Avant garde music

[Mandryka]

I think the term avant-garde, as it was originally used, no longer applies to new music today, or it needs a new application.

I think it became most used in relation to the new music produced after 1945 by composers who seemed to turn their backs on what went before and to start again.

If you’re a musician today, the music which “went before” is the stuff that Boulez and Lachenmann and Stockhausen and Ferneyhough and Feldman etc all did. And composers have indeed turned their backs on those sorts of musics. I’ll make two proposals for avant garde composers of our times - John Zorn in Goddard/Spillane and Francisco Lopez in La Selva. Both these composers, in these works, are inspired by values which make their music transcend the mere experimental.

I note that both pieces are not indeterminate.

[RichardB]

Well I was thinking of the programmes in the most prestigious and rich European and US coastal concert halls, places like the Musikverein and the Berlin Philharmoniker.

Yes but in most of those places there's hardly any contemporary music of any kind, let alone "experimental"! (which is not coextensive with "indeterminate")

[Bryn]

Yes but in most of those places there's hardly any contemporary music of any kind, let alone "experimental"! (which is not coextensive with "indeterminate")

Also, it is worth mentioning that the likes of Skempton, Bryars, Nyman and others have all been regarded as, indeed self-identified as, composers of experimental music for some decades. Chris Hobbs and Gavin Bryars were the composers behind the Experimental Music Catalogue set up in 1969 and still going.

[RichardB]

If you’re a musician today, the music which “went before” is the stuff that Boulez and Lachenmann and Stockhausen and Ferneyhough and Feldman etc all did. And composers have indeed turned their backs on those sorts of musics.

I don't think this is really true. Lachenmann, Ferneyhough and Feldman's music is still highly influential on what many young composers are doing. I could give you dozens of examples. What does it mean to "transcend the mere experimental"? Does that mean that for you what's generally called experimental music (which generally coincides with the kinds of music that come under that heading in Nyman's book) is somehow impoverished, or whatever the opposite of "transcendent" is? I wasn't aware of "experimental" having become a term of disapproval. Also I'm not sure that the Berliner Philharmonie would be a suitable venue for performances of work by Zorn or Lopez in any case.

[Mandryka]

I don't think this is really true. Lachenmann, Ferneyhough and Feldman's music is still highly influential on what many young composers are doing. I could give you dozens of examples

I could give dozens of examples too, it just shows that they're drawing from old musics, either because they're derivative or conservatives - like Rihm stood to Schumann back in the 1980s, or Bernhard Lang stands to Schubert and Beethoven and others in the monadology.

What does it mean to "transcend the mere experimental"? Does that mean that for you what's generally called experimental music (which generally coincides with the kinds of music that come under that heading in Nyman's book) is somehow impoverished, or whatever the opposite of "transcendent" is? I wasn't aware of "experimental" having become a term of disapproval.

By experimental music I mean music which is first and foremost exploring what happens if you compose in new ways, maybe specifying new instruments or new notations or seeing what happens if you apply new processes for composing.

By avant garde music I mean music which is inspired by values and ideas about truth and the meaning of life today and here. I use the term that way because that's how the paradigm avant gardists were -- Flaubert, Baudelaire, Manet.


Aaron Cassidy is an example of a composer who seems more experimental than avant garde to me. And maybe Peter Ablinger in those piano transcriptions he made.

Michael Finnissy is an interesting one to think about in this respect, his comment, maybe just a provocation, that his response to Beethoven op 106 is in some sense gay.

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

https://www.artforum.com/music/immortal-homosexual-poets-michael-finnissy-s-hammerklavier-87866

Also I'm not sure that the Berliner Philharmonie would be a suitable venue for performances of work by Zorn or Lopez in any case.

Well I'd buy a ticket!

[RichardB]

By experimental music I mean music which is first and foremost exploring what happens if you compose in new ways, maybe specifying new instruments or new notations or seeing what happens if you apply new processes for composing.

By avant garde music I mean music which is inspired by values and ideas about truth and the meaning of life today and here. I use the term that way because that's how the paradigm avant gardists were -- Flaubert, Baudelaire, Manet.

