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Wikipedia

Experimental music

April 28, 2023

Not to be confused with Avant-garde music.

Experimental music is a general label for any music or music genre that pushes existing boundaries and genre definitions.[1] Experimental compositional practice is defined broadly by exploratory sensibilities radically opposed to, and questioning of, institutionalized compositional, performing, and aesthetic conventions in music.[2] Elements of experimental music include indeterminacy, in which the composer introduces the elements of chance or unpredictability with regard to either the composition or its performance. Artists may approach a hybrid of disparate styles or incorporate unorthodox and unique elements.[1]

The practice became prominent in the mid-20th century, particularly in Europe and North America. John Cage was one of the earliest composers to use the term and one of experimental music's primary innovators, utilizing indeterminacy techniques and seeking unknown outcomes. In France, as early as 1953, Pierre Schaeffer had begun using the term musique expérimentale to describe compositional activities that incorporated tape music, musique concrète, and elektronische Musik. In America, a quite distinct sense of the term was used in the late 1950s to describe computer-controlled composition associated with composers such as Lejaren Hiller. Harry Partch and Ivor Darreg worked with other tuning scales based on the physical laws for harmonic music. For this music they both developed a group of experimental musical instruments. Musique concrète is a form of electroacoustic music that utilises acousmatic sound as a compositional resource. Free improvisation or free music is improvised music without any rules beyond the taste or inclination of the musician(s) involved; in many cases, the musicians make an active effort to avoid clichés; i.e., overt references to recognizable musical conventions or genres.

Definitions and usage

Origins

The Groupe de Recherches de Musique Concrète (GRMC), under the leadership of Pierre Schaeffer, organized the First International Decade of Experimental Music between 8 and 18 June 1953. This appears to have been an attempt by Schaeffer to reverse the assimilation of musique concrète into the German elektronische Musik, and instead tried to subsume musique concrète, elektronische Musik, tape music, and world music under the rubric "musique experimentale".[3] Publication of Schaeffer's manifesto[4] was delayed by four years, by which time Schaeffer was favoring the term "recherche musicale" (music research), though he never wholly abandoned "musique expérimentale".[5][6]

John Cage was also using the term as early as 1955. According to Cage's definition, "an experimental action is one the outcome of which is not foreseen",[7] and he was specifically interested in completed works that performed an unpredictable action.[8] In Germany, the publication of Cage's article was anticipated by several months in a lecture delivered by Wolfgang Edward Rebner at the Darmstädter Ferienkurse on 13 August 1954, titled "Amerikanische Experimentalmusik". Rebner's lecture extended the concept back in time to include Charles Ives, Edgard Varèse, and Henry Cowell, as well as Cage, due to their focus on sound as such rather than compositional method.[9]

Alternative classifications

Composer and critic Michael Nyman starts from Cage's definition,[10] and develops the term "experimental" also to describe the work of other American composers (Christian Wolff, Earle Brown, Meredith Monk, Malcolm Goldstein, Morton Feldman, Terry Riley, La Monte Young, Philip Glass, Steve Reich, etc.), as well as composers such as Gavin Bryars, John Cale, Toshi Ichiyanagi, Cornelius Cardew, John Tilbury, Frederic Rzewski, and Keith Rowe.[11] Nyman opposes experimental music to the European avant-garde of the time (Boulez, Kagel, Xenakis, Birtwistle, Berio, Stockhausen, and Bussotti), for whom "The identity of a composition is of paramount importance".[12] The word "experimental" in the former cases "is apt, providing it is understood not as descriptive of an act to be later judged in terms of success or failure, but simply as of an act the outcome of which is unknown".[13]

David Cope also distinguishes between experimental and avant-garde, describing experimental music as that "which represents a refusal to accept the status quo".[14] David Nicholls, too, makes this distinction, saying that "...very generally, avant-garde music can be viewed as occupying an extreme position within the tradition, while experimental music lies outside it".[15]

Warren Burt cautions that, as "a combination of leading-edge techniques and a certain exploratory attitude", experimental music requires a broad and inclusive definition, "a series of ands, if you will", encompassing such areas as "Cageian influences and work with low technology and improvisation and sound poetry and linguistics and new instrument building and multimedia and music theatre and work with high technology and community music, among others, when these activities are done with the aim of finding those musics 'we don't like, yet', [citing Herbert Brün] in a 'problem-seeking environment' [citing Chris Mann]".[16]

Benjamin Piekut argues that this "consensus view of experimentalism" is based on an a priori "grouping", rather than asking the question "How have these composers been collected together in the first place, that they can now be the subject of a description?" That is, "for the most part, experimental music studies describes [sic] a category without really explaining it".[17] He finds laudable exceptions in the work of David Nicholls and, especially, Amy Beal,[18] and concludes from their work that "The fundamental ontological shift that marks experimentalism as an achievement is that from representationalism to performativity", so that "an explanation of experimentalism that already assumes the category it purports to explain is an exercise in metaphysics, not ontology".[19]

