Michael Schmidt - Quotes

But there are things you can only really say in music.
Schmidt, Michael.

Media stratifies music infinitely, creating a total temporal and spatial vertical — a never fading hyperchord.
Schmidt, Michael.

Media opened music to sound, making it universally available as material for multiple collages. At the same time, media puts music into the state of a constant murmuring drone, an incessant flowing. Music in the age of technical media continues to move between these two polarities. The outcome depends upon our creativity, and our competence, in both our music and our media.
Schmidt, Michael.

In this phenomenon of global music it is important to show how you can use the differences between musical cultures. Using it only in an eclectic way, such as this Australian group Yothu Yindi, who manage somehow to use musical forms from their own culture in an eclectic way, is rather limiting, I think.
Schmidt, Michael.

It's always more difficult to speak of musical phenomena than to describe visual or textual phenomena. We need not only to describe what happens in media sounds, but also to develop criteria for value. For example, I tried to develop the difference between exoticism and synthesis.
Schmidt, Michael.

Exoticism is always at a certain distance, using something without connection or combination.
Schmidt, Michael.

Schmidt, Michael. Multimediale Musikvermittlung als kulturpolitische Zukunftsaufgabe - Vier Thesen. The fan, the music and the net. DMET Conference. Music Information Center Austria. November 12, 2007. (German).

The aspect of experience is very important. I think the question we should discuss now is 'What will be the music of the future?' Will we go in a direction of a musical illiteracy?
Schmidt, Michael. "Music and Globalization in the Age of Media." in: European Graduate School. Open discussion with Michael Schmidt. June 2001. (English).

But it's never the words standing alone, they're always being experienced against the larger musical context.
Schmidt, Michael. "Music and Globalization in the Age of Media." in: European Graduate School. Open discussion with Michael Schmidt. June 2001. (English).

This is what John Cage taught us, a collage itself is a context, within a larger social context.
Schmidt, Michael. "Music and Globalization in the Age of Media." in: European Graduate School. Open discussion with Michael Schmidt. June 2001. (English).

Adorno frowns upon the use of technology only in a virtual sense, to create only effects without sense.
Schmidt, Michael. "Music and Globalization in the Age of Media." in: European Graduate School. Open discussion with Michael Schmidt. June 2001. (English).