Is A New Musical Movement Needed?

[some guy]

Just stick to the classic composers and some modern. We are blessed with them.

"Stick" being the operative word here.

We don't need so much a new musical movement--new music being something that someone will inevitably write, regardless--as we need a different way of listening and a different way of reacting to the new.

It's just logic, really. Old means known. New means unknown. You cannot bring the same expectations to new music as you bring to old. Indeed, you cannot even bring Renaissance expectations to a piece of, say, the early Romantic.

As for the other key word, blessed, we are certainly blessed with a lot of very different and very talented musicians currently.

http://dougtheriault.bandcamp.com/

https://soundcloud.com/fathomdistribution/francisco-lopez-amarok

http://vimeo.com/14577016

http://vimeo.com/58487445

[Cato]

"Stick" being the operative word here.

We don't need so much a new musical movement--new music being something that someone will inevitably write, regardless--as we need a different way of listening and a different way of reacting to the new.

It's just logic, really. Old means known. New means unknown. You cannot bring the same expectations to new music as you bring to old. Indeed, you cannot even bring Renaissance expectations to a piece of, say, the early Romantic.

As for the other key word, blessed, we are certainly blessed with a lot of very different and very talented musicians currently.


https://soundcloud.com/fathomdistribution/francisco-lopez-amarok

Thanks for those links!

Okay, the Francisco Lopez work Amarok sounds even more intriguing, after you read the blurb from the website:

It's a unequalled conceptual soundscape in this artist's huge discography and it perfectly joins to Glacial Movements aesthetics. After a few seconds from the track beginning we are dip into an arctic trip which lasts more than an hour and in which tangled weavings in a masterly fashion handled by the Spanish artist appear, develop and dissolve. Gusts of arctic wind, the Amarok's wheezing breath (Amarok is the name of a gigantic wolf in Inuit mythology) and the sense of loss in the polar night are only some of the sensations that this cryogenic hallucinatory acustic is able to evoke.

(Sic)  (My emphasis)

"Cryogenic hallucinatory acoustic" is one great phrase, not to mention "Glacial Movements aesthetics"!   0:)   Whether or not this aesthetic will catch on outside of Nuuk...?

Some Guy: have you listened to the complete Amarok ?

[Fagotterdämmerung]

I remember composing for glacier. It almost got a performance, too, but unfortunately the entire ensemble was crushed by an unforeseen calving.

[torut]

http://dougtheriault.bandcamp.com/

This is sweet, thanks. I like High Plains Cemetery the most. Beautiful piano and viola over sounds of field recordings.

[some guy]

You're very welcome.

I've loved Doug's music for many years, and when I moved to Portland about ten years ago, I was very pleased to find that Theriault lived there. (And Daniel Menche and Smegma, too.)

You'll be glad to know that Doug is a really great person, too.

Otherwise, yes Cato, I have listened to all of Amarok. In fact, I put it on just now to have it playing while I wrote this post.

(And yes, I'll be leaving it on after I click the "Post" button, too. It's got about another hour to go, after all.)

[jochanaan]

New music doesn't equal alien though, it rarely ever does. So of course we bring to each experience what we know & what we have been exposed to, and associations & judgement will form. Composers of our time have it rough on a creative scale considering the rich historical legacy and what has been done .. they should remain true to themselves though and find their own voice, this may keep it 'fresh' at least.

+1

[Mandryka]

 
  I think it's been a while since anything actually sounded Modern to my ears in the sense of an entirely new sound.

Try the Finnissy 2nd Quartet and the Ferneyhough 6th quartet, or Ferneyhough's Plötzlichkeit. Britain is leading the avant garde at the moment.

[Cato]

Try the Finnissy 2nd Quartet and the Ferneyhough 6th quartet, or Ferneyhough's Plötzlichkeit. Britain is leading the avant garde at the moment.

I assume these would be examples of the "New Complexity" movement?

[starrynight]

What needed probably, as always, is for most listeners to catch up with what classical music can actually be defined or seen as.  The problem is rarely with the overall music it tends to be more with listeners.

[Karl Henning]

And yet, [some subset of] listeners have always caught up with new music in advance of (say) music theory.

[Cato]

And yet, [some subset of] listeners have always caught up with new music in advance of (say) music theory.

Yes, the composers are always there first (it seems superfluous to say), with (as you say) at least some of the listeners: the classification and the analysis of the works come later.

Which has been the main question here: can any trends be gleaned these days, from e.g. Muhy, Saariaho, etc. etc. etc.?  Or are we in an age beyond easy classification, i.e. "Individualism" which defies grouping?

[some guy]

e.g. Muhy, Saariaho, etc. etc. etc.

Interesting list.

Or are we in an age beyond easy classification, i.e. "Individualism" which defies grouping?