Leonard B. Meyer, on the other hand, includes under "experimental music" composers rejected by Nyman, such as Berio, Boulez and Stockhausen, as well as the techniques of "total serialism",[20] holding that "there is no single, or even pre-eminent, experimental music, but rather a plethora of different methods and kinds".[21]

Abortive critical term

In the 1950s, the term "experimental" was often applied by conservative music critics—along with a number of other words, such as "engineers art", "musical splitting of the atom", "alchemist's kitchen", "atonal", and "serial"—as a deprecating jargon term, which must be regarded as "abortive concepts", since they did not "grasp a subject".[22] This was an attempt to marginalize, and thereby dismiss various kinds of music that did not conform to established conventions.[23] In 1955, Pierre Boulez identified it as a "new definition that makes it possible to restrict to a laboratory, which is tolerated but subject to inspection, all attempts to corrupt musical morals. Once they have set limits to the danger, the good ostriches go to sleep again and wake only to stamp their feet with rage when they are obliged to accept the bitter fact of the periodical ravages caused by experiment." He concludes, "There is no such thing as experimental music ... but there is a very real distinction between sterility and invention".[24]

Starting in the 1960s, "experimental music" began to be used in America for almost the opposite purpose, in an attempt to establish an historical category to help legitimize a loosely identified group of radically innovative, "outsider" composers. Whatever success this might have had in academe, this attempt to construct a genre was as abortive as the meaningless namecalling noted by Metzger, since by the "genre's" own definition the work it includes is "radically different and highly individualistic".[25] It is therefore not a genre, but an open category, "because any attempt to classify a phenomenon as unclassifiable and (often) elusive as experimental music must be partial".[26] Furthermore, the characteristic indeterminacy in performance "guarantees that two versions of the same piece will have virtually no perceptible musical 'facts' in common".[27]

Computer composition

Main article: Computer music

In the late 1950s, Lejaren Hiller and L. M. Isaacson used the term in connection with computer-controlled composition, in the scientific sense of "experiment":[28] making predictions for new compositions based on established musical technique (Mauceri 1997, 194–195). The term "experimental music" was used contemporaneously for electronic music, particularly in the early musique concrète work of Schaeffer and Henry in France.[29] There is a considerable overlap between Downtown music and what is more generally called experimental music, especially as that term was defined at length by Nyman in his book Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond (1974, second edition 1999).

History

Influential antecedents

A number of early 20th-century American composers, seen as precedents to and influences on John Cage, are sometimes referred to as the "American Experimental School". These include Charles Ives, Charles and Ruth Crawford Seeger, Henry Cowell, Carl Ruggles, and John Becker.[30][9]

New York School

Main article: New York School (art) § The composers

The New York School was an informal group of American poets, painters, dancers, and musicians active in the 1950s and 1960s in New York City. They often drew inspiration from Marcel Duchamp and Dada and contemporary avant-garde art movements, in particular conceptual art, pop art, jazz, improvisational theater, experimental music, and the interaction of friends in the New York City art world's vanguard circle. Composers/Musicians included John Cage, Earle Brown, Christian Wolff, Morton Feldman, David Tudor among others. Dance related: Merce Cunningham

Musique concrète

Main article: Musique concrète

Musique concrète (French; literally, "concrete music"), is a form of electroacoustic music that utilises acousmatic sound as a compositional resource. The compositional material is not restricted to the inclusion of sonorities derived from musical instruments or voices, nor to elements traditionally thought of as "musical" (melody, harmony, rhythm, metre and so on). The theoretical underpinnings of the aesthetic were developed by Pierre Schaeffer, beginning in the late 1940s.

Fluxus

Main article: Fluxus

Fluxus was an artistic movement started in the 1960s, characterized by an increased theatricality and the use of mixed media. Another known musical aspect appearing in the Fluxus movement was the use of Primal Scream at performances, derived from the primal therapy. Yoko Ono used this technique of expression.[31]

Minimalism

Main article: Minimalist music

Transethnicism

The term "experimental" has sometimes been applied to the mixture of recognizable music genres, especially those identified with specific ethnic groups, as found for example in the music of Laurie Anderson, Chou Wen-chung, Steve Reich, Kevin Volans, Martin Scherzinger, Michael Blake, and Rüdiger Meyer.[32][33][34]

Free improvisation

Main article: Free improvisation

Free improvisation or free music is improvised music without any rules beyond the taste or inclination of the musician(s) involved; in many cases the musicians make an active effort to avoid overt references to recognizable musical genres. The term is somewhat paradoxical, since it can be considered both as a technique (employed by any musician who wishes to disregard rigid genres and forms) and as a recognizable genre in its own right.

