Mixing it Up

2021 ◽  
pp. 197-210
Author(s):  
Andrew C. A. Elliott
Keyword(s):  
New Music ◽  
Random Numbers ◽  
Jazz Improvisation ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
On Demand

Mozart’s musical dice game is one example of how musicians and other artists have incorporated aleatoric elements into their work. Jazz improvisation means every performance is different. Cage left space for the environment to make its own music, but Xenakis took a mathematician’s understanding of randomness and created avant-garde compositions that use the orchestra in new ways. Generative techniques use random numbers to provide new music and other kinds of art on demand. Blocked creativity can be freed by deliberate injections of spontaneity.

scholarly journals Art as a Critique of Language: On the Continuity of the Tradition of the Avant-Garde Aesthetic in the Modern and the Postmodern

2007 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 287-303
Author(s):  
Susanne Kogler
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Conceptual Knowledge ◽  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
New Music ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Traditional Language ◽  
Art Philosophy ◽  
Language Of Music ◽  
The One

That art functions as a corrective to rational-scientific insights is one of the formative thoughts of art philosophy. The fact that artistic expression represents a corrective to linguistically-rationally affected insight also ranks among the constants of art philosophy in the 20th century. “Expression is the opponent of articulating something” can be read, for instance, in Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory with regards to the character of language in art and Jean François Lyotard wrote on aesthetic experience: “What happens to us is by no means something which we would have controlled, programmed or conceptually apprehended beforehand”. The uneducible, conceptually unattainable is also at the centre of current art production of the 21st century. On the basis of Lyotard’s and Adorno’s positions, the article shows that one should acknowledge a constancy of the topos of art as non-conceptual knowledge on the one hand as the continuing function of a tradition defined from the philosophical aesthetics of modernity to post-modernity and orientated on the artistic avant-garde. On the other hand and beyond this a continuous line of tradition of New Music becomes clear, leading to the expressionistic avant-garde of the 20th century which represented the starting point for Adorno’s music philosophy, through Lyotard’s focus on John Cage, up to the avant-garde of New Music in the era of post modernity. Specific features of contemporary art, such as rebellion against linguistic standards, an understanding of expressivity that opposes the traditional language of music and operates on the verge of silence, as well as the utopian vision of a modified reality which aims at transcendency enable a conception of art as non-conceptual knowledge, corresponding with the positions of art philosophy in modernity and post-modernity in important points. The relevance of focusing on this line of tradition for musicology lies in the fact that it sheds new light on the musical avant-garde and its further function and, last but not least, that it opens new perspectives in understanding contemporary artistic productions.

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).

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Jennifer Iverson
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Electronic Music ◽  
New Music ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Cultural Hegemony ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
New Frontier ◽  
Reliable Marker ◽  
The One ◽  
Opening Up

The Westdeutscher Rundfunk [West German Radio] or WDR studio emerged in the early 1950s in Cologne, West Germany in a conflicted Cold War climate. On the one hand, electronic music signified social and artistic progress; avant-garde music stood as a reliable marker of democracy and freedom in contrast to Nazi and Soviet aesthetic mandates. On the other hand, technophobic audiences and critics reacted with skepticism to de-personalized, machine-mediated concerts, often regarding the new sounds with disdain. Nevertheless, cultural administrators, especially by means of the regional radio network, channeled funding to new music and the electronic studio as a way of rebuilding West Germany’s cultural hegemony. The WDR studio’s heterogeneity—its ability to incorporate and make use of several different types of resources—became a key to its success. The studio’s composers and technicians synthesized new sounds from scientific discourses. They reclaimed military technologies and long-standing musical lineages, opening up a new frontier. By embracing electronic music, West Germany found a way out of its decimated postwar landscape and emerged as a leader in the cultural Cold War.

Paul Dessau and the Hard Work of Socialist Music in the German Democratic Republic

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-66
Author(s):  
MARTIN BRADY
Keyword(s):  
German Democratic Republic ◽  
Choral Music ◽  
Democratic Republic ◽  
Bertolt Brecht ◽  
Hard Work ◽  
New Music ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Heiner Müller

AbstractThis article examines the labour of socialist music in the German Democratic Republic, focusing on composer Paul Dessau's use of political cryptography and quotation in a number of compositions from the opera The Condemnation of Lukullus (1950) through to Choral Music No. 5 (1976). Most famous for his collaborations with Bertolt Brecht, Dessau was the leading avant-garde composer of the GDR and its chief practitioner of serialism. He believed that only difficult, progressive New Music could convey the struggle(s) of socialism. This brought him into conflict with the authorities, who accused him of formalism. Choral Music No. 5 is a setting of a poem by Heiner Müller based on a speech by Erich Honecker (Žižek refers to the text as an ‘obscenity’). Dessau's composition is complex and dialectical, abrasive in its rhythms and counterpoint, and pluralistic in style. It is the embodiment of Dessau's belief in socialist music as rewarding hard work.

