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

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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