Chapter 9 - Nature, Music and Nature, My Music Outdoors

Summary

Deeply affected is the way nature lets me know what I need to know about the mysteries of form. I sense this in the way the trail takes me places, sometimes knowingly, other times by surprise. But always, at the end, there is an inevitable moment where nature takes over, where the trail is no longer humanly contrived, but, instead, and because of its contrivance (or in spite of it), I find myself overwhelmed.

—Christopher Shultis

This “talk” was more or less written to be part of this book. Some paragraphs come from a brief essay I wrote on request from the Web magazine New Music Box. It appeared with other articles on the topic “How do music and nature connect in your work?” A few other paragraphs—some explicitly quoted—come from program notes for the outdoor pieces. Notes for an introductory talk before the performance of Oracle were recast for inclusion here. And some of the material on Sound/Path/Field is adapted from a PowerPoint presentation on that composition I have presented here and there since September 2006. I make reference to this presentation in the body of this talk.

Many other contemporary composers are concerned about the relation of nature (with or without a capital N) to music. A good survey of such views is provided (with an accompanying CD) by The Book of Music and Nature: An Anthology of Sounds, Words, Thoughts edited by David Rothenberg and Marta Ulvaeus, which includes stimulating and remarkable writings by John Cage, David Dunn, Steven Feld, Hazrat Inayat Khan, Steve Lacy, R. Murray Schafer, Toru Takemitsu, and many other authors. I must also mention Henry Brant’s antiphonal music, which certainly partakes of a spatial sensibility akin to outdoor music. Other contemporary composers who have written music to be played outside include Karlheinz Stockhausen, John Cage, and most notably Alvin Curran.

I do want to be clear about the status of some of my ideas and opinions about nature and its connections with music. I often quote, cite, or allude to religious writings in this talk (and elsewhere in this book). However, the reader should not assume that I am engaging in some sort of apologetics or other form of religious advocacy.