Jackson Pollack abstract painting
Why Does Art Change?
The history of artistic change is replete with various forms of human expression.
Dance has changed over the millennia, as all the other art genres: literature, painting, sculpture and music.
Why?
In my opinion, there are two major influences within any civilization which spur a change in artistic development.
These two influences are ambient technological mechanical rhythms, and cultural rhythms.
Ambient Technological and Mechanical Rhythms
This is the easier to understand once explained.
The question to ask: what ambient sounds did the musician, painter, writer, and dancer hear during their lifetime?
These sounds change with the development of new civilization.
In Bach, Mozart Beethoven’s time, there were no trains. In Germany the first steam powered train line was in 1837, ten years after Beethoven’s passing.
Trains have an explicit rhythm, a sound which is ever-present in some people’s lives. It influences their internal rhythmic expression.
We see this in the Blues, and Jazz. Oscar Peterson’s Night Train is an obvious example. Glenn Miller’s Chattanooga Choo Choo couldn’t been written in Europe.
They are quintessentially American and written in a time when trains were a major mode of transportation. The subway was also a major source of rhythmic influence. Billy Strayhorn’s Take The A Train is American music indicative of the 1940’s New York. New Yorkers relied mostly on the subway as their mode of transportation. The subway’s rhythm’s are inculcated by the musician. Unique musical expression results.
With the advent of cars, rock music became the prominent form musical expression. We hear this in the music of the Beach Boys, and the free flowing Jazz of artists like pianist Dave Brubeck and Alto Saxophonist Paul Desmond who played in his quartet. The free flowing movement of California’s Freeways are expressed in their music.
The rhythm of motorcycles affect rock’s development. Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run demonstrates the rhythmic effect of the motorcycle on his music. The songs Billy Joel another avid motorcyclist,
are influenced by motorcycle movement. At the end of Uptown Girl, Billy Joel pulls out the service station with Christie Brinkley
Cultural Rhythmic Change
The other main element which propels new artistic change is cultural rhythm. We all grow up with cultural rhythms which are indicative to our development as individuals and artists.
What are cultural rhythms?
We are surrounded by cultural rhythms which we take for granted. How do people walk in our cultural environment, how do they gesture, sit down, move their eyes and head?
Most importantly, what is the cadence of their speech? Tempo, volume, accentuation, timbre, rise and fall of speaking patterns.
These are important cultural elements which artists absorb in their lifetime, changing and nuancing within the environments in which they live.
The Dynamic Combo:
Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Chopin grew up in a different culture than American Songbook composers, Jazz masters, and Rock, Rap, Punk, and Hip-Hop musicians..
Artists throughout the millennia experience cultures with radically different technology and cultural rhythms. These essential elements meld together to form artistic personality.
George Balanchine recognized the gulf of cultural and technological differences between his native Russia and America- hence, he created an entirely new style of Ballet. The Hudson River Valley painters grew up in an entirely different environment than the Parisian or Dutch artists.
Edward Hopper and Georgia O’Keefe painted in a new culturally rhythmic and technologically developed America.
Atonality and Improvisation:
My improvisational styles point to my being influenced by a post-WWll America. Highly diverse and technologically developed as no previous civilization.
Atonality intertwined with popular musical currents makes sense in the framework of today’s civilization.
And so the beat goes on…