"As I had collaborated with visual artists before whether on installations, on performance pieces, in the context of theatre works and as I had taught for a time in art colleges the idea of writing music in response to painting was not alien"
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Bryars is quietly dismantling the fantasy that genres live in separate rooms. The sentence is almost stubbornly procedural, a string of credentials and contexts that reads like a CV line stretched into philosophy. That’s the point: he’s normalizing what plenty of institutions still treat as a novelty act - “music inspired by painting” - by framing it as craft, not concept.
Notice the phrasing: “was not alien.” Not “natural,” not “inevitable,” just not strange. It’s an anti-romantic posture that fits Bryars’s larger aesthetic, where rigor and restraint often do more work than overt emotion. He’s sidestepping the mystical language of synesthesia or genius intuition and replacing it with lived practice: installations, performance pieces, theatre, teaching in art colleges. Translation across mediums becomes a professional habit, learned through collaboration and pedagogy.
The subtext is institutional, too. By mentioning art colleges, Bryars hints at the cultural ecosystem that makes cross-disciplinary thinking viable: studios where sound is treated as material, not just accompaniment; theatres where music is dramaturgy, not ornament. He’s also positioning himself against the idea that responding to painting is merely illustrative. In installation and performance contexts, music doesn’t “describe” an image; it cohabits with it, changes how time is felt around it, and reframes what the viewer thinks they’re seeing.
The intent, then, is modest but strategic: to claim legitimacy for intermedia composition by making it sound routine. Bryars doesn’t argue for the bridge between painting and music; he simply walks across it and tells you he’s been doing it for years.
Notice the phrasing: “was not alien.” Not “natural,” not “inevitable,” just not strange. It’s an anti-romantic posture that fits Bryars’s larger aesthetic, where rigor and restraint often do more work than overt emotion. He’s sidestepping the mystical language of synesthesia or genius intuition and replacing it with lived practice: installations, performance pieces, theatre, teaching in art colleges. Translation across mediums becomes a professional habit, learned through collaboration and pedagogy.
The subtext is institutional, too. By mentioning art colleges, Bryars hints at the cultural ecosystem that makes cross-disciplinary thinking viable: studios where sound is treated as material, not just accompaniment; theatres where music is dramaturgy, not ornament. He’s also positioning himself against the idea that responding to painting is merely illustrative. In installation and performance contexts, music doesn’t “describe” an image; it cohabits with it, changes how time is felt around it, and reframes what the viewer thinks they’re seeing.
The intent, then, is modest but strategic: to claim legitimacy for intermedia composition by making it sound routine. Bryars doesn’t argue for the bridge between painting and music; he simply walks across it and tells you he’s been doing it for years.
Quote Details
| Topic | Music |
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