The Association for Contemporary Music in Moscow: An interview with Nikolai Korndorf

Tempo ◽  
1994 ◽  
pp. 2-5
Author(s):  
Anna Ferenc
Keyword(s):  
International Society ◽  
Contemporary Music ◽  
New Music ◽  
Vice Presidents ◽  
Political Pressure

The Association for Contemporary Music was initially founded in Moscow in 1923. It united Russian modernist composers, promoted the cause of ‘new music’ in print and in performance, and served as the Russian chapter of the International Society for Contemporary Music. Bowing to political pressure, the Association ceased to operate in the early 1930s. In January 1990, the existence of an Association for Contemporary Music was again announced in Moscow. Despite difficult economic circumstances, it remains active. The following is an interview conducted in July 1993 with one of its founding members and vice-presidents, Nikolai Korndorf.

Balance Problems: Neoliberalism and New Music in the American University and Ensemble

2018 ◽  
Vol 71 (3) ◽  
pp. 749-793 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Robin
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Music ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
The United States ◽  
New Music ◽  
First Century ◽  
American University ◽  
Duke University ◽  
Contemporary Status ◽  
The University ◽  
The Impact

Between 2013 and 2015, the ensemble yMusic collaborated with graduate student composers in a residency at Duke University. This article positions the residency as a result of the transformation of the university and the new-music ensemble from a technocratic Cold War paradigm to their contemporary status under the market- and branding-oriented logics of neoliberalism. The works written for yMusic by the Duke composers were deeply informed by the ensemble's musical brand, including its idiosyncratic instrumentation, preexisting repertory, collaborative ethos, and relationship to popular music. In accounting for the impact of these institutional developments on the production of musical works, this article argues that the economic and ideological practices of neoliberalism have discernible aesthetic consequences for American new music. Given the key role of the ensemble and the university in the contemporary music landscape, the issues raised by my ethnographic and historical analysis have significant implications for new music in the twenty-first century, and for the way composers work in the United States and beyond.

Record Labels

Industry ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 190-220
Author(s):  
William Robin
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Music ◽  
New Music ◽  
Bang On A Can ◽  
New Institutions

In the 1990s, Bang on a Can jumped from releasing albums on the academic label Composers Recordings, Inc. to signing a contract with the major label Sony Classical. Their path emblematized an unusual moment in recording contemporary music: after Nonesuch’s 1992 recording of Henryk Górecki’s Symphony No. 3 became extraordinarily popular, major labels looked to contemporary music as a means to reach new listeners. Whereas new music had previously been the provenance of noncommercial labels like CRI, major labels began investing in new composers and new institutions like Bang on a Can in the hopes of turning new profits. From Sony, Bang on a Can jumped to Philips’s Point Music and released their rendition of Brian Eno’s Music for Airports, an album designed to reach new rock audience; and from there, amidst the industry tumult of the late 1990s, they struck out on their own with the independent label Cantaloupe Music.

Paz, Juan Carlos (1897–1972)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Violeta Nigro-Giunta
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Chamber Music ◽  
Contemporary Music ◽  
New Music ◽  
Film Scores ◽  
Twelve Tone ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
The Press ◽  
Traditional Institutions

Juan Carlos Paz (1897–1972) was an Argentine composer, critic, writer, and self-described "compositional guide" who played a key role in twentieth-century Argentine contemporary music. Known for his rebellious attitude towards traditional institutions and academia, and as an advocate of avant-garde music throughout his life, Paz was a pioneer in the use of the twelve-tone technique in Latin America. Paz founded such groups as Grupo Renovación [Renovation Group] and Asociación Nueva Música [New Music Association], both devoted to promoting and performing new music. Paz wrote music for solo instruments, chamber music, orchestra, and theatre, as well as film scores. He published three important books dedicated to new music and three volumes containing his memoirs, and collaborated intensively with the press and magazines (Crítica, Reconquista, Acción de Arte, La Protesta, La Campana de Palo, Argentina Libre, among others).

