In the XXI century, by breaking the conventions and the traditional relations of sounds as used in the XVIII and XIX centuries, sometimes the music seems to go nowhere. There are changes in the music but one is expecting the music to go somewhere in a certain way and it does not. The […] Read more »
Intellect-Emotion
This is another dichotomy that is in evidence in the XXI century. While music during the Romantic era tried to appeal to our emotions and to make us feel our humanity, music became more interested in appealing to the intellect in the XX century. Schoenberg and his music based on numerical […] Read more »
Simplicity- Complexity
This is an important dichotomy in order to understand music of the XX century and classical music in general. Many times there is a great simplicity associated with beauty. Some of Beethoven’s most beloved works are simple works, like the piano piece “Fur Elise” or the first movement of the […] Read more »
Melody-Randomness
I am going to continue my meditations on music and on a framework to understand it better. I was going to abandon them but I will finish them before embarking on something else. I have put a lot of thought a lot about what the opposite of melody is, or […] Read more »
Interesting-Boring
So why would a composer abandon beauty in a musical composition? Here we get to the second dichotomy in music: Interesting-Boring. If a composer used a very beautiful chord and repeated it 20 times, even if it was the most beautiful chord in the world, your mind would probably start […] Read more »
Ugliness-Beauty
The first dichotomy we will use when talking about music is ugliness-beauty. This is a very important dichotomy in all the arts, as the achievement of beauty has long been a goal of artists. However, as Plato said: “Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder”. I have found, nevertheless, […] Read more »
Understanding Music
Music is a complex subject. How can we understand it fully without studying it professionally? I’m talking about classical music, of course, or as they call it in Latin-American countries, “serious music”. Of course, the more you know, the easier it will be for you to relate to this type […] Read more »
The dichotomies in music
I plan to write a series of posts talking about dichotomies as a mean to express my ideas about contemporary classical music and its future. A dichotomy, which is the division of a subject into two opposites, allows us to better understand a subject and coupled with a scale between […] Read more »