Mmmm, sounds nice!

[Ken B]

Yes, the composers are always there first

What about the composers who were nowhere first?

You can -- and many here do -- take the nihilist position that it is meaningless to say a piece of music is good. But if you don't take that position it's implausible to argue that every composer always writes something good. A fortiori for experimental or "avant garde" composers. I use the scare quotes because it's a misnomer unless a derriere garde follows. And sometimes that doesn't happen. How many imitators has Ligeti's metronome piece inspired, where are the crowds who flock to that once new music? That wasn't avant garde, it was on the road to nowhere.

[Cato]

What about the composers who were nowhere first?

They are legion!   

An example is Josef Hauer whose ideas on "composing with 12-tones" were similar to Schoenberg's, and apparently were developed a few years before Schoenberg derived his ideas from his "atonal period." But Hauer's music with those ideas never caught on, or as you say, he "was nowhere first."

I know there are some fans of Hauer's works here, (or at least there were), but certainly his influence never came close to Schoenberg's. 

I have examined several piano works by Hauer and found them dull.

[Karl Henning]

And sometimes contracts.

Shrivelism!

[Fagotterdämmerung]

  There are always isolated examples of someone ahead of their time whose music never caught on. For example, Edmond de Polignac's 19th century "discovery" of the octatonic scale.

  There was also that 18th century American choral composer ( name escapes me, unfortunately ) who wrote that piece inverting the rules for dissonance and resolution. In his case it was a joke, never meant to be taken seriously as a piece of music, yet it definitely prefigures compositional strategies as "dissonant counterpoint".

  We seem to be at a point where many 7th chords don't sound particularly dissonant to people unless the interval of a minor second is really emphasized in an inversion. Many popular songs influenced by jazz end on 9ths, etc. Debussy is - mostly - audience friendly, and his work is chocked full of massive, dissonant chords.

[EigenUser]

What about the composers who were nowhere first?

You can -- and many here do -- take the nihilist position that it is meaningless to say a piece of music is good. But if you don't take that position it's implausible to argue that every composer always writes something good. A fortiori for experimental or "avant garde" composers. I use the scare quotes because it's a misnomer unless a derriere garde follows. And sometimes that doesn't happen. How many imitators has Ligeti's metronome piece inspired, where are the crowds who flock to that once new music? That wasn't avant garde, it was on the road to nowhere.

Ligeti's Poeme Symphonique pour 100 Metronomes isn't the best example, I think. This was a much more personal idea than an attempt at avant-garde music. He got the idea for it while reading a book of stories about a widow of some kind of scientist who left all sorts of measurement devices running in his laboratory in the attic. He came across the book as a child (and he claimed that it was by accident, since he said it was totally inappropriate for children) and it was an experience that stuck with him.

Also, it is partially a joke (given away by the mock-pretentious and overly-formal title).

The "metronomes" come back (in instrumental form) in his Chamber Concerto, String Quartet No. 2, and Clocks and Clouds, among others.

[North Star]

Ligeti's Poeme Symphonique pour 100 Metronomes isn't the best example, I think. This was a much more personal idea than an attempt at avant-garde music. He got the idea for it while reading a book of stories about a widow of some kind of scientist who left all sorts of measurement devices running in his laboratory in the attic. He came across the book as a child (and he claimed that it was by accident, since he said it was totally inappropriate for children) and it was an experience that stuck with him.

Also, it is partially a joke (given away by the mock-pretentious and overly-formal title).

The "metronomes" come back (in instrumental form) in his Chamber Concerto, String Quartet No. 2, and Clocks and Clouds, among others.

But, the Poeme Symphonique is not without connection to the world of science - what can be noticed in the work was noticed by scientists much later.
http://www.math.pitt.edu/~bard/classes/mth3380/syncpapers/metronome.pdf

[EigenUser]

But, the Poeme Symphonique is not without connection to the world of science - what can be noticed in the work was noticed by scientists much later.
http://www.math.pitt.edu/~bard/classes/mth3380/syncpapers/metronome.pdf

Ligeti's original choice of career was to become a scientist. Sadly, various antisemitic laws in the 1930s didn't allow for it. Well, I guess it isn't so sad in his case considering his alternative.

BTW, that paper looks really cool! I think I remember you mentioning something about this awhile ago, but I don't remember seeing the paper. I will need to look at it closer when I'm not so tired.

[North Star]

Well, I guess it isn't so sad in his case considering his alternative.

Indeed!

BTW, that paper looks really cool! I think I remember you mentioning something about this awhile ago, but I don't remember seeing the paper. I will need to look at it closer when I'm not so tired.

I'm sure I have mentioned it before. It must have been some much more recent (2012-2014) study mentioned in some magazine that caught my attention originally.