Above all, this is a question that you raise with yourself, given the amount of time you put in on something that is so abstract and which takes you deep into a process of work and far away from leading any form of a normal social life! And if you are a musicologist as well, you are also questioning the essence of music: ‘What is music?’ and ‘what function has it in our lives?’ What can be identifed is that music plays an important part of our lives and has always done so.

But, yet, what is music? There is, of course, no clear answer to this question and this is, perhaps, the driving force behind – and the fascination for – composing and listening to music. At its best, music may have the power to expand the mind, even if, when not too communicative, it is capable of proving very restrictive for that power.

By nature, the ear seems to be a sensitive flter confrming what has already been heard, an idea which was taken up by John Cage when he considered the relationship between ‘non-musical sounds’ and ‘musical sounds’.

“If you develop an ear for sounds that are musical it’s like developing an ego. You begin to refuse sounds that are not musical and that way cut yourself of from a good deal of experience.”

Musicians:
Alter Ego
Duo Dillon - Torquati
Stenhammar Quartet
Manuel Zurria
David Brutti

The whole CD-catalogue of nosag records