dissimilar musical practises and philosophies can stimulate both congruence and
conflict. Aesthetic idiosyncrasies of the world musical traditions could as well hinder
fruitful confrontations; on the other hand, such conflicts remain a challenge for the
exploration of other idioms and techniques. Each culture holds its own distinctive
strengths and limitations, each its own attributes; and through a sensitive approach
to world diversities, new music languages could be born as a result of these.
Innovative methods and attitudes could be transferred from one culture to another
whilst being continuously enriched by the confrontation of individual musical
traditions.
In 1989 Stockhausen claimed that ‘all the differences between cultures, languages and
works by individual composers are dialects, and that their basic units, the
intervals, are the same for all of them’; ‘styles are only a question of tonal colours
and forms’ (Stockhausen, 1989:84). Such a view could help setting innovative
criteria for the articulation of paradigms of similarities and dissimilarities in
form, melody, rhythm and articulation. And compositional techniques could be
reinterpreted in terms of models and levels of interactions or interdependence. The
following analytical aspects, for instance, could be evaluated: i) logistics of
interdependence, where one idiom, style or technique is prevailing upon another; ii)
the degree of interconnection of such elements in terms of textural weight; iii)
degree of contrast: whether such processes may intensify or diminish existing
dissimilarities between idiomatic materials such as performance techniques
and scales; iv) the resulting instrument – performance logistics and aesthetic
constraints: what textural relationships may be generated in supposedly hybrid
idioms.
