Contemporary Composition Seminar Fall 2012

Contemporary Composition SeminarFall 2012

Instructor: Prof. SIGMANThursday 14:00-16:00

Lecture IV

0. Administrata

• DROPBOX? • Assignment I submission?• Questions?• Next week: It’s 추석… but we still have

class! (Ugh!)

I. Intro to “Critical Music”

A. What is “Critical Music”?

Musical Material ( 제재 ) vs. Musical Context ( 베경 )

• Stockhausen/Boulez/Xenakis: development of musical material via refinement or change of compositional technique

• Critical Music composers: connection between musical material and musical context

• OR separation of material from its usual context

A.k.a…

• “engaged” music• political music• musica negativa

B. Music about Politics vs. Music About Music

1. Music About Politics

• Historical Events (e.g., wars and protests)• Social Justice• Economic Fairness/Abuses of Capitalism ($$$

and power)• Civil Liberties (freedom of speech, expression,

etc.) • Mass Media (Radio/TV/Internet)• Consumerism

2. Music About Music

• The sociology of the concert hall• Social structure of ensembles • Composer-performer-public relations• Listening habits of audience • Mass Media• Consumerism

C. Motivations

• [a limited selection…]

D. Philosophical Impetus

1. Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno (1903-69)

• Regressive listening• Culture industry• Musical material and relevance to society• Frankfurt School • Art and human atrocities: “to write music after Auschwitz is barbaric.”

2. Karl Marx (1818-1883)

• “diffusion of the senses” • Art and the proletariat (working class)• Ownership of means of production • Bourgeois cultural values

II. Luigi Nono: From Il Canto sospeso to La lontananza…

A. Brief Biography

• 1924-1990, Venice • Highly influenced by conductor Hermann

Scherchen• Card-carrying Communist ( 공산당원 )• Colleague of Boulez, Stockhausen, Maderna,

and Henze at the Darmstadt Summer Courses in the 1950s

B. Darmstadt Years: Incontri (1955)

• For orchestra• Total serial organisation• Palindrome ( 희 문 [?])• “encounters” between attacks (points) and

sustained tones (lines)• Extreme dynamic contours • Dense orchestration • Clusters

C. Music, Imprisonment, Freedom: Il canto sospeso (1955-1956)

• For narrators, 8-voice choir, and orchestra• Texts: letters of political prisoners of fascist

regimes (Hitler/Mussolini/Franco) during World War II

• “the suspended song”

1. Texts and Setting

• Quotations of prisoners just before execution (death)

• 4 contrapuntal lines, divided amongst 8 singers• Meta-language: to express this instant of facing

one’s own imminent death, intelligible language was not a sufficient means

• Text fragmented, spatialised, and overlapping, partitioned (divided) amongst the singers

Example: Il Canto sospeso Score

“Non ho paura della morte” ( 난 죽음 두려워하지 않아 )

2. Material and Techniques

• A) All-interval series (“wedge” row):

• B) Rhythmic layers (as in Stockhausen’s Gruppen)

• C) Durations: Fibonacci series (1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13 units)

C. Putting the “critical” in Critical Music

• Nono and Stockhausen did not remain friends after 1956• In his article “Music and Speech,” Stockhausen analyses 3

works: Gesang der Jünglinge, Le marteau sans maître (Boulez) and Il Canto sospeso in objective, information theory terms

• Nono does not approve of this pseudo-scientific, non-political/non-contextual approach to his music

• In turn, Nono attacks Stockhausen’s Gruppen for its excessive ornamentation ( = bourgeois)

• Stockhausen made several enemies at this time

D. The Illuminated Factory: La Fabbrica illuminata (1964)

• For soprano and 4-channel electronic tape• Sound sources: factory ( 공 장 ) noises, voices• Political statement: connects music with the

world of workers; distances music from experience of the bourgeoisie

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMvrhkF6VlQ

E. The Politics of Listening: Fragmente-Stille. An Diotima

(1979-1980)

• For string quartet• “fragments-silence” • 2 movements• First piece after 3-year compositional crisis• Final phase of Nono’s career

1. Extremes

• Extreme dynamics (pppp, ffff)• Durations (of sound and silence) • Registers (high and low)• Intervals (microtonal) • NOT an exercise in expressionism; but rather, an

interest in heightening listener engagement, and abandoning passive listening habits ( 슨관적 행 워 )

• “amplified Nono”

Nono on Listening and Silence• „The silence. Listening is very difficult. Very difficult to listen to

others in the silence.Other thoughts, other noises, other sounds, other ideas. When one comes to listen, one often tries to rediscover oneself in others. To rediscover one’s own mechanisms, system, rationalism in the others. Instead of hearing the silence, instead of hearing the others, one often hopes to hear oneself. That is an academic, conservative, and reactionary repetition. It is a wall against ideas, against what one cannot explain today. […] To listen to music. That is very difficult. I think it is a rare phenomenon today. […] Perhaps one can change the rituals; perhaps it is possible to try to wake up the ear. To wake up the ear, the eyes, human thinking, intelligence, the most exposed inwardness. This is now what is crucial.” (1983)

2. Texts• Friedrich Hölderlin, Hyperion (1799)• 53 fragments from letters to Diotima (muse of

spiritual love) • Placed in score—but NOT to be read aloud! • “Negative” texts: influence performers, but

not revealed to listener

Fragmente-Stille: Score/Recording Excerpt

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njeMEaghKxE

F. Nono and the SWR Experimental-Studio

Nono and the Studio

• In the 1980s, Nono was invited to the Experimentalstudio of the South West German Radio (Südwestrundfunk, or SWR) in Freiburg to realise pieces with live electronics

• This residency resulted in several important works, including the opera Prometeo—tragedia dell’ascolto [Prometheus—tragedy of listening] (1984-85)

G. La lontananza nostagica utopica futura (1988-89)

• For violin and 8-channel tape• “the distant nostalgic utopic future” ( 거리

향수 유토피아 미래 )

1. Electronics Materials

• 1) quotations (e.g., Verdi’s Ave Maria)• 2) material from earlier compositions of Nono

(including Fragmente-Stille)• 3) recording session discussions with Gidon

Kremer• 4) ambient noises during recording sessions

2. Staging

• 8 music stands (leggii) positioned throughout concert space; 6 contain scores

• Sound projectionist at back of hall• Violinist wanders indirectly from one stand to

the other, like a nomad• “madrigal for several travelers, with Gidon

Kremer”

3. Performer Roles

• Violinist: in dialogue with Gidon Kremer • Sound projectionist: as performer and

composer– Selects among 8 tracks of material in real time --in dialogue with Nono• Continuous interaction between violinist and

sound projectionist

4. Performance Realisation

• Precise notation• Variable duration • 3 recordings: range in length from 40

minutes- > 1 hour! • Contrast in interpretation of violinist and in

the electronics part • Listener presented only a “partial view” of the

universe of the piece

5. Critical Engagement

• Heightened listening experience• Multiple perspectives on the same work• Dissolving ( 본리 ) of traditional composer-

performer-audience boundaries and roles