentrate on one

01:20:14.880 instrument or set of instruments as

01:20:17.040 opposed to another, like you can use

01:20:18.480 them as the guides or you can

01:20:19.760 concentrate on the bass lines or you

01:20:21.480 can concentrate on the sounds that are

01:20:23.360 much higher in the register. And

01:20:24.760 every time you do that with a complex

01:20:26.980 piece of music, it, it, it's a

01:20:29.400 different journey. That's, that's one

01:20:30.980 way of thinking about it. So that's

01:20:32.360 also extremely interesting.

01:20:34.460 Okay. So you were talking about the

01:20:36.200 sudden acceleration of music in the

01:20:37.780 20th century. So why don't you, why

01:20:39.680 don't you pick up on that?

01:20:41.820 Well, really, I mentioned earlier that

01:20:43.600 it's something that starts to take

01:20:44.660 place with the industrial revolution

01:20:46.040 and it, it, it takes up, it picks up

01:20:48.820 extraordinary speed at the, at the

01:20:50.820 beginning of the 20th century. And, and

01:20:52.520 in a sense, you could say that the, the

01:20:54.760 history of music in the 20th century is

01:20:56.200 not, is not divorceable from, from the, the,

01:20:59.780 the world wars. You cannot separate them. You

01:21:02.240 also cannot underestimate the enormous

01:21:04.880 significance that that had on the

01:21:06.640 development of the art. I mean, certainly

01:21:09.360 after the second world war, there's a

01:21:11.100 generalized sense amongst European

01:21:12.980 musicians that, that fundamentally an

01:21:16.120 old order had been overturned and, and 0.75

01:21:18.640 had, had proven to be absolutely rotten. And

01:21:21.880 that there was, there was, there was a, an

01:21:24.520 almost paroxysmal desire to get away from

01:21:28.980 that and to, and to, and to create entirely

01:21:32.160 new musical worlds. And that was definitely

01:21:34.700 allied with the, the, the, this, this need to,

01:21:38.320 a, to, to build a new and better society. So

01:21:41.100 you can't, you can't separate those two

01:21:42.820 things. And you have to, you have to try to

01:21:45.280 imagine yourself as a, as a 20 or 25 year old

01:21:48.220 composer, you know, growing up in a, in a

01:21:50.820 Europe that's been absolutely devastated, you

01:21:53.500 know, to the, to the extent that there's

01:21:54.560 practically nothing left. And you're trying

01:21:56.960 to rebuild on, on top of that, you know, so

01:21:59.520 that's, that's, that's the situation that

01:22:01.480 the, the, the composers born in that era were

01:22:04.220 faced with. So do you want to pretend as, as

01:22:08.180 though nothing has happened and, and go back

01:22:09.820 to writing late romantic music? Or do you,

01:22:13.560 do you accept that fundamentally something

01:22:15.600 enormous has taken place that you, you

01:22:18.680 can't ignore? And, and if you want to be an

01:22:20.480 authentic artist, and if you want to manifest

01:22:23.560 the things that you can't help but perceive,

01:22:26.500 then how do you do that? And can you do that

01:22:28.500 within the confines of a language that was

01:22:30.560 associated with the period before the war?

01:22:33.020 So that's a somewhat simplified, that's a

01:22:35.520 somewhat simplified account of events, because

01:22:37.760 certainly there was a, there was a push

01:22:39.240 towards ever more personal and individual

01:22:41.180 forms of expression, starting with the, the

01:22:43.400 late 19th century, but it really accelerates

01:22:46.080 and takes off after the, after the Second

01:22:47.800 World War. And that happened for a number of reasons.

01:22:51.360 Okay. Well, and also that, that's, it seems

01:22:53.900 to me that it was, it's that post-war period,

01:22:56.660 roughly speaking, that was what grabbed your

01:22:58.440 attention when you were composing your pop

01:23:00.360 songs as well, and, and drew you in through

01:23:02.440 that particular rabbit hole. So, okay, so, so

01:23:04.820 back to the post-war period.