Game pieces

Main article: Game piece (music)

References

  1. ^ a b Anon. n.d.
  2. ^ Sun 2013.
  3. ^ Palombini 1993a, 18.
  4. ^ Schaeffer 1957.
  5. ^ Palombini 1993a, 19.
  6. ^ Palombini 1993b, 557.
  7. ^ Cage 1961, 39.
  8. ^ Mauceri 1997, 197.
  9. ^ a b Rebner 1997.
  10. ^ Nyman 1974, 1.
  11. ^ Nyman 1974, 78–81, 93–115.
  12. ^ Nyman 1974, 2, 9.
  13. ^ Cage 1961, 13.
  14. ^ Cope 1997, 222.
  15. ^ Nicholls 1998, 318.
  16. ^ Burt 1991, 5.
  17. ^ Piekut 2008, 2–5.
  18. ^ Piekut 2008, 5.
  19. ^ Piekut 2008, 7.
  20. ^ Meyer 1994, 106–107, 266.
  21. ^ Meyer 1994, 237.
  22. ^ Metzger 1959, 21.
  23. ^ Mauceri 1997, 189.
  24. ^ Boulez 1986, 430, 431.
  25. ^ Mauceri 1997, 190.
  26. ^ Nyman 1974, 5.
  27. ^ Nyman 1974, 9.
  28. ^ Hiller and Isaacson 1959.
  29. ^ Vignal 2003, 298.
  30. ^ Nicholls 1990.
  31. ^ Bateman n.d.
  32. ^ Blake 1999.
  33. ^ Jaffe 1983.
  34. ^ Lubet 1999.

Sources

  • Anon. n.d. "Avant-Garde » Modern Composition » Experimental". AllMusic
  • Bateman, Shahbeila. n.d. "Biography of Yoko Ono". Website of Hugh McCarney, Communication Department, Western Connecticut University. (Accessed 15 February 2009)
  • Blake, Michael. 1999. "The Emergence of a South African Experimental Aesthetic". In Proceedings of the 25th Annual Congress of the Musicological Society of Southern Africa, edited by Izak J. Grové. Pretoria: Musicological Society of Southern Africa.
  • Boulez, Pierre. 1986. "Experiment, Ostriches, and Music", in his Orientations: Collected Writings, translated by Martin Cooper, 430–431. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-64375-5 Originally published as "Expérience, autriches et musique". La Nouvelle Revue française, no. 36 (December 1955): 1, 174–176.
  • Burt, Warren. 1991. "Australian Experimental Music 1963–1990". Leonardo Music Journal 1, no. 1:5–10.
  • Cage, John. 1961. Silence: Lectures and Writings. Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press. Unaltered reprints: Weslyan University press, 1966 (pbk), 1967 (cloth), 1973 (pbk ["First Wesleyan paperback edition"], 1975 (unknown binding); Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1966, 1967, 1969, 1970, 1971; London: Calder & Boyars, 1968, 1971, 1973 ISBN 0-7145-0526-9 (cloth) ISBN 0-7145-1043-2 (pbk). London: Marion Boyars, 1986, 1999 ISBN 0-7145-1043-2 (pbk); [n.p.]: Reprint Services Corporation, 1988 (cloth) ISBN 99911-780-1-5 [In particular the essays "Experimental Music", pp. 7–12, and "Experimental Music: Doctrine", pp. 13–17.]
  • Cope, David. 1997. Techniques of the Contemporary Composer. New York: Schirmer Books. ISBN 0-02-864737-8.
  • Hiller, Lejaren, and L. M. Isaacson. 1959. Experimental Music: Composition with an Electronic Computer. New York: McGraw-Hill.
  • Jaffe, Lee David. 1983. "The Last Days of the Avant Garde; or How to Tell Your Glass from Your Eno". Drexel Library Quarterly 19, no. 1 (Winter): 105–122.
  • Lubet, Alex. 1999. "Indeterminate Origins: A Cultural theory of American Experimental Music". In Perspectives on American music since 1950, edited by James R. Heintze. New York: General Music Publishing Co. ISBN 0-8153-2144-9
  • Mauceri, Frank X. 1997. "From Experimental Music to Musical Experiment". Perspectives of New Music 35, no. 1 (Winter): 187-204.
  • Metzger, Heinz-Klaus. 1959. "Abortive Concepts in the Theory and Criticism of Music", translated by Leo Black. Die Reihe 5: "Reports, Analysis" (English edition): 21–29).
  • Meyer, Leonard B. 1994. Music, the Arts, and Ideas: Patterns and Predictions in Twentieth-Century Culture. Second edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-52143-5.
  • Nicholls, David. 1990. American Experimental Music, 1890–1940. New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-34578-2.
  • Nicholls, David. 1998. "Avant-garde and Experimental Music". In Cambridge History of American Music. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-45429-8.
  • Nyman, Michael. 1974. Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond. London: Studio Vista ISBN 0-289-70182-1. New York: Schirmer Books. ISBN 0-02-871200-5. Second edition, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. ISBN 0-521-65297-9.
  • Palombini, Carlos. 1993a. "Machine Songs V: Pierre Schaeffer: From Research into Noises to Experimental Music". Computer Music Journal, 17, No. 3 (Autumn): 14–19.
  • Palombini, Carlos. 1993b. . Music & Letters 74, no. 4 (November): 542–557.
  • Piekut, Benjamin. 2008. "Testing, Testing ...: New York Experimentalism 1964". Ph.D. diss. New York: Columbia University.
  • Rebner, Wolfgang Edward. 1997. "Amerikanische Experimentalmusik". In Im Zenit der Moderne: Geschichte und Dokumentation in vier Bänden—Die Internationalen Ferienkurse für Neue Musik Darmstadt, 1946–1966. Rombach Wissenschaften: Reihe Musicae 2, 4 vols., edited by Gianmario Borio and Hermann Danuser, 3:178–189. Freiburg im Breisgau: Rombach.
  • Schaeffer, Pierre. 1957. "Vers une musique experimentale". La Revue musicale no. 236 (Vers une musique experimentale), edited by Pierre Schaeffer, 18–23. Paris: Richard-Masse.
  • Sun, Cecilia. 2013. "Experimental Music". 2013. The Grove Dictionary of American Music, second edition, edited by Charles Hiroshi Garrett. New York: Oxford University Press.
  • Vignal, Marc (ed.). 2003. "Expérimentale (musique)". In Dictionnaire de la musique. Paris: Larousse. ISBN 2-03-511354-7.

