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Indeterminacy (music)
Indeterminacy is a composing approach in which some aspects of a musical work are left open to chance or to the interpreter's free choice. John Cage, a pioneer of indeterminacy, defined it as "the ability of a piece to be performed in substantially different ways". The earliest significant use of music indeterminacy features is found in many of the compositions of American composer Charles Ives in the early 20th century. Henry Cowell adopted Ives's ideas during the 1930s, in works allowing players to arrange the fragments of music in a number of different possible sequences. Beginning in the early 1950s, the term came to refer to the (mostly American) movement which grew up around Cage. This group included the other members of the New York School. In Europe, following the introduction of the expression "aleatory music" by Werner Meyer-Eppler, the French composer Pierre Boulez was largely responsible for popularizing the term. Definition Describing indeterminacy, composer John C ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Cage
John Milton Cage Jr. (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American composer and music theorist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde. Critics have lauded him as one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. He was also instrumental in the development of modern dance, mostly through his association with choreographer Merce Cunningham, who was also Cage's romantic partner for most of their lives. Cage is perhaps best known for his 1952 composition ''4′33″'', which is performed in the absence of deliberate sound; musicians who present the work do nothing aside from being present for the duration specified by the title. The content of the composition is not "four minutes and 33 seconds of silence," as is often assumed, but rather the sounds of the environment heard by the audience during performance. The work's challenge t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stochastic Music
Stochastic (, ) refers to the property of being well described by a random probability distribution. Although stochasticity and randomness are distinct in that the former refers to a modeling approach and the latter refers to phenomena themselves, these two terms are often used synonymously. Furthermore, in probability theory, the formal concept of a '' stochastic process'' is also referred to as a ''random process''. Stochasticity is used in many different fields, including the natural sciences such as biology, chemistry, ecology, neuroscience, and physics, as well as technology and engineering fields such as image processing, signal processing, information theory, computer science, cryptography, and telecommunications. It is also used in finance, due to seemingly random changes in financial markets as well as in medicine, linguistics, music, media, colour theory, botany, manufacturing, and geomorphology. Etymology The word ''stochastic'' in English was originally used ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Process Music
Process music is music that arises from a process. It may make that process audible to the listener, or the process may be concealed. Primarily begun in the 1960s, diverse composers have employed divergent methods and styles of process. "A 'musical process' as Christensen defines it is a highly complex dynamic phenomenon involving audible structures that evolve in the course of the musical performance ... 2nd order audible developments, i.e., audible developments within audible developments". These processes may involve specific systems of choosing and arranging notes through pitch and time, often involving a long term change with a limited amount of musical material, or transformations of musical events that are already relatively complex in themselves. Steve Reich defines process music not as, "the process of composition but rather pieces of music that are, literally, processes. The distinctive thing about musical processes is that they determine all the note-to-note (sound-to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Treatise (music)
''Treatise'' is a musical composition by British composer Cornelius Cardew (1936–81). Summary Written between 1963 and 1967, ''Treatise'' is a graphic musical score comprising 193 pages of lines, symbols, and various geometric or abstract shapes that largely eschew conventional musical notation. Implicit in the title is a reference to the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein, which was of particular inspiration to Cardew in composing the work. The score is not accompanied by any explicit instructions to the performers in how to perform the work, or what sound-producing means are to be used. Although the bottom of each page has two five-line musical staves, this is apparently not meant to suggest piano or other keyboard instrument(s), only to indicate that the graphic elements are musical and not purely artistic in character. Although the score allows for absolute interpretive freedom (no one interpretation will sound like another), the work is not normally played spontaneously, as Car ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cornelius Cardew
Cornelius Cardew (7 May 193613 December 1981) was an English experimental music composer, and founder (with Howard Skempton and Michael Parsons) of the Scratch Orchestra, an experimental performing ensemble. He later rejected experimental music, explaining why he had "discontinued composing in an avantgarde idiom" in his own programme notes to his Piano Album 1973. Biography Cardew was born in Winchcombe, Gloucestershire. He was the second of three sons whose parents were both artists—his father was the potter Michael Cardew. The family moved to Wenford Bridge Pottery Cornwall a few years after his birth where he was first nurtured as a chorister at Canterbury Cathedral, and later at The King's School, Canterbury which had evacuated to the Carlyon Bay Hotel for the war. His musical career thus began as a chorister. From 1953 to 1957, Cardew studied piano, cello, and composition at the Royal Academy of Music in London. Career Having won a scholarship to study at the recently es ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Graphic Notation (music)
