Glenn Stallcop Composer, Performer
The golden means
This particular idea as the subject for an album was immediately inspired by an interview I read in Dark Mountain: Issue 21 (Spring 2022) with the author and poet Sophie Strand. Her emphasis on interconnection in both her creative work and career pursuits is reinforced by her heart-wrenching lifelong struggle with Connective Tissue Disease (EDS) which causes her body to melt down in painful and debilitating ways for extended periods of time.
Ms. Strand talks quite a bit about fungi and mycorrhizal networks as symbolic life models, and I happened, at the time, to be reading Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds, and Change Our Futures, a remarkable and mind-opening book by the mycologist Merlin Sheldrake. This multiple exposure to the hidden and intriguing life of vital connections triggered an exotic and more intricate take on my own music-making experience.
When I was in college, decades ago, I became fascinated with musical transitions. I tried to categorize them and make notable use of them in my music. I have also had a continued interest in musical process, how my music developed and progressed within a piece from beginning to end. My use of improvisation as an inspiration is an extension of this creative obsession, as how things go from here to there has always been important to me.
But this emphasis on interconnectivity impinges on the Romantic notion of creative freedom and independence. Socially interconnected creativity is something I’m not sure I’m totally ready for. Musical collaboration has become more and more common. It has been important in pop music and jazz for decades, but it has now made its way into Classical music as well. Sometimes contemporary composers do more collecting and assembling than traditional composing. I saw a video recently of a composer searching and collecting ethnic music for a film score. The music was fantastic, but I am not sure. as a composer, I could even relate to what he was doing.
However, a person is by themselves an interconnection of influences and experiences. Our brain continues to make and strengthen synapses all through our lives. Even if we have trouble making physical connection with others, we are ourselves a network of time, space, and activity that becomes mixed and re-mixed in all that we do. I try to reach out and explore music and ideas that are different than those I have touched on before, but I realize that I am merely making connections. Nothing we do, no matter how novel, truly stands on its own. It is a flowering, a mushroom, a hub of influence. We are neither heads nor tails, we are the coin in between.
THE GOLDEN MEANS
This particular idea as the subject for an album was immediately inspired by an interview I read in Dark Mountain: Issue 21 (Spring 2022) with the author and poet Sophie Strand. Her emphasis on interconnection in both her creative work and career pursuits is reinforced by her heart-wrenching lifelong struggle with Connective Tissue Disease (EDS) which causes her body to melt down in painful and debilitating ways for extended periods of time.
Ms. Strand talks quite a bit about fungi and mycorrhizal networks as symbolic life models, and I happened, at the time, to be reading Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds, and Change Our Futures, a remarkable and mind-opening book by the mycologist Merlin Sheldrake. This multiple exposure to the hidden and intriguing life of vital connections triggered an exotic and more intricate take on my own music-making experience.
When I was in college, decades ago, I became fascinated with musical transitions. I tried to categorize them and make notable use of them in my music. I have also had a continued interest in musical process, how my music developed and progressed within a piece from beginning to end. My use of improvisation as an inspiration is an extension of this creative obsession, as how things go from here to there has always been important to me.
But this emphasis on interconnectivity impinges on the Romantic notion of creative freedom and independence. Socially interconnected creativity is something I’m not sure I’m totally ready for. Musical collaboration has become more and more common. It has been important in pop music and jazz for decades, but it has now made its way into Classical music as well. Sometimes contemporary composers do more collecting and assembling than traditional composing. I saw a video recently of a composer searching and collecting ethnic music for a film score. The music was fantastic, but I am not sure. as a composer, I could even relate to what he was doing.
However, a person is by themselves an interconnection of influences and experiences. Our brain continues to make and strengthen synapses all through our lives. Even if we have trouble making physical connection with others, we are ourselves a network of time, space, and activity that becomes mixed and re-mixed in all that we do. I try to reach out and explore music and ideas that are different than those I have touched on before, but I realize that I am merely making connections. Nothing we do, no matter how novel, truly stands on its own. It is a flowering, a mushroom, a hub of influence. We are neither heads nor tails, we are the coin in between.