The musical scale is a convention which circumscribes the area of potentiality and permits construction within those limits in its own particular symmetry.
Iannis XenakisRead
Music is not a language. Any musical piece is akin to a boulder with complex forms, with striations and engraved designs atop and within, which men can decipher in a thousand different ways without ever finding the right answer or the best one.
Interpretation
Music transcends language, offering multiple interpretations instead of a single correct understanding.
This quote by Iannis Xenakis highlights the complexity and multifaceted nature of music, suggesting that it cannot be confined to the limitations of spoken language. Just as a boulder possesses various forms and engravings that invite diverse interpretations, music evokes personal and subjective responses, emphasizing that there is no definitive or 'best' interpretation, only myriad perspectives that reflect individual experiences and emotions.
In practice
Use this quote to introduce a discussion on the subjective nature of art in a classroom.
The musical scale is a convention which circumscribes the area of potentiality and permits construction within those limits in its own particular symmetry.
To make music means to express human intelligence by sonic means. This is intelligence in its broadest sense, which includes not only the peregrinations of pure logic but also the "logic" of emotions and intuition. My musical techniques, although often rigorous in their internal structure, leave many openings through which the most complex and mysterious factors of the intelligence may penetrate.
The collision of hail or rain with hard surfaces, or the song of cicadas in a summer field. These sonic events are made out of thousands of isolated sounds; this multitude of sounds, seen as totality, is a new sonic event.
The listener must be gripped and whether he likes it or not, drawn into the flight path of the sounds without special training being necessary. The sensual shock must be just as forceful as when one hears a clap of thunder or looks into a bottomless abyss
Writing songs used to be my hobby; it used to be my getaway.
I wear myself out and struggle with the sun. And what a sun here! It would be necessary to paint here with gold and gemstones. It is wonderful.
I don't write songs, songs write me. ... Writing a song can be agony or ecstasy. It can take half an hour or half a year. ... The popular song is America's greatest ambassador.
I'm a storyteller; that's what exploration really is all about. Going to places where others haven't been and returning to tell a story they haven't heard before.
My personal aesthetic is to be affected directly by everything about what you're seeing... I don't mind being dashed on the rocks... My most base act of defiance is to live a long time and still rock.
If a novelist tells you something she knows or thinks, and you believe her, that is not because either of you think she is God, but because she is doing her work - as a novelist.
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