Consonant 20th Century Avant-Garde...or not?

[snyprrr]

i just joined, so i don't know if i'm allowed to do this, but...

this is in response to two threads i found very interesting, "recommend me some dissonant music" and 20th Century Impressionism".

i didn't know if my thoughts were appropriate to either thread, so i started this one. is that good?

so i was wondering about consonant "avant garde" music and the first thing that popped in my head was "lontano" by LIGETI (1967)
then, "triadic memories" by FELDMAN

"In C"...
and then philip GLASS, but that's not where i hoping to go with this thread. GORECKI sym. no3...

more along the lines of, i'm trying to thing of the most consonant piece by XENAKIS,  perhaps "epei" (1976) or "oophaa" for harpsicord and percussion,  and i wonder if anyone out there would consider "a I'lle de Goree" for harpsicord and ensemble actually an overtly "beautiful" piece, in the old fashioned sense of the word.

are there consonant "spectral" composers? maybe that's not a right question

perhaps i'm just curious about any thoughts out there about the "struggle"? for consonance in the 20th century avant garde of high modernism, especially perhaps how to remain "consonant" in a post 1960s world without sounding "pop"

is the term "post modernism" so all encompassing that there is no room for consonance ijn the avant garde for fear of not being taken "seriously"?

[david johnson]

forget pomo, i declare it died a few years ago. thank heavens.

'so i started this one. is that good?'
you did fine.

for me it only takes staying away from too many added 6ths and pop rhytms to not sound 'pop'.
but a pop sound is ok depending on the desired outcome.

i hope i understood your question.

dj

[snyprrr]

what's pomo?

yes, thank you, i enjoyed your answer...

but when you said "pop rhythms" i thought of elliott sharp, nyc downtown composer, ...i guess it made me wonder what is "pop" anymore...

but i think you simply mean regular rhythmic pulse, as in "normal" pop music.


ahhh...but then doesn't Xenakis undergird his compositions with an invisible regular meter? "pulse" wise, i find him very easy to follow (that is, from his classic works of the 70s and 80s). i thought i read somewhere that he wrote a lot of pieces wholly in regular 4/4. i may be wrong about that.

but i hope someone else picks up on your thought of "added 6ths" and "pop rhythms". maybe examples of composers who got away with it and some who didn't.

[david johnson]

pomo = post modernism.

dj

[some guy]

The only quibble I would have with this thread is that it puts us squarely into the old situation of assuming that dissonance (and a reaction against it) was the only thing that happened in the twentieth century. (And the corollary assumption that there was an avant garde.)

Leaving aside the technical musical fact that tonality operates according to patterns of alternating consonance and dissonance. No dissonance, no tonality--a fact that's been pretty successfully obscured by conflating consonance with "pretty" and dissonance with "ugly."

A lot of different things happened in the twentieth century, and conversations about that time will be hopelessly hamstrung if they assume that only one thing happened.

[snyprrr]

yes, of course, any expansion of the topic...please.

i know there's a "big idea" around here somewhere that we could all have a lot of fun talking about. i still wonder at how quickly technology has transformed things since the industrial revolution.

and sometimes i DO wonder what was going on between 1949-52...the rise of computers...roswell, haha...the absolute, total break with the past, and then the struggle to retrieve "memory" in the face of a new serial totalitarianism. hence, the 1960s. the experiments, the wild abandon.

wasn't  there a point in the 50s when EVERYBODY was doin the serial thing...and there was no way out? the "anonymous" sound? grey and clinical? "just the notes, ma'am".

i just find all the "threads" (including the new influence of eastern theology) beginning to show in the late 50s, bringing in an era of unprecesented experimentalism that in my humble opinion reached its zenith in 1971. as if the all inclusiveness of the 60s became manifest, and then promptly, after "opening night" began to decompose under the weight of its own all inclusiveness, to the point that we see such fragmentation and niche orientation today.

hey...TODAY..;..you can pretty much sound like anything you want....

ALL OF A SUDDEN I FEEL ADRIFT ON THIS TOPIC. PLEASE, SOMEONE SAVE THIS THREAD!!! TOO MANY FACTORS COMING TOGETHER,AHHHHHH.....

[otterhouse]

Try this playlist on youtube (and skip the first 2 minutues)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aL27dSTOsSQ&feature=PlayList&p=C00B9317F80CA7E8&index=0&playnext=1

It's a playlist (so you don't have to run to your computer all the time to click a new video)

of "de hemel" ("heaven") by Peter Schat
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Schat

It happily combines modernism with his "own" form of tonality

I'm curious what you think of it...

