Part of the purpose of arts education is to encourage, support and develop
the process of individuation and to help people express their humanity through
the arts. There is little in contemporary media that is achieving that goal.
If we are learning many of our values, ideals, and metaphors via the products
of the image-makers, and image-makers have made the acquisition of money
their primary goal, how is this tendency affecting our cultural life? What
kind of impact do the commercial arts have on the development of individual
conscience? The idea that entertainment is an end in itself - a drug, an
escape, rather than a medium to foment the mind and heart - is a widely
accepted one. And this idea has its roots happily planted in the soil of
advertising and mass-marketing. Perhaps in the future we will recognize
these cultural weeds for what they are and pull them so as to make room
for that which is truly beautiful and useful.
Art is a laboring to express ultimate reality from the limited perspective
of the finite personality. The artist's role is to blend the spiritual with
the material, the intellectual and the sensual. The will and the conscience
are far more connected than we would like to believe and no amount of cleverness,
be it intellectual, technological or marketing, can compensate for empty
entertainment which, like junk food, leaves people gratified for a moment
but in the long-run contributes nothing to their well-being. Far too much
music, and the inane uses of music, are doing just that.
In a mature society commerce serves the fine arts, that is the arts are
the end and commerce the means. By viewing everything cultural through the
eyes of the economic paradigm, I think our society sees it distorted. The
arts are important not because they serve the politically correct rhetoric
of attracting tourism, providing jobs, selling products, etc., but simply
because we express our hearts, heads and hands through art, and this in
itself is a cultural and psychic necessity. Entertainment for the sole purpose
of distracting people from their own solitude and inner life is about as
far from real art as you can possibly get. The confusion between what is
vanity and what is true individuality, and the conflict between community
and conformity has to be clarified within the consciousness of the artist
if even the possibility of creating art is to exist. It is not that the
usual rhetoric about the social purposes of art is wrong, it is merely designed
to explain art to people who otherwise don't get it in the first place;
it is designed to justify a human endeavor that ought not require justification
at all. |
As the visual image is pervasive in media, so is the accompanying music
score. Television sitcoms, movies, advertisements, computer and video games,
MTV and news broadcasts each use music for their own purposes. I frequently
observe how often people habitually associate music with images, and wonder
if this is a kind of culturally induced hypnosis. There is so much to be
gained by encountering music as its own language, as ideas in themselves,
independent of visual association. Many people experience dramatic instrumental
music only in the form of the latest, biggest and loudest film or television
score. Meanings and values which are unexpressed, or under-expressed, through
the combined visual-musical experience are often conveyed better through
music alone because of its abstract nature. It is this capacity to be abstract
which makes music so marvelous, while the visual image tends to be quite
specific. In film, music usually means something definite and concrete -
a character's state of mind, a setting, an event or an incident about to
occur - hence music's meaning is literally defined by image and story. The
composer can bring his own insights via the music, but nonetheless, those
insights are reflections of the story. Music without the visual image can
exist as an abstract experience where the listener plays a crucial role
in discovering meaning by how perceptively and imaginatively he can listen.
It is this abstract nature of music which fascinates me as a composer, and
holds my interest and curiosity as a human being. Because music is an inherently
intangible and abstract medium, the listener is free to ponder and discover
much through his own listening skills, without a literal or visual point
of reference.
I am aware of and support the outstanding work that has resulted from
the combined efforts and talents of directors, screenwriters and composers.
I have had enjoyable and productive experiences composing music for film,
television and digital media, yet I find the deepest artistic pleasures
in composing music in which structure and styles are self-contained, and
not associated with images. The rewards of individual expression are immeasurable,
and the joy of making music that is governed by its own inner laws is profound.
Of course there is room in the world for both the multimedia arts which
involve music with other media, and music as an art form by itself. My intention
is not to deprecate the use of music with images, but to affirm music as
an art in its own right, with its own inherent purpose: The greatness of
musical expression and artistic achievement is not guaranteed one whit by
the availability of technology, the enticements of mass-market success,
or the adjunct of the exciting or seductive visual image. |
