Missy Mazzoli Professions : Composer Born : 1980 Browse All Authors Top 17 quotes by Missy Mazzoli I want my music to be something that people use in order to access parts of themselves. So in that sense, every piece I write is about all emotions at once, about the lines in between. It's never only about one thing or another. It's emotionally getting at those things that we can't really describe - things for which we don't have labels. So yes, it's about something, and it has a use. It's neither about nothing nor about something concrete - it's about what you bring to it as a listener. Missy Mazzoli writing order people I really think of my motives, my melodies, my harmonies, as being these things that are very much alive. They have these little lives of their own that are stretched and pulled, and I do conceive of my music in a very narrative way. Missy Mazzoli alive littles thinking I'm not religious, but I've always been attracted to the rituals of religion; as a kid, Sunday church was the closest thing I had to an interactive, theatrical experience. Missy Mazzoli sunday religious kids There's some ambient music that doesn't do anything. I wouldn't say that that's narrative. It is narrative in that it creates a sort of world where nothing happens, where really nothing happens, so you become a different person after hearing eight minutes of exactly the same thing. Yes, I hear music all the time in which one idea is strung together to another idea, and I feel that such music is non-narrative. Missy Mazzoli eight together ideas If the music is good, and if it makes sense as a strong structure and as a drama, and things happen as a result of what happened before, not just as a string of unrelated events, then the question doesn't come up. Missy Mazzoli events strong drama For me, writing music is a way of processing the world. It's not a concrete thing, as in, "This piece is about giraffes." It's much more of an emotional sort of thing. I want people to find something out about themselves through my music, something that was inaccessible before, something that they were suppressing, something that they couldn't really confront. Missy Mazzoli emotional writing people Of course I love when people are quiet, but I also love when people are comfortable. I love when people emote. The flip side of having a totally silent audience is that they're less likely to react to you in the space, and I think that's one of the great things about performing live: you get energy from the audience, and you give energy back to them. There's interaction. Missy Mazzoli space people thinking I feel like there's not this black-and-white division between concert hall music and music that bands play in a bar. I don't know if this was ever truly the case, but I don't feel that I need to decide between playing for a sit-down, totally silent audience and playing for a bunch of noisy, drunk people in a bar. What I do with the group is somewhere in between. Missy Mazzoli black-and-white play people I think there's just been this "thing" that's developed, this way that we have of talking about our music that alienates people. And I fall into that too! I learned that in graduate school. You just talk about your music in a specific way, and that separates people from you. But some composers like that. Schoenberg liked that. He wanted to feel that he was making music for an elite few. That's fine for him, but I want to set myself free from that sort of attitude. Missy Mazzoli attitude school fall I have this ideal listener, as John Cage did. This listener doesn't bring expectations that my music will fit into some part of music history, or that it will do any particular thing. This listener is just open to listening. Missy Mazzoli cages expectations listening The goal is that people will find something of themselves in it. But you don't need to know what a hexachord is! You don't need to know what serialism is. You don't need to know anything technical. It's more about the state of mind of being open and listening to what's really going on. And I think that the more open you can be, the better. So maybe it's not good to have expectations. Missy Mazzoli goal people thinking I write my music with the idea that it will appeal to all of those people, and I want them to go in with all the history that's within all of us - all the things that they've listened to in the backs of their minds, whether it's country music or minimal techno, or classical music or whatever. I want them to bring that excitement, that love, or that hate, or whatever it might be, to my music. I feel that my music draws on so many different things. Missy Mazzoli hate writing country I don't think anyone listening to my music needs any special knowledge. They don't need to have a background in contemporary music. They don't need to go to new-music concerts all the time in order to be able to understand it. Missy Mazzoli listening order thinking There are some superficial things that connect me to the stream. There's instrumentation, there's timbre, use of electronics, the way that samples are used, the way the electric guitar is used. I'm thinking of things that are particular to this era. But I don't always feel particularly close to the music of my peers. I often feel that I have more in common with writers and visual artists. I try to connect to people in an emotional kind of way. Missy Mazzoli emotional artist thinking It's only when it's smoothed out by history and we try to make sense of it - this incredibly complicated period when everyone's doing something different every day - that we look for those stylistic similarities and we say, "Well, that's what that was about," and sort of forget all the other nuance. I definitely feel that that's true for this time in my community of artists, and I'm sure that it was true at other times too. Missy Mazzoli community artist trying I don't think that those things [so called common practice] ever truly existed in the way that we like to believe that they do, the way we learn about them in music history class. Those things are defined at least decades after they happen. And even then, it's a fallacy because when you're in the moment, when you're in a thriving scene of musicians, inevitably everyone is going to be doing something completely different from everyone else Missy Mazzoli practice believe thinking Sometimes you feel some artists are doing the same thing that you're doing but in a different field. But they have the same approach. Their method of research and gathering data is the same as yours. Missy Mazzoli data artist gathering Similar Authors Igor Stravinsky composer Irving Berlin composer Brian Ferneyhough composer Bryce Dessner composer Bradley Joseph composer Boudleaux Bryant composer All Authors
