ABOUT THE POWER OF MUSIC

 

“Popular Music 1” (selections) Dieter Roth - 1966

Is music a neutral art form?

Is it simply a tapestry of sounds that calls for discreet listening as we go about our daily lives?

I don't believe in transparency, nor in the harmlessness of music.

Music is an active principle.

It conveys visions of the world, modes of thought, mental maps and introspective surveys.

For me, music is inseparable from cosmology.

This is obvious in the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, which evokes the rhythmic mechanics and harmonic geometry of a post-Copernican world.

It's also evident in the Berlin School and its cosmic tropism, with its sound spaces deepened by reverberations and multiplied by delays, its harmonic wakes mingling with the propulsion of sequences.

I think all music is a cosmology. It builds a world.

At the same time, it is a vehicle for abstraction and questioning. There's a philosophical, existential, metaphysical quest dimension to music, which doesn't proceed through words and rational thought, but through the language of sounds, harmonics, space, time and silence.

All music is an exploration, an experiment on the frontiers of thought, imagination, vision and, quite simply, existence.

This does not contradict the festive, recreational dimension of music.

It can address the body or the mind, most often both.

In the course of my musical work, in my search for new sounds and compositional forms, I feel as if I'm moving forward on this initiatory quest...