Jos Kunst home page: Nederlands | English
by Jos Kunst and Jan Vriend (1972)
With thanks to Jan Vriend for his permission to include this text.
'Elements of Logic' is meant to be an initiative. In the strong belief that the world has to be changed we state that human thinking has to be changed, and not merely in its selection or storage of material, but, in a more essential way, in its very mechanisms. Every manifestation of human activity is the product of these mechanisms, and when one compares their potentialities with their results so far, notably in the field of the social structures our species is putting up with, one is faced with a tremendous responsibility. Thought can and must he shaped, re-shaped, and the widespread uncritical assumption that music itself cannot do anything in this matter must be fought with all available energy. Semiotics, information theory and cybernetics, the neurophysiology of the brain, mathematics, logic, all point to the fact that music (and all art) is to be considered and consequently dealt with, as a formal language, with all the responsibilities this entails for its users: the musicians. Its being based on the same principles of logic that underlie all human cerebral activities, implies, in return, its possible influence on human thought and, consequently, on human action.
The piece of music we made contains such elements of logic, which have been elaborated into formal schemes and working-models meant for both compositional thinking (techniques of production) and musical perception (analysis). In line with this approach the piece obviously functions as a field of experiment on the way to a very necessary re-evaluation of our ways of thinking and understanding music, which then, in its turn, must become a really revolutionary motor, and not, as it has become now, a decorative thing enjoying its own pseudo-revolutionary dismantling. Music will have to take up full responsibility for the effect it has on the human mind.
Jos Kunst home page Nederlands | Jos Kunst home page English | Sitemap