Download listen! - Moodle

Chapter 22:
The Late Twentieth
Century
Modernism in
Music: The Second
Phase
Key Terms
Serialism
New sound materials
Electronic music
Chance (aleatoric)
music
Multiphonics
Musique concrète
Sampling
Synthesizers
Computer music
Late Twentieth Century
Timeline
The Late Twentieth Century
21 years separated two cataclysmic wars
• Extravagant experimentation no longer seemed
appropriate after World War I
• Move toward abstraction, standards, & norms
• Stravinsky’s Neoclassicism & Schoenberg’s
serialism were efforts to achieve order
World War II even more devastating
• Bombings of Pearl Harbor, London, Dresden, &
Tokyo
• Mass murders in concentration camps
• Atomic bombs over Hiroshima & Nagasaki
Modernism in Music:
The Second Phase
Modernism reemerged with a vengeance
• Old ways of thinking created this mess
• Time for radical new approaches
• New uses of color, rhythm, texture, & form
Two contradictory tendencies—
Intellectual, constructive techniques
• Inspired by serialism, but going far beyond
• Efforts to “serialize” rhythm, color, dynamics
Emergence of chance techniques
• Questioned past assumptions about music
New Sound Materials (1)
Insatiable demand for new sounds
• The orchestra now seemed stiff, antiquated
Composers explored many possibilities
• New ways of using old instruments
• Use of nonmusical sounds & noises
• Sounds produced through electronic means
New virtuosity required of performers
• Singers had to hiss, grunt, click, laugh, cry
• Pianists plucked or hit strings with mallets
• Clarinets learned to play multiphonics
New Sound Materials (2)
Percussion instruments came to the fore
• Inspired by Bartók, jazz, & other styles
• Any sounds & noises are possible in
percussion music
• Marimbas, xylophones, gongs, bells, cymbals,
etc. became standard in the postwar era
Wartime technologies offered many new
possibilities
• Electronic music on a large scale was possible
for the first time
Electronic Music
Only a few pre-war electronic instruments
• Theremin, ondes Martenot, Hammond organ
Postwar technological explosion
• Advent of magnetic tape for sound recording,
storage, & playback
New technologies defined each new stage
in the progress of electronic music
• 1950s – Magnetic tape & musique concrète
• 1960s – Transistors & the synthesizer age
• 1980s – The MIDI protocol & computer music
Musique concrète
First style of electronic music
• Begun by Pierre Schaeffer in 1948
Music made of sounds & noises
• Traffic, factories, trains, airplanes, etc.
• Avoided “musical” & electronic sounds
Used tape recorder as compositional tool
Composers manipulated recorded sounds
• Cutting & splicing, changing speed, tape loops
Lives on today through sampling
Synthesizers
German electronic studios led the way
• The first electronically generated compositions
were created by manipulating oscillators
1950s saw the first synthesizers
• Impractically large & expensive before the
advent of transistors
1960s voltage-controlled synthesizers
• New instruments created by Moog & Buchla
• Now anyone could afford an electronic studio
• They soon grew in sophistication
Computer Music
The computer as a musical tool
• 1955 – 1st computer-composed work (Hiller)
• Late 1950s – 1st computer sound synthesis
• 1983 – MIDI protocol adopted in 1983
MIDI revolution changed everything
• Computers can now perform, record, edit,
notate, print, synthesize, & reproduce music
• They can process sequenced and digitally
recorded music
• They can even interact with live musicians
On the Boundaries of Time
Postwar modernists also rethought time
How long can a composition be?
• 45 seconds? 25 minutes? 15 hours?
How can sounds relate to each other in
time?
• Connected or disjointed? Fast or slow paced?
What rate of change?
How does time feel as it passes?
• Fast? Slow? Intense? Hypnotic?
Webern, Five Orchestral
Pieces, IV
Only 6 measures & half a minute long!
• Whole piece can be shown on a single line
• Disconnected registers, colors, rhythms
• A pointillistic work – each note acquires great
significance
• A short time segment of very high intensity
Riley, In C
Length varies – often
about 45 minutes
Score is 53 short
motives on one page
Each performer
repeats each motive
over and over – as
often as they like
Slow, gradual rate of
change as the music
becomes more
polyphonic
Chance music, yet
early minimalist
A long time segment
of low intensity
Chance Music
Compositions in which some or many
musical elements are left to chance
• Decided by the performers as they perform
• Or decided by composer through chance
operations (dice, I Ching, etc.)
• For In C, Riley did not specify interactions
between performers or overall length
Chance composers question the most
basic assumptions about time
• Must musical time be linear & goal-directed?
• Do we ever really experience time that way?