Post-modern composers
(Last one I promise)

Some names on this list are John Cage, Schoenberg, and Stockhausen (I know how much we owe him and greatly respect him as a technical innovator, but not as a composer).

I did a creative music degree, and the lecturers were CONSTANTLY fobbing off to these guys, and expected us to do the same. Here's one of those Professors in action furtlogic.com/nodeorder/term/15

But what did these guys do?

John Cage: Found lots of ways to NOT compose, such as using the I-Ching (googlit) to randomise notes, or not fucking playing at all (i.e. 4'33").

Schoenberg: A serialist composer, meaning he would take all 12 notes, arrange them mathematically using an external stimulus (like numbers drawn from the letters in someone's name), then he would repeat that sequence and literally "flip and reverse it" until it was a full-length piece of "music".

Their legacy meant that we were told to make music using randomised bullshit methods, marked up for post-tonality (read as "out-of-tune"), marked down for any degree of beauty that we managed to smuggle into the music (if we could still call it fucking music by the time we'd submitted).

At the tail end of this degree not ONE of my classmates has gone on to any kind of composition employment. The only ones that are still composers are all now making Dubstep (ergo, they are on the dole). The others have buggered off to work in schools or have left music altogether. I had to spend all summer listening to trance music and folk metal before I could write a decent melody again.

I don't think my reasons are irrational, but the volume of hatred is perhaps irrational. I did a music degree which rapidly ran out of music.

/rant
( Extinct Jesus Dossier "...I think it counteracts Hitler's magic...", Thu 31 Mar 2011, 21:43, 14 replies)

Actually, that just wound me up, and I barely understood half of it.
edit: I got wound up on your behalf, not by your post. In case that wasn't clear.
( scarpe We Stole Bikes, Thu 31 Mar 2011, 21:52, closed)

Well thank you kindly for empathising :)

( Extinct Jesus Dossier "...I think it counteracts Hitler's magic...", Fri 1 Apr 2011, 0:04, closed)

Stockhausen.
Stockhausen has fundamentally changed modern music.
Along with his two contemporaries, he fused genres to create a whole new innovative sound.
You cannot deny the lasting influence of such classics as this. www.youtube.com/watch?v=EK2tWVj6lXw
(speedevil, Thu 31 Mar 2011, 21:56, closed)

Purple link is purple.

( jim_bob can herd cats., Thu 31 Mar 2011, 23:46, closed)

You tried to warn me, but I clicked too fast >: <

( Extinct Jesus Dossier "...I think it counteracts Hitler's magic...", Fri 1 Apr 2011, 0:05, closed)

It's been a while since I've heard that,
thanks :-/
( Chum Gnomesky Nom Chompsky, Fri 1 Apr 2011, 0:06, closed)

They have a series of paintings in the Tate modern inspired by John Cage.




They look like someone just cleaned their roller on canvas.
(FondaAccord, Thu 31 Mar 2011, 22:08, closed)

Electro-acoustic "music"
As the lecturers on my music-technology degree course called it. They rammed this stuff down our throats at DMU but I have to admit that it made us listen to things in a different way and encouraged us to experiment with sounds in a way we might not have dared. I actually think John Cage's 4'33" is pretty clever....its 273 seconds which in terms of minus Celcius equals "absolute zero" - oh and he was off his head on mushrooms and shit all the time.
( Twizla ...a shrew living on the edge of a bog, extinct on, Thu 31 Mar 2011, 22:09, closed)

Tsk
The point of Cage's 4'33" is that it provides a space in which think about the sounds around us as music. That's genius, and if you don't understand that then you deserve to be 25th viola in the Burnley Methodist Youth Orchestra.
(Valentine_Sprake immanentising the eschaton since 1983, Thu 31 Mar 2011, 23:48, closed)

I'm happy to agree that it's thought-provoking, and an artistic endeavour.
But I reject the notion that he has composed a piece of music; he has created a thought-experiment.

Whereas Roaratorio can simply fuck right off.
( Extinct Jesus Dossier "...I think it counteracts Hitler's magic...", Fri 1 Apr 2011, 0:07, closed)

I like this one by John Cage...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEImD_r6D8o
( jim_bob can herd cats., Thu 31 Mar 2011, 23:47, closed)

Schoenberg had his moments.
"Verklarte Nacht" is rather excellent.

But yes, I am very tired of avante garde abrasiveness for the sake of the Emperor's new clothes. That said I quite like blasts of abrasiveness to liven up a traditional melody. Diamanda Galás does that rather well.
(Ladyfingers is in your wardrobe,, Fri 1 Apr 2011, 5:53, closed)

*Post* Modernist?
Modernist shurely...

(also have a music degree specialising in composition thanks very much, and fundamentally agree with the point you're making. Now working as a project manager - it took me 5 years post graduating before I touched an instrument.)
(MartinB9999, Sun 3 Apr 2011, 19:28, closed)

You are right
If you can't sing or hum along with the tune then it isn't a tune. 4'33" may be great for dead music lovers, but for the rest of us it is simply an unnecessarily long intro to the actual music. Schoenberg sounds like a herd of crazed cats trapped inside a musical instrument store. Elitist crap that touches nobody and has nothing of value to say.
(ianisme, Wed 6 Apr 2011, 14:52, closed)