Pre-WWII Avant-garde Music
 

I'm in a similar position to you with this really. I know the so-called 'American Experimental School'; Ives, Ruggles, Becker, Cowell and Reigger, to varying degrees, whilst I'm also familiar with Varese... I know Stravinsky, Honegger and Antheil were influential too but beyond these guys my knowledge is limited.

Avante-Garde music didn't really exist as a movement until the 1950s any way, or so I understood? I suspect somebody will correct me on this.

The Italian futurists are technically the first avant-garde music. When they were doing what they were doing, they were funded by Ferruccio Busoni. Who himself was an extremely conventional piano player(and virtuoso) but a massive advocate of music experimentation. Including microtones, and electronic music. He also is responsible for funding Varese.

The most important of he two futurists are probably Luigi Russolo, and Antheil. Antheil obviously for La Ballet Mechanique. Russolo for pretty much inventing noise music in the 1910s against a backdrop where the only musics in Europe were folk, and classical(which is based off folk). Setting up the framework for electronic music, creating avant-garde music, home made instrumentation, and non-melodic music(Which one could argue is the template for a lot of modern rock, hip-hop, electronica, and pop).

I honestly think that Luigi Russolo is, bar none, the most important musician of the 1900s, and the most important musician since. He's really probably the first composer ever to bridge out of acoustic music into modern electric music.

Ives probably predates them, but maybe not as technically 'avant-garde' as really what he did was add dissonance to classical moreso. He also may have been one of the first composers to explicitly write microtonally. Best of my knowledge, he didn't really experiment in electronic music.

Varese is simultaneous with the futurists. Him, and Russolo actually were friends early on in both of their careers. Varese's purpose was to create music which more represented the feeling, and tone of Gregorian chant, but really is the first to fully orchestrate electronic music. He also extensively used sirens, and other means. He borrowed a lot from the futurists but was strictly more known in the American dada circle(and ironically mostly for his post WWII works). He was actually a heavy critic of the futurists later on.

Schoenburg deserves a nod, as serialism was quite radical for it's time(and before he had serialism his style was fiercely atonal. Edgard Varese later, in a Varesian fashion heavily criticized him for inventing a system.) By extension Webern should be counted. Both I believe slightly predate/run simultaneously with Varese.

Cage, Partch, and Pierre Schaeffer were technically pre-WWII composers. Schaeffer is another thread that Varese connects with the futurists.

Werent the blues a new and experimental music at one time?

Well... if we want to get all philosophical, then we could say that all music is experimental, but... I would rather not. When regarding the traditional definition of experimental/avant-garde music, blues cannot be considered as such. However, does that mean blues cannot venture into the realm of the avant-garde? Certainly not... just look at Captain Beefheart or the music from Keiji Haino's album, Black Blues (2004). :)

Yes I was about to mention Captain Beefheart. But I am talking about when the blues were first being played. Was it not a experimental, new type of music?

This still applies:
New? Yes. Experimental? No... not in the traditional sense of the word.

How was it not experimental in the beginning? The definition of experiment is "an act or operation for the purpose of discovering something unknown." I'd say the first blues players were doing some experimenting.

Not really. Nobody was playing a guitar while they were working in the fields, they were just singing. At the time when the blues were first being played, I'd say it was unconcventional. There wasn't really anything like it before. The Charley Patton song sounds a lot better than that noise.

How was it already established? It was pretty unconventional. The classical music theory is not well suited to describe the Blues. From that point of view, Blues is crazy and wrong - playing dominant major 7th chords all over minor pentatonic scales, using chromatic scale pieces for intros and turnarounds, using a 5 tone scale instead of the accustomed 7 tone scales, adding notes that don't belong to any scale.

You can't always get what you want.

EVery form of music STARTS as avant-garde because it's on the cutting edge of something. Blues stopped being experimental when it found common appeal.

Furthermore, blues is extremely structural. In all fairness, it invented the pop structure, or early usage of it. HOWEVER, due to the fact it adheres to a strict ruleset, it's a genre, not a deviation of a genre.

"that noise" is avant-garde music, and there is an intelligence to it. The thing is, however, it is experimental because it doesn't follow a common ruleset, but a ruleset invented specifically for itself. Blues follows the blues ruleset, therefore is not avant-garde.

No offense, but you're coming into this thread with all mouth, and no ears, Blastinggas.

On that note, an interesting factoid of Edgard Varese. He was an innovative composer, of course. Albeit, more owing to the futurists than he was willing to give credit for later on. However, he is the first ever in terms of inventing all percussion chamber pieces. Nobody before him ever did anything like this:



essentially, he invented an entirely new language of composition when he wrote this piece. One of which is pretty much used up to today.

I am talking about when blues were first being played, that's what i've been talking about the entire time. You admitted that it started as avant-garde, and that's the point I was trying to prove. Blues didn't follow the blues ruleset when it was first created, because there was no set of rules at the time. In the beginning, it was avant-garde, and that was my point.

Your point is not valid because EVERY ****ING GENRE starts as a form of avant-garde. Which makes blues irrelevant to mention. It's especially irritating because the point of avant-garde is to show people different approaches than the norm, and we've all had the 'blues is great, rock is great' club beat over our heads since childhood.

How about we talk about a form of music that wasn't, ok?

Pre-WWII avant-garde composers are extremely underrated. They approached ideas, and concepts that mainstream music did not adopt really until the 80s(well, somewhat int he 60s), and since has adopted very VERY minimally. They were really pioneers in the sense of utilizing things that nobody would touch. Including sampling, usage of non-instrument devices in music, and electronics. Long before 60s psychedelic bands/producers, or 80s new wave bands made these concepts trendy. They even lead into early musique concrete that created music entirely off samples 50 years before hip-hop was beginning to gain a reputation for it.

These guys were cutting edge, they were beyond cutting edge, to be honest.

You belittle the other genres by saying "every genre starts as avant-garde", but for some reason that doesn't apply to these guys.

You're acting like blues sprang into existence fully formed at some particular time, but it didn't. It's the product of organically evolving musical tradition and, as such, is essentially the antithesis of "avant-garde" as the term is generally used.

All music has been a product of evolution, Whether it was the evolution of traditional music or the evolution of technology. Music isn't all about technical ability and experimenting, it's about feeling. And I honestly don't see how there is any feeling in that video above. Seems like its all about experimentation.

Not mine, either, but I just had to point out the inventiveness of avant-garde sometimes isn't always veering away from accessibility, and often is reflected in music since.

Also, Blastinggas, the futurists were out to anger people. I imagine what you're saying about 'having feeling' is wrong. Imagine you played a Sex Pistols record do an 80 year old lady in the 70s. Then you ask her if it 'has feeling'...

Same response. Same purpose, really.

Does it make the Sex Pistols musically invalid, or is it you refusing to see the bigger picture?

Really enjoyed reading the "Is blues music avant-garde?" discussion here. Thanks for that!

The one thing that came to my mind that wasn't yet mentioned in this thread is Kecak music created in Bali in the 1930s. Very strong roots in their musical tradition, yes, so it perhaps doesn't count as avant-garde. But if you listen to it with Western ears, it certainly sounds like one of the most distinctive and other-wordly music ever created. Varese, Cage, Stockhausen or the like would sure have been proud if they would have produced anything like this. And the music scene in Bali has been very vivid and creative throughout the last 100 years so I guess you could consider the birth of kecak a pretty experimental episode even in Bali terms. If you want to hear it, I would prefer listening to some old recordings by renowned world music labels and not the Youtube videos made for tourists.

I'm just glad we mentioned Satie in this thread. Love that guy and his works