So, given what has come before, we at Bigmouths seem to be moving towards a conceptualization of "mobile forms" which emphasizes the decision making process. Openness is the property of music which affords performers the ability to make choices regarding the sounding-shape of the piece. True enough, but formulated this generically, the statement applies to statement applies to a Beethoven sonata as well as it does to my Study. The great significance of overtly 'open' works, to my mind, is simply that the essential contribution of the performers is rather more difficult to overlook or to encapsulate in the traditional definitions of 'performance.' The decisions are not fundamentally different — they just are harder to sweep under the rug.CMZ (and readers) may disagree with this, but this strikes me as analogous to the condition of postmodernity and its impact on audiences and artists. The kinds of questions the we ask, decisions that we make and actions that we take are not fundamentally different from the questions that other artists have made. It is simply that the condition of postmodernity has rendered the conditional aspect of all our aesthetic calibrations not merely visible/audible, but undeniable and inescapable.The way in which this plays out in jazz is a complex question that i hope we can delve into at the discussion at the CONCERT; Obviously, there is a sense that 'open works' and 'improvisation' are related the specific stylistic/cultural context in which poeisic and esthesic discriminations are made is really quite different. What interests me in bringing these two worlds together in a performative rather than scholar or context is that some body of experience with how different people make music, not as listeners or observers, but, so some extent, as co-participants. There are many barriers to this, but it is essential. Borrowing a reference from Tia De Nora's After Adorno. She quotes Olle Edström describing the frustration of an Adorno study group after several months of reading and arguing and rereading anre-arguingng:
"...we gradually gained a deeper insight into the pointlessness of instituting theoretical discourses on musiwithoutgh a solid ethnomusicological knowledge of the everyday usage, function and meaning of music.' -— Olle Edström 'Fragements: A Discussion on the Position of Critical Ethnomusicology,' Swedish Journal of Musicology) 79:1,9-68This may seem to doom our little project of bridging genre and style, but if we can start to actually unpack the ways through which music means, even in very limited contexts, we might begin to be aware of frameworks which shape our own thoughts about music, and so find away to music in the world which is both inviting and accepting of difference and engaged and rigorous in its own terms, a way of making music which is open and closed at the same moment.