Leereenheid 8

Music after 1945
 Technological rather than artistic
development
 Greater communication between composers –
accelerated pace of music change

Music after 1945
 Altered assumptions about composition,
performance & listening
 Creation of new medium – electronic music

The Long-playing Record & tape
recorder

recorder
 Inventions became commercially available late 1940s
 Transformed nature of music experience
 Today’s use of amplification & electric instruments in
live performance
 Growth of TV & radio

recorder
 Later development of Compact-disc, videocasette
recorder (VCR) & personal stereo
 Recordings, elect. amplification, & even electronic
instruments known before 1940s
 Date as far back as 1877:
 Thomas Edison – cylinder phonograph
 Unknown potential of recorded sound – alter musical
experience

recorder
 LP records & tapes simply vehicles for preservation &
transmission of concert music
 BUT, enormous impact on composers

recorder
 Accelerated development of music:
• More interaction between composers
• Improved communications & transportation
• Greater access to scores
• Presence of recordings

The tape recording medium
 Composers now with virtually unlimited access to
variety of musical stimuli
 Also works of fellow artists available
 Ease of storage & editing – tape recorder

 Global sharing of new works within matter of days of
1st performance
 Stylistic development influential before even accepted
by listeners

 Also rekindled interest in works of:
 Bach
 Vivaldi (& other Baroque composers)
 Berlioz
 Bruckner
 Ethnic & folk musics
 Renaissance motets & masses
 20th century ‘classics’ – Satie,
Hindermith, Stravinsky, Bartok & more

 Recording industry:
 Exposed listeners to greater range of music styles
 Historically, ethnically & geographically
 Composers could take advantage of audience’s broad
listening experience

Changes in listener perception
 Creative artists realized recordings could be used
to compose music in new ways:
 Methods which had not been possible before
 Resembled development in visual arts - photography

 1930s:
 Ernst Toch & Paul Hindermith
 Experimented with distorting recorded sounds
 Mixing of sound on variable-speed turntables

 Experimentation with technology:
 Records played backwards
 Scratches made into grooves to create sound of repeated
fragments
 John Cage – Imaginary landscape No. 1
 Variable Turntables used as performance instruments in
chamber ensemble

 After WW2:
 Composers used unique features of recording &
playback
 Electronic / tape music composition
 Originally neutral perception of recording’s impact on
music appreciation changed – why?

 Reconsideration of essentials of music
performance:
 Traditional association with visual stimuli
 Theatrical gesture
 Acoustics of performance space
 Immediacy of ‘real time’

 Cage conceived Landscape No. 1 with radio
broadcast in mind
 Recognized that loudspeaker performance /
broadcast of chamber work = new possibilities
of listening
 Recorded music = music

 New ideas of ‘performance’:
 Visual stimuli
 Physical setting of original,
‘real’ performance
 = eliminated
 New audience – sound
designed for cathedrals / 18th
century drawing rooms can be
listened to in kitchens & cars

 New concept of sound:
 Has sound become sole focus? Sound = unchanged?

 New medium has altered sound itself
 Balances & timbres can be altered by mic placement
/ broadcast
 Record or tape – succession of sounds may be
artificial construction
 Edited ‘takes’

 Spontaneity of live performance ‘lost’
 Live performance in concert hall – subject to level of
focus (e.g. daydreaming)
 Loudspeaker performance can be ‘controlled’
 Single performance can be listened to multiple times
 ‘Fixed’ in time like visual art

 Control of recorded sound:
 Order of movements can be changed
 Sections of work can be repeated
 Listener in unique position of ‘performing’ record
or ‘composing’ new work from isolated fragments
out of existing

 Musical performance indistinguishable from
electronic illusion
 Form, content, duration, direction = alterable
 Logic of musical continuity in Western concert
tradition removed

 Fadeouts of song endings
 Instant cuts to other tunes
 Directionality of sound determined by loudspeaker
placement
 ‘Look’ of sounding
objects changed –
electronic instruments

 New instruments:
 Theremin (1920): Leon Theremin playing his own
instrument
 Jason Hou – (2010-2012) Alphasphere

 Composers:
 Shaped music in accordance to changed perception
of sound, performance & listening
 Attempt to create spontaneous situations – cannot
be duplicated
 Improvisation
 New means to reassert
focus of visual

 Music created which will benefit from
recordable form:
 Highly complex sound relationships
 Repeated hearing required for comprehension
 Music since 1940’s exploits new perception of
performance

New concepts & tools
 New musical concepts:
 Pitch logic
 Time
 Sound colour
 Texture
 Process
 Performance ritual
 Parody (Historicism)

 Pitch Logic:
 Western music, by definition, involved 12 notes of
chromatic scale
 Since Wagner, Debussy & others began to move beyond
these principles – more radical experimentation
 John Cage, Henry Cowell & Oliver Messiaen – unique
approaches

 Pitch Logic
 What is meant with ‘pitch logic’?
 “Manipulation / design of pitches & intervals

