{"id":632,"date":"2009-06-04T12:19:38","date_gmt":"2009-06-04T16:19:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/opensourcemusic.org\/?p=632"},"modified":"2009-06-04T17:08:36","modified_gmt":"2009-06-04T21:08:36","slug":"whats-the-avant-garde","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/opensourcemusic.org\/?p=632","title":{"rendered":"What’s the Avant Garde?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Terry

Terry Riley may look rediculous, but he is one of the leaders of a principal post-modern avant garde movement. <\/p><\/div>\n

I\u2019ve been thinking a ton about where classical art music is going these days, and I consistently get drawn to looking back at prior avant-garde movements that developed into important musical movements.\u00a0 Consider the early modernist avant-garde movements in two different countries, France and Germany.<\/p>\n

In France, the modernist avant garde was led by people like Edgar Varese<\/a>, the musical Dadaists, and Darius Milhuad<\/a>.\u00a0 This music was highly experimental in a different way from their counterparts in Germany, who following the lead of Schoenberg seemed to stick closer to the tradition of Brahmsian style and structure.\u00a0 The French composers of this time seemed a bit more adventurous rhythmically and with the tone quality of the instruments they used.\u00a0 They were far ahead of the curve in experimenting with electronic music and highlighting music as a function of sound in time.<\/p>\n

The Germans on the other hand, had the Vanguard of the 2nd Viennese school with Schoenberg<\/a>, Berg<\/a> and Webern<\/a> leading the pack.\u00a0 Their important contribution was the attempt at dissolving tonal harmony (they largely failed) along with the invention and propagation of the twelve-tone technique.\u00a0 As I said before, their music emphasizes structure and radicalizing pitch systems while sticking to traditional instrumentation , instrumental use and stricter form. These two schools developed, eventually, into the most prominent threads of musical thought, especially as we entered the post-modern era where a few new avant garde movements sprout up.<\/p>\n

In the Post-modern era, which I’ll loosely define as 1945-present(?),\u00a0 the avant garde of the past became the central musical movements, albeit far more radicalized.\u00a0 Total serialism of the likes of Milton Babbitt<\/a> seems to be an extension of the 2nd Viennese school. \u00a0 Music that explores non-traditional use of traditional instruments and seeks to create radical new colors like Xenakis<\/a> and Penderecki<\/a>, on the other hand, reflects the French avant garde.\u00a0 People like Boulez<\/a> and Stockhausen<\/a> draw from both movements, while John Cage<\/a> writes music that becomes the ultimate definition of sound in time.\u00a0 The music is of these composers are edgier than anything heard before, but seem to be more of a further development of past practices.<\/p>\n

Another avant garde thread that popped up in the 1960’s is Minimalism.\u00a0 Largely kicked off by Terry Riley’s In C<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0 The minimalist movement uses a more tonal approach but emphasizes repetition. \u00a0 In Minimalism there are quick surface changes that repeat over and over (and over and over and over) to create a macro-texture that changes very slowly over time.<\/p>\n

Hindsight is 20-20, and it gets even easier to distinguish musical periods and movements as we become further removed (temporally) from them.\u00a0 I\u2019ll do the best I can to extract from a small portion of music I\u2019ve been listening to what current the avant garde is.<\/p>\n

World music would be an almost too easy claim.\u00a0 But, I\u2019d rather say that it isn\u2019t the avant-garde because it has already reached, or is near a mainstream status in the art-music world.\u00a0 I\u2019ve taken a sample of the music that New Amsterdam Records puts out, and they seem not to have any world music at all in their sample recordings.\u00a0 What I\u2019ve found from this tiny sample size is a reliance on folk (fiddling), jazz and pop music.\u00a0 In a way this music is an undercurrent that I\u2019ve heard called Indie-Classical, which incidentally, the recording company uses as a label to promote their current performance series.\u00a0 The \u201cindie-classical\u201d music seems to take some of the coloristic qualities explored in the past 50 years but then attempts to use them in a way that is overtly expressive and referential or intentionally accessible, which can\u2019t be said for much of the music I\u2019ve discussed before.\u00a0 That young composers are rejecting the aesthetic of their teachers is an interesting reaction.\u00a0 I am sure I\u2019m not the only one who is happy that when my own teachers tell me of a time in the 70s or 80s, where if you weren\u2019t writing serial music you weren\u2019t a composer, it is a thing of the past.<\/p>\n

In this upcoming transitional period, we (upcoming composers) would do well to caution against turning against the use of the ugly and depressing in our music because music that is dogmatically sublime in the view of the human condition is just as bad as music that unilaterally damns us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Terry Riley may look rediculous, but he is one of the leaders of a principal post-modern avant garde movement. <\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been thinking a ton about where classical art music is going these days, and I consistently get drawn to looking back at prior avant-garde movements that developed into important musical movements. Consider the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20001,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51,61],"tags":[75,76,74,55,73,53,81,78,77,80,79,72],"class_list":["post-632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art-philosophy","category-thoughts-on-music","tag-alban-berg","tag-anton-webern","tag-arnold-schoenberg","tag-avant-garde","tag-darius-milhaud","tag-edgar-varese","tag-indie-classical","tag-john-cage","tag-milton-babbitt","tag-minimalism","tag-pierre-boulez","tag-terry-riley","odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/opensourcemusic.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/opensourcemusic.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/opensourcemusic.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opensourcemusic.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/20001"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opensourcemusic.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=632"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/opensourcemusic.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":635,"href":"https:\/\/opensourcemusic.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632\/revisions\/635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/opensourcemusic.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opensourcemusic.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opensourcemusic.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}