John Borstlap

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Fruits of tradition

Posted on September 27, 2016January 10, 2017 by John

An interesting article in the Chronicle of Higher Education about the fruits of tradition, if correctly understood:

http://www.chronicle.com/article/How-to-Think-Like-Shakespeare/237593

Quote: “You simply cannot transform tradition (a creative ideal) without first knowing it (a conserving ideal).” The article confirms the common sense insight that any achievement in any field is based upon mastering the rules by immersion in tradition, which is: the available body of works and their meaning. But what are these rules, and where are they for? Paradoxically, rules require discipline, concentration, learning, repetition, all restricting activities with clear limitations, but when gone through this stage, rules offer freedom. The British art nun Sister Wendy, a most brilliant mind in the field of art history, once said in one of her famous BBC documentaries: ‘I like rules… because you can move so freely within them’. One could go further and conclude, that mastering rules offers the possibility of transcending them and creating new things: not merely following rules but playing inventively with them, so that new forms can blossom; in this way, an artistic tradition develops in a lively balance between order and re-invention. In music, rules are the result of the discovery of innate laws, but these laws are flexible, like living things. The 20C explosion of multifarious possibilities in terms of musical language and the accompanying erosion of artistic quality and value, are related….. and a renewed interest in the concept of tradition (well-understood) may help to revert the decline in creative thinking in the field of contemporary music.

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