RTV Theory and Practice - Special Issue

Ildi Ivanji

CONTEMPORARY SOUND DESIGN

Vartkes Baronijan, Muzika kao primenjena umetnost (Music as Applied Art), Univerzitet umetnosti, Belgrade, 1981.

This book by Vartkes Baronijan, Music as Applied Art, seems at first glance and at first reading to be a handbook for working with the tools of an ostensibly new craft, recently emerged and developing in step with electronic and electro-acoustic technology in this century. But it transcends its origjnal intent by reason of the elements inherent in it of a fresh and unusual view of the world and life seen through the prism of a craft now grown into a champion of the art of sound. At the same time, the masters of this craft аге ranked by the author as equal partners with others engaged in musical creation. The latter is all the more significant as it is clear that today the wrapping often sells the product no matter what the product is called. Consequently, workers whose duty it is to ofer music to the consumers of the mass media must achieve social (and artistic) status if their product is to be accepted in a way that corresponds to its original evaluation. Regrettably, the snobbish belief is still extensive that it is a ”greater experience” to listen to music at a concert; that music illustrating a picture is a second- ог third-rate - and also subordinate - part of the whole product; that commissioned (special-purpose) music is short on ”inspiration”. In his book Baronijan shows with arguments that music can be experienced much more deeply in the unbroken silence of a private room; that most frequently in the picture-and-music symbiosis it is precisely the picture that is, through atmosphere, tempo and associations, absolute!y subordinated to the music and that many masterpieces admired for centuries were the product of commissions,

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