Lyrical Dissonance
Too often is truly powerful music in our contemporary age judged with either one of two possible criticisms. The first critique takes on the guise of “traditionalism,” and argues that modern music is too dissonant, formless, pessimistic. Such criticisms are like to be heard from the babbling mouths of neo-classicists, students of all kinds, classical musicians, jazz musicians, rock musicians, pop musicians, and a good majority of populist opinion. The second critique is the precise opposite. It is the critique that modern music is still too safe, tonal, harmonic, “pretty,” sentimental. This critique is more often than not made by the supposed “avant-garde” residing in cities the world throughout. Any modern music that allows itself to be influenced by the wealth of the past is derided as being a “traditionalist” and ultimately boring. This latter critique is particularly alarming because the very element often interpreted as “sentimental,” is nothing other than a music that shares emotion with expressivity when it is being performed. The current so-called “avant-garde” in America now wishes to degrade the human to a piece of functioning machinery.
Too often are musicians and composers with true talent thrust into the narrow space that separates these opinions, both of which are grounded in nothing more than a loyalty to ideology.
Our age is such that the only true musician is one who is “lyrically dissonant.” Lyrical dissonance is the skill possessed by a few noble musicians that do not succumb to either force. Most musicians, when confronted with the absurdity of the paradox, will break down, lose their strength, and pick a side. Musicians who cannot bear the necessity to be a dissonant musician will turn into the kind of players that approaches music through such preconceived notions as genre, style, idiosyncratic accuracy, and so on. Musicians who cannot bear the burden of being lyrical will succumb to soft avant-gardism and play only formless noise under the pretense that it’s being ironic or meaningless gives it a reason to be called art.
Lyrical dissonance stands in opposition to the “binary forms of nihilism.”[i] For in fact, there is a great necessity to utilize dissonance and tension for it is the state of the modern world. To banish dissonance from music is to banish humanity. To cast out lyricism is to cast out the effort to make coherent the inner turmoil of the human soul. Lyricism is the redemption of the suffering human soul; it is beauty.
Too often are musicians and composers with true talent thrust into the narrow space that separates these opinions, both of which are grounded in nothing more than a loyalty to ideology.
Our age is such that the only true musician is one who is “lyrically dissonant.” Lyrical dissonance is the skill possessed by a few noble musicians that do not succumb to either force. Most musicians, when confronted with the absurdity of the paradox, will break down, lose their strength, and pick a side. Musicians who cannot bear the necessity to be a dissonant musician will turn into the kind of players that approaches music through such preconceived notions as genre, style, idiosyncratic accuracy, and so on. Musicians who cannot bear the burden of being lyrical will succumb to soft avant-gardism and play only formless noise under the pretense that it’s being ironic or meaningless gives it a reason to be called art.
Lyrical dissonance stands in opposition to the “binary forms of nihilism.”[i] For in fact, there is a great necessity to utilize dissonance and tension for it is the state of the modern world. To banish dissonance from music is to banish humanity. To cast out lyricism is to cast out the effort to make coherent the inner turmoil of the human soul. Lyricism is the redemption of the suffering human soul; it is beauty.
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