Source: Music of the Avant-garde, 1966-1973
Douglas Kahn
Language: English
Pages: 396
ISBN: 0520267451
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
and articles formed around these. introduction 7 For instance, the articles on groups in Issue 3 came about because we observed and wanted to chronicle that composers and performers were making avant-garde music, some with scores, some without scores, but always in dynamic interaction. The issue has several pieces by members of groups, and the core articles on the New Music Ensemble, the ONCE Group, Musica Elettronica Viva, and the Sonic Arts Group. They were the prominent avant-garde
function of a complex process of not totally rational developments within a chain of cause and effect extending from the original conception of the work, through the graphic representation as “score,” to performance realization as actual sound. It is difficult to describe this process because at every point it is more or less a combination of rational and irrational signs and actions. Not irrational in the “mindless” sense but in the sense that the immense number of major and minor decisions
tradition . . . like Africa. ASHLEY: Yes, but I think we have to accept the fact that, as composers, the aural tradition is becoming very much more important. STOCKHAUSEN: Naturally. ASHLEY: And that the more important the aural tradition becomes the less important the composer becomes. STOCKHAUSEN: He has a new function. ASHLEY: Yes, he does. STOCKHAUSEN: He does more research now. ASHLEY: He’s more than that; he’s a sort of director. AUSTIN: He does both. STOCKHAUSEN: He no longer
quarrel with that man in Tempo. I agree with everything he says about music . . . with one difference. I don’t like it. I want to change it. Stravinsky, you see, is alive, and Boulez now “knows everything.” He knows how to be silent about Stravinsky. He has learned everything, hasn’t he? Yes, indeed. Everything to his advantage. Forgive me for injecting this jeremiad, but your question really carried me away. When you are involved with a sound as a sound, as a limited yet infinite thought to
picture. Agreed. But does the inventor of the camera sign the photo? The one who snaps the picture does.—Masterpiece = monument = composition: suspect today, it probably will issue no. 3 97 endure (that’s what it is about: nonperishability). I would not want to dismiss the possibility of new monuments.—Whenever monumentbuilding becomes unbearable there is this more fragile, perishable art: performer’s music = composition become performance = a kind of “instant composition” (only one step