Soundmining

This is the forth text about the composers and music behind the Spotify playlist Avant-Garde classics. It is a playlist that tries to present great music composed after 1945.

Gérard Grisey was born in 1946. As many other great contemporary composers he studied for Oliver Messiaen. He also studied acoustics 1974-75.

In 1973 he formed the group Ensemble l’Itinéraire together with among others Tristan Murail. They are still active and are considered one the greatest performers of contemporary music.

He is one of the leading composers that write, so called, spectral music. They use many techniques found in synthesis techniques. Both to synthesize sound via additive synthesis and FM-synthesis and to explore sound with the help spectral analysis. One of the theories is that a sound's timbre is built from partials in a spectrum. You can use these partials to build harmony and later “synthesize” sound with an orchestra. From this theory they also draw the conclusion that all intervals not are equal like serial composers such as Stockhausen suggest.

The first piece in the playlist is the third movement from the monumental piece les Espaces Acoustiques, Partiels. The whole composition comprise of 6 parts composed between 1974-1985. It demonstrate spectral techniques very well. “Partiels” starts with a low E played on the trombone. The spectrum from the trombone is then “synthesized” in the orchestra with different variants.

This is the third text about the composers and music behind the Spotify playlist Avant-Garde classics. It is a playlist that tries to present great music composed after 1945.

Iannis Xenakis was born in Greek 1922. He fled as a refugee to France in 1947. He worked as an architect with Le Corbusier. He studied composition for Oliver Messiaen in Paris.

Xenakis was influenced by architecture and science when he composed music. Instead of using serial techniques like many of the other composers of his time, he composed with techniques such as stochastic models and game theories. He described many of these techniques in the book Formalized Music: Thought and Mathematics in Composition.

One might think that Xenakis music should be very sterile and only of academic value. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is very emotional and powerful. Xenakis wife have said that all of Xenakis music is about his experiences from the war. There, in Athen, he participated in street fights. He was wounded when a shell hit his face and lost his left eye.

The first piece is Jonchaies that is a piece for large orchestra (109 musicians). It is written in 1977. Physical, very powerful and surprisingly lyrical.

Metastasis is the second piece in the playlist. It is Xenakis first major work and was performed for the first time in 1955. It is written for 61 musicians and each member has its own staff. This results in a “mass” of sound. There are not as many mathematical techniques as in Pithoprakta that came the year after but the basic ideas are there.

This is the second text about the composers and music behind the Spotify playlist Avant-Garde classics. It is a playlist that tries to present great music composed after 1945.

Karlheinz Stockhausen is one of the most influential composers after 1945. Not just for other contemporary composers but also in popular culture. He has his face on "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" and Kraftwerk has named him as a influence.

He studied for Oliver Messian and was one the leading figures in the Darmstadt School. His theories regarding music has influenced many contemporary composers.

To understand his fascination for science as the basis for his theories about music you have to see the impact that the second world war had on him and his generation. The Nazis had taken the romantic music as their and after the war it was hard to find values to believe in. Science was something that was neutral and pure. Stockhausen published a number of articles, where the most famous is "... wie die Zeit vergeht ...", (...how time passes...). He also gave a number of lectures 1972 in England. Those were recorded and can be found on Youtube here. I highly recommend them if you are interested in Stockhausen.

The first piece for the playlist is Kontakte. It exists in two variants. One pure electronic piece and one for electronics, piano and percussion. I have chosen the latter one. One important aspect of Kontakte is Stockhausen's idea that melody, rhythm and form are different aspects of frequency/time. If the pulses is over 20 per second it becomes pitch with timbre and if the pulse is slower then 8 seconds it becomes form. In between those frequencies there is rhythm. In Kontakte Stockhausen uses a synthesis technique called pulse that allows him to gradually go from pitch to rhythm. One such part is from 1.00 in the second part.

The second piece is Kontra-punkte. Punkte, or point, means one isolated note that is separated from other surrounding points. This is a concept often called point music and originate from Webern. Stockhausens vision are that each note or point should be like stars in the sky.

This is a series of texts about the composers and music behind the Spofity playlist Avant-Garde classics. It is a playlist that tries to present great music composed after 1945.

The first, and in some respect, the most important composer is Olivier Messiaen. You don't normally assosiate him with Avant-garde music but he taught composition in Paris for many years and among his students are the greatest composers of the 19th century. Both Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Iannis Xenakis studied for him.

The world war two had a huge impact on many of the composers that wrote music after 1945. Olivier Messiaen was no exception. He sat in concentration camp from 1940 to 1941 and it was there he wrote his most famous piece. Quatuor pour la fin du temps.

Olivier Messiaen was deeply religious and that influence a lot of his music, like Vingt regards sur l'enfant-Jésus. He was also interested in bird songs as seen in Catalogue d'oiseaux and Le réveil des oiseaux.