01:23:06.780 Right. So one of the interesting things that,

01:23:09.140 that happened in Europe was that the, the, the

01:23:12.160 need to reconstruct these different states

01:23:14.660 manifested also through a desire on the parts

01:23:17.360 of certain politicians to, to, to show how

01:23:20.600 advanced their societies could be through the

01:23:22.560 medium of art. So in, in Germany, for example,

01:23:25.660 enormous sums of money were put into, into, into

01:23:29.240 music. And they, they, they developed radio

01:23:31.420 orchestras. Every single region had its own

01:23:33.420 orchestra. Very, very high levels of, of, of

01:23:36.240 artistic quality as well. And, and, and so one

01:23:40.880 corollary of that was that they wanted their

01:23:42.500 music to be absolutely advanced and, and

01:23:45.960 absolutely striking. And, and that was a kind

01:23:49.660 of a, a very, a very strong impulse that began

01:23:53.720 to be felt in other European countries as well. And,

01:23:56.020 and France, for their part, had to also show that

01:23:58.640 they were investing in, in contemporary art and

01:24:00.760 contemporary music. And, and so there was a very

01:24:03.940 high degree of subsidization of the avant-garde

01:24:06.680 in the post-war period. Now that's not to say that

01:24:09.040 life was easy for every artist because it most

01:24:11.080 definitely was not. And it was an enormous

01:24:12.980 struggle for composers to produce this kind of

01:24:16.320 work and have it be performed. But there was

01:24:18.700 certainly a major investment on the part of the, of

01:24:22.080 certain European states in terms of funding this

01:24:25.060 kind of musical expression. So, that more or less...

01:24:27.180 Well maybe, they seem to have known instinctively,

01:24:30.640 even by your own argument, that if they were

01:24:33.180 going to rebuild, that this was going to be part,

01:24:35.360 an important part, maybe a vital part of the

01:24:37.820 rebuilding process. And you wouldn't think that

01:24:40.440 necessarily because you would assume that people's

01:24:43.180 attention would be drawn to what you might regard as

01:24:45.940 more practical concerns. But, of course, since we don't know

01:24:50.020 what role music is playing precisely, but a role that seems

01:24:53.200 to be incredibly important, it's not that easy to figure

01:24:55.520 out exactly what's practical and what isn't. Keeping

01:24:57.940 people's morale up is of, of incredible import, or

01:25:01.780 restoring the morale as well, is of incredible import,

01:25:04.680 maybe above all else.

01:25:06.140 Right. Right. Absolutely. Yeah. So, one of the essential

01:25:12.520 functions of art is, is, is spiritual, whether people know

01:25:15.220 it or not. And, and so if you want to rebuild your

01:25:18.100 culture, there's no better way to do it than through the

01:25:20.940 medium of art, as far as I'm concerned. I mean, it's a,

01:25:22.860 it's an absolutely fundamental thing. It's so fundamental

01:25:25.980 that even in the most, in the midst of the most horrific

01:25:29.400 experiences a human being can be, there is a, there is a

01:25:31.980 redemptive experience to be had in, in art. Right. Right,

01:25:36.760 right, which is really, really to say something. I mean, it

01:25:39.640 really is to say something. Because there's often, you can

01:25:42.480 find people in situations often where nothing else could do

01:25:45.480 that. There can't be rich by any other means. Right. Right.

01:25:49.320 And many people have their life saved by art. There's no

01:25:52.240 doubt about that. And I think that's true on an ongoing

01:25:54.320 basis, even with young people. I mean, certainly when they're

01:25:57.640 going through their, their late adolescent or even early

01:26:01.320 adolescent cataclysmic changes, many of them live for music.

01:26:05.480 Right. And music is helping them catalyze a group identity,

01:26:09.320 but deeper than that, it's also providing them with the implicit

01:26:12.100 sense that there's meaning, that the being is meaningful and

01:26:15.600 that there's meaning at hand. And, and you can't argue with

01:26:18.860 it. Right. The other thing that's so cool, especially

01:26:21.160 about music, is you can't argue with its meaning. It just

01:26:24.600 manifests itself. Right. So it's, it's outside of the domain

01:26:27.940 of rational, you can't criticize it. You sound like a fool. It's 1.00

01:26:31.800 like, well, why are you dancing? It's like, well, that, there, that

01:26:36.680 isn't a question. And also there's no answer to it. And why are you

01:26:40.260 listening to music? What's the point is also not a question. And

01:26:44.260 there's not an answer to it. You either, it's self-evident and

01:26:47.740 it's almost self-evident to everyone, which is fantastically

01:26:51.500 remarkable.

01:26:53.260 It is indeed. So the, the, the, the, the last thing I would, I

01:26:57.460 would say about that is that fundamentally the way that, uh, that

01:27:01.340 someone expresses them themselves through music, if it's

01:27:03.600 authentic, fundamentally, it's not a choice, you know? So one thing

01:27:08.740 that, that, that audiences might keep in mind if they're, if

01:27:11.180 they're about to engage with something that's unfamiliar to

01:27:13.400 them is that if it's, if it's a half decent work of art, if

01:27:17.040 the composer is, is sincere in what they're doing, then

01:27:20.220 fundamentally it's something that in a sense they, they have

01:27:22.960 to do. You know, there, there's not a strong element of choice

01:27:25.820 involved. So it's, it's not, it's not an arbitrary thing to

01:27:29.240 express yourself in one way or another. I mean, it's, it's, uh, it's

01:27:32.160 something that, that you, you don't get to choose.

