Category Archives: 20th- and 21st-century music

by | July 11, 2016 · 6:00 am

Jazz and imaginary folklore

 

L’Association à la Recherche d’un Folklore Imaginaire (ARFI) is a musical collective founded in 1977 by six musicians, including three who had previously formed Le Free Jazz Workshop.

The group now consists of 20 full-time musicians and comprises numerous small groups. Its multidisciplinary performances, which may include jugglers, films, pyrotechnics, and feasting, are designed to appeal to all five senses.

ARFI’s largest ensemble, the 12-piece La Marmite Infernale, began in 1978 as a free-blowing big band but has since expanded to perform compositions.  Smaller groups such as the Workshop de Lyon, É-Guijecri, and Apollo are improvising chamber ensembles, in the traditional ARFI style, while the newer L’Effet Vapeur and 32 Janvier perform higher-tech and harder edged pieces with distinctly hip-hop sensibilities.

This according to “Imaginary folklore and the infernal cooking pot: An introduction to Lyon’s ARFI” by Jim Laniok (Coda magazine 300–301 [December 2001] pp. 29, 32).

Below, an excerpt from a performance by L’Effet Vapeur.

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by | June 2, 2016 · 6:00 am

Musique concrète with grapefruit

grapefruit

Musique concrète has evolved a great deal since its beginnings in the late 1940s; experiments with musique concrète that are presently occurring within the world of electronic dance music (EDM) and other musical genres are quite different from Pierre Schaeffer’s original work.

In 2013 Brian Speise was composing credits music for a short zombie film and thought that the project would be perfect for experimenting with musique concrète. This was not a work of dance music at all, but it had elements of electronic music that producers of EDM can appreciate. Balloons and a grapefruit were brought into play.

This according to Mr. Speise’s “From grapefruit to plastic surgery: Experiments in contemporary musique concrete” (Dancecult VI/1 [2014]).

Above, the author records a grapefruit peel with a contact microphone; you can hear the sound here.

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by | May 26, 2016 · 6:00 am

Moondog makes it big

moondog

Louis T. Hardin, known to all as Moondog, was celebrated among New Yorkers for two decades as a mysterious and extravagantly clothed blind street performer; but he went on to win acclaim in Europe as an avant-garde composer, conducting orchestras before royalty.

From the late 1940s until the early 1970s Moondog stood like a sentinel on Avenue of the Americas near 54th Street. Rain or shine, he wore a homemade robe, sandals, a flowing cape, and a horned Viking helmet, and clutched a long homemade spear.

Most of the passers-by who dismissed him as “the Viking of Sixth Avenue” and offered him contributions for copies of his music and poetry were unaware that he had recorded his music on the CBS, Prestige, Epic, Angel, and Mars labels.

Although many New Yorkers assumed that he had died after he vanished from his customary post in 1974, Moondog had actually been invited to perform his music in West Germany and decided to stay.

In his later years he produced at least five albums in Europe, and regularly performed his compositions with chamber and symphony orchestras before tony audiences in German cities as well as in Paris and Stockholm.

This according to “Louis (Moondog) Hardin, 83, musician, dies” by Glenn Collins (The New York times CXLVIII/51,643 [12 September 1999] p. I:47).

Today would have been Moondog’s 100th birthday! Below, his 1971 album Moondog 2.

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by | May 12, 2016 · 6:00 am

Meet the gamelatron

The gamelatron, a robotic gamelan built by the sound artist Aaron Taylor Kuffner, has appeared regularly at events such as Burning Man, raves, and exhibitions.

Breaching the conceptual divides between instrument and art installation, performance and recording, sculptor and composer, and prosthesis and robot, the gamelatron is a singular site for investigating imaginaries of the human, machine, and media.

This according to “Atmosphere as a concept for ethnomusicology: Comparing the gamelatron and gamelan” by Andrew McGraw (Ethnomusicology LX/1 [winter 2016] pp. 125–147.

Below, the gamelatron in action.

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by | May 10, 2016 · 6:00 am

Milton Babbitt’s twelve-tone tango

 

Milton Babbitt’s It takes twelve to tango (1984) has a subdivision series that unfolds in two dimensions: globally in the first beat of the 2/4 meter, and locally in the second beat. Though the eight subdivision series expressed in the second beat mostly proceed at the rate of one subdivision per measure, occasionally a subdivision will be repeated in two consecutive measures.

Attempts to interpret these duplicated subdivisions reveal intersections between the subdivision series and a wide variety of other aspects of the piece, including the pitch-class array, hypermeter, and registral gestures. These non-systematic explanations illuminate the meaning and power of the systematic aspects of Babbitt’s music.

