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Chapter 80 Alternatives to Serialism: Chance, Electronics, Textures

Chapter 80 alternatives to serialism - chance, electronics, & texture

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Page 1: Chapter 80   alternatives to serialism - chance, electronics, & texture

Chapter 80

Alternatives to Serialism:

Chance, Electronics,

Textures

Page 2: Chapter 80   alternatives to serialism - chance, electronics, & texture

Chance Music

• Following WW II, modern music took on a variety of styles and compositional methods in addition to serialism.

• One of the most novel was the making of compositional choices by chance (chance music)– an approach associated with the

music of the American composer John Cage (around 1950)

Page 3: Chapter 80   alternatives to serialism - chance, electronics, & texture

Characteristics of John Cage’s Music

• Cage’s Music of Changes for piano is notated in detail– but the compositional choices are made from a

number of options by chance routines.

• Earlier, Cage had written more traditional types of music, often for “prepared piano” – an instrument converted into a virtual percussion

ensemble.

• In works composed later in the 1950’s, Cage used a style that he termed “indeterminacy of performance”– where he turned decisions about what to play

almost entirely over to performers.

• His involvement with a “composition” dwindled to brief graphic notations and verbal scores.

Page 4: Chapter 80   alternatives to serialism - chance, electronics, & texture

The Life of John Cage (1912–1992)

• 1912 - born in Los Angeles

• 1928-30 - attends Pomona College in Claremont, CA

• 1942 - moves to New York

• 1951 - introduces chance elements into compositions

• 1958 - lecture and musical performances at Darmstadt

• 1992 - dies in New York

Page 5: Chapter 80   alternatives to serialism - chance, electronics, & texture

John Cage’s Reasoning Behind Chance Music

• to remove the “glue” between musical sounds and events

• to let sounds be sounds, neither more or less

• to remove the personality of the composer

• to allow the listener to focus on sounds per se

Page 6: Chapter 80   alternatives to serialism - chance, electronics, & texture

Principal Compositions of John Cage

• Prepared piano: works include Sonatas and Interludes

• Percussion ensemble: works include Imaginary Landscape Nos. 1-3

• Piano: include Music of Changes and 4’33”

• Chance pieces: a large number of pieces of flexible medium

Page 7: Chapter 80   alternatives to serialism - chance, electronics, & texture

John Cage, Music of Changes, 1951, part 1

Through composed form based on number sequence

Page 8: Chapter 80   alternatives to serialism - chance, electronics, & texture

Electronic Music

• Another postwar alternative to serialism was the composition of electronic music.

• An early version was “musique concrète”– electronic music made from recordings of natural

or man-made sounds.

– are manipulated electronically and reassembled on disc or tape in a musical form.

• Other composers opted for pure electronic music– in which the source of sounds were produced by

electronic devices.

• Edgar Varèse’s Poème électronique (1958) uses both approaches.

Page 9: Chapter 80   alternatives to serialism - chance, electronics, & texture

The Life of Edgard Varèse (1883–1965)

• 1883 - born in Paris, grows up in Turin, Italy

• 1903 - enters the Schola Cantorum in Paris

• 1907-13 - lives mainly in Berlin

• 1913-15 - lives in Paris

• 1915 - emigrates to America

• 1921 - founds the International Composers Guild in New York • 1928-33 - returns to France

• 1958 - attracts attention for electronic music at the Brussels Worlds Fair

• 1965 - dies in New York

Page 10: Chapter 80   alternatives to serialism - chance, electronics, & texture

Principal Compositions by Edgard Varèse

• Orchestra and chamber orchestra: works include– Amériques– Hyperprism– Octandre– Intégrales– Arcana– Ionisation

• Voice with instrumental accompaniment: works include– Offrandes– Ecuatorial– Metal– Nocturnal

• Works with electronic sounds on tape– Poème électronique– Déserts

Page 11: Chapter 80   alternatives to serialism - chance, electronics, & texture

Edgard Varèse, Poème électronique, 1958

Through-composed form

Page 12: Chapter 80   alternatives to serialism - chance, electronics, & texture

Experimenting with New Musical Textures

• Composers following WW II also experimented with new musical textures– alternatives to the traditional homophony and polyphony.

• Varèse praised the value of “sound masses”– conglomorations of sound in which no single tones or intervals are

apparent.

• In his piano study “Mode de valueurs et d’intensités,” Messiaen linked together – the choice of register– duration, dynamic level– attack to produce a “pointillistic” texture

– in this approach, individual tones seem to leap out without association into lines or chords.

Page 13: Chapter 80   alternatives to serialism - chance, electronics, & texture

The Life of Olivier Messiaen (1908–1992)

• 1908 - born in Avignon, France

• 1919–29 - attends Paris Conservatory (composition with

Paul Dukas)

• 1931 - appointed organist at the Church of the Trinity in Paris

• 1936–39 - with Daniel-Lesur, Yves Baudrier, and André

Jolivet forms “La Jeune France” to seek alternatives to neoclassicism

• 1941 - begins teaching at the Paris Conservatory

• 1950s - ornithological interests expressed by imitating

bird song in music

• 1992 - dies in Paris

Page 14: Chapter 80   alternatives to serialism - chance, electronics, & texture

Principal Compositions by Olivier Messiaen

• Orchestra: character pieces and larger works including– Turangalîla Symphony– From the Canyons to the Stars

• Songs: numerous collections on his own poetry

• Chamber music: includes the Quartet for the End of Time (violin, clarinet, cello, piano)

• Organ music: character pieces including the Messe de la Pentecôte

• Piano: preludes, etudes, bird song pieces

Page 15: Chapter 80   alternatives to serialism - chance, electronics, & texture

Olivier Messiaen, “Mode de valeurs et d’intensités,” 1949

Summary of the mode of pitches, durations, attack types, and dynamic levels in this work:

Top line

Bottom line

Middle line

Through-composed form