01:27:35.440 Well, I've also noticed, like, I've had more than my fair share

01:27:38.920 of creative clients. Probably, I know, certainly because they're

01:27:43.580 attracted, for example, to come and see me by the content of my, my

01:27:49.020 videos and my lectures and that sort of thing. And, and one of the

01:27:52.420 things, and I studied creativity in, in, in, in some depth and its

01:27:56.560 relationship to personality. And one of the things that I found that

01:27:59.360 really being struck by is that there is a trait, which is openness,

01:28:03.780 which is a fundamental trait. And for people who are high in

01:28:07.080 openness is, if you imagine the person as a, as a central trunk

01:28:10.720 with a few branches, you know, and the branches are, are the

01:28:14.200 place where the nourishment emerges up into the, well, and, and

01:28:18.020 back, of course, too. But there's a, there's a pathway of life

01:28:21.480 along those, of those subdivisions of the trunk. Um, if they're

01:28:26.240 creative, that might be the main part of them that's alive. And if

01:28:30.820 that is manifesting itself, they just droop and die. Sometimes

01:28:34.320 they criticize them to death, send themselves to death rationally,

01:28:37.500 or, or, well, there's, there's a choice. They can either pursue

01:28:42.440 their creative nature or they can wilt and die. That, that's, but

01:28:45.980 that's not much of a choice, really.

01:28:48.280 No, no.

01:28:49.120 And it's striking to me how fundamental an, an instinct that

01:28:52.480 is and how, how unrelenting it is. And it manifests itself in

01:28:57.080 their increased proclivity to fantasize and to dream and to, and to find

01:29:01.460 like a, uh, a life inside of boxes that's predictable, unbearable, really

01:29:07.480 unbearable. Whereas a conventional person, a conservative person isn't

01:29:11.640 like that at all. They find that routine soothing and, and, uh, and the

01:29:16.100 exercise of that predictable duty meaningful and sustaining. But a

01:29:20.840 creative person, that, that just, it's just death for them.

01:29:24.240 Well, there's plenty of examples of, of, of creative artists who

01:29:28.460 have, who've had to endure the most horrible suffering and, and just

01:29:32.940 terrible material circumstances in order to pursue a singular

01:29:36.300 creative vision. And I mean, that's an absolutely amazing thing that

01:29:39.460 you think that people would voluntarily subject themselves to

01:29:41.700 that. So it, it makes you wonder, is it actually voluntary? I don't, I

01:29:44.340 don't know.

01:29:44.660 Well, I think the alternative is worse.

01:29:47.620 Right. The alternative is worse.

01:29:48.880 The alternative is worse, you know? And so, and you know, they are possessed to

01:29:52.700 some degree by genius, you know, that's the genie here. It's a major

01:29:56.300 thing to possess a person. And, and it's a, it's a, it's a fundamental

01:30:00.680 natural manifestation. So is it voluntary? You can either cooperate

01:30:05.760 with it or get crushed by it. I think that's basically the, that's basically

01:30:09.980 that your choice, it's still a choice. And, you know, you do interact with

01:30:14.700 your creativity. It's not like it just pours out of you. It's, there's a, there's,

01:30:19.000 there's work that needs to be done, even though the, the source is there in some

01:30:22.820 sense, which is also extremely strange. It doesn't just pour out, although it

01:30:26.860 does in some people, but they are, they have to have developed the expertise

01:30:30.180 necessary for that to occur. It's still effortful and demanding more to, well,

01:30:36.640 it's effortful and demanding and we can leave it at that. So.

01:30:40.600 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

01:30:41.840 Okay. So what was back to the beginning of the story, since we're going to do the

01:30:46.380 right thing from a musical perspective, you talked about being attracted to the

01:30:51.260 avant-garde poking up through, in some sense, because of your experimentation with

01:30:56.880 integrating that into pop songs, but then that took you down this rabbit hole

01:31:00.060 that, that propelled you into your career as a composer and, and into moving to

01:31:04.360 Europe and all of that. So, and you said that part of that was that you found some

01:31:09.940 of what you were listening to incomprehensible, and that was a mystery to you.

01:31:14.520 You wanted to pursue it. Was that, would you see that as a manifestation of your

01:31:18.980 musical ability trying to perfect itself? You found something you admired and

01:31:24.100 couldn't comprehend, or what was it?

