"I've come up with another formulation about style: that it's essentially a manifestation of a certain habitual set of limitations. It's what a composer does NOT do that defines a style"
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Style, in Tenney's telling, isn’t flair you paste on after the “real” work is done. It’s the shape of your refusal. Calling style a “habitual set of limitations” strips away the romance of genius and replaces it with something closer to practice: constraints repeated until they become identity. The key word is habitual. This isn’t a one-off aesthetic choice; it’s a pattern of decisions that hardens over time into a recognizable fingerprint.
The punch of “what a composer does NOT do” lands as a quiet jab at the myth of limitless creativity. Tenney is pointing to the negative space that listeners actually learn to hear: the cadences avoided, the textures declined, the harmonic turns that never arrive. Absence becomes a signature. In a world that markets artists by their “sound,” he’s arguing that sound is partly constructed by systematic omission - by the doors you keep closed, not the rooms you decorate.
Context matters here. Tenney came up through the postwar American experimental ecosystem, where composers were obsessed with systems, perception, and the politics of musical materials. Limitations weren’t a compromise; they were a method. Cage’s procedures, minimalism’s restricted vocabularies, spectralism’s acoustic rules - each demonstrates Tenney’s thesis: strong styles emerge when the field of options is aggressively narrowed.
Subtext: if you want to change your style, don’t chase novelty. Change your prohibitions. Stop doing what you always refuse to do, or start refusing what you always reach for.
The punch of “what a composer does NOT do” lands as a quiet jab at the myth of limitless creativity. Tenney is pointing to the negative space that listeners actually learn to hear: the cadences avoided, the textures declined, the harmonic turns that never arrive. Absence becomes a signature. In a world that markets artists by their “sound,” he’s arguing that sound is partly constructed by systematic omission - by the doors you keep closed, not the rooms you decorate.
Context matters here. Tenney came up through the postwar American experimental ecosystem, where composers were obsessed with systems, perception, and the politics of musical materials. Limitations weren’t a compromise; they were a method. Cage’s procedures, minimalism’s restricted vocabularies, spectralism’s acoustic rules - each demonstrates Tenney’s thesis: strong styles emerge when the field of options is aggressively narrowed.
Subtext: if you want to change your style, don’t chase novelty. Change your prohibitions. Stop doing what you always refuse to do, or start refusing what you always reach for.
Quote Details
| Topic | Music |
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