 Pitch Logic:
 Strict 12-tone procedures used by Anton Webern in
Piano Variations, Op. 27
 Traditional hierarchies of scale & key centre
replaced by a row & its
permutations
 Serialism – subject of
work = pitch logic

 Pitch Logic:
 Anton Webern: Piano Variations, Op. 27

 Pitch Logic
 Henry Cowell – innovative use of inner-string piano
sonorities & keyboard clusters
 Pitch not as important
 Messiaen’s Quartet for the end of time
 Pitches form scales
 Scales = unusual
 Non-directional, non-functional cycles & sequences

 Time:
 Composers – new ways of determining how pitches or
sounds located in time
 Music from 1600 – 1900: rhythmic patterns reliant on
unchanging meter

 Time:
 Charles Ives: Unanswered Question
 Opening devoid of meter
 Entire work = timeless, spacious quality

 Time - Charles Ives: Unanswered Question:
 Against a background of slow, quiet strings representing
"The Silence of the Druids", a solo trumpet poses "The
Perennial Question of Existence”
 Woodwind quartet of "Fighting Answerers" tries vainly
to provide an answer, growing more frustrated and
dissonant until they give up
 The three groups of instruments perform in
independent tempos and are placed separately on the
stage—the strings offstage.

 Time:
 Messiaen – Quartet for the end of time
 Isorhythmic relationship between time (rhythm) & pitch
 Both aspects = revolving in different orbits (timeless)

 Time:
 Webern Piano Variations – conveys expression of
compressed time
 Music locked in ‘fast forward’

 Time:
 Complex meters – 7/16, 11/32, 6/4+3/8
 Changing meters
 Irrational subdivisions of beat(units of 7 or 11)
 Spontaneity – performers encouraged to take decisions
about placement of rhythms in time

 Sound Colour:
 Many composers turned to sound colour as primary field
of exploration
 Unanswered Question – extramusical program focuses
on timbral contrasts among 3 ‘forces’
 Timbre articulates form

 Sound Colour:
 Unique sounds created with trad. Instruments
 Webern – Piano Variations
 Unfamiliar playing styles – “extended thechniques”

 Sound Colour:
 Unique playing styles also derived from jazz & rock
 Amplified instruments
 Electronic modification – e.g. Vocoder
 Instruments from other cultures – sitar & koto etc.

 Sound Colour:
 Use of non-musical sound
 Birdcalls, motors, running water, explosives
 Amplified electronically
 Acoustically modified
 Sampled & altered digitally
 Variety of tape editing techniques

 Texture:
 Usually characterised in ‘pictorial / tactile’ terms
 Heavy, light, dense, transparent, busy, simple
 Texture now given role sometimes more NB than pitch /
time

 Texture: Unanswered Question – 3 levels of activity
seem to exist in separate worlds = juxtaposition more
than polyphonic whole

 Texture:
 Factors such as time, sound colour & texture seem
independent
 But, one exerts effect on other – textural possibilities
influenced by approach to time
 Unlimited degree of rhythmic freedom in individual
parts = huge range of contrapuntal textures
 John Cage 4’33” – no texture

 Process:
 New processes of composition
 E.g. Unanswered Question: quasitheatric roles
determined process
 Piano Variations – pitch, rhythm, register, articulation,
dynamics related to asymmetrical 12-tone row
 Cage’s Imaginary Landscape No. 1 – rhythmic units to
overall form based on no. 16

 Process:
 One particular trend after WW2 – to treat composition
as problem solving

 Performance Ritual
 For concertgoers –
music performed on
stage (space set apart
from audience)
 Audience members
may converse & applaud
only at specific times
 Artistic sociological
ritual

 NB – visual aspect
 Piano Variations – breath-taking to see pianist’s agility
with “extended technique” used

 Other composers who wished to escape trad. concert
format
 New relationships between composer, performer,
audience
 Performers surround audience or vice versa
 Unanswered Question – wide spatial placement of
performers

 Audience may be asked to participate – perform,
improvise or even compose part of work
 Members of audience may be encouraged to come & go
as they please

 Audience may converse with performers – openly
confess approval / disapproval
 Unconventional performance spaces – streets, public
buildings etc.

 Time of performance – may begin during any time of
day or night
 Any length (even months or years!)
 Beginning or ending not needed
 Multimedia performance – interaction between music &
other arts

 Parody (Historicism)
 Parody not only a reference to satire
 Larger sense – refashioning of existent material
 Related to broader concept of ‘historicism’
 When entire styles are altered and given a new ‘guise’

 Parody & Historicism
 Composer – historical awareness created in works
 Reference serve as homage to styles
 Unanswered Question:
 Strings always triadic & constant (serene, language of
church music)
 Flutes = unstable (language of late 19th century dramatic
music)

 Piano Variations – also use of historicism:
 19th century ‘recital piece’
 2nd movement = strict binary dance form of Baroque era
(concept of terraced dynamics also used)

 Messiaen’s Quartet for the end of time – uses meditative
Indian music & connects works to scripture
 Cage – draws upon world of visual art & also Indian
mysticism
 Webern – European tradition of abstract art music
 Ives - philosophy

Leereenheid 8

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