Isolation
Analogies between Stuart Saunders Smith and the Transcendentalists
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.35699/2317-6377.2023.48481Keywords:
Stuart Saunders Smith, Transcendentalism, freethinking, oneness, silence, anti-materialism, anti-technologismAbstract
The life and work of North American composer Stuart Saunders Smith (1948) have shown features reminiscent of the 19th century philosophical movement known as New England Transcendentalism. Here I discuss how ideas divulged by Transcendentalism and transcendentalist philosophies, in particular oneness, freethinking, anti-materialism, anti-technologism, and silence reflect in Smith’s life stances and compositional process. Based on a belief that oneness binds all living beings via a universal soul, Smith seeks to symbolically unify composer, performer, and audience through the use of silence and a compositional technique called co-existence. In turn, anti-materialism and anti-technologism manifest musically in his frugal use of instrumentation, and in his refusal to write for electronics while evoking naturalistic themes, respectively.
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