Confessions of a piano-player
John Tilbury · Contemporary Music Review · 1996
The music of the 21st century cannot be predicted, any more than it can be prescribed. Technology, however spectacular its trajectory, cannot usurp the anthropocentric basis of music-making and of artistic debate in general. In particular, 20th century Western compositional modes have to be reassessed, modified and, where necessary, jettisoned. Their embodiment of an outmoded and discredited system of cultural values involving human control techniques (notations), an alienated labour force (professional musicians), and a reactionary social function (patronage and funding strategies) is recognised, implicitly, by the development of survival strategies — new, creative modes of ‘self-invention’ — within and through improvised music. In a world dominated by oppressive and rampant ideologies, appearing in both materialistic and other-worldly guises, let us ensure that an Art of profound scepticism and tenacious dissent accompanies us into the 21st century.