Make sure you don’t miss David First’s cosmic and bumptiously entertaining article “The Entertainer” that went up on New Music Box today. Along with his own personal view of music history, it’s a plea for composers to start making music that actually heals people and makes life better, a return to the Renaissance concept of music as magic. As someone who’s followed David’s career closely for a quarter-century, I can attest that this is an endpoint he’s been visibly and aurally heading towards for decades. And I’m very sympathetic. It was reading about the astrological healing music of the 15th-century Marsilio Ficino that led me to writing The Planets, and I have bought and tried out Chinese healing CDs that are supposed to lower your blood pressure, balance yin and yang, and stuff like that. But in my own music I’ve always been content with metaphor, ambience, and suggestion; David’s actually hoping to rearrange your molecules. Somebody’s gotta try it.
UPDATE: Also, make sure you listen to the drone piece clickable at the top of the article. It made very cool interactions with my tinnitus, seeming to draw my usual drone pitches into it and make them go in and out, neutralizing them at times. It’s the first time I’ve ever noticed my tinnitus while listening to music and could actually enjoy it.