ABSTRACT
All that we have spoken of thus far implies the making of what critic Peter Yates has called “aesthetic instances” by composition, the putting together of materials, events, processes, and so on. Historically, composers have achieved by additive construction. Their training has centered on the control of clearly characterized relationships that were built up according to prevailing values and techniques. It is no longer inconvenient to venture several steps beyond the use of a limited repertoire of given items. We can now begin with a surfeit. Our technological capacity for storing, synthesizing, and rapid sampling from diverse sources makes it possible to start off with a practically unlimited store of individual sound items or patterns, a selection as structured or random as one wishes. Such abundance is perhaps the most genuinely new resource with which we are faced. Now, in a demanding, clangorous environment, one may select rather than construct, sample differently rather than develop. In short, the composer’s function might become essentially subtractive, rather than additive. Working in this way, one could seek an enlarged sensitivity to trends and concurrent streams of eventuation. One could learn to be adaptive and persuasive rather than deterministic and manipulative. The implications of a selective posture are practically and philosophically large, involving the whole notion of art as a message-bearing medium. What distinctions will be meaningful between messages given and selected?