Dallapiccola, Luigi (1904–1975)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Roderick
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
International Society ◽  
Contemporary Music ◽  
Luigi Dallapiccola ◽  
Musical Modernism ◽  
The City ◽  
Performed Music

Luigi Dallapiccola was the leading Italian composer of the middle half of the twentieth century, contributing much to the development of musical modernism in Italy as well as writing some of the most famous and widely performed music of his era. He was born in Pisino in modern-day Croatia; his Istrian background and the changing political ownership of his hometown are often cited as the root of many of his later musical and esthetic directions. However, it could be claimed that his more crucial relationship with place occurred in Florence, where he re-located in 1922 as a burgeoning compositional talent to study with Ernesto Consolo and later the modernist Vito Frazzi. He never left, finding the city of Dante, Botticelli, and Boccaccio to be a perpetual artistic muse. By the end of the 1930s, Dallapiccola had been firmly established as Italian music’s principal pioneer and was known overseas as a vocal supporter of musical internationalism through the International Society for Contemporary Music.

Vítězslava Kaprálová: a remarkable voice in 20th-century Czech Music

Tempo ◽  
2000 ◽  
pp. 23-25
Author(s):  
Eugene Gates ◽  
Karla Hartl
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
International Society ◽  
Contemporary Music ◽  
Great Promise ◽  
Czech Music ◽  
Unusual Phenomenon ◽  
Bohuslav Martinu ◽  
And Performance

It was with enormous pride in the achievements of his 23-year-old protégé Vítězslava Kaprálová that Bohuslav Martinů wrote the following in his review of the 1938 International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) Festival, held in London:The very first item on the programme of the Festival was Military Sinfouictta by Vitězslava Kaprálová – an opening with great promise for both the festival and the composer. Her performance was awaited with interest as well as some curiosity – a girl with a baton is quite an unusual phenomenon – and when our ‘little girl conductor’ (as the English newspapers called her) appeared before the orchestra, she was welcomed by a supportive audience. She stood before the orchestra with great courage and both her composition and performance earned her respect and applause from the excellent BBC orchestra, the audience, and the critics. … Kaprálová's international debut is a success, promising and encouraging.

A Viennese Exponent of Understatement: Personal reflections on Friedrich Cerha

Tempo ◽  
1987 ◽  
pp. 3-5 ◽  
Author(s):  
György Ligeti
Keyword(s):  
Small Group ◽  
International Society ◽  
Contemporary Music ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Personal Reflections

I First Met Friedrich Cerha and his wife Traude in December 1956. After a concert given by the International Society for Contemporary Music—at that time still considered a small group of conspirators—in a remote room at the Musikakademie, my mentor Hanns Jelinek took me to the Gmoa-Keller on the Heumarkt to introduce me to the leaders of Vienna's musical avant-garde.

Ligeti in Fluxus

2004 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 201-240
Author(s):  
Eric Drott
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Contemporary Music ◽  
The United States ◽  
New Music ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Gyorgy Ligeti ◽  
General Dynamic

During a brief period in the early 1960s, Fluxus, a neo-avant-garde group active in the United States, Europe, and Japan, engaged the unlikely participation of Gyorgy Ligeti. Ligeti's three contributions to Fluxus publications-the Trois Bagatelles for David Tudor (1961), Die Zukunft der Musik-eine kollektive Komposition (1961), and Poèème Symphonique for 100 metronomes (1962)-proved both compatible with and divergent from the general ideology and aesthetic of Fluxus. Central to the consideration of Ligeti's Fluxus pieces is the contentious relationship that existed between experimental and modernist branches of new music at the time. Ligeti's flirtation with more experimental forms of composition not only reflects the general dynamic of this relationship but also illuminates how Ligeti positioned himself within the field of European contemporary music ca. 1960 and in subsequent years.

Gaudeamus Muziekweek, Utrecht

Tempo ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 71 (280) ◽  
pp. 83-85
Author(s):  
James O'Callaghan
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Music ◽  
New Music ◽  
Cultural Life ◽  
The World

The Gaudeamus Muziekweek is now in its sixty-ninth year and, as ever, it focuses on young music pioneers, in hopes of presenting a snapshot of the newest ideas in contemporary music being developed across the world. The festival's dense and diverse programming is compressed into five full days, in 2016 from 7 to 11 September, squeezed principally within one labyrinthian building, the TivoliVredenburg, whose impressive monolithic glass exterior imposes itself as a pillar of cultural life in central Utrecht. Amid this density, it is impossible to provide anything but a partial account of the festival, and my presentation is far from impartial, as I was one of the five nominated composers for this year's Gaudeamus Award. If only from these fragments and particular foci, then, I will present my own reactions and estimations of how the festival has highlighted some of the innovations and interests of a few of the newest practitioners of new new music.

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