Hell is full of musical amateurs, but so is heaven

• Today, whenwe think of musical performance inWestern art music, it is easy to takefor granted the division of labor between, for example, musician and composer. However,music has obviously been produced for many thousands of years without therebeing a need to compose and write it down before playing it. Most genres of music havesustained and developed without this split between creator and performer. In genreswhere improvisation play an important role the musician sometimes embodies both thecreative act and the interpretative–simultaneously. In musics built on aural traditionsthe composed component is integrally bound to the musician. However, as advancedand standardized technologies for systematic notation of music were developed in Europethe role of the musician slowly began to evolve into two, often separate parts: onepart primarily responsible for the construction of music (composer), and one part primarilyresponsible for the performance of it (musician). There is no doubt that compositionand notation are extraordinarily ecient means to structure, communicate andpreserve musical ideas and it is fair to assume that the development that led to the divisionof labor loosely sketched here participated in the advancement ofWestern musicinto new aesthetic areas.

Ämnesord

HUMANIORA  -- Konst -- Musik (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Arts -- Music (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Amatörer

kompositörer

performer

Publikations- och innehållstyp

ref (ämneskategori)

art (ämneskategori)