Further reading

  • Ballantine, Christopher. 1977. "Towards an Aesthetic of Experimental Music". The Musical Quarterly 63, no. 2 (April): 224–246.
  • Beal, Amy C. 2006. New Music, New Allies: American Experimental Music in West Germany from the Zero Hour to Reunification. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-24755-8.
  • Benitez, Joaquim M. 1978. "Avant-Garde or Experimental? Classifying Contemporary Music". International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music 9, no. 1 (June): 53–77.
  • Broyles, Michael. 2004. Mavericks and Other Traditions in American Music. New Haven: Yale University Press.
  • Cameron, Catherine. 1996. Dialectics in the Arts: The Rise of Experimentalism in American Music. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger.
  • Cox, Christoph. 2004. Audio Culture. Continuum International Publishing Group.[full citation needed]
  • Crumsho, Michael. 2008. "Dusted Reviews: Neptune—Gong Lake". Dusted Magazine (February 19).
  • Ensemble Modern. 1995. "Was ist experimentelles Musiktheater? Mitglieder des 'Ensemble Modern' befragen Hans Zender". Positionen: Beiträge zur Neuen Musik 22 (February): 17–20.
  • Bailey, Derek. 1980. "Musical Improvisation: Its Nature and Practice in Music". Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall; Ashbourne: Moorland. ISBN 0-13-607044-2. Second edition, London: British Library National Sound Archive, 1992. ISBN 0-7123-0506-8
  • Experimental Musical Instruments. 1985–1999. A periodical (no longer published) devoted to experimental music and instruments.
  • Gligo, Nikša. 1989. "Die musikalische Avantgarde als ahistorische Utopie: Die gescheiterten Implikationen der experimentellen Musik". Acta Musicologica 61, no. 2 (May–August): 217–237.
  • Grant, Morag Josephine. 2003. "Experimental Music Semiotics". International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music 34, no. 2 (December): 173–191.
  • Henius, Carla. 1977. "Musikalisches Experimentiertheater. Kommentare aus der Praxis". Melos/Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 3, no. 6:489–492.
  • Henius, Carla. 1994. "Experimentelles Musiktheater seit 1946". Bayerische Akademie der Schönen Künste: Jahrbuch 8:131–154.
  • Holmes, Thomas B. 2008. Electronic and Experimental Music: Pioneers in Technology and Composition. Third edition. London and New York: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-95781-6 (hbk.) ISBN 978-0-415-95782-3 (pbk.)
  • Lucier, Alvin. 2002. "An einem hellen Tag: Avantgarde und Experiment", trans. Gisela Gronemeyer. MusikTexte: Zeitschrift für Neue Musik, no. 92 (February), pp. 13–14.
  • Lucier, Alvin. 2012. Music 109: Notes on Experimental Music. Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press. ISBN 978-0-8195-7297-4 (cloth); ISBN 978-0-8195-7298-1 (ebook).
  • Masters, Marc. 2007. . London: Black Dog Publishing. ISBN 978-1-906155-02-5.
  • Parkin, Chris. 2008. "Micachu: Interview" 2012-09-24 at the Wayback Machine. Time Out London (February 26).
  • Piekut, Benjamin. 2011. Experimentalism Otherwise: The New York Avant-Garde and its Limits. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-26851-7.
  • Saunders, James. 2009. The Ashgate Research Companion to Experimental Music. Aldershot, Hampshire, and Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate. ISBN 978-0-7546-6282-2
  • Schnebel, Dieter. 2001. "Experimentelles Musiktheater". In Das Musiktheater: Exempel der Kunst, edited by Otto Kolleritsch, 14–24. Vienna: Universal Edition. ISBN 3-7024-0263-2
  • Shultis, Christopher. 1998. Silencing the Sounded Self: John Cage and the American Experimental Tradition. Boston: Northeastern University Press. ISBN 1-55553-377-9
  • Smith Brindle, Reginald. 1987. The New Music: The Avant-Garde Since 1945, second edition. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-315471-4 (cloth) ISBN 0-19-315468-4 (pbk.)
  • Sutherland, Roger, 1994. New Perspectives in Music. London: Sun Tavern Fields. ISBN 0-9517012-6-6

