Death, Dying, and Music

I write so many things, I sometimes forget what I wrote.

A stroll through the Internet today reminded me that I once penned an essay on classical music's relationship to mortality for the Macmillan Encyclopedia of Death and Dying, edited by my dear friend, Robert Kastenbaum. Bob and I were collaborators on several projects, including the one-scene chamber opera Closing Time, the one-act opera American Gothic, and the musical, Outlaw Heart. (Look for sections of American Gothic and possibly all of Closing Time to appear sometime soon at my YouTube channel, www.youtube.com/composerlafave.) We're hoping to work together on another project, soon.

Below is a link to the piece. In it, I try to make a case for the Western tonal system as an embodiment of the material-world cycle of birth-growth-decay-death, where most other musics "transcend" the material realm through repetition, trance techniques, etc. At the Macmillan site, you can also search for my articles on Gustav Mahler and "operatic death."

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_gx5214/is_2003/ai_n19132233

- KLF