The Music of the Future
futuresymphony.org
futuresymphony.org
As the article mentions, this talk was given at the Donaueschingen Festival, so the audience almost certainly consisted mostly of fans of avant-garde contemporary classical music. If the author only mentions jazz or rock, or electronics only in passing, it's because he's primarily talking about the future of contemporary classical music, and in particular the future of the sort of highly-experimental classical music played at the Donaueschingen Festival, and probably not the future of music at large.
In this context, I think his question is a reasonable one. What will/should innovative classical music look like in the future? The article's suggestion seems to be that it should focus less on being radically experimental, and more on innovating in a way which is more deeply rooted in traditional techniques and more easily comprehensible to the listener. I suppose the question is, in light of what is now a long history of extreme musical experimentation, what does innovation look like in this more traditional context? I obviously don't have any answers, but I agree with the author that it would be nice to see more focus in this in the experimental classical music culture.
As an aside, this article has a lot of references to composers and pieces which will make it tough reading for someone not already familiar with avant-garde classical. That said, it does give a nice whirlwind overview of a lot of historical trends in this space, so if you're unfamiliar, but still sufficiently interested, you might use it as a quick reference for areas to listen to. Alex Ross' book "The Rest is Noise" is a good resource for a deeper look at the area.
For example this one, to the 12-note piece mentioned towards the start: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sylplEFxXo and the talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8K9gkuHpMo
http://lukemuehlhauser.com/how-to-fall-in-love-with-modern-c...
[0] https://www.amazon.com/Infinite-Music-Imagining-Millennium-M...
[1] https://rougesfoam.blogspot.com
[2] https://www.rbmaradio.com/shows/adam-harpers-bubblebath (might need non-US proxy)
I prefer playing music that is more avant garde (within my abilities of course) even if it appeals to a smaller audience.
That led me to wonder if there should be more cross pollination between the two.
When speaking of, and indeed when many modern electronic music composers write music they don't think in terms of phrases, chords, cadences, etc. The tools they use to write music don't have notes on a staff, they are just rectangles in a graph (1 axis for pitch and the other for time).
But at the same time, those who compose in the more traditional sense only stick to the sounds, patterns, and vocabulary from the classical world. They don't do anything like "drops".
It would be really interesting to hear what could come from the combination of the two and also the productivity that could be gained by both worlds learning about the concepts and tools used by the other.
Sure, there's plenty of generic, uninspired pop and rock. But there's plenty of generic, uninspired classic musical as well. And dig even a little deeper, and you find many, many pop rock, and hip-hop artists who are wildly experimental, yet still find an audience. Techniques like sampling and the use of electronics were pioneered by the avant-garde, but it is pop, rock and hip-hop artists who have taken them further and done the hard work of figuring out how they can be incorporated into a traditional (and new) melodic frameworks that actually have an appeal to the listener.
Roger Scruton, author of the article posted, is a controversial figure. He's not someone you'd go to for tips on the latest digital deconstructivist architecture, and probably not for actually cutting-edge music either. More about him here: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/04/21/enemies-of-roger-...
As a meta joke, years later, he could confess to not actually having gone through with the above process, and instead say he used remote brain manipulations equivalent to injecting the audience with LSD while playing Nickleback.
In the same way that we have class or income divides, we have a culture divide through the hard division of "pop" vs. "academic" styles. This divide affects not just the arts, but math, science, philosophy, and related endeavors.
THE FOURTH DEVELOPMENT [of new music], which is in many ways the most interesting, [is] namely the replacement of tones by sounds, and musical by acoustical hearing. Varèse, Pierre Schaeffer and their immediate successors awoke composers and audiences to the many new sounds, some of them produced electronically, that could enter the space of music without destroying its intrinsic order. These experiments are not what I have in mind when referring to the replacement of tones by sounds and musical by acoustical hearing. I am thinking of a more general transition, from Tonkunst to Klangkunst, to use the German expressions – a transition of deep philosophical significance, between two ways of hearing, and two responses to what is heard.
The author is arguing that we've moved from lyrical experimentation with tones, to serialization (complete lyrical structure of tones, probably commonly known as musical theory), and now to the avant garde of replacing tones (chords, progressions, structure) with recorded/processed sounds. Sounds (presumably) lack the melodic/harmonic qualities such as notes played together in a classical scale or progression.
This leads to: The experience of ‘next,’ and the inevitability of the next, has been chased away. In a concert devoted to music of this kind the audience can know that the piece is ended only because the performers are putting down their instruments.
Naturally we can fill in the blanks if we hear 75% of a chord progression, but with sounds, we have no idea what is coming next. They're disjointed.
I'm not sure what the author's conclusion is, but this seems to be as close to a summary as he gives: It seems to me that, if there is, now, to be a music of the future it will, in that way, belong with the music of the past.