External links

April 28, 2023
experimental, music, confused, with, avant, garde, music, general, label, music, music, genre, that, pushes, existing, boundaries, genre, definitions, experimental, compositional, practice, defined, broadly, exploratory, sensibilities, radically, opposed, ques. Not to be confused with Avant garde music Experimental music is a general label for any music or music genre that pushes existing boundaries and genre definitions 1 Experimental compositional practice is defined broadly by exploratory sensibilities radically opposed to and questioning of institutionalized compositional performing and aesthetic conventions in music 2 Elements of experimental music include indeterminacy in which the composer introduces the elements of chance or unpredictability with regard to either the composition or its performance Artists may approach a hybrid of disparate styles or incorporate unorthodox and unique elements 1 The practice became prominent in the mid 20th century particularly in Europe and North America John Cage was one of the earliest composers to use the term and one of experimental music s primary innovators utilizing indeterminacy techniques and seeking unknown outcomes In France as early as 1953 Pierre Schaeffer had begun using the term musique experimentale to describe compositional activities that incorporated tape music musique concrete and elektronische Musik In America a quite distinct sense of the term was used in the late 1950s to describe computer controlled composition associated with composers such as Lejaren Hiller Harry Partch and Ivor Darreg worked with other tuning scales based on the physical laws for harmonic music For this music they both developed a group of experimental musical instruments Musique concrete is a form of electroacoustic music that utilises acousmatic sound as a compositional resource Free improvisation or free music is improvised music without any rules beyond the taste or inclination of the musician s involved in many cases the musicians make an active effort to avoid cliches i e overt references to recognizable musical conventions or genres Contents 1 Definitions and usage 1 1 Origins 1 2 Alternative classifications 1 3 Abortive critical term 1 4 Computer composition 2 History 2 1 Influential antecedents 2 2 New York School 2 3 Musique concrete 2 4 Fluxus 2 5 Minimalism 2 6 Transethnicism 2 7 Free improvisation 2 8 Game pieces 3 References 4 Further reading 5 External linksDefinitions and usage EditOrigins Edit The Groupe de Recherches de Musique Concrete GRMC under the leadership of Pierre Schaeffer organized the First International Decade of Experimental Music between 8 and 18 June 1953 This appears to have been an attempt by Schaeffer to reverse the assimilation of musique concrete into the German elektronische Musik and instead tried to subsume musique concrete elektronische Musik tape music and world music under the rubric musique experimentale 3 Publication of Schaeffer s manifesto 4 was delayed by four years by which time Schaeffer was favoring the term recherche musicale music research though he never wholly abandoned musique experimentale 5 6 John Cage was also using the term as early as 1955 According to Cage s definition an experimental action is one the outcome of which is not foreseen 7 and he was specifically interested in completed works that performed an unpredictable action 8 In Germany the publication of Cage s article was anticipated by several months in a lecture delivered by Wolfgang Edward Rebner at the Darmstadter Ferienkurse on 13 August 1954 titled Amerikanische Experimentalmusik Rebner s lecture extended the concept back in time to include Charles Ives Edgard Varese and Henry Cowell as well as Cage due to their focus on sound as such rather than compositional method 9 Alternative classifications Edit Composer and critic Michael Nyman starts from Cage s definition 10 and develops the term experimental also to describe the work of other American composers Christian Wolff Earle Brown Meredith Monk Malcolm Goldstein Morton Feldman Terry Riley La Monte Young Philip Glass Steve Reich etc as well as composers such as Gavin Bryars John Cale Toshi Ichiyanagi Cornelius Cardew John Tilbury Frederic Rzewski and Keith Rowe 11 Nyman opposes experimental music to the European avant garde of the time Boulez Kagel Xenakis Birtwistle Berio Stockhausen and Bussotti for whom The identity of a composition is of paramount importance 12 The word experimental in the former cases is apt providing it is understood not as descriptive of an act to be later judged in terms of success or failure but simply as of an act the outcome of which is unknown 13 David Cope also distinguishes between experimental and avant garde describing experimental music as that which represents a refusal to accept the status quo 14 David Nicholls too makes this distinction saying that very generally avant garde music can be viewed as occupying an extreme position within the tradition while experimental music lies outside it 15 Warren Burt cautions that as a