Lobortis laoreet diam eum lucidus gemino. Humo premo in. Ne dolus usitas augue. Ad at lenis. Immitto sagaciter eligo et patria multo duis. Iriure uxor ludus ibidem dolore aliquip. Ex ex immitto a volutpat molior qui ea.] December 8th Sarah Lawrence College February 26 Cygnus @ …
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Humo premo in. Ne dolus usitas augue. Ad at lenis. Immitto sagaciter eligo et patria multo duis.
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December 8th Sarah Lawrence College
February 26 Cygnus @ Bargemusic
February 8 Venice/Istanbul with Amir Elsaffar , santur
April 5 Cygnus on Cutting Edge Concerts at Symphony Space
Cygnus with Serial Underground, at the Cornelia St. Cafe:
March 8 Rapproachement Some classical music geeks try to get their heads around rap & hip-hop. Hosted by rapper/baritone Thelonius Griffin
June 14 music for guitar, laptop & guests Chris Botta & Joe Branciforte, laptop artists William Anderson, guitar
New Music for Dummies: A Beginner's Guide to New Music There is a series of books with titles like, Foucault for Dummies, or Marshall MacLuhan for Dummies . This beginner's guide is conceived in that spirit. a work in progress--- We need volunteers! to make an outline, breaking the job up …
There is a series of books with titles like, Foucault for Dummies, or Marshall MacLuhan for Dummies . This beginner's guide is conceived in that spirit.
a work in progress---
We need volunteers!
"New Music" is now being used to denote "new pop muisic", a sign of the late stage of baby-boomer pop culture, projected 30 years beyond its vital phase. In that vital phase it didn't have to be called "new". Everyone knew it was "new". We spoke of "the new Led Zepplin album", certainly, but the genre was never "new music". It was rock music. "New" was only needed for rock after it became old. We might want to found a new term for what we're talking about--"non pop", perhaps.
Who should read this:
--Anyone who is curious and interested in new musical experiences
--The parents, siblings, significant others, extended family and friends of the exponentially swelling ranks of composers in the world today.
Join the Party---
There is now a wellspring of formalized composition in the U.S. It's getting to the point where even smaller cities are supporting performances and commissions of new American music. My hometown region of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania offers an example of this. Market Square Concerts of Harrisburg is commissioning new music, and the local public radio station, WITF, is broadcasting new works. This was unheard of in the days when I was growing up there.
The fare offered by the great musical monopolies in New York City--Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall--include new music prominently in their presentations. There are still star players offering works by dead composers, but the dead composers are more often mixed with living composers now. So we have reason to suspect that our culture may turn more fully to this ferment of musical activity, much of which is worthy of our attention, even if most of it is certainly not. A robust traffic in new music is a sign of a healthy culture. We resist ancestor worship and tolearate a great amount of chaff as we wait for the rare germs of wheat.
You can get there from here click on the link tto the route hat most suits you:
New American music via other music--
--New Music for lovers of the great German musical tradition
Brahms
New American music via literature--
--naturalism
--antinaturalism
New American music via the visual arts--
--art nouveau
--art decco
--abstract expressionism
--minimalism
The structural avante guarde
In the Baroque period, composer Jean Phillipe Rameau explained what we now call "functional harmony". Since the Baroque era new harmonic functions proliferated and were eventually re-codified, most notably by Nadia Boulanger, who explained in functional harmonic terms the relationship between each dominant 7 chord and any of the 12 keys. This proliferation was the structural avante guarde within the realm of functional harmony.
The harmonic world of the Beatles may be understood in Rameau's terms, likewise the era of the classic American pop song--Kern, Gershwin, Porter, Rogers--these musics can all be analysed with Rameau's system. Understanding the difference between the Beatles and Jerome Kern requires more than what Rameau has to offer. Rameau's analytical tools are applicable to the harmonic aspects of most of the music we hear today--most rock, jazz, folk, and also the work of many cross-over composers like Claude Bolling and Astor Piazzola.
The continual reinvention of functional harmony often involves historical exigencies such as the confluence of African elements mixing with church music in the American south; the confluence of Baroque idioms and Arabic/gypsy elements in Spanish music.
Particularly in the 20th century composers such as Arnold Schoenberg, Bela Bartok, Claude Debussy, Igor Stravinsky, & Edgar Varese came up with ways of dealing with pitches that cannot be explained by Rameau's theories. Throughout the last century we have, by turns, embraced and rejected these revolutionary new musical practices. Movement on this structural front define the present structural avante guarde.
