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CAGE
A JOHN CAGEMUSICIRCUS
Music 1945-today
POST-MODERNISM
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
seriallairessleariialseriraelsreslaiisraelserlailearsierialsalseriaireslrialseaelrsisrliea
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
Formed his own ensemble to play pieces like Drumming and Music for 18 Musicians
STEVE REICH
Preferred the term “process music”
POSTMINIMALISM
A music for those who found minimalism to be too confining and . . . repetitive
JOHN ADAMS
(not to be confused with John LUTHER Adams, also a good composer)
• traditional training, minimalist roots
• embraces a huge amount of styles
• master of orchestration
JOHN ADAMS
LISTENING EXAMPLE
NIXON IN CHINA
an opera about . . . Nixon in China
CD EXAMPLE
The Chairman Dances
JOHN ADAMSAfter 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.
Alex Ross
TOTALISM
• re-introduces rhythmic complexity, noise, grunge, rock, while keeping the minimalist groove
• Michael Gordon, Bang-on-a-Can festival
• seeking to bring uptown & downtown music (and audiences) together
Ex.: TRANCE
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 post-minimalist 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
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