Check this article/blog post out, it is an interview with Curtis Roads and was in the 1988 computer music journal. The part that caught my attention was the intro by the interviewer Brigitte Robindore'. Most everyone on here makes something artistic, so a thought provoking conversation in an Ivy League wanker magizine from when most of us weren't old to know how to wank, may be entertaining, and helpful in the creation process (yeah, i gots writers block suckas, per usual though).
Robindoré: In a 1988 interview in The New York Times, the instrumental composer Olivier Messiaen gave his rather remarkable perspective on electro-acoustic music: “The ancient musical modes lasted for ten centuries, tonal music only a few centuries, three centuries really. Serial music lasted about fifty years. Aleatory music should last for a few days, Minimalism a couple of weeks. What will last longer, I believe, is electronic music, or electro-acoustic music. Some composers do this, some don’t; I don’t - but even for me it has changed music. I cannot hear the orchestra in the same way, for instance, because of electro-acoustic music. It has not yet given us new masterpieces, but it has given us new timbres.” With the vantage point of a solid 30 years in the field, can you concur with Messiaen’s opinion concerning the lasting nature of this genre? And has your perspective changed over those years or only been confirmed? And what of his comment that the field has not yet offered (as of 1988, that is) any “masterpieces” such as those yielded by Western art instrumental and choral music composers over the centuries?
