Disclaimer The following text is a summary of Eduardo De la Fuente's essay, "Prophet and Priest, Ascetic and Mystic: Towards a Cultural Sociology of the Twentieth Century Composer", published in Philosophical and Cultural Theories of Music (2010), ed. Eduardo De La Fuente and Peter Murphy.

European Modernist culture’s longest lasting obsession has been the pursuit of an “aesthetic” salvation, primarily a result of Modernism’s break with institutional Christianity and the elevation of the Artist-as-Priest. Art as religion solidified in the 20th century as Wagner’s theoretical writings espoused with the writings of various modernist philosophers, and a revived interest in the Apollonion, objective Kunstreligion of ancient Greece.

 Max Weber suggested specifically that the 20th century composer resembled a religious professional, paving paths to aesthetic salvation based on their various rejections and affirmations of the world. These “professions” can be subdivided into four categories, the composer as prophet, priest, ascetic and mystic.

 Prophet: A person for whom the “conflict between empirical reality and his conception of the world as a meaningful totality […] produces the strongest tensions in the man’s inner life, as well as his external relationship to the world.” The prophet “discharges his internal pressure”, and their persona is marked by an unresolvable tension between their sacred duty/mission and the world. The prophet gains a mythical status and a swath of blind followers; they are charismatic and do not gain reward from the “field” or institution; their art is not commissioned or supported widely. Example give by De La Fuentes: Arnold Schoenberg

 Priest: The priest is specialized, with a vocational qualification and an aura of “fixed doctrine”.  Their views, metaphysical or otherwise, are rationalized: their role is to make peace with the past and to ensure that their sacred activity is shared and maintained with the “laity”. The priest is utilitarian, valuing coherence, constraint and unity. They reject the aesthetics of “expression”, and Modernity; they are rooted in a pre-Romantic-era past. Example give by De La Fuentes: Igor Stravinsky

Ascetic: The ascetic controls the demands of their inner-world; everything must be rationalized, not only elements perceived to be unorganized, but all elements perceived as expressive, spontaneous and purely conventional. The goal is “…supremacy of intellect over passion, the triumph of mind over physical instinct”.Example give by De La Fuentes:  Pierre Boulez

 Mystic: The mystic’s primarily principle is to remain silent so that God may speak. Their action is minimized, which puts them in contrast with the ascetics, who prove themselves through action. Perhaps the mystic’s ultimate goal in their silence is to pursue the elements that lie beyond their own intentions. The mystic is irresponsible to himself, risking their reputation and state in order to achieve and overarching acceptance of all circumstance. Example give by De La Fuentes: John Cage

The 2014 ARRAYmusic Young Composer's workshop is under way! This year us four young composers are under the mentorship of Vancouver-based composer Rodney Sharman, who brings with him a vast array of compositional knowledge from various forefronts of contemporary music, and Rick Sacks, artistic director of ARRAYmusic. Every year the instrumentation for the Young Composers Workshop varies, and this year the instrumentation has settled on 'cello (Rachel Mercer), clarinet (Colleen Cook) and percussion (David Schotzko).

Click here to listen to a sneak preview of what I'm working on at the 2014 ARRAYmusic Young Composers Workshop.

So far the the workshop has been rewarding and also challenging, as I find myself grappling with a large collection of artistic talent and possibility. The most graceful element of the workshop, is, of course, the extensive amount of TIME we get with such awesome musicians- time to experiment, collaborate, extrapolate and elaborate... anything we can and must do! Certainly countercultural to the limited rehearsal times, hyper-efficiency and overproduction that dominates most new music structures and organizations these days.

You can hear the final product of this workshop on May 31st, at Array Space, 3PM. More info here

On March 26th, University of Toronto's gamUT new music ensemble will perform my new piece, Fantasia, in fulfillment of my residency with this group. The concert will also premiere a piece by Toronto composer, Patrick McGraw.

"Polyphony organizes differences in a deconstructive way; unlike homophony, where voices blend into perceptual unities, polyphony poses the question, ‘does difference function as difference?’ (Mahnkopf, 2002, p. 39). The functioning of difference as difference
affects not only the musical material itself but also the manner in which the listener perceives the material. According to Mahnkopf, polyphony forces the listener towards two phenomenological states: positively, the listener enters a state of diagonal listening as a form of ‘mental compromise’, because the ear cannot simultaneously grasp a synchronic layering and diachronic unfolding of such detail and complexity. Negatively, the listener experiences an apperceptive overload where the ear discovers a quality of ‘too-muchness’, an excess of musical relationships that reach sublime proportions. And like the classical sublime, apperceptive overload reveals the limits
of the subject’s capacities, a limit which both reasserts the power and domain of both the interiority of subject and the externality of nature, its other.”

—  Aspect and Ascription in the Music of Mathias Spahlinger, Brian Kane.

Published in Contemporary Music Review 27(6): 595-610, ©2008 Taylor & Francis.

 Intentionality is an important part of composed music- but I also realize that there are large portions of musical material that flowed from a hidden source- that is, material whose presence cannot be justified through empirical methods. The idea of musical development is, on a basic level, an empirical process because the development springs forth from that which is already “experienced”, or material heard earlier in the piece.

On the other hand, there is the material that falls outside of the empirical process, the “dark matter” which marks its presence through its “unknownness” but justifies its presence through mysterious and ultimately mystical means. One of my professor’s describes these ideas (klangs, motives,chords, etc.) as “sphinxes”, carriers of hidden knowledge whose secrets remain profound but very much shrouded.

A good composer’s music is wholly intentional- they are able, through mystical processes to make their “sphinxes” feel equally as important as their empirical material. Besides the obvious, some composer that effectively utilized the mystical include J.S. and C.P.E. Bach, Schumann, Sibelius, Prokofiev, Dufay, Mozart.

“It is conscious plagiarism that demonstrates invention: we are so taken with what someone else did that we set out to do likewise. Yet prospects of shameful exposure are such that we disguise to a point of opposition; then the song becomes ours. No one suspects. It’s unconscious stealing that’s dangerous.” —  Ned Rorem, Paris Diary (Summer 1951)