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.

scholarly journals Józef Patkowski at the Darmstadt International Summer Courses for New Music

2019 ◽  
pp. 17-28
Author(s):  
Marianne Nowak
Keyword(s):  
Contact Point ◽  
Socialist Realism ◽  
New Music ◽  
Organizational Process ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Insight Into

Around 1960, the Darmstadt International Summer Courses for New Music were an important contact point for Polish composers and musicians to the Western avant-garde after years of isolation due to the doctrine of socialist realism imposed in Poland. During this first phase of Polish participation, Józef Patkowski participated twice in the Courses. Mainly based on sources to be found in the archives of the International Music Institute Darmstadt (IMD), this article di-scusses Patkowski’s perception of the Courses as well as his lecture on New Music in Poland which he held in Darmstadt 1962, and gives an insight into the organizational process of artistic contact between Poland and a Western festival.

London, Queen Elizabeth Hall and Brighton Dome: Big Noise Tour

Tempo ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 58 (228) ◽  
pp. 61-62
Author(s):  
John Godfrey
Keyword(s):  
Coming Out ◽  
Art Music ◽  
New Music ◽  
Brass Bands ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Music Ensembles ◽  
Music Ensemble ◽  
New Type ◽  
Minimal Music ◽  
Louis Andriessen

Big Noise – heard in London on 21 November and repeated at the Dome (Corn Exchange) in Brighton on the 22nd – was a collaboration between the highly idiosyncratic New Music ensembles Orkest de Volharding (Holland) and Icebreaker (UK). The former was established by the amazingly influential Dutch composer Louis Andriessen: reacting against the elitist music of his youth, he saw the need for a new type of Art-music ensemble which could travel into the streets and play music with a broad appeal. Borrowing from the model of Dutch street bands (the equivalent, perhaps, of the UK's brass bands), jazz of the 1920s, Minimal music coming out of America and the European avant-garde, Andriessen created an ensemble and a language with an overt non-elitist agenda.

Back to Modernism. Back to Futurism. Back to New York (1948–1975)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Schiff
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Close Association ◽  
New Music ◽  
Charles Ives ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Central Figure ◽  
Music Scene ◽  
Spatial Composition ◽  
Three Phases ◽  
Cello Sonata

Carter’s mid-life oeuvre much of it composed in Europe, can be divided into three phases. From the Cello Sonata to the Variations for Orchestra he achieved a synthesis of European modernism, especially as found in the music of Schoenberg, Berg and Bartók, and American ultra-modernism; in all of these works Carter either quoted or alluded to compositions by Charles Ives. The works from the Second Quartet to the Concerto for Orchestra reflect his ambivalent connection with the European avant-garde. While he was particularly impressed with the spatial composition and expansion of percussion found in works of Boulez and Stockhausen, he rejected the algorithmic and aleatoric aspects of their music. After 1968 Carter returned to New York and became a central figure in the “uptown” new music scene. He formed a particularly close association with the new music group, Speculum Musicae.

Zur Bartók-Rezeption in Russland

2007 ◽  
Vol 48 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 225-236
Author(s):  
Evgenia Tschigareva
Keyword(s):  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
New Music ◽  
Musical Style ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Official Policy ◽  
The Press ◽  
Active Interest ◽  
Second Wave ◽  
Comprehensive Study

Abstract Béla Bartók's sympathies towards Russian culture are well-known, as is the veneration of the Hungarian master by Russian musicians. During the course of three quarters of a century the image of Bartók the composer and folklore researcher has gradually infolded itself to Russian musical circles as well as the broad strata of music lowers. This thesis presents an integral overview of the reception of Bartók in Russia: the perception of his musical legacy by composers, musicological research about him, performances and publications of his works in Russia, comments from the press, and of music critics, etc. At the same time a particular evolution could be traced: an active interest towards Bartók the composer and pianist in the 1920s, then a nearly twenty-five years “pause;” in the 1950's a perception of him primarily as a folklor researcher as well as a progressive musical public figure at that an aversion from the official policy makers of his musical style as an “avant-garde” style during the dominance of the doctrine of “socialist realism;” the discovery of Bartók's innovative style, his influence on the young Soviet composers (E. Denisov, A. Schnittke, S. Gubaidulina) during the 1960's and 1970's; an overall comprehensive study of his musical legacy and the recognition of his significance (1960's–1980's), a decline of interest towards Bartók (as a classic) as a result of the stream of information, gushing from the West, having to do with the “new music” of the avant-garde of the “second wave” and the “post-avantgarde” trends (during the 1990's); a resurgence of interest at the turn of the century and an acquiescence of Bartók's artistic path as being perspective for musical art.

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