Quote:
Originally Posted by grindy
Stockhausen does have aleatoric pieces. Although he might have disliked the term "experimental" describing his work, it wouldn't be completely out of place.
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True. I'm pretty sure every History of Music Textbook opens the section on "Aleatoric" music with something like. "So there's the dude Stockhausen who wrote a piece called "Klavierstuck" that had parts that could be played in any order. (read George Lewis's essay on the racism possibly inherent in
that term next time you're up for being depressed. Also, "Indeterminism.")
And true, I'm pretty sure most of the "experimental" composers dislike the term, similarly to the minimalists hating the term "minimalist." Seems to be a trend!
BUT, I don't think most people would say that he was mostly into indeterminacy. So, I suppose a discussion of his aleatoric compositions would fit nicely in experimental music, technically, if his serialism and canned compositions were excluded. But the composer as a whole? I don't think he really fits...
Quote:
Originally Posted by grindy
I'm trying to think of music of today, where the term avant-garde would be truly fitting. Nothing comes to mind. There obviously is a lot of wonderful, creative stuff being played and composed though.
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True. I think Avant Garde is so seeped with connotations of the bizarrely esoteric, disenfranchising classical-lineage works of the mid-20th century, that we feel like it has to be even "wierder" and more "out" for it to be truly avant garde. Which, to be fair, is pretty impossible once you've had decades of people saying, "All noise is music, and strange sounds are the most musical of music."
But, Avant Garde really pertains to music that hasn't been done before, that is now being created. A good deal of Post Metal likely fits that bill. It's weird, it's out, it combines elements of atonalism, free jazz, prog rock, and odd sound effects and melds it all into a twisted mixture of metal and pop and classical and jazz and folk that really hasn't been done before.
But also, it doesn't have to be weird to be Avant Garde. Brian Eno, I would make the case, was extremely avant garde back in the day. I mean, people in the "Serious" music world assumed his early ambient stuff was a joke, and congratulated him on mocking such simple, bland music. But he meant it seriously, and I'll be damned if he didn't start something new. Same goes for Glass and Reich. Their music was so palatable it got them derided for simple-mindedness, but again, it was new, and it was avant garde.
I'd say a good deal of true Avant Garde music is currently coming from less "serious" musical traditions, from people who are saying both, "music doesn't have to be what you already know," but also, "It's still art even if it sounds good." Kaki King's more recent stuff, for example. It's pop. People who like Top 40 listen to it. But it's new and different from what came before.
Hell for that matter, there's a case to be made for the American Style Dubstep ala Skrillex...