combination of leading edge techniques and a certain exploratory attitude experimental music requires a broad and inclusive definition a series of ands if you will encompassing such areas as Cageian influences and work with low technology and improvisation and sound poetry and linguistics and new instrument building and multimedia and music theatre and work with high technology and community music among others when these activities are done with the aim of finding those musics we don t like yet citing Herbert Brun in a problem seeking environment citing Chris Mann 16 Benjamin Piekut argues that this consensus view of experimentalism is based on an a priori grouping rather than asking the question How have these composers been collected together in the first place that they can now be the subject of a description That is for the most part experimental music studies describes sic a category without really explaining it 17 He finds laudable exceptions in the work of David Nicholls and especially Amy Beal 18 and concludes from their work that The fundamental ontological shift that marks experimentalism as an achievement is that from representationalism to performativity so that an explanation of experimentalism that already assumes the category it purports to explain is an exercise in metaphysics not ontology 19 Leonard B Meyer on the other hand includes under experimental music composers rejected by Nyman such as Berio Boulez and Stockhausen as well as the techniques of total serialism 20 holding that there is no single or even pre eminent experimental music but rather a plethora of different methods and kinds 21 Abortive critical term Edit In the 1950s the term experimental was often applied by conservative music critics along with a number of other words such as engineers art musical splitting of the atom alchemist s kitchen atonal and serial as a deprecating jargon term which must be regarded as abortive concepts since they did not grasp a subject 22 This was an attempt to marginalize and thereby dismiss various kinds of music that did not conform to established conventions 23 In 1955 Pierre Boulez identified it as a new definition that makes it possible to restrict to a laboratory which is tolerated but subject to inspection all attempts to corrupt musical morals Once they have set limits to the danger the good ostriches go to sleep again and wake only to stamp their feet with rage when they are obliged to accept the bitter fact of the periodical ravages caused by experiment He concludes There is no such thing as experimental music but there is a very real distinction between sterility and invention 24 Starting in the 1960s experimental music began to be used in America for almost the opposite purpose in an attempt to establish an historical category to help legitimize a loosely identified group of radically innovative outsider composers Whatever success this might have had in academe this attempt to construct a genre was as abortive as the meaningless namecalling noted by Metzger since by the genre s own definition the work it includes is radically different and highly individualistic 25 It is therefore not a genre but an open category because any attempt to classify a phenomenon as unclassifiable and often elusive as experimental music must be partial 26 Furthermore the characteristic indeterminacy in performance guarantees that two versions of the same piece will have virtually no perceptible musical facts in common 27 Computer composition Edit Main article Computer music In the late 1950s Lejaren Hiller and L M Isaacson used the term in connection with computer controlled composition in the scientific sense of experiment 28 making predictions for new compositions based on established musical technique Mauceri 1997 194 195 The term experimental music was used contemporaneously for electronic music particularly in the early musique concrete work of Schaeffer and Henry in France 29 There is a considerable overlap between Downtown music and what is more generally called experimental music especially as that term was defined at length by Nyman in his book Experimental Music Cage and Beyond 1974 second edition 1999 History EditInfluential antecedents Edit A number of early 20th century American composers seen as precedents to and influences on John Cage are sometimes referred to as the American Experimental School These include Charles Ives Charles and Ruth Crawford Seeger Henry Cowell Carl Ruggles and John Becker 30 9 New York School Edit Main article New York School art The composers The New York School was an informal group of American poets painters dancers and musicians active in the 1950s and 1960s in New York City They often drew inspiration from Marcel Duchamp and Dada and contemporary avant garde art movements in particular conceptual art pop art jazz improvisational theater experimental music and the interaction of friends in the New York City art world s vanguard circle Composers Musicians included John Cage Earle Brown Christian Wolff Morton Feldman David Tudor among others Dance