Graphic notation (or graphic score) is the representation of music through the use of visual symbols outside the realm of traditional music notation. Graphic notation became popular in the 1950s, and can be used either in combination with or instead of traditional music notation.Pryer, Anthony. "Graphic Notation." ''The Oxford Companion to Music'', edited by Alison Latham. ''Oxford Music Online''. 12 April 2011 Graphic notation was influenced by contemporary visual art trends in its conception, bringing stylistic components from modern art into music. Composers often rely on graphic notation in experimental music, where standard musical notation can be ineffective. Other uses include pieces where an Aleatoric music, aleatoric or Indeterminacy (music), undetermined effect is desired. One of the earliest pioneers of this technique was Earle Brown, who, along with John Cage, sought to liberate performers from the constraints of notation and make them active participants in the creation ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
In C
''In C'' is a musical piece composed by Terry Riley in 1964 for an indefinite number of performers. He suggests "a group of about 35 is desired if possible but smaller or larger groups will work". A series of short melodic fragments, ''In C'' is often cited as the first minimalist music, minimalist composition (though La Monte Young's drone compositions preceded it by several years, ''In C'' had a greater impact on public consciousness). The piece was first performed by Steve Reich, Jon Gibson (minimalist musician), Jon Gibson, Pauline Oliveros, Stuart Dempster, Morton Subotnick and others at the San Francisco Tape Music Center. It received its first recorded release in 1968 on Columbia Records, CBS Records. Subsequent performances have been recorded many times since. In 2022, the 1968 LP recording of ''In C'' was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the United States National Recording Registry as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.". ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Terry Riley
Terrence Mitchell "Terry" Riley (born June 24, 1935) is an American composer and performing musician best known as a pioneer of the minimalist school of composition. Influenced by jazz and Indian classical music, his music became notable for its innovative use of repetition, tape music techniques, and delay systems. His best known works are the 1964 composition '' In C'' and the 1969 LP ''A Rainbow in Curved Air'', both considered landmarks of minimalism and important influences on experimental music, rock, and contemporary electronic music. Raised in California, Riley began studying composition and performing solo piano in the 1950s. He befriended and collaborated with composer La Monte Young, and later became involved with the San Francisco Tape Music Center. A three-record deal with CBS in the late 1960s, resulting in an LP recording of ''In C'' (1968) and ''A Rainbow in Curved Air'' (1969), brought his work to wider audiences. In 1970, he began intensive studies under Hin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Zyklus
''Zyklus für einen Schlagzeuger'' (English: Cycle for a Percussionist) is a composition by Karlheinz Stockhausen, assigned Number 9 in the composer's catalog of works. It was composed in 1959 at the request of Wolfgang Steinecke as a test piece for a percussion competition at the Darmstadt Summer Courses, where it was premièred on 25 August 1959 by Christoph Caskel. It quickly became the most frequently played solo percussion work, and "inspired a wave of writing for percussion". Instrumentation The work is written for one percussionist playing a marimba, vibraphone (motor off), 4 tom-toms, snare drum, güiro (one or several, if necessary), 2 African log drums (each producing 2 pitches), 2 suspended cymbals of differing sizes, hi-hat, 4 almglocken (suspended, clappers removed), a suspended "bunch of bells" (preferably Indian bells or tambourine mounted on a stand), at least 2 high pitched triangles, gong (with raised boss in center) and tam-tam. Form The title of ''Zyklus'' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Karlheinz Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen (; 22 August 1928 – 5 December 2007) was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. He is known for his groundbreaking work in electronic music, for introducing controlled chance ( aleatory techniques) into serial composition, and for musical spatialization. He was educated at the Hochschule für Musik Köln and the University of Cologne, later studying with Olivier Messiaen in Paris and with Werner Meyer-Eppler at the University of Bonn. One of the leading figures of the Darmstadt School, his compositions and theories were and remain widely influential, not only on composers of art music, but also on jazz and popular music. His works, composed over a period of nearly sixty years, eschew traditional forms. In addition to electronic music—both with and without live performers—they range from miniatures for musical boxes through works for s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Roman Haubenstock-Ramati
Roman Haubenstock-Ramati ( he, רוֹמן האובּנשׁטוֹק-רָמָתִי; 27 February 1919 – 3 March 1994) was a composer and music editor who worked in Kraków, Tel Aviv and Vienna. Life Haubenstock-Ramati was born in Kraków. He studied composition, music theory, violin and philosophy there from 1934 to 1938, and in Lemberg from 1939 to 1941. Among his teachers were Artur Malawski and Józef Koffler. From 1947 to 1950 he was head of the music department of Kraków Radio, and from 1950 to 1956 he was director of the State Music Library in Tel Aviv. In 1957 he was awarded a six-month stipend for the Academy for musique concrète. From 1957 to 1968 he was an editor of new music for Universal Edition in Vienna. In addition he gave guest lectures and composition seminars in Tel Aviv, Stockholm, Darmstadt, Bilthoven (the Netherlands) and Buenos Aires, and from 1973 held a professorship at the Musikhochschule in Vienna. He died in Vienna in 1994. Haubenstock-Ramati was also ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jeux Vénitiens
''Jeux vénitiens'' (French for ''Venetian Games'') is a 1961 composition by Polish people, Polish composer Witold Lutosławski, under commission from the Krakow Philharmonic. It premiered April 21, 1961 in Venice. Another performance occurred at Warsaw Autumn in 1961. Inspired by John Cage, ''Jeux vénitiens'' is notable for its use of limited aleatoric music, aleatory techniques. In the piece, Lutosławski determined the overall form and harmonic boundaries, yet he left the realization of the exact contrapuntal and harmonic details up to chance in performance. The indeterminate character produces aleatoric counterpoint'','' which is a type of sound mass. The score of the first movement contains eight boxed musical events labeled A-B-C-D-E-F-G-H. Sections A, C, E, and G function as a refrain. Four percussion instruments signal the beginning of these sections, which are composed of lively un-metered lines played by woodwinds. Each subsequent refrain adds instrumentation. Thus, sec ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