The categorical avante guarde
Eric Satie and John Cage, among others, were influential by turning musical values upside down, but not with a focus on structure. Instead, they turn our heads in directions in which we had never thought of looking, breaking out of the functional harmonic/non-functional harmonic universe.
How do we like "categorical avante guarde" to describe their thinking?
A geneaology of formalized music in America
------One of a Kind, Home-Grown American Composers
---Charles Ives, Elliott Carter, Conlon Nancarrow, & the Californians, Henry Cowell, Harry Partch, & Lou Harrison & John Cage
These composers tend to make a clean break with music's European past--Ives most strongly. He avoided any grasping for exotic elements. With Cowell, Partch and Harrison Asian and other non-Western influences are important.
Ives
Ives brings American music into meaningful conjunction with the transcendentalists, and also with William James. Ives' music is pluralistic. He likes to have more than one music going at once. This pluralistic aspect of Ives' music set a crucial precedent for another one of a kind American composer, Elliott Carter. Carter expanded on Ives' musical pluralism.
Several Californians
Henry Cowell, Harry Partch, & Lou Harrison all had a distinctively Californian perspective, and they all had a deep interest in non-Western music.
The musical instruments designed and built by Harry Partch are now in the care of Newband, run by composer and Partch protege Dean Drummond. Drummond and Newband now have a home at Monclair State College, in Montclair, New Jersey.
The clean break from the past is a very American phenomenon. These composers tend to be most successful in Europe. The Euorpeans seem uninterested in Americans picking up their traditions.
There continue to be new generations of such one of a kind home grown American composers--
Perhaps these composers--
John Zorn
Anthony Braxton
David Jaffe
William Bland
Morton Feldman
I'll think of many more later
Special Cases--
George Antheil was an American original, influenced by Ezra Pound's "syncretic universalism". Pound and Antheil collaborated in Paris. Antheil was also an imitator of Stravinsky--a very good imitator.
------Students of Nadia Boulanger
---Aaron Copland, Rolv Yttrehus, Lalo Schifrin, George Walker Dina Koston
In addition to Boulanger's extensions of the functional harmonic vocabulary (mentioned above), she also served as a proponent of Stravinsky's neo-classicism. The octatonic (8-note diminished scale) harmonies that we associate with TV and film music from the 50's through the 80's can largely be attributed to Boulanger and her school.
------Students of Germanic emigrees
--such as Ernest Bloch, Paul Hindemith, Arnold Schoenberg, Stephan Wolpe, Ernst Krenek
Students of Ernest Bloch:
George Antheil
Roger Sessions
Sessions was the teacher of Milton Babbitt, Robert Pollock, Rolv Yttrehus, David Diamond, Andrew Imbrie, Harold Schiffman, Andrew Viloette, George Tsontakis, David Del Tredici, Roger Nixon, William Mayer, Peter Maxwell Davies, Ursula Mamlok, Larry Bell, David Deason, Conlon Nancarrow, John Harbison, Vivian Fine, Allen Brings, Elmer Bernstein, and there seem to be dozens more.
Students of Hindemith:
Yehudi Wyner
Olga Gorelli
Vincent Persichetti
there are dozens more
Students of Arnold Schoenberg:
Lou Harrison--while Harrison studied with Schoenberg, he did not pursue any of Schoenberg's ideas or adopt any of his techniques.
John Cage--while Cage studied with Schoenberg, he did not pursue any of Schoenberg's ideas or adopt any of his techniques
Milton Babbitt--while Babbitt did not study with Schoenberg directly, he is certainly one of the most important students of Schoenberg's music. He is a foremost exegete of Schoenberg's techniques, carrying them much further, and creating from them his own unique & compelling music.
There was an unfortunate period in American music when many composers who were not really interested in Schoenberg's and Babbitt's (12-tone) techniques felt compelled, nevertheless, to explore them. There was a 12-tone bubble that resulted in heaps of horrible, half-hearted 12-tone music. Some was excellent despite it's misunderstanding of the 12-tone concept.
Students of Stephan Wolpe
Morton Feldman
Matthew Greenbaum
Ralph Shapey
David Tudor
Yehuda Yannai
Wolpe exerted a great influence upon many American composers.
Students of Ernst Krenek
William Bland
Roque Cordero
George Pearle
Robert Erickson
Henry Mancini
Milton Babbitt explained that when Krenek arrived in the U.S. he was the most famous composer in Europe, riding the wave of his highly successful opera, Johnny Spielt Auf.