• Welcome to the Internet Infidels Discussion Board.

Stockhausen, Electronic Music, and the Acant Gurar

 
 
 
S

steve_bank

Diabetic retinopathy and poor eyesight. Typos ...
Joined
Nov 9, 2017
Messages
16,674
Location
seattle
Basic Beliefs
secular-skeptic
Wendy Carlos brought back to mind what used to be called Avant Guard in art and music. Testing your Avant Guard IQ anybody member Stockhausen? The Grateful Dead were experimental music.

Can't member the name, there was someone who did big synthesizer concerts in the 7-s.

I ember musicians at a classical venue in NYC boycotted synthesized music, fear of job loss..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avant-garde_music

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karlheinz_Stockhausen
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=264HLeQIUv4

Moog. First synthesizers had waveform oscillators, mixers, and envelope shapers connected by patch cords. The Minimoog.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moog_synthesizer
 
Years ago at Houston's KPFT radio, there was an avante garde music show, that occasionally I substituted as a DJ. I did in fact play Stockhuasen's Anthems plus other electronic and avante garde works. Tod Dockstater, and others. 100,000 watts of Mighty Weirdness.
 
Cheerful Charlie said:
Years ago at Houston's KPFT radio, there was an avante garde music show, that occasionally I substituted as a DJ. I did in fact play Stockhuasen's Anthems plus other electronic and avante garde works. Tod Dockstater, and others. 100,000 watts of Mighty Weirdness.
Click to expand...

Sigh...those were the days.

In the early 70s I was in Hartford Ct. There was a place called Real Art Ways. I went to hearic by some guy named Stockousen. Oof the instruments was a typewriter.
 
No matter how hard I try, I can't get into avant-garde music. It's mind-numbingly boring to me. I can't tell what the artist is trying to get at. Now I await some pretentious comments about how avant-garde music is superior to all other music, or something.
 
GenesisNemesis said:
No matter how hard I try, I can't get into avant-garde music. It's mind-numbingly boring to me. I can't tell what the artist is trying to get at. Now I await some pretentious comments about how avant-garde music is superior to all other music, or something.
Click to expand...

For me mind numbing applies to most contemporary music.
 
When I was a music major in the '70's, Stockhausen was a name you heard a lot.

Along with Boulez and Elliot Carter.

The Stockhausen I was familiar with was iirc called post serial, taking the serialization started by Schoenberg into new dimensions i.e. serializing rhythms, dynamics, articulation etc in addition to pitches.
 
12 tone serialism piece - YouTube -- seems like musical gibberish to me

Karlheinz Stockhausen - Elektronische Musik 1952-1960 - YouTube (link in OP with YouTube title)

Desmond Leslie - Esoteric Tone Poem (From "Death Of Satan") - YouTube - late 1950's musique concrète with found sounds, painstakingly spliced together. Nowadays, it would be easy with present-day Digital Audio Workstation software with musical-instrument plugins. One records a lot of samples then plays them back on command from a keyboard or drum pads.

The Last Question at Strasenburgh Planetarium | Democrat and Chronicle Events - Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, originally in 1972:
Eastman School graduate Tim Clark composed the original music for “The Last Question” while he was Strasenburgh Planetarium’s music director. He worked in the Planetarium’s sound studio, which was equipped with a Moog Model D Electronic Music Synthesizer (the smallest one made at the time) and three Ampex 440 tape recorders.
Click to expand...
I found a bootleg copy online, and one could recognize the limitations of his Moog system -- it was monophonic, meaning that it could make one note at a time. So he overlaid a lot of melodies without making any chords. It's like Walter/Wendy Carlos and Switched-On Bach -- what she did was multiple-melody ones without many chords. That's why she didn't do JS Bach's greatest hit, "Toccata and Fugue in D Minor" That one has several big chords in it, though I've heard stripped-down versions with the chords much reduced or absent.
 
Another moog pioneer who did classical music about the same time, Wendy Carlos was making it big was Ruth White. Some of her stuff can be found on Youtube. In Houston back in the very early 70's, Dick Hyman actually got some airplay here in Houston on the hippy-dippy free form radio station with his electronic album hit "The Minotaur". Neither of these can be considered avante garde. Another early moog master who made good music was Larry fast, Synergy. 1975.
 
I just finished listening to that Stockhausen collection. Much of it sounds like some synth-module solo for showing off how weird it can sound. It includes Gesang Der Jünglinge (Song of the Youths), where he mixed the singing of a 12-year-old boy with his electronic sounds.
 
GenesisNemesis said:
No matter how hard I try, I can't get into avant-garde music. It's mind-numbingly boring to me. I can't tell what the artist is trying to get at. Now I await some pretentious comments about how avant-garde music is superior to all other music, or something.
Click to expand...

I don't find it boring, but I do often find it pretentious. Listening to some of the more modern jazz groups I get visions of a bunch of intellectuals sitting in a room, quietly sipping bourbon by themselves and listening to jazz that people just don't get, man.

I'd rather be drunk in a bar in New Orleans, listening to a bunch of up-tempo, cliched music, or really anything that stays within the bounds of sounding good, and emoting things other than 'I'm an enlightened musician'.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom