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INTRODUCTION:
“… I have set out to share with you, the reader and listener, some of the many new ideas and concepts that are being brought to the act of composing in today’s world. Many of these ideas are very new. Some of them have yet to find their way into print. Most haven’t been compiled, together, within a single cover. All are intended to freshen the listening experience, and reawaken listeners to the notion of a new music that can be heard and understood, and that will become a powerful, memorable and rewarding event for you and me, the listeners. This will require something of a historical survey with a decidedly philosophical bent. New definitions will be traced as they were born, from the beginning of the century in works of Claude Debussy, through those of Arnold Schönberg, and in today’s works by Julio Estrada, the Mexican revolutionary theorist.”
“What is the glue that can hold together such disparities? Is there a secret organizing impulse that makes these alchemies glimmer in ways that can move an audience? Yes! The best of what modernism exemplified, in the olden sense as well as what can be reascribed to advanced work of today, lies in a complete reconsideration of what constitutes a sound. A sound has many attributes, the most famous of which (and which garnered almost exclusive attention in the avant-garde music of the 1950s and 1960s) are pitch and duration. Another dimension, far too long ignored, is just now receiving long overdue attention: it is depth, (Giacinto Scelsi’s third dimension). This has been the missing ingredient in the stew. The most common musical element of depth is timbre (tone-color resulting from a confluence of overtones). More broadly, it’s the concept of color that provides the spice to enhance the flavor¾in ways that provide accessibility for the listener, even in music of decidedly rugged terrain. These concepts slowly took on flesh with the work of composers in successive generations, until a formalized concept was born: that of sound-based music. Coupled with composers’ understanding of psychoacoustics (how we perceive sound), this approach has led to startling new results that are striking at their very least, and deeply rewarding at their best.”
BOOK EXCERPTS - INTRO
