Monday, January 11, 2016

301 day 3

European serialism and American indeterminacy

- Boulezian multiplication
- was a method of creating a harmonic depth to his essentially linear structures

12 tone row -> 2, 3, 4, 9, 3

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- Babbitt created his arrays to accomplish this

Okay

Anyway

THE NEW YORK SCHOOL

John Cage (1912) was the philosophical father of the New York School

Morton Feldman & Earle Brown - both born 1926, in 1950 fell under the creative aegis
of Cage

The personal objectives of the school were very different from the European serialists,
though their aims were similar

- Cage had studied with Schoenberg in California, as well as Henry Cowell. These
influences can be seen to blend in his systematic aleatoricsm

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- John Cage's development can be traced in a few compositions

1
 Monday, January 11, 2016
- the series of imaginary landscapes (1939 - 52) create amazing (analog and live)
soundscapes

- the Sonatas and Interludes for prepared piano (1948)

- orchestrate the piano as an efficient means of creating diverse sounds

for the Merce Cunningham dance Company

follows the Bachannale (1940)

- 1952 - 4' 33"

- 1958 the concert for Piano and orchestra further elaborates

In general the compositional perspective of the Americans differs greatly from that of the
Europeans, his textures seem earthly and built on the relationship between the
performers and instruments at the moment of performance, while the equally
democratic sounds of the Europeans have a removed attitude

Morton Feldman began writing his perspectives with the 1st for solo cello (1950)

- his works involving range notation was very involved with the sound of the
instruments and the relationship of the performers

Earle Brown's influence in the school focuses on his use of graphic notation, though his
interest in music included a career in jazz and as a recording engineer.

Christian Wolff also had a diverse career as an academic and composer. The New York
School saw his genesis as a composer

he was 16 when he joined up with the group.