Rolf

[snyprrr]

ha, i used to have (a looong time ago) that cd of THE HEAVENS (conducted by chailly?)....i know what you mean

honestly, this piece reminded me a lot of robert simpson's 9th symphony...don't they both utilize 12 tone cycle of constantly raising everything a fourth? i believe so.

but yes, i DO remember when i heard this piece it exhibited the kinds of "alternatives to serialism" sounds that we've been talking about.
i remember thinking the piece was ":too" perfect...in that kind of messaien (?) way.

but yes, that was a great example of what i was shooting for. keep em comin!!

i'll check out that video, thanks

[some guy]

It happily combines modernism with his "own" form of tonality

And I'm curious about what this could possibly mean.

Anyway, back to Snyprrr's question "wasn't there a point in the 50s when EVERYBODY was doin the serial thing...and there was no way out? the "anonymous" sound? grey and clinical? "just the notes, ma'am"."

In a word, no.

In the first place, I don't think there has ever been any anonymous sound, no more than say baroque or classical or romantic. That is, every time has a certain sound (or sounds) that distinguish it from other times--and an unwary listener might have a hard time distinguishing Telemann, say, from Corelli. AT FIRST.

Secondly, I don't think serial music sounds grey and clinical, either. But that impression of mine comes from years of listening to a lot of serial music, from the 20s on, and so knowing how different and unique it all is. (One of the more amusing comments one always sees about this or that serial composer is that she--or perhaps he--uses the technique in an individual way. No, duh! Why, that's just how tonal composers used to use tonal techniques, in individual ways. Go figure!)

Thirdly, the fifties were not wholly given over to serialism by any means. For one, the fifties were when electroacoustic music was really exploding (with musique concrète in Paris and electronic music in Köln, a divisive distinction that was already blurring by the decade's end), when indeterminacy was really getting going* (remember that Cage's 4' 33" is from 1952, and the 25 year Retrospective Concert is from 1958), when non-serial composers all over the world were still getting some swing outta jazz, when even jazz itself was right on the verge of becoming something new and strange.

The experiments, the wild abandon, were all there in the fifties already. Don't forget, it was the fifties that came right after WWII. People were already full of relief and the arts were already full of promise before the sixties arrived. Also don't forget that things like action painting started in the fifties, too. I don't have references for this to hand, but I don't think it's much of a stretch to see things like improvisation and FLUXUS as having their roots in the fifties, even though the actual events didn't take place until the early sixties.

*Paul Ignace's "It Is" for orchestra, which consists of a simple graphic, with no instructions, is from 1947, which is the same year Schaeffer was doing his musique concrète experiments. There's always something going on, no matter what year/decade you're in.

[snyprrr]

just one comment about "own brand of tonality"

i THINK this is what i heard as the circling fourths...the simpson sym 9


BUT BACK TO THING...

thank you, i was wanting to hear about the "coming together". i think one of the pieces i forgot to mention was CAGE'S Quartet in Four Parts (1950?) as part of the "consonance" of this thread

yer gonna hate me maybe, but the "anonymous" sound makes think of late piston, late bloch, ...please don't get me wrong, i'm not sure i meant it derogatorily, maybe it's just a figment/stereotype" i use to make sense of the so many strands. i guess the word "academic" maybe has been unfairly used for some composers during this time (maybe the ones who were trying to play catch up?)? didn't mean any offence...and i didn't mean ALL...just a bad habit word.

i guess because i've got string quartets on the brain i fail to mention that that's how i hear stuff lately...like when you mention tape i think of Kirchner's Qrt no3 w/tape (1967) pulitzer prize winner, meaning, for me, that it took about 17 years for the quartet medium to integrate THAT particular strand. for aleatoric i would go to evangelisti's "aleatorio" (1959),....probabilities and statistics, Xenakis st-4 (1962). and so forth...Lejaren Hiller's str qrt No3 "illiac suite" comes to mind. didn't rochberg do something "new" when he inserted blantantly "romantic" music in the middle of his serial qrt 3 (1973)-btw, is that "post modern"?

i've just been gravitating towards the 1945-62 era, like...SOMETHING seemed to happen overnight, and i'm just following the spray. messaien (?) seems to be central.

i just recently got the parisii qrt playing boulez' "livre pour quatour" (1947?)...never heard it.

oy...i'm ramblin...too much coffee
I'LL BE BACH