Personally, if I hear a bunch of sounds that my brain can't connect together, and that don't please me or move me, I would have trouble calling that acoustical experience "music".
Serialism does not mean non-melodic. Procedural creation of music does not mean the melodies and rhythms "don't exist". If anything, they're more there than they are in traditional music.
If anything, they're more there than
they are in traditional music.
It's the same if you talk about seeing
structures in old terrestrial tv noise
patterns.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donaueschingen_Festival#List_o...
So it's all garbage right? Metal is noise too I suppose, and Charles Mingus should have just played lounge music eh?
When you listen popular music on a timeline (70s, 80s, ...), you can at the same time see to the evolution of synthesizers and music production software.
I agree that synthesizers in pop music have been a welcome addition (70s & 80s produced some good music with it as you mentioned).
I wonder how much of this is just due to taste or lack of familiarity? Not that you're wrong but for whatever reason I actually feel like classical music has a much greater variation of sound than pop music.
I'm curious whether you feel like there's a lack of diversity among these pieces (which happen to be a few of my favorites =)
Scriabin Etude Op42 No5: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwqaOGikyNs Schubert Impromptu Op90 No3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxhbAGwEYGQ Prokofiev Piano Concerto 3 Mvmt 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AdBi5IBrto Shostakovich Piano Concerto 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCTEx3w2_jU
I admit though that I probably am biased, because frankly I enjoy the sounds of the instruments very much. If anything I suspect that having people listen to recorded music probably makes them less likely to appreciate classical music.
To say it another way, no matter how you bang at a piano, it still sounds like a piano.
I was talking about diversity in what is technically known as "timbre". For example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1T-za0WH4Y You can say that these are toy sounds, that they don't sound like real instruments, I can then say that they are purer sounds. But I think we can agree that a classical orchestra cannot make these sounds, so in way it's less expressive.
I don't think we are actually because I was also referring to timbre. But yes I suppose I would agree that by the nature of being limited to certain instruments, you are limited in what you can express. I suppose I just feel like each of those instruments can be played to produce a very wide variety of colors as well, but I do of course see what you are saying.
(Serial music is like a thorn in the classic cultural body of 'Music', because it's partly inhuman)
Most other art forms that are performed over a period of time are not a function of time, but a function of dependency. In a play, you say your line after another actor finishes. Even in a movie it's the same way - it's not locked into an actual tempo until the editing process. Exceptions are the films where the music is written first, like Fantasia (this is a sorely ignored medium; I'd love to see a live-action film scored to a pre-written John Williams or Michael Giacchino score; where they have the freedom to pull in actual musical forms).
It's odd to consider music written like this - where snippets of a piece are written in all sorts of conflicting tempos, and then finally assembled during "editing" into something cohesive (although I guess this is how the Norwegian megapop songwriters kind of do this).
I think there's a lot of opportunity for introducing more tempo-based notation into other artforms. What if an internal pulse were introduced into a play? What else could sheet music be applied to if you kept everything except for the instruments and pitches/melody/harmony? Could you rehearse/perform a debate, a game, a dinner party...?
Sample-heavy (hip-hop, house) musical genres have been doing this for a while. They'll take old 90 BPM records, sample em, pitch em/speed em up, or cut samples in such a way that they fit into new time signatures, keys, tempos, etc. The really good producers will take a bunch of samples and mash em up into a new work.
I think a lot of popular art forms have an internal tempo, whether their creators are conscious of structuring the tempo or not. All stories (music, movies, books, plays) have "shapes" [1] which incorporate a component of tempo. It would be interesting to make it explicit though for an art form where language rather than music is the main form of expression. Musicals are a happy medium here, a completely time-based dinner party or play might end up more like Jeopardy and less like free-flowing art.
But synths and sequencers? They're not "modern". I find it hard to imagine music much more primitive than the boring wub-wub-wub of dubstep or the endless 4/4 oontz of Eurodance.
Serialization and 12-tone, for all their shortcomings, represented serious questioning of how notes should be organized at all. I think they failed because they dehumanized, and humanity is at the heart of music. A conscious disregard for consonance/dissonance isn't the same as choosing the balance of consonance/dissonance. They were interesting intellectual exercises, but as a musician, I think they deserved to die. They're the music of the past now.
Most of the real experimentalism in music I hear these days (and I have some bias here) is in the noise and free improvisation fields. I'm biased because I also play free improvisation. But undermining rhythm and harmony, and focusing on tonal evolution - that's interesting and daring. And that music is done with some seriously analog approach, not computers. Computers are generally very restrictive (although there are exceptions - the people doing million-note sequences are fascinating noise experimenters). One of the best modern music performances I've ever heard was an improvisation of one percussionist, who spent several minutes carefully wadding a piece of cellophane. It was complex, dynamic, exciting, and above all, musical - but it worked by tossing aside virtually every musical convention except "be interesting".