01:31:26.860 Well, first of all, could, could we, could we exchange the term rabbit hole for,

01:31:31.680 for a gleaming field of light? Because I, that, that, that, that's how I would

01:31:36.160 characterize it. I think that's a little bit more accurate. Um, well, how can I, how can

01:31:41.580 I explain that? There's, there's a dragon with every gleaming field of light, you know?

01:31:47.420 No, one of the things I would say is that there are things that I, I would, I would hear and I

01:31:52.320 would instinctively know are, are deeply meaningful. They, they are so, so meaningful

01:31:57.040 that I almost can't begin to fathom their depths. And you don't necessarily

01:32:01.060 understand them intellectually. You don't understand what, how they are made or, or how

01:32:05.580 they function or what their component parts are, but there's something in it that, that

01:32:10.600 fundamentally speaks to you on a, on a very, very deep level. I can't explain why that is.

01:32:16.140 I can't explain why certain things that I, that I've heard, or that I heard when I was

01:32:19.880 a teenager had that effect on me, but they were, they, they were like invitations into a,

01:32:25.820 into a, a world of seemingly limitless potential that you cannot refuse. It's, it's like a form

01:32:32.200 of fascination that grips you. Yeah, well, that's, that's the grip, that's the grip by

01:32:35.980 the mercurial spirit, you know, that mercurius is this thing that flits around, that, that

01:32:41.040 can't help but attract your attention, the god Mercury, and he's an emissary of the gods,

01:32:46.120 right? Right. Yes, exactly that. And so if your interest is trapped by something like

01:32:50.480 that, you find it spontaneously meaningful. It is an invitation. So, and, and you don't have

01:32:56.060 to follow it, but if you do follow it, you'll find what you're being invited to, for better

01:33:01.240 or for worse. Right, right. Yeah, it's, it's an instinctive sense that this is something

01:33:06.520 that is deeply meaningful, and you, and you follow it, and it takes you places. And so

01:33:11.160 that's what happened with me. I, I was listening to, uh, the composers of, uh, what's called

01:33:15.180 the Second Viennese School. So that's a, that's a, a trio of composers, um, Berg, Schönbergen,

01:33:21.820 and Webern, uh, who I was just instinctively fascinated by when I was a teenager. Now, they're

01:33:27.640 considered by, by some people to be difficult composers to get into. Um, it really depends

01:33:33.560 on the, on the work, I would say. There are pieces that are actually quite accessible,

01:33:37.200 but there was something there that absolutely fascinated me. And, and once I had, once I

01:33:42.640 understood that that world existed, I, I, I found it extremely difficult to go back to

01:33:48.260 what I had been doing previously. Now, my music has absolutely nothing in common with, with

01:33:52.960 theirs. I mean, it's, it's stylistically very, very different. So I, it's not a question

01:33:57.000 of, uh, of wanting to do the same thing necessarily, but it just, it was a, a sign that there is

01:34:03.180 a, a, an enormous world of, of exotic knowledge and experience to be had if you only pay attention.

01:34:10.980 Well, that's a good, that's a good, uh, what would you call it? That's a good phrase to

01:34:15.540 think about in relationship to life in general. So, and it's a good thing for people to know

01:34:20.340 because, you know, if, if you're living a life that's devoid of sufficient meaning,

01:34:24.320 there is the probability that there's a bunch of things that you could be paying attention

01:34:27.760 to that would rectify that. It's not that simple because you can be in states of mind

01:34:32.280 that make that very, very difficult. But it is nice to know that those gleaming fields exist

01:34:37.880 and that you can pursue the flickers and, and, and find out where you're going to go.

01:34:42.240 All right. So I'm going to close this by pointing out to everyone that Sam Andreev has a Patreon

01:34:47.380 account, www.patreon.com forward slash Samuel Andreev. Is that correct?

01:34:53.980 That's right. All right. Good. And so, um, if you're inclined and to, to, uh, indicate your

01:35:01.000 support for his work, at least to visit his, his YouTube website as well, because Sam has

01:35:06.360 made a lot of videos, a number of different videos, helping guide people through the musical

01:35:11.780 landscape, the complex musical landscape, and which seems to me to be a very useful endeavor. So

01:35:16.620 anyways, thanks very much for talking to me and, and with everyone that's listening. And, uh,

01:35:23.080 we'll, I suspect we'll do this again in the future.

01:35:26.480 Yeah. Thank you for the invitation. I really appreciate it.

01:35:35.220 Thank you for listening to episode eight of the Jordan B. Peterson podcast.

01:35:39.860 To support these podcasts, you can donate to Dr. Peterson's Patreon page,

01:35:43.960 or purchase the self-authoring programs at selfauthoring.com. The links are in the description.

01:35:50.500 Thank you for listening.

The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - February 19, 2017

Samuel Andreyev

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