Tag Archives: manifesto

Why I started LandscapeMusic.org

Posted on by Nell Shaw Cohen
1

I’ve composed many works of music inspired by paintings and drawings of landscapes by artists from Thomas Cole to Georgia O’Keeffe. I’ve gradually been writing more and more works inspired by my direct experiences of nature, parallel with and/or unrelated to interpretations by visual artists. I’ve come to realize that what I’ve been striving to achieve is the sonic equivalent of what visual artists accomplish with landscape art. I coined the term “Landscape Music” to communicate this ideal and philosophy.

At the same time, I’ve noticed several other composers who have been approaching a similar ideal from different aesthetic angles or perspectives. With the creation of this website, I seek to investigate work being done in this vein and to explore commonalities, divergences, exciting new developments, unexplored potentials, and possibly to derive some general principles or practices relating to this idea of musical landscapes.

Music inspired by nature, in my view, should never be taken as an objective representation of the natural world through sound, or even a way to concretely evoke a world beyond human experience. I argue instead that the creation of music inspired by nature is an inherently humanistic act that simultaneously affirms the intrinsic value and importance of the non-human natural world to the human experience.

The perception that a particular melody played on the flute signifies or “captures” the experience of sunlight filtering through the leaves of a tree, for example, inevitably has far more to do with the composer and/or the listener than it does with sunlight or trees themselves. This does not devalue the flute melody, however: a musical idea can be a conduit for communicating, understanding, and encapsulating human experiences of the natural world.

Because of my own background, and an awareness of the established tradition of music inspired by landscapes in Western classical music, this publication will inherently be biased towards music created by “composers” within the tradition of “classical,” “concert music,” or “New Music.” That said, I hope this website will encompass music created within other genres and perspectives (jazz, rock, pop, “folk” music, musical traditions from other regions of the world, etc) that similarly seek to express experiences of landscape, nature, and sense of place.

“Landscape” and the role of art in our understanding of nature

Posted on by Nell Shaw Cohen
1

Claude Lorrain, "Landscape with the Rest on The Flight into Egypt," 1666

Claude Lorrain, Landscape with the Rest on The Flight into Egypt, 1666

For better or for worse, most of the words and concepts we have for “nature” in English emerged from the opposition between human civilization and everything else. In Wilderness and the American Mind, Roderick Frazier Nash traces how the term wilderness was transformed in America over the centuries from an essentially derogatory indicator for uncultivated, uncivilized areas, to its current positive associations with environmental conservation. Gary Snyder explored in The Practice of the Wild how even the popularly-held conception of nature is itself paradoxical. Despite the common and seemingly unavoidable usage of the word to refer to the “non-human” world, we humans and all of our activities – from gardening to browsing the Internet – are a part of nature.

Furthermore, when thinking about interpretations of “wilderness” or “nature” within art, it is inherently impossible to avoid human-imposed lenses on nature. The interpretation of nature through art is, by definition, the representation of human perspectives. This, I believe, is not a bad thing. In Landscape And Memory, Simon Schama argues eloquently for the importance of understanding that “the cultural habits of humanity have always made room for the sacredness of nature” and that culture is “not the repudiation, but the veneration, of nature” (p. 18).

In this spirit, I seek to acknowledge and engage with culture-based perceptions of nature as the ways in which we humans necessarily make sense and meaning from the world around us, whether it’s through an Albert Bierstadt painting or a Disney movie.

I feel that landscape is the term that best embodies this overall idea. This word was imported from Dutch into English in the 16th century and has been used historically to refer to the aesthetic appreciation of nature, especially in the context of visual art. “Landscape” may be as accurately applied to bucolic scenes (the word’s original application) or cityscapes, as to wilderness locales that have been minimally impacted or modified by human hands. That having been said, as a creator and an audience member I’m interested primarily in art and music that acts as a pathway to fostering a greater empathy with, and connection to, the rest of the natural world.

Why Landscape Music is more important than ever

Posted on by Nell Shaw Cohen
Reply

By NASA.Mrshaba at en.wikipedia [Public domain], from Wikimedia Commons

Photo by NASA.Mrshaba, from Wikimedia Commons

One of the greatest quandaries that human beings now face (arguably the greatest) is how to balance human activity and growth with the natural world: how can industrialized nations and peoples make the necessary changes that will enable us to sustain ourselves and other living beings on the planet?

Hubris, shortsightedness, and overall alienation from nature is leading us towards catastrophic instability and mass-scale environmental imbalance, resulting in climate change and dwindling biodiversity. Many sense that a massive paradigm shift is necessary to reconcile the human species with our position in the universe and on the earth as animals, as a part of the larger fabric of life; to move our society towards perceiving nature as more than a resource merely to be “utilized” and used up.

Artists concerned with this environmental sustainability crisis are faced with the question: how can we artists best utilize our time, skills, and insights as creators to reconnect ourselves and our audiences with the natural world? Through research and writing for Landscape Music and the process of composing and promoting music inspired by landscape, I hope to find for myself and for other artists some possible ways in which to work towards this goal.

I don’t pretend to claim that art solves all problems, but it is a powerful force that influences peoples’ feelings, alters their priorities, and gives them purpose. Being affected by a work of art can awaken a person’s mind to the world around them.