HEARING ART
I believe that each art has its own specificity, that each art has a way of being different from the other arts. But in the same time I find that every art share one communal characteristic, which is irrationality. Constructing a building has an interest, building a plane too, but painting a picture has no direct usefulness, so why are we doing that?
Generally speaking, in the case of music, we don’t think about it but it’s quite strange that we like listening to it. What makes the difference between music and a succession of ordinary sounds, that we call noise? Why do we like certain sounds combinations and others not? And what makes that some instruments sounds great together and not others?
It’s all those things that fascinate me in music, I find it unbelievable that everyone agrees that certain sounds are forming a music and not others. After all, maybe that music has a social purpose, the purpose of gathering people and of creating a cohesion.
IT’S ALL ABOUT STYLE
In music as in fashion (and in art generally speaking) there are distinct styles which are well-defined. According to the style, the whole music changes, there is nothing that is universal.
Each style has its codes that characterize it, of course you can get away from those codes in order to innovate, but it’s rather dangerous as you can easily come to something that has no real sense anymore, like in fashion I think. You can rely on the codes that exist and adopt a style that has proven its worth, but you don’t take real risks and the result, although objectively satisfactory, can seem tasteless.
But getting away from the codes in an uncontrolled way can also be unpleasant, for example during fashion shows you can see a lot of very extravagant outfits, that nobody really wears, but this allows showing new things and innovating. After a fashion show the limits have been pushed back and then it’s less hazardous to attempt some new combinations or to wear some new pieces that would have been called strange before.
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