related Merce Cunningham Musique concrete Edit Main article Musique concrete Musique concrete French literally concrete music is a form of electroacoustic music that utilises acousmatic sound as a compositional resource The compositional material is not restricted to the inclusion of sonorities derived from musical instruments or voices nor to elements traditionally thought of as musical melody harmony rhythm metre and so on The theoretical underpinnings of the aesthetic were developed by Pierre Schaeffer beginning in the late 1940s Fluxus Edit Main article Fluxus Fluxus was an artistic movement started in the 1960s characterized by an increased theatricality and the use of mixed media Another known musical aspect appearing in the Fluxus movement was the use of Primal Scream at performances derived from the primal therapy Yoko Ono used this technique of expression 31 Minimalism Edit Main article Minimalist music Transethnicism Edit The term experimental has sometimes been applied to the mixture of recognizable music genres especially those identified with specific ethnic groups as found for example in the music of Laurie Anderson Chou Wen chung Steve Reich Kevin Volans Martin Scherzinger Michael Blake and Rudiger Meyer 32 33 34 Free improvisation Edit Main article Free improvisation Free improvisation or free music is improvised music without any rules beyond the taste or inclination of the musician s involved in many cases the musicians make an active effort to avoid overt references to recognizable musical genres The term is somewhat paradoxical since it can be considered both as a technique employed by any musician who wishes to disregard rigid genres and forms and as a recognizable genre in its own right Game pieces Edit Main article Game piece music References Edit a b Anon n d Sun 2013 Palombini 1993a 18 Schaeffer 1957 Palombini 1993a 19 Palombini 1993b 557 Cage 1961 39 Mauceri 1997 197 a b Rebner 1997 Nyman 1974 1 Nyman 1974 78 81 93 115 Nyman 1974 2 9 Cage 1961 13 Cope 1997 222 Nicholls 1998 318 Burt 1991 5 Piekut 2008 2 5 Piekut 2008 5 Piekut 2008 7 Meyer 1994 106 107 266 Meyer 1994 237 Metzger 1959 21 Mauceri 1997 189 Boulez 1986 430 431 Mauceri 1997 190 Nyman 1974 5 Nyman 1974 9 Hiller and Isaacson 1959 Vignal 2003 298 Nicholls 1990 Bateman n d Blake 1999 Jaffe 1983 Lubet 1999 Sources Anon n d Avant Garde Modern Composition Experimental AllMusic Bateman Shahbeila n d Biography of Yoko Ono Website of Hugh McCarney Communication Department Western Connecticut University Accessed 15 February 2009 Blake Michael 1999 The Emergence of a South African Experimental Aesthetic In Proceedings of the 25th Annual Congress of the Musicological Society of Southern Africa edited by Izak J Grove Pretoria Musicological Society of Southern Africa Boulez Pierre 1986 Experiment Ostriches and Music in his Orientations Collected Writings translated by Martin Cooper 430 431 Cambridge Harvard University Press ISBN 0 674 64375 5 Originally published as Experience autriches et musique La Nouvelle Revue francaise no 36 December 1955 1 174 176 Burt Warren 1991 Australian Experimental Music 1963 1990 Leonardo Music Journal 1 no 1 5 10 Cage John 1961 Silence Lectures and Writings Middletown Connecticut Wesleyan University Press Unaltered reprints Weslyan University press 1966 pbk 1967 cloth 1973 pbk First Wesleyan paperback edition 1975 unknown binding Cambridge Massachusetts MIT Press 1966 1967 1969 1970 1971 London Calder amp Boyars 1968 1971 1973 ISBN 0 7145 0526 9 cloth ISBN 0 7145 1043 2 pbk London Marion Boyars 1986 1999 ISBN 0 7145 1043 2 pbk n p Reprint Services Corporation 1988 cloth ISBN 99911 780 1 5 In particular the essays Experimental Music pp 7 12 and Experimental Music Doctrine pp 13 17 Cope David 1997 Techniques of the Contemporary Composer New York Schirmer Books ISBN 0 02 864737 8 Hiller Lejaren and L M Isaacson 1959 Experimental Music Composition with an Electronic Computer New York McGraw Hill Jaffe Lee David 1983 The Last Days of the Avant Garde or How to Tell Your Glass from Your Eno Drexel Library Quarterly 19 no 1 Winter 105 122 Lubet Alex 1999 Indeterminate Origins A Cultural theory of American Experimental Music In Perspectives on American music since 1950 edited by James R Heintze New York General Music Publishing Co ISBN 0 8153 2144 9 Mauceri Frank X 1997 From Experimental Music to Musical Experiment Perspectives of New Music 35 no 1 Winter 187 204 Metzger Heinz Klaus 1959 Abortive Concepts in the Theory and Criticism of Music translated by Leo Black Die Reihe 5 Reports Analysis English edition 21 29 Meyer Leonard B 1994 Music the Arts and Ideas Patterns and Predictions in Twentieth Century Culture Second edition Chicago University of Chicago Press ISBN 0 226 52143 5 Nicholls David 1990 American Experimental Music 1890 1940 New York Cambridge University Press ISBN 0 521 34578 2 Nicholls David 1998 Avant garde and Experimental Music In Cambridge History of American Music Cambridge and New York Cambridge University Press ISBN 0 521 45429 8 Nyman Michael 1974 Experimental Music Cage and Beyond