This according to “Duplicated subdivisions in Babbitt’s It takes twelve to tango” by Zachary Bernstein (Music theory online XXVII/2 [July 2011]).

Today would have been Babbitt’s 100th birthday! Below, Edward Neeman does the twelve-tone tango.

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by | April 24, 2016 · 6:00 am

Elliott Carter studies online

carter studies

Elliott Carter studies online, an open-access journal devoted to the music, life, and times of the American composer Elliott Carter, posted its inaugural issue in 2016.

The journal welcomes submissions on a wide range of topics—there are no restrictions on disciplinary perspective or format—and possibilities include history, theory, performance practice, personal essays, aesthetics, biography, criticism, analysis, and media.

Performers, composers, musicologists, historians, theorists, and “friends of Elliott” are encouraged to submit full-length articles for anonymous peer review, as well as short essays and notes, commentary, analytical vignettes, oral history, reviews, and media. Submissions may be specifically about Elliott Carter and his music or may focus on broader topics of relevance to Carter Studies, such as music and politics, music and philosophy, music and poetry, or theoretical work that bears on Carter’s music.

Below, Carter’s Variations for orchestra, the subject of one of the articles in the first issue.

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by | April 11, 2016 · 6:00 am

Ginastera and Argentine traditions

 

Three categories of Argentine traditional elements are evident in Alberto Ginastera’s sonata for guitar, op. 47.

Characteristics of the criollo guitar tradition and of the guitar itself play important roles in the construction of the piece. Elements of the andino cantos de caja, the baguala, and the vidala are used in the development of important thematic material as well. Finally, the malambo and other criollo dances generate the rhythms of the energetic closing movement.

This according to Alberto Ginastera’s use of Argentine folk elements in the sonata for guitar, op. 47 by Mark Grover Basinski, a dissertation accepted by the University of Arizona in 1994.

Today is Ginastera’s 100th birthday! Below, Manuel Espinás performs the sonata.

BONUS: The composer with one of his more temperamental critics (click to enlarge).

Ginastera

 

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by | March 11, 2016 · 6:00 am

Carl Ruggles’s consistent inconstancy

Carl Ruggles (Thomas Hart Benton 1934)

Carl Ruggles’s œuvre, although small, is powerful, finely crafted, and intensely individual; his compositions are not easily mistaken for those of any other composer. An individuality so audibly recognizable points to distinctive musical characteristics and procedures.

A pervasive theme in Ruggles’s music is the tension between consistent compositional procedures and the composer’s determination not to use them systematically. This consistent inconstancy is integral both to Ruggles’s compositional method and to his aesthetic.

This according to A vast simplicity: The music of Carl Ruggles by Stephen P. Slottow (Hillsdale: Pendragon Press, 2009).

Today is Ruggles’s 140th birthday! Above, a 1934 portrait by his friend Thomas Hart Benton; below, Christoph von Dohnányi conducts the Cleveland Orchestra in his celebrated Sun-treader.

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by | January 22, 2016 · 6:00 am

Henri Dutilleux’s evolving aesthetics

 

Henri Dutilleux was a unique musical figure of the 20th and 21st centuries; his music is defined by his great sense of lyricism and meticulous control, which underwent much thought and a gradual sense of change over the course of his career.

Dutilleux inevitably acquired a wide mix of contemporary influences, which added to his poetic vision. His music appears to be a sophisticated understatement, yet at the same time there is an expressive depth and mystery that sets his works apart from any particular musical movement of his time.

This according to “Remembering a musical era: Henri Dutilleux in conversation” by Janet Obi-Keller (Tempo LXIX/273 [July 2015] pp. 12–19).

Today would have been Dutilleux’s 100th birthday! Below, Renaud Capuçon performs his violin concerto L’arbre des songes (1985).

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by | January 12, 2016 · 6:00 am

Morton Feldman’s “The viola in my life”

 

Morton Feldman’s four compositions with the title The viola in my life comprise a series-like cycle.

Unlike his earlier Intermissions, this series is constituted less through compositional and representational procedures than through small pregnant melodic objects that are assembled montage-like in the solo viola part over a homogeneous sonic background; these formal strategies show parallels to the combine paintings of Robert Rauschenberg.

This according to Morton Feldman: The viola in my life (1970–71) by Oliver Wiener (Saarbrücken: Pfau-Verlag, 1996).

Today would have been Feldman’s 90th birthday! Above, the composer in 1976; below, a performance of The viola in my life 2.

Related post: Morton Feldman and Persian carpets

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