Is it useful to view those categories as mutually exclusive? One is (to borrow one of Stockhausen's favourite formulations) about the how, the other about the why.

[Mandryka]

Is it useful to view those categories as mutually exclusive? One is (to borrow one of Stockhausen's favourite formulations) about the how, the other about the why.

I don't think they are mutually exclusive at all.

I think there's a way of being where experimental-ness is the means and the ends. Maybe this is the case for Aaron Cassidy, for example. But I may well be doing him a disservice there.

As far as usefulness is concerned, don't forget that Smittims said that he didn't think there was an avant garde today. I think that's not a quirky view, I mean -- I've heard other people say it. I'm just trying to make sense of it, because I expect he knows that experimental music is alive and kicking.

I'm conscious that the two pieces which I felt even slightly inclined to defend as avant garde -- La Selva and Goddard/Spillane -- are twenty years old!

[RichardB]

I don't think they are mutually exclusive at all.

I really can’t work out what it is you’re saying then, not for the first time!

[Mandryka]

I really can’t work out what it is you’re saying then, not for the first time!

I don't think it's difficult. I'm saying they are different concepts. Some composers are experimental and not avant garde, some composers are avant garde and not experimental, some composers are both avant garde and experimental, and some are neither.

[Mandryka]

Some ideas for names

experimental and not avant garde (Cassidy. He's about exploring technique and notation)
avant garde and not experimental (that's Godard/Spillane -- a collage, but what a collage!)
Both avant garde and experimental (La Selva)
neither

[Bryn]

I'm saying they are different concepts. Some composers are experimental and not avant garde, some composers are avant garde and not experimental, some composers are both avant-garde and experimental, and some are neither.

I can identify with this. Back in the late 1960a and into the 1970s there was, among those experimentalists I mixed with, a general outlook that regarded what was seen as 'London Sinfonietta music' as being official, or avant-garde 'new music, as distinct from what those composers who identified with the Scratch Orchestra et al were writing, the latter falling within the experimental music ambit. There was something of a 'them and us' aspect to it, though I actively followed both. Both would sometimes be found in the same programme, such as a Robert Sherlaw Johnson recital I attended at the Purcell Room which included both RSJ's[sic] 2nd Piano Sonata and Hugh Shrapnel's very pared down Memories of Childhood. The latter fell very much within the experimental ethos whereas the RSJ's sonata was well within the avant-garde. A review in Musical Times suggested that Hugh Shrapnel's must have been "a very deprived childhood". Hugh was rather proud of that quip.

[Mandryka]

I'll kill time by having a go at the same in French literature. I'm sure I'm doing Perec and injustice, but . . .

experimental and not avant garde -- Perec in that novel without the e, La Disparition. Just fiddling with words.

avant garde and not experimental -- Michon's Vies minuscules. In a way it's a regular traditional collection of stories, but the nobility of the language to describe the ordinary lives of ordinary people elevates it into something which created a whole new strand in literature, people who followed in its wake. The vision is precisely the ennoblement of the ordinary

Both avant garde and experimental -- Something by Claude Simon, the structure alone makes L'acacia experimental, and the value inspiring it is about the debunking of heroic narratives of war I guess.

neither

[RichardB]

Do not ask who I am and do not ask me to remain the same: leave it to our bureaucrats and our police to see that our papers are in order. At least spare us their morality when we write.

(Michel Foucault, The Order of Things)

[NatBalance]

Have a look at the wiki for indeterminate music and then apply the negative

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indeterminacy_(music)

It’s probably a bit of a vague concept thought, a question of degrees - even scores by Schumann have an element of indeterminacy (Glenn Gould used to say that traditional scores left nothing determined apart from relative pitch! )

Thanks Mandryka. It does seem to be what I suggested. I believe Bach put very little direction, not even whether played piano or forte. Not sure if that's correct.

[smittims]

Bach very rarely indicates tempo or dynamics, and sometimes not even which instrument he wants. Different times, different customs.