not stay long in his music. In 1939 he composed First Construction (In Metal), which bases its structure on durations and not harmony. It was also around this time that Cage first began to use the prepared piano, an instrument that was to become central to his compositional aesthetic. This is a normal piano with everyday items such as rubber ...
as unusual as they once were. New non-electronic instrumental in-ventions have had a certain amount of cult success. Composers such as Harry Partch (1901–74), George Crumb (b. 1929) and John Cage (1912–92) invented countless instruments of their own, and others such as Conlon Nancarrow (1912–97) explored the potential of a single instrument, in his case the player piano. Other ...
Musikalisches Würfelspiel to randomly select sections of music to be played. Algorithmic and aleatoric composition was much beloved by the avant-garde composers of the 1950s and 1960s, including John Cage (1912–92). In computer-generated music, the computer produces musical material within parameters determined by the composer. One of the first computer composers, Iannis Xenakis (1922–2001), wrote a computer program ...
which is written for 13 percussionists. He uses chains dropped into a metal box in Intégrales (1920), as did Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951) in Gurrelieder (1910). Compositions for Found Objects John Cage (1912–92) challenged the listener to focus on the placement of sounds in his music for prepared piano and music using electronic equipment. Rocks (1986) requires radios, television sets, ...
Bass Drum The dominant feature of every military band is its big bass drum. Throughout the history of percussion instruments, this drum has been the mainstay of time-keeping, whether it is used for a marching army or in a late-twentieth century heavy metal band. Early versions of the bass drum (it was certainly known in Asia around 3500 BC) ...
From the 1950s, several composers began to discover the compositional possibilities in the technology of radio stations and specialized studios. Important centres were: Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center, New York, founded in 1951 by Vladimir Ussachevsky and Otto Luening; Studio für Elektronische Musik, Cologne, established by Herbert Eimert in 1951; Studio di Fonologia, Milan, established ...
way they incorporated noise and environmental sound into modern music. His work was a direct influence on the first generation of composers to work with electro-acoustics, including Varèse, Cage and Pierre Schaefer (1910–95), the inventor of musique concrète and the first composer to work with magnetic tape. Intonarumori The intonarumori created sounds in a similar way to a hurdy-gurdy. ...
music won widespread support only with the advent of dance music and rave culture from the mid- to late-1980s, it was the sound collage and minimal work of John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen in the mid-twentieth century that provided the impetus for others to experiment with less familiar concepts and instruments. In the 1960s, German bands Neu, Can ...
follows two noisily amorous cats into the garden, but even there everything has something bad to say about the child. The squirrel has not forgotten being imprisoned in a cage and prodded. The child says it was only to admire his eyes. He realizes that all the creatures are now ignoring him. He is alone and cries out, ‘Maman ...
and For Alto (both on Delmark) – were stunning in their conceptual maturity. In the 1970s, Braxton’s music began to reflect his interest in composers Karlheinz Stockhausen and John Cage, as well as his love of marches by John Philip Sousa. His musical output includes solo works and compositions for massed orchestras of 160 players, but he is ...
complex rhythm and of aleatory music, in which performers make some of the composing decisions, his output was prolific. He was also an influential teacher, of John Cage (1912–92) and Gershwin, among others, and his New Music Edition published the work of Ives and Ruggles. Recommended Recording: Quartets, Colorado Quartet et al (Mode) Introduction | ...
b. 1944 English composer The influence of Cage and Feldman can be heard in Nyman’s creation of elastic, intuitive sound-worlds. 1–100 (1976) is simply a series of 100 chords descending through a circle of fourths. Nyman’s early music is full of allusions to and quotations from music of the past, in addition to the use of amplification and rhythms ...
1926–87 American composer Associated with Cage’s circle of musicians, Feldman was also strongly affected by the aesthetic of the abstract Expressionist painters in New York. His music displays a distrust of intellectual, rigorous systems of writing, exploring instead abstract forms and an instinctive approach to composition. He is well known for his graphic scores, such as his ...
Messiaen and René Leibowitz (1913–72), Boulez is perhaps the arch-modernist of the twentieth century. His early piano works clearly show the influence of Schoenberg (Notations, 1945). A visit from Cage in 1949 sparked a friendship and correspondence that was to be central to the progress of twentieth-century music. He was ruthless in his development of a new musical language; for ...
Mary Hansen and Andy Ramsay being the other essential core members. Delighting in limited-edition vinyl releases their fascination with 1960s music, bossa nova, lounge, ambience, John Cage and even dance resulted in startling music and cult success that rippled outwards. Mars Audio Quintet (1994) and compilation Refried Ectoplasm (Switched On Volume 2) (1995) are good places to ...
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