Quotes
I do not see any dangers that could lead to annihilation of art and music. Art is one of human needs. What does evolve, however, is the contact people have with art, with new forms of contact replacing the old, less convenient ones. What does evolve is people’s creative attitude to art, while processes of natural changes sometimes seem like disasters. Something dies, but something new is born as well and this is natural in the development of humankind.
Composition cannot be “taught”; you can, however, show students how to compose and composition can be “studied”. If a student is very strongly motivated to speak through music, he or she needs someone capable of indicating various aesthetic directions and various tools that could be used to make his or her artistic visions come true.
Teachers should be capable of capturing and understanding the artistic intentions contained in their students’ works. They should be tolerant with regard to their students’ various aesthetic views and support their development. What they need in order to do that is, in addition to tolerance, a considerable knowledge of the subject. Not just their own experience but also erudition.
The craft of composing is a body of specific knowledge, a sum of cultural achievements of composers encompassing all elements of music and, at the same time, it is a synthesis of experiences of a centuries-long dialogue with listeners. Let us ask: what artist is capable, without any detriment to his or her art, of abandoning everything and starting to build a world ex nihilo, like the Creator, not a creator? There was a time when people thought they could or even should reject everything, but this time has passed. The results of such nonchalant thinking proved to be pathetic. I don’t deny I grew up admiring the great European music, admiring tradition. It was always a source of fascination, which, above all, prompted me to study music. Unlike other fascinations, this one is permanent.
Music is a form of artistic, emotional and intellectual expression of human beings. It has a system of notation, is an intentional subject and, as a work of art, is based on various acoustic phenomena stemming from various sources, organised according to varied, historically changing rules and principles, and filling fragments of space-time.