<p>Went to a nifty recital last night and had a bit of an “A-Ha” moment. As much as I hate that phrase, it works well enough to describe what happened. <s>Katie</s> Katherine Yaeger sang four songs by Strauss - his “Four Last Songs” written right before he died - which just all happened to be about death. It ended up making my voice teacher cry. “A-ha!” thought I, “This is what I’m after when I compose!” To an extent, at least. The more I think about it, the more wonder if classical music might’ve taken such a dive as it did partly because (and there are many reasons) it spent far too much time on <em>pathos</em>. However, the reason I don’t like a lot of rock music is that it offers nothing for the <em>logos</em>. I guess it’s all well and good to be like Satie and write the most apathetic, distant sounding music possible, but maybe writing music is a tiny bit like writing argumentative essays in that you have to balance your ‘rhetoric.’ :o) </p>
<p>(I dunno how common it is, but my writing teacher included <em>mythos</em> - the societal subconscious - in there occasionally; I guess that, in music, this is the post-modernist movement’s emphasis..?</p>
