Tag Archives: the role of art

Landscape Music as Advocacy

Posted on by Christina Rusnak
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Editor’s Note: I’m delighted to present the first of a two-part series of essays penned for Landscape Music by guest author, composer Christina Rusnak.

Composing in Denali

Photo courtesy of Stephen Lias, 2012.

If you research “Music” and “Advocacy” together, invariably your search will bring up articles, scholarly and otherwise, about Music Education Advocacy: why to, if to, when to, and how to advocate for music in the schools. Add to the search “Landscape”, and up pops essays on ethnomusicology. While I certainly agree that landscape shapes culture, I contend that our environment—the physical landscape—undoubtedly has influenced musical creation for eons.

“Sound is one of the original elements of the Earth’s ecosystem.” Like us, sound and music require air. “Music breathes; giving it breath and beauty is what we call music making.”1Kennedy, John. “On the Nature of Music”, New Music Box, January 1, 2004. http://www.newmusicbox.org/articles/On-the-Nature-of-Music/ Music is what composers create to reflect our human experience.

Music is, has been, and always will be transitory! Whether we are hiking, biking, riding a horse or driving, the nature of experiencing the landscape is also transitory.

Research is mounting that getting outside and experiencing nature is essential for our health.2Metger, Chloe. Scientific Reasons Getting Outside is Good for You http://news.health.com/2014/09/29/health-benefits-of-nature/ I myself am a product of the transformative power of wilderness. A field botany class in college, during which we hiked over 60 miles in Big Bend National Park, literally changed my life.

There are those who consider composing new music about place, whether urban or wilderness, problematic—“primarily because of its transitory nature.”3Siepmann, Daniel. “Who is Creative Placemaking? New Music, Integrity and Community”, New Music Box, July, 9, 2014. http://www.newmusicbox.org/articles/who-is-creative-placemaking-new-music-integrity-and-community/ Really? Music is, has been and always will be transitory! Whether we are hiking, biking, riding a horse or driving, the nature of experiencing the landscape is also transitory. Continue reading →

References

References
↑1 Kennedy, John. “On the Nature of Music”, New Music Box, January 1, 2004. http://www.newmusicbox.org/articles/On-the-Nature-of-Music/
↑2 Metger, Chloe. Scientific Reasons Getting Outside is Good for You http://news.health.com/2014/09/29/health-benefits-of-nature/
↑3 Siepmann, Daniel. “Who is Creative Placemaking? New Music, Integrity and Community”, New Music Box, July, 9, 2014. http://www.newmusicbox.org/articles/who-is-creative-placemaking-new-music-integrity-and-community/

The ecocentric rationale for wilderness

Posted on by Nell Shaw Cohen
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Wilderness and the American Mind by Roderick Frazier NashI recently read Wilderness and the American Mind, Roderick Frazier Nash‘s influential landmark survey of the intellectual history of wilderness in the U.S. In the Epilogue of the fourth edition, Nash muses on possible futures for wilderness and explains why the attitudes and rationales that led to the preservation of wilderness in the past may not hold up going forward.

“Ecocentric” arguments for wilderness preservation, which are rooted in ethics—rather than aesthetics, politics, or economics—are becoming increasingly important. Such a shift in conversation necessitates an intellectual and moral transformation of attitudes about nature. This is something I’ve been thinking about for a while, and Nash’s ideas have stimulated me to further contemplate how music might support the ecocentric perspective. Continue reading →

Why I started LandscapeMusic.org

Posted on by Nell Shaw Cohen
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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.