Music or confusion?

Sitting in the class these past few weeks have been very interesting to my ears. I haven't really listened to much 'avant-garde' music in years. I remember when I was an undergraduate student in NC listening to composers such as Schoenberg, Berg, and Weber and really wondering what was happening to music??!! It was really different to my ears back then. Having grown up in a rural area, I was exposed to basically pop music, some country, and bluegrass. When I entered college my 'classical' exposure to music was greatly enhanced. And then I heard Schoenberg. Oh my goodness...what happened?! After being exposed to that music for a bit, then along came Cage. I remember listening to it with amusement, wondering what had happened. It was totally different from what I had listened to in the past. My inexperienced mind (and ears) couldn't quite comprehend it all. Being the introvert that I was back then, I kept quiet about it. After all, I was "from the hills!" :)

Years later I have come to be more tolerant and willing to listen to different (or as our class indicates...innovative) music. Some of it can be quite challenging to listen to. Some of it I would even question whether to classify it as music or as experiments with sound. Back in high school I took an electronic music class. This was the time when synthesizers did not have labels such as "piano, bass, strings, etc." The synthesizers looked more like small scientific instruments with the labels "sine wave, algorhithm, frequency, etc." We also experimented with taped sounds, loops....very different from the Yahama DX7 synthesizers (I'm showing my age here). Anyway, I knew about experimenting with sounds. But did it make it music? I would say that during that particular class I was more of a noise maker (or creator) than that of an innovative music maker. I was really just in the stage of just trying to figure out different things. So I suppose that's what a lot of composers are doing, especially the experimenters whose 'musical' creations are just trying to expand the bounds of music and sound. I've been intrigued by their process, and with their thinking.

So I suppose my whole purpose of writing this blog is to think aloud why/how some 'innovative' composers' musics sound like music and some composers' musics sound like 'sound.' It does help me to hear/read what the composer has to say about his/her piece of music. That bit of insight does help in the digesting and, hopefully, in the appreciation of his/her work. Knowing about the music and the composer's intent really helps me to understand what he/she is accomplishing. I may not love it, but at least I understand it better.