Chapters 51 & 52 Cage - Crumb

Copyright © 2020 W. W. Norton & Co., Inc.
Extended Techniques: Crumb
and the New Virtuosity in
America
New Sound Palettes: A Mid-
Twentieth-Century American
Experimentalist
CHAPTER 51 & 52

Experimental and Technological Music

Copyright © 2020, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
New Compositional Techniques: Composer Control
Increased use of 12-tone system
Serialism
Total serialism-expanded further by Pierre Boulez, Luciano Berio, Milton
Babbitt, Karlheinz Stockhausen
Musique Concrète: use of everyday sounds captured and manipulated with tape
recorders
Electronic Music: sounds produced on electronic oscillators; recorded, stored, and
used in compositions
Computer and Mixed Media: use of digital formats to create, manipulate, and
organize sounds into compositions

“I believe composers must forge out of the many influences that play upon them
and never close their ears to any part of the world of sound.” —
Henry Cowell
Important experimenters:
• Henry Cowell (1897–1965)
– non-Western music
– Japan, India, Iran, rural Ireland,
America
– foreign scales
– tone clusters
The Banshee
• Microtonal music
Early Experiments

Electronic Music
Can be sped up, slowed down
Can have other sounds added with editing
Partials of sound filtered out
Order of sounds arranged & altered
Valdimir Ussachensky-founder of Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Laboratory in NY
Electronic Music of West German Radio
Technology-total control by composer
• No performers, no notation, any pitch or combination possible
• Any rhythm, timbre, dynamic level possible
• Any electronically created sound combined with any recorded sound in any way
• Computer programmed in conjunction with other equipment

Electronic Music
Pioneers-Edgard Varese & Karlheinz Stockhausen
Varese-French, lived in US
• 1st work, Ameriques, unusual combo of percussion instruments; Poeme electronique,
World Fair 1958
• Ionisation-37 different percussion instruments played by 13 musicians, Density
21.5(flute)
• Trained in engineering & mathematics
• Contract with Bell Telephone Co. to create machines to synthesize musical sounds
• First to explore magnetic tape recorders’ potential for music making
• Stockhausen- Gesang der Junglinge

Electronic Music
Poéme èlectronique
Poeme electronique
Gesange der Junglinge
Gesang der jungling

New Compositional Techniques: Performer Control
Aleatoric Music: many important performance decisions left to performer, although specific
instructions are given regarding some aspects of music; interdeterminancy
Chance Music: less precise notation than aleatoric music; instructions very general
Silence: forces audience to focus on other aspects of experience
Deck of Cards: shuffle deck, pull cards, numbers and suits determine aspects of music
Throw music on floor
Based on “no such thing as progress”-existential philosophy & Asian religions, things just
“happen”

Early Experiments
I. Early Experiments
A. Mid-twentieth century, fertile musical expansion
1. Henry Cowell (1897–1965)
a. drawn to non-Western sources for music; music of Japan, India, Iran
b. combined Asian instruments with traditional Western ensembles
c. foreign scales harmonized with Western chords
d. piano techniques: tone clusters, plucking of piano strings
2. Harry Partch (1901–1974)
a. microtonal technique: scale of forty-three microtones
b. original instruments: adapted Indian and African instruments
c. focus on melody and timbre

“I thought I could never compose socially important
music. Only if I could invent something new, then
would I be useful to society.”
—John Cage
• American composer
• East Asian philosophy
• Quest for tranquility
• Indeterminacy
• Role of silence:
The Music of John Cage, Part 2

II. The Music of John Cage
A. John Cage (1912–1992)
1. Los Angeles-born composer
2. experimental compositions and writings, leader in postwar
avant-garde
3. student of Henry Cowell, early interest in non-Western scales
4. 1938, invented the “prepared piano”
5. interests: rhythm; opposition between music and noise;
indeterminacy (chance or aleatoric); the role of silence (4´33",
1952)
6. works: orchestral music, works for percussion, prepared piano
works, electronic music, indeterminate works

Chapter 53: John Cage
4’33”
4'33"
Probably the most controversial composition ever written
Said to be 4’33” of silence, but not truly silence
Audience sounds, ambient noise, etc. create the “piece.”
Cage was attempting to get the audience to listen carefully to
sounds around them.

