The musical scale is a convention which circumscribes the area of potentiality and permits construction within those limits in its own particular symmetry.
Interpretation
The musical scale defines the boundaries within which music can be created, allowing for artistic expression within those limits.
The quote by Iannis Xenakis emphasizes the idea that musical scales are not just arbitrary sets of notes, but rather structured conventions that shape the possibilities of musical composition. By establishing certain boundaries, they allow musicians to construct works that possess their own unique symmetry and coherence, showcasing the balance between limitation and creativity in the art of music.
In practice
In a music class discussing the importance of scales in composition.
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.
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
In the belly of the furnace of creativity is a sexual fire; the flames twine about each other in fear and delight. The same sort of coiling, at a cooler, slower pace, is what the life of this planet looks like. The enormous spirals of typhoons, the twists and turns of mountain ranges and gorges, the waves and the deep ocean currents - a dragonlike writhing.
When we get to a point when trans folks are included in the creative process, the narrative will be much more authentic. Trans actors playing trans roles is a key part of that. But some of the trans talent is not even making it into the audition room, let's be honest.
Writing for television is completely different from movie scriptwriting. A movie is all about the director's vision, but television is a writer's medium.
My method of getting a play across the footlights is like a revolver shooting: every line has a bullet in it and comes with an explosion.
I've written so many verses and keep on writing so many more that I became afraid that if I didn't write them into one big book, I might forget some of them.
The most extraordinary thing about writing is that when you've struck the right vein, tiredness goes. It must be an effort, thinking wrong.
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