Avant garde music

[Mandryka]

Maybe an exemple of a baroque composer whose indeterminacy approximates the indeterminacy of more recent composers is Frescobaldi. His Toccatas are sectional, and his preface advised the performer to decide for himself which sections to play. Another example would be the whole tradition of unmeasured music in the French baroque and Froberger, where rhythm and phrasing and possibly other things (!) aren’t specified.


In Bach’s contrapuntal music, there has been some interest recently in the degree to which the voices need to be aligned. Keith Hill and Wolfgang Rübsam have suggested that Art of Fugue for example should be played with the voices independent of each other - each voice with its own phrasing and rhythm and tempo - the job of the keyboard player is to bring them together in an interesting, thrilling, poetic way. If you go to Rübsam’s website you’ll see some discussion of this. Hill and Rübsam are inspired by madrigal performance (they say), but the idea seems to have something in common with things in Cage’s music.

[smittims]

That's most thought-povoking, Mandryka. I wonder if that's why Bach and Frescobaldi were Lizzie Lutyens' two favourite composers.

Third and Fourth were Webern and Beethoven 'in that order' as she was keen to stress.

[Bryn]

Maybe an exemple of a baroque composer whose indeterminacy approximates the indeterminacy of more recent composers is Frescobaldi. His Toccatas are sectional, and his preface advised the performer to decide for himself which sections to play. Another example would be the whole tradition of unmeasured music in the French baroque and Froberger, where rhythm and phrasing and possibly other things (!) aren’t specified.


In Bach’s contrapuntal music, there has been some interest recently in the degree to which the voices need to be aligned. Keith Hill and Wolfgang Rübsam have suggested that Art of Fugue for example should be played with the voices independent of each other - each voice with its own phrasing and rhythm and tempo - the job of the keyboard player is to bring them together in an interesting, thrilling, poetic way. If you go to Rübsam’s website you’ll see some discussion of this. Hill and Rübsam are inspired by madrigal performance (they say), but the idea seems to have something in common with things in Cage’s music.

By the end of the second paragraph of Hill's "LISTEN - HEAR - VIEW", I had come to the conclusion that he has little of worth to say, so abandoned reading at that point.

[Mandryka]

By the end of the second paragraph of Hill's "LISTEN - HEAR - VIEW", I had come to the conclusion that he has little of worth to say, so abandoned reading at that point.

Yes, indeed -- but Rubsam's good!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPHuky0YOtg&ab_channel=RiqueBorges

[Serial_Apologist]

That's most thought-povoking, Mandryka. I wonder if that's why Bach and Frescobaldi were Lizzie Lutyens' two favourite composers.

Third and Fourth were Webern and Beethoven 'in that order' as she was keen to stress.

Surely for reasons other than indeterminacy in Lutyens' case, I would have thought? From what I know she never ventured into aleatoricisms in her own work.

[Mandryka]

Bach's Opfer is interesting from the point of view of indeterminacy. It consists of a set of five booklets, there's no consensus as far as I know about why it took this form. Neither is there consensus about the order that the booklets are to be played. Maybe the order is something to be decided by the performers. Furthermore, the canons are presented as puzzles for the musicians to solve, and they are infinite canons. The composer doesn't say where and how they are to end, but leaves it to the performers. There's a wonderfully original solution to this in Gerd Zacher's recording - basically he ends some of the canons leaving the music in the air -- like an unanswered question.

[Mandryka]

Toru Takemitsu. From me flows what you call Time. Indeterminate music. A structure for improvisation as far as I can see.


Totally establishment - created in Carnegie Hall - who had payed for it to be written, played by the likes of the Boston Symphony orchestra. Released on record by Sony. Presumably those Boston Symphony musicians improvised.

Never seen the score, I’m just going on Wikipedia and a couple of performances on Qobuz.


To me it sounds tame and safe. The wiki says it’s supposed to sound improvised - if that’s right, they’ve failed. I don’t see how it could possibly sound improvised actually.

[Bryn]

Toru Takemitsu. From me flows what you call Time. Indeterminate music. A structure for improvisation as far as I can see.