London Studio Vista ISBN 0 289 70182 1 New York Schirmer Books ISBN 0 02 871200 5 Second edition Cambridge and New York Cambridge University Press 1999 ISBN 0 521 65297 9 Palombini Carlos 1993a Machine Songs V Pierre Schaeffer From Research into Noises to Experimental Music Computer Music Journal 17 No 3 Autumn 14 19 Palombini Carlos 1993b Pierre Schaeffer 1953 Towards an Experimental Music Music amp Letters 74 no 4 November 542 557 Piekut Benjamin 2008 Testing Testing New York Experimentalism 1964 Ph D diss New York Columbia University Rebner Wolfgang Edward 1997 Amerikanische Experimentalmusik In Im Zenit der Moderne Geschichte und Dokumentation in vier Banden Die Internationalen Ferienkurse fur Neue Musik Darmstadt 1946 1966 Rombach Wissenschaften Reihe Musicae 2 4 vols edited by Gianmario Borio and Hermann Danuser 3 178 189 Freiburg im Breisgau Rombach Schaeffer Pierre 1957 Vers une musique experimentale La Revue musicale no 236 Vers une musique experimentale edited by Pierre Schaeffer 18 23 Paris Richard Masse Sun Cecilia 2013 Experimental Music 2013 The Grove Dictionary of American Music second edition edited by Charles Hiroshi Garrett New York Oxford University Press Vignal Marc ed 2003 Experimentale musique In Dictionnaire de la musique Paris Larousse ISBN 2 03 511354 7 Further reading EditBallantine Christopher 1977 Towards an Aesthetic of Experimental Music The Musical Quarterly 63 no 2 April 224 246 Beal Amy C 2006 New Music New Allies American Experimental Music in West Germany from the Zero Hour to Reunification Berkeley University of California Press ISBN 0 520 24755 8 Benitez Joaquim M 1978 Avant Garde or Experimental Classifying Contemporary Music International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music 9 no 1 June 53 77 Broyles Michael 2004 Mavericks and Other Traditions in American Music New Haven Yale University Press Cameron Catherine 1996 Dialectics in the Arts The Rise of Experimentalism in American Music Westport Connecticut Praeger Cox Christoph 2004 Audio Culture Continuum International Publishing Group full citation needed Crumsho Michael 2008 Dusted Reviews Neptune Gong Lake Dusted Magazine February 19 Ensemble Modern 1995 Was ist experimentelles Musiktheater Mitglieder des Ensemble Modern befragen Hans Zender Positionen Beitrage zur Neuen Musik 22 February 17 20 Bailey Derek 1980 Musical Improvisation Its Nature and Practice in Music Englewood Cliffs New Jersey Prentice Hall Ashbourne Moorland ISBN 0 13 607044 2 Second edition London British Library National Sound Archive 1992 ISBN 0 7123 0506 8 Experimental Musical Instruments 1985 1999 A periodical no longer published devoted to experimental music and instruments Gligo Niksa 1989 Die musikalische Avantgarde als ahistorische Utopie Die gescheiterten Implikationen der experimentellen Musik Acta Musicologica 61 no 2 May August 217 237 Grant Morag Josephine 2003 Experimental Music Semiotics International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music 34 no 2 December 173 191 Henius Carla 1977 Musikalisches Experimentiertheater Kommentare aus der Praxis Melos Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik 3 no 6 489 492 Henius Carla 1994 Experimentelles Musiktheater seit 1946 Bayerische Akademie der Schonen Kunste Jahrbuch 8 131 154 Holmes Thomas B 2008 Electronic and Experimental Music Pioneers in Technology and Composition Third edition London and New York Routledge ISBN 978 0 415 95781 6 hbk ISBN 978 0 415 95782 3 pbk Lucier Alvin 2002 An einem hellen Tag Avantgarde und Experiment trans Gisela Gronemeyer MusikTexte Zeitschrift fur Neue Musik no 92 February pp 13 14 Lucier Alvin 2012 Music 109 Notes on Experimental Music Middletown Connecticut Wesleyan University Press ISBN 978 0 8195 7297 4 cloth ISBN 978 0 8195 7298 1 ebook Masters Marc 2007 No Wave London Black Dog Publishing ISBN 978 1 906155 02 5 Parkin Chris 2008 Micachu Interview Archived 2012 09 24 at the Wayback Machine Time Out London February 26 Piekut Benjamin 2011 Experimentalism Otherwise The New York Avant Garde and its Limits Berkeley University of California Press ISBN 978 0 520 26851 7 Saunders James 2009 The Ashgate Research Companion to Experimental Music Aldershot Hampshire and Burlington Vermont Ashgate ISBN 978 0 7546 6282 2 Schnebel Dieter 2001 Experimentelles Musiktheater In Das Musiktheater Exempel der Kunst edited by Otto Kolleritsch 14 24 Vienna Universal Edition ISBN 3 7024 0263 2 Shultis Christopher 1998 Silencing the Sounded Self John Cage and the American Experimental Tradition Boston Northeastern University Press ISBN 1 55553 377 9 Smith Brindle Reginald 1987 The New Music The Avant Garde Since 1945 second edition Oxford and New York Oxford University Press ISBN 0 19 315471 4 cloth ISBN 0 19 315468 4 pbk Sutherland Roger 1994 New Perspectives in Music London Sun Tavern Fields ISBN 0 9517012 6 6External links EditExperimental music at Curlie Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Experimental music amp oldid 1151398602, wikipedia, wiki, 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