MaerzMusik. Lewis, Kaziboni, Wiget, Ensemble Modern Berlin. Stream, 24 March 2021.

Tempo ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 75 (298) ◽  
pp. 92-93
Author(s):  
Ian Power
Keyword(s):  
African Diaspora ◽  
Contemporary Music ◽  
New Music ◽  
On Demand ◽  
American Composer

March 2021's online MaerzMusik Festival featured a trio of events on themes of Afro-diaspora and new music: one German discussion, one English discussion and the concert ‘Afro-Modernism in Contemporary Music’, each curated by prominent American composer George Lewis. The programme of, according to the MaerzMusik website, ‘composers of the African diaspora’ was performed by Ensemble Modern, who performed the same concert in Frankfurt in November 2020. At that concert each piece was a world or German premiere, repeated for the MaerzMusik version, at which we were treated to an empty hall with a multi-HD-camera setup. It was streamed live on 24 March and available on demand for a few months following.

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).

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.

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.

scholarly journals Dissonant Harmony and “Seed-Tones”

2014 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael K. Trinastic
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Piano Music ◽  
New Music ◽  
Harmonic Series ◽  
Spiritual Discipline ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
American Composer ◽  
Interval Cycles ◽  
Musical Sounds

French-American composer Dane Rudhyar’s (1895–1985) vision of dissonance as a spiritual discipline was profoundly influential upon American ultra-modernist composers in the 1920s and ’30s. Rudhyar’s own compositions manifest his theoretical ideas, which revolve around a mystical conception of Tone as the totality of all possible musical sounds. His prose reveals several interrelated methods of creating Tone: using the piano’s sounding board as a gong, employing dissonant harmony (relating pitches by geometric relationships, which manifest as interval cycles), applying “the new sense of space” (beginning from wholeness, which requires equal divisions of the octave), and creating organic forms by basing each composition on a “seed-tone” (a dissonant tonic sonority). Rudhyar’s theoretical writings suggest two compatible methods of constructing seed-tones: building quintal sonorities (which exemplify dissonant harmony in Rudhyar’s theory) and employing “interpenetrating harmonic series.” These two methods facilitate the identification of seed-tones and their elaborations in Rudhyar’s piano music. Schenkerian-style graphs accompany detailed analyses of two of Rudhyar’s piano pieces: “Stars” and the first movement of Granites. Rudhyar’s seed-tones may suggest new analytic perspectives for other post-tonal repertoire. In addition, Rudhyar’s connection of dissonance with spirituality serves as a reminder that many early-twentieth-century pioneers in atonality and dodecaphony perceived a numinousness in this new music.

New Music at Copenhagen

Tempo ◽  
1947 ◽  
pp. 26-28
Author(s):  
Jurgen Balzer
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Contemporary Music ◽  
Complex Structure ◽  
New Music ◽  
Stable Form ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Musical Life ◽  
Individual Country ◽  
The Real ◽  
The Right

Contemporary music is a complex structure. It reaches from the traditionalists of the right wing to the experimentalists of the left. In the centre are those composers who take a stand from which, without forcing their material, they can achieve a free, personally stamped, stable form of expression. While thus “contemporary” is a mere dating, indicating the period of composition, “modern” implies a valuation of the style of the work. It would be an advantage if the I.S.C.M. would stress the modern and exclude works by composers who are only interested in the continuation of nineteenth century traditions, however skilled as craftsmen they may be. Every country has its clever traditionalists, and they are all very much alike, so that the real purpose of the I.S.C.M. Festivals should be to gather together in one place those works which, in the opinion of each individual country, are the most complete expression of what is new in the musical life of that country. The Copenhagen Festival fell short in this respect, yet even so, of the thirty works from sixteen different countries which were performed, I, for my part, took pleasure in listening to about one third, which after all is a high percentage.

scholarly journals Understanding the liminality of individual giving to the arts

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-33
Author(s):  
Stephanie E. Pitts ◽  
Marta Herrero ◽  
Sarah M. Price
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Contemporary Music ◽  
New Music ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Individual Giving ◽  
Depth Interviews ◽  
Individual Donor

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore the experiences of donors to a UK-based contemporary music organisation fundraising scheme through the theoretical lens of liminality.Design/methodology/approachIn-depth interviews with 16 members of the Sound Investment scheme investigated the motivations and experiences of individual donors to the commissioning of new music. Thematic analysis suggested parallels with the framework of “liminality,” which shed new light on the ways in which membership changed donors' relationships with the organisation and audience.FindingsMotivations for supporting contemporary music commissioning included personal interest, cultural responsibility and alignment to the values of the organisation. Tangible benefits, particularly access to rehearsals, brought donors into closer connection with the creative and managerial working of the organisation.Research limitations/implicationsThe sample did not include any lapsed donors, or people who had chosen not to participate. Future research could test the liminal framework in different artforms and through different tangible benefits.Practical implicationsUnderstanding donors as liminals could help arts organisations to develop membership schemes that more effectively sustain individual giving. Key elements of involvement and access are identified that could engage audiences more widely.Originality/valueThis case study foregrounds lived experience of arts donors where previous literature has primarily focussed on motivations for donating. It highlights the liminal elements of becoming an individual donor, namely, the integration and socialisation processes, the space-and time-bound interactions with the organisation and the alignment of values with the organisation. This framework offers a new way for arts organisations to understand and enhance individual giving in a time of austerity.

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