Influences, part 2

 

Bela Bartok

In this blog post, I spoke of artistic influences.  Since that post was written, I've turned in a large amount of work on the Codex series.  

Recently, after a Codex recording session, I was listening to some of Bartok's solo piano works.  I was a little shocked at how much impact his solo piano works have had and continue to have on my solo guitar works.  In this case, his pieces Sonata for Piano and Out of Doors; both composed in 1926.  To my great surprise and shock, I could hear some pretty direct influence and impact from those two pieces in my recent solo guitar compositions in the Codex series; at least, in the work from this specific recording session.

The noted influence was and is entirely unintentional and unconscious.  That said, perhaps the argument could be made that we can't escape our influences.  Not that this is necessarily a bad thing.

However, hearing this was a big surprise to me.  I never want to sound like someone else.  On the other hand, I'd guess that it's likely that no one else may hear these pieces in the same way as me, and would probably never make that connection or comparison.  

All this by way of saying that I was surprised to hear such a direct impact from one of my influences. I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing.

 More thoughts to come, I suspect. 

-kk