Transcript Music 1945

CAGE
A JOHN CAGE
MUSICIRCUS
Music 1945-today
POSTMODERNISM
Music 1945-today
• EXPERIMENTATION
• COMPLEXITY
• REACTIONS TO THAT COMPLEXITY:
OPEN FORMS, CHANCE METHODS,
NEW SIMPLICITY and . . .
• MINIMALISM
• SOME IGNORE IT ALL & CONTINUE IN A
MORE-OR-LESS ROMANTIC LANGUAGE
Serialism continues,
becomes “total
serialism,” and totally
(not really) takes over
academic music in
America
serial
laires
sleari
ialser
iraels
reslai
israel
serlai
learsi
erials
alseri
airesl
rialse
aelrsi
srliea
2 modernist attitudes about
popular culture:
• it’s evil (Adorno, theorist/cultural
critic/composer, follower of
Schoenberg
• it’s interesting (Stravinsky & others
use ideas imitating jazz & swing in
their music)
CAGE
-- invented prepared piano (1935). The
classic American crazy tinkerer
-- "My father was an inventor."
EXPERIMENTATION a key value in
20th Century music.
-- the unpredictability of the prepared
piano and his study of Zen and Indian
aesthetics lead him to develop chance
(random) procedures as a
compositional method or process
CAGE listening example
John Cage (1912-1992),
Sonata II from Sonatas and
Interludes for Prepared
Piano (19 pieces composed
1946-1948)
-- influenced by gamelan
and other non-Western
music
CAGE
-- viewed by some as a charlatan or as
important only because of his
philosophy
-- many value his music and thought
today (although many misinterpret his
disciplined openness as a philosophy of
"anything goes")
-- eventually came to be viewed as
Post-Modernist because of his
relinquishing of compositional control
ELECTRONIC MUSIC
TAPE, ANALOG SYNTHESIZERS & EFFECTS;
COMPUTER CONTOLLED SYNTHS, DIGITAL
SYNTHESIS FOLLOW
Ex. – KARLHEINZ STOCKHAUSEN, Gesang der
Junglinge, 1956 (textbook p. 430)
Kontakte, piano, percussion, 4-channel tape
KARLHEINZ STOCKHAUSEN
b. 1928
given an electronic music studio in 1953
KARLHEINZ STOCKHAUSEN
b. 1928
given an electronic music studio in 1953
KARLHEINZ STOCKHAUSEN
POST-MODERN MUSIC
• DELIGHTS IN IMPURITY, MIXING “HIGH & LOW” CULTURE
• WE NOW HAVE RANDOM ACCESS TO ALL OF HISTORY &
ALL OF THE WORLD
• QUESTIONS MODERNIST “PROGRESS” NARRATIVE
• QUESTIONS THE IDEA OF THE AUTONOMOUS ARTWORK
• If modernism asks why, post-modernism asks “WHY NOT?”
BERIO – Sinfonia
• 1968-69
• 3RD mvt. of 5
• collage of musical
quotations layered on top
of Mahler
• Beckett text
• overall work concerned
with myth & meaning
MINIMALISM
• Music gets its groove back
• influenced by Indian music, tape music,
improvisation
• initial audience in art galleries, NOT in concert
halls, conservatories or academic settings
• Terry Riley, Philip Glass, Steve Reich
• a “downtown” music
STEVE REICH
Preferred the term
“process music”
Formed his own
ensemble to play
pieces like
Drumming and
Music for 18 Musicians
POSTMINIMALISM
A music for those who found minimalism
to be too confining and . . . repetitive
JOHN ADAMS
• traditional training, minimalist roots
• embraces a huge amount of styles
• master of orchestration
(not to be confused with John
LUTHER Adams, also a good
composer)
JOHN ADAMS
LISTENING EXAMPLE
NIXON IN CHINA
an opera about . . . Nixon in China
CD EXAMPLE
The Chairman Dances
After its 1987 premiere in Houston and follow-up stagings in
Amsterdam, Washington, and Brooklyn, this great American
opera came dangerously close to dropping out of sight. In
1996 I wrote a piece for the Times complaining about the total
lack of productions. In the last few years, it has had a
resurgence; the Chicago show is a co-production with Opera
Theatre of St. Louis, the Portland Opera, and the Minnesota
Opera, all of whom have had success with the work (a
Houston Grand Opera version is upcoming). Next month
comes a revival of Peter Sellars's original staging at the ENO in
London, with James Maddalena again in the lead. Yet the
stubborn fact remains: Nixon has never been staged by New
York's two big opera companies.
JOHN ADAMS
Alex Ross
TOTALISM
• re-introduces rhythmic complexity,
noise, grunge, rock, while keeping the
minimalist groove
• Michael Gordon, Bang-on-a-Can
festival
Ex.: TRANCE
• seeking to bring uptown &
downtown music (and audiences)
together
POST-ISM-ISM?
IS THE CONCEPT OF
OBSELECENCE
OBSELETE?
A GREAT TIME TO BE ALIVE!
Downside: great artistic freedom, little
consequence; been there done that
LOOKING BACK
ORDER & CHAOS
• SURFACE CHAOS/INNER ORDER:
Rite of Spring; serialism
• SURFACE ORDER/INNER ORDER:
minimalism (Reich, Music for 18)
• SURFACE CHAOS/INNER CHAOS:
chance methods (John Cage)
My own stuff
Apollo 14, A
Space Opera
• eclectic postminimalist
groove
My own stuff
Black Cat
• 12-tone!
(serial)
• Commissioned
by Skyline
My psyche
MODERNIST Super-ego: MAKE IT NEW!
(or at least rigorous)
POST-MODERN EGO: Have fun!
NEO-ROMANTIC ID: indulge in the past