Unit XXV – The New Music
Chapter 77
Contemporary Composers Look to
World Music
Brian Bondari
Important Experimenters
Henry Cowell
1897-1965
Drawn toward a
variety of non-Western
musics
Music of Japan, India,
Iran, etc.
Led him to combine
Asian instruments with
traditional Western
ensembles
Henry Cowell (continued)
Experimented with non-Western scales
harmonized over Western chords
Tone clusters:
Groups of adjacent notes that are sounded with
the fist, palm, or forearm, or by directly
plucking the piano strings
Harry Patch
1901-1974
Single-mindedly pursued the goal of a
microtonal music
Evolved a scale of 43 microtones to the
octave and adapted Hindu and African
instruments to fit this tuning
The Delusion of Fury, 1969
The Music of John Cage
1912-1992
Wild experimenter!
“Prepared piano”
Consisted of nails,
nuts, bolts, screws, bits
of rubber, wood, or
leather inserted in the
strings of a grand piano
Sonatas and Interludes
(1946-48)
Indeterminacy
Led John Cage to compose works in which
performers make choices by throwing dice
Cage also relied on the I Ching (Book of
Changes), an ancient Chinese method of
throwing coins or sticks for chance numbers
From this he derived a system of charts and
graphs governing the series of events that could
happen within a piece
The Role of Silence
“There is no such thing as an empty space or an
empty time…try as we may to make a silence, we
cannot.” – Cage
4’33”
A piece without any musical content at all
Audience members are expected to become aware of
the sounds around them or within their own
imaginations
First performed by pianist David Tudor in 1952
He walked onstage, placed a score on the piano rack, sat
quietly for the duration of the piece, then closed the piano lid
and walked offstage
George Crumb’s Ancient Voices
of Children
B. 1929
Very emotional music
A song cycle based on the
poetry of Federico Garcia
Lorca
Written for soprano, boy
soprano, oboe, mandolin,
harp, electric piano, and
percussion
George Crumb’s Ancient Voices
of Children
The score is full of unusual effects
Opens with the soprano singing a fanciful
vocalise (a wordless melody)
The first song in the cycle, The Little Boy is
Looking for His Voice, displays a free and
fantastic character
The soprano part cries, sighs, whispers, buzzes, trills,
“fluttertongues”, etc.
György Ligeti’s Etudes for Piano
B. 1923
Ligeti developed a
process of
interweaving many
separate strands into a
complex polyphonic
fabric
He called this
“micropolyphony”
György Ligeti’s Etudes for Piano
Etudes for Piano illustrates the
manipulation of rhythm
He experimented with illusionary rhythm,
where the listener perceives a work to be much
slower than it is actually played because of the
recurrence of certain accented notes
The first étude from Book 1, Disorder, is
the most rhythmically complex of the set
See Listening Guide 41 for details
Music from Eastern Africa
The modern Republic
of Uganda was
formerly subdivided
into a number of
powerful kingdoms,
each with its own
court and ruler
Ensiriba ya munange
Katego was originally
court music, played by
a royal drum ensemble
Music from Eastern Africa
The court musicians of the former King of
Buganda included an ensemble called the entenga
This group consisted of 6 musicians playing 15 tuned,
conical drums (drum chimes)
Ensiriba ya munange Katego tells the story of a
sub-chief named Kangawo, who wears a leopard-
skin headband for good luck
One night, his precious headband disappears, and he
feels so unprotected without it that he becomes ill and
dies.
See Listening Guide 42 for details
Chinary Ung’s Spiral
B. 1942, Cambodia
Received a doctorate
in composition from
Columbia University
He is strongly
influenced by music of
his native Cambodia
Chinary Ung’s Spiral
Spiral, 1987
Written for cello, piano, and percussion
Evokes the melodic patterns and timbres of
Asian music
Largely heterophonic texture
Multiple lines blend and interweave their strands
against the occasional punctuation provided by the
piano and percussion
See listening guide 43 for details
An Introduction to Chinese
Traditional Music
Abing
1883-1950
Original name was Hua
Yanjun
He was taught music by a
Taoist monk
He played in the wind
and percussion
ensemble of the local
temple
– He was expelled
from the group for
playing in secular
settings
An Introduction to Chinese
Traditional Music
Abing was able to make a meager living by
singing and playing the 2-stringed fiddle
(erhu) and the lute (pipa)
Shortly before his death in 1950, he taped 6
memorable solos; The Moon Reflected on the
Second Springs is the most famous
His music is viewed as traditional because it
was created through improvisation and
passed down orally
The Moon Reflected on the
Second Springs
Originally written for solo erhu, a 2-string
fiddle
Modern recordings add the yangquin
A hammered dulcimer with a trapezoidal sound
box strung with metal strings that are struck
with strips of bamboo
Based on pentatonic scale (D-E-G-A-B)
See Listening Guide 44 for details