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Monday, October 29, 2007

On Originality

A thoughtful post from Matthew Guerrier about the nature of genius, Romantic thinking, and current notions of innovation reminded me of a particular email exchange with a friend a few years back:
Friend: Enthusiastic as I was about "My Father..." and many other Adams pieces, I don't like [Naive and Sentimental Music] at all. To me, it sounds like "Adams Does Adams," without anything new... no, just anything...to say. Sorry.

Me: And how did you feel about Haydn around Symphony No. 85?
Clearly some critical antipathy toward Philip Glass originates in the demand for constant newness and originality.

4 comments:

  1. I think there's a difference between being in a rut (or plowing over and over in the same area) and having a well-defined approach that works over a long period of time. It may be that some critics think the Glass is an example of the former and that Haydn was an example of the latter.

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  2. Your assessment of how you perceive a technique or approach is also a personal thing. If the approach doesn't work for you as a listener, you aren't likely to appreciate the subtler differences between instances of that approach and are likely to dismiss it with an "oh, God, that again".

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  3. But many of the criticisms one sees of composers who are supposedly "in a rut" would apply equally aptly to a composer with "a well-defined approach that works over a long period of time." Declarations that a particular personal idiom is explored after only one or two works, that constant reinvention is necessary, that only the cutting-edge will be valuable in the future (which is closer to the opposite of the truth, although not very close to that, either) - that sort of crap is still uttered today.

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