B. Sonatas and Interludes
1. written for prepared piano
a. simulates sounds of Javanese gamelan (orchestra
comprised mostly of metallic percussion instruments)
b. various materials inserted between the strings: nails,
bolts, nuts, screws, bits of rubber, wood, or leather
c. varied effects: nonpitched thump, pitch and timbre
altered
2. focus on timbral effects, rhythmic groupings of sound
3. four groups of four Sonatas, separated by Interludes

C. Listening Guide 40: Cage: Sonata V, from Sonatas and
Interludes (1946–48; first performed, 1949)
1. binary structure (A–A–B–B)
2. ethereal, otherworldly sounds
3. irregular phrase groupings; two-voice texture
4. A section:
a. regular rhythmic movement
b. upper line sustained, moving lower line

5. B section:
a. quicker tempo, more disjunct and accented
b. rests break music into sections
c. closing: sustained dissonance

• Sixteen pieces for the
prepared piano
• Javanese gamelan
• Meditative
Cage: Sonata V, from Sonatas and Interludes
(Listening Guide)

Sonata V from Sonatas & Interludes
Sonata 5

John Cage Gathering Wild Greens--1971

“Music [is] a system of proportions in the service of a
spiritual impulse.” —George Crumb
• American composer
• Emotional, dramatic, expressive
music
• University of Pennsylvania
• Federico García Lorca
The New Virtuosity of the Modern Age
George Crumb (b. 1929) and Avant-Garde Virtuosity

Avant-Garde Virtuosity, Part 1
I. Avant-Garde Virtuosity
A. George Crumb (b. 1929)
1. American avant-garde composer
2. education: Mason College of Fine Arts, University of Illinois, University
of Michigan
3. teaching positions: Colorado, New York, University of Pennsylvania
4. Pulitzer Prize in 1968, Echoes of Time and the River

“I feel that the essential meaning of this poetry is concerned with the
most primary things: Life, death, love, the smell of the earth, the sounds
of the wind and the sea.” —George Crumb
• Song, from Madrigals, Book II
• Scored for soprano, piccolo, and metallic percussion
instruments
• Text: Frederico García Lorca poem
• Crumb alternated two refrains; image of death
• Ominous words, downward melodic line: muerto (dead),
negro (black), frio (cold), cuchillo (knife)
The New Virtuosity of the Modern Age
Crumb’s Caballito negro

5. influences: art music tradition, folk themes, non-Western
sounds
6. musical style: contemporary techniques, expressive ends
a. new sonorities and timbres
b. Sprechstimme (spoken melody)
c. quarter tones
d. “white” tones
e. extra-musical content, theatrical concepts
7. works: orchestral, vocal, and chamber music; four books
of madrigals; music for amplified piano

B. Caballito negro (Little Black Horse)
1. last song from Madrigals, Book II
2. soprano with metallic percussion instruments and flute
or piccolo
3. voice as virtuosic instrument
4. text: Frederico García Lorca poem (Spanish)
a. extracts two refrains, alternates between them
b. images of death
5. phrase endings: descending, ominous words

C. Listening Guide 41: Crumb: Caballito negro (Little Black
Horse) (1965)
1. three-part form (A–B–A′)
2. regular pulsations, no sense of meter
3. extended technique: flutter-tonguing, glissandos,
whispering
4. opening: pounding rhythm, piccolo and percussion,
disjunct vocal line
5. return of A section: vocalist neighs like a horse

Caballito negro (Little Black Horse)
Caballito negro

Credits
This concludes the Lecture PowerPoint presentation for “The Enjoyment of Music, 4th Edition, Chapter 51: New Sound Palettes:
A Mid-Twentieth-Century American Experimentalist”
For more resources, please visit https://digital.wwnorton.com/enjmusic4ess

Chapters 51 & 52 Cage - Crumb

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