Totally establishment - created in Carnegie Hall - who had payed for it to be written, played by the likes of the Boston Symphony orchestra. Released on record by Sony. Presumably those Boston Symphony musicians improvised.

Never seen the score, I’m just going on Wikipedia and a couple of performances on Qobuz.


To me it sounds tame and safe. The wiki says it’s supposed to sound improvised - if that’s right, they’ve failed. I don’t see how it could possibly sound improvised actually.

[RichardB]

What does it mean for something to "sound improvised"?

[smittims]

I think that's for the speaker to explain, but I suppose it means the hearer forms the impression that the musician was improvising the music. This may be inferred from , peerhaps, a lack of forrmal coherence , though of course the music may have been written fdown and practised . Strictly speaking, I suppose one cannot say for certain which was the case. There have been instances where improvisations have been written down by someone studying a recording: this has been done to recorded improvisations by Elgar and Tournemire, for instance.

Maybe I'm stretching the thread here, but I recall some musicians in the jazz and folk movements who seemed to believe that improvisation is the most essential music making. Derek Bailey wrote a most interesting book on the subject c.1980.

[Joseph K]

What does it mean for something to "sound improvised"?

Good question. I think Charlie Parker's improvisations at their best have a similar kind of logic about them as something one might find in Bach. I think that is more likely when an improvisor is having to negotiate fast-moving harmonies like Parker generally did in his music, in lines based around quavers (though of course he also played ballads) and if the melodic voice-leading of at least some of his lines work out in a way that strongly implies the harmony. That's obviously a very tall order to do while improvising.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7CsuOtidFs

I'm not sure I could separate knowing that someone is improvising from whatever they're playing 'sounding improvised' if that makes sense. What I will say is that while obviously I know everyone is improvising on 'Petits Machins' by Miles Davis, there is a sense that they're improvising in a more heightened way than usual, overstepping the usual through an interconnectedness and concentration that, I would aver, sounds more improvised than other improvised music I've heard. I guess there is that sound of surprise...

This is all idiomatic improv I'm talking about though - but these things probably apply to the non-idiomatic, too.

[Pulcinella]

What does it mean for something to "sound improvised"?

I tend(ed?) to think of improvisation as something the organist did while the choir was processing into place (which in Liverpool Cathedral could take quite a while); not exactly 'doodling' as there was an aim in mind: to end up in the right key for the (unaccompanied) introit. There was a real gift I thought in making it sound improvised (maybe spontaneous?) rather than contrived.

PS: must dig that BBC MM CD out.

[RichardB]

This is all idiomatic improv I'm talking about though - but these things probably apply to the non-idiomatic, too.

Exactly. I think that many people whose listening experience is centred on notated music have a somewhat underdeveloped idea of what "the improvisational method of composition" is capable of. I recall an occasion when, after giving a performance that was freely improvised (in a trio one of whose members I'd never even heard play before the performance), an audience member came up and intended to be complimentary by remarking that the performance "sounded composed", to which my answer was "well actually it was composed, just using a different method to what you're used to".

Takemitsu's From me flows what you call time isn't "indeterminate music" or "a structure for improvisation" but a mostly fully scored work for percussion ensemble and orchestra in which the percussionists are in a few places asked to "improvise" within rather restrictive parameters. (In the early 1960s, Takemitsu wrote a number of pieces which actually indeterminate, like Corona for pianist(s) which is based on graphic notations, but he abandoned this approach not long afterwards.)

[RichardB]

a real gift I thought in making it sound improvised (maybe spontaneous?) rather than contrived.

But, again, is it really possible in principle to say whether something sounds spontaneous or not? Some of Messiaen's organ compositions are based closely on his improvisations. Is it possible to know by hearing them which ones these are? I would say not. Is there really a binary opposition between "spontaneous" and "contrived"?

[Bryn]

I tend(ed?) to think of improvisation as something the organist did while the choir was processing into place (which in Liverpool Cathedral could take quite a while); not exactly 'doodling' as there was an aim in mind: to end up in the right key for the (unaccompanied) introit. There was a real gift I thought in making it sound improvised (maybe spontaneous?) rather than contrived.

PS: must dig that BBC MM CD out.

The Walton performance is pretty good, too.