Today I opened my Dover score of the Ravel and Debussy String Quartets to begin numbering the measures of Ravel’s String Quartet in F before our first rehearsal. The editor’s preface caught my attention with the query, “Why do we study the string quartets of Debussy and Ravel?” The editor attributed the groundbreaking harmonic language in these Impressionistic quartets as a significant influence for composers as disparate in their styles as Béla Bartók, Edgar Varése, Olivier Messiaen, Pierre Boulez, Igor Stravinsky, and Henri Dutilleux.
Is there a parallel here for understanding how an artist considered avant-garde flirts with the boundaries of experimentalism? (It is arbitrary to even suggest that experimental music can fall within definite bounds at all). Suppose for the moment we leave out the factor of the passing of time and simply examine how an idea/artist/piece that is avant-garde can translate into the experimental works of those who follow. In the article “Avant-garde and Experimental Music,” David Nicholls provides this distinction: “Thus, very generally, avant-garde music can be viewed as occupying an extreme position within the tradition, while experimental music lies outside it” (518). In the context of the early twentieth century by this definition, we could place tonally adventurous composers like Debussy, Strauss, and Wagner at the very edge of tradition; at that time, predecessors like Boulez and Messiaen occupied the sphere of experimentalism. However, I could be completely wrong about this. Is rebelling against the status quo enough to cause one to lie outside the avant-garde as Nicholls suggests?
So, if we take a glass filled with a traditional liquid like orange juice and infuse it with a strange new flavor like Tabasco sauce [the avant garde], this will invariably change the flavor of the drink. (I suppose that this is similar to Debussy’s effect on traditional harmony, although the flavors of his whole-tone scales and modes were much more palatable than the disgusting concoction I just described!) So, the question arises, at what point do we cease to call something “orange juice” and begin to describe it as something entirely different? I am wondering if pouring a cup of vegetable oil on the top is similar to the role of musical experimentalism: it’s all in there in the same glass, but things don’t necessarily mix together.
Examples of Experimentalism from Nicholl’s Article
Uses of prospective, retrospective, and extraspective experimentalism
Chales Ives (1874-1954) - New compositional techniques (EX: polytonality); wide stylistic variety
Early Emigre Composers: Varése, E. Robert Schmitz, Leo Ornstein - International Composers’ Guild, Pro-Musica Society premiered new works by Second Viennese School, Cowell, Antheil, etc., in America
Henry Cowell - Introduces experimentalism to the West Coast by exploring the Asian music of San Francisco [An example of extraspective experimentalism]; founded the New Music Society and published the New Music Quarterly
John Cage and Lou Harrison: Embracing the Radical - Works for percussion and prepared piano; transethnicism; new and untraditional forms of music notation; dabbles in Zen Buddhism; aleatoric music
The New York School: Morton Feldman (1926-1987), David Tudor (1926-1996), Christian Wolff (b.1934) - graphic notation; “Glue-less music”; structural mobility
Minimalists: Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Philip Glass, La Monte Young - A blending of Eurocentric, radical, jazz, and pop traditions; Indian influence; use of drones; additive and subtractive meters
Prospective Radicalism: George Crumb and John Cage - circular notations (Neo-Medieval?); amplified instruments; indeterminancy; extended techniques
What a Paradox: A Limitless Exploration of the Limits of Music.
What could possibly come next?
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