I don't get why "traditional" musicians tend to dismiss electronic music. Electronic music is not just dubstep or Eurodance. There are modern genres such as future bass that incorporate more advanced musical composition and implement it with new technologies that many people enjoy.
Electronic music can be wonderfully experimental, but that's not because of anything that's been invented lately. Listen to the Forbidden Planet soundtrack, for example. That was wild, and it was 1956. I work with a lot of electronic musicians, and there's a strong interest in older instruments - analog synthesis, early digital like 12 bit samplers, etc.
I've used recent software synths, but for the most part, they're either not all that interesting, or they're studied knockoffs of analog synthesis techniques from the 1970s and earlier. At worst, many/most hit Brian Eno's criticism of modern synths - they lack character. By trying to sound like everything, they wind up not sounding like themselves.
It's pretty obvious that it's different from what was there before, so it is an innovation in that sense.
What's the take from "serious listeners" as mentioned in the article, just a mere stylistic change, I'm very curious about this.
That said, I think hip-hop is THE driving force behind innovation in pop today. Even country music is now being driven by hip-hop concepts. The beats of trap will be around for a while, but they sure as heck didn't invent 808 kicks or filter sweeps.
And it's important to distinguish between cultural innovations and real, substantial changes here. Disco was a cultural innovation 40 years ago. It's more or less dead now. 45 RPM singles were a real, substantial change.
What I am saying is that I think that what makes 4/4 so prevalent today is that it is somehow deeply connected to how our brains work, and if you consider popular music subject to Darwinian pressures, it is likely that 4/4 is the most "evolved" one (from a fitness view).
Anyway, I think that in 10 years we will be passing all of our music through a deep neural network, and then ask the network to create new things, like invent a new number one hit, cultural style, or create a new work in the style of Beethoven.
Hiphop is not the driving force anymore, also it did not care about harmony at all in a special way. Hiphops focus has always been on rythm. The essence of hiphop is the political rap combined with sampling (pirate citations of all kind creatively layered together). Hiphop (especially rap) has been culturally annihilated.
I don't know why you think hip hop has been "culturally annihilated". I hear it as an incredibly dynamic and forward-looking genre.
Resampling isn't particularly innovative as Im sure you aware of musique concrete and tape music. Hip-hop is essentially defined by the combination of rapping, sociopolitical subtexts, and, yes, specific music production techniques that include sampling but also certain types of rhythms and beats. Those are roughly in order of importance; notice how few people openly lament the death of sampling but the prominence of a white rapper will prompt endless critical and popular commentary.
> that's pretty dead.
Anyone who can listen to To Pimp a Butterfly and believe that hip hop is dead does not know what hip hop is.
> Can you name any currently successful hip hop band that does radical resampling over all genres?
When has this been the criterion for what makes a hip hop band?
it's a particular 16th note
I hear it as an incredibly dynamic
and forward-looking genre.
As a cultural innovation, trap music is cool.
It depends on what you're using. You can get anything from a system that can't be pulled off of 12 tone equal temperament and some conventional time signature all the way up to systems that offer complete and total freedom, up to and including setting the exact values in the .WAV file you generate. I wouldn't say getting past those restrictions are "difficult" necessarily, it's just that by necessity, the more power you take on yourself to define your music, the more work you're going to need to do. By the time you end up with the systems that offer total freedom you have music synthesis systems that look more like programming than musical instruments. But they do exist, and back on the topic of the original article, there's a lot of avant-garde-style work that has been done in them.
When I was going to school and minoring in electric music there was a guy playing with "granular synthesis"; his result sounded like telemetry. I'm not being particularly critical or cruel when I say that... that's seriously what his music sounded like. If you look at how telemetry is generated and compare to how granular synthesis works, it's not hard to see why. Tonality was entirely absent, let alone 12-tone equal temperament.
I actually have no idea what telemetry is supposed to sound like but I think this guy was just making bad music, with granular synthesis. Granular synthesis can actually be quite beautiful and tonal if thats what you're looking for, see examples [1] and [2] just to dig up some quick examples. Ableton's built-in time stretching uses granular synthesis. One guy's bad granular music isn't really indicative of anything.
Most apparent in pop where, for example, each new wave of chart hits in the 80s was driven by the sounds available on some newly-released synth, but the same thing goes on with electro-acoustic music (timbrally, spatially) and modern classical music (in terms of organisation and programme content).
The theory is that this period has ended because we can pretty much synthesise anything now. (Or can we?)
If so, we no longer have the same motivating impulse. Where next?
The fact that we have so many "more traditional" genres in the first place is a result of some progress or invention having happened in the past. Why should it stop?
Novelty is something people seek in every field of course. But some of what makes music music (as opposed to just a soothing or vexing noise) has to do with anticipation and surprise. Perhaps novelty broadly is appealing to music listeners for similar reasons to why any music is appealing in the first place.
Although many forms in e.g. the classical canon might have been inspired by new technology of the day (