Transcript Cage and Modern Music

Total Serialism
• Applying the rules of serialism to all possible
elements
Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992)
- French composer, educator and organist
- Was caputerd and imprisoned by Nazis
- Composed Quartet for the End of Time (1940)
Pierre Boulez (b.1925)
- Studied with Messiaen
- Regarded music from a scientific viewpoint
- “Schoenberg is Dead” claimed Schoenberg didn’t go far
enough with serialism
Electronics
• A time of extreme technological advances
– This lead to extreme experimentation
– Gave composers the ability to not only record
their music, but an opportunity to create art from
manipulated sounds
– Eventually composers use new sounds and new
means of generating them
– Lead to use of electronic instruments
Electronics
Edgard Varese (1883-1965)
- Poeme Electronique (1957)
– recorded on 3 track tape,
speakers surrounded the audience
Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928-2007)
- Attended Messiaen’s summer class in Darmstadt
- Mixed voice and electronics
- Gesang de Junglinge – recorded a boy reciting bible
verses, and manipulated it
Minimalism
• Style:
– Repetition of short figures
– Simple harmonies
– Slow moving harmonies
– Usually regular pulsation
• Terry Riley – In C (1964)
– A pianist plays constant eighth note C’s
– 53 small figures
Minimalism
• Steve Reich (b. 1963)
– Interest in jazz and
non-pitchedpercussion
– Also an interest in
African drumming
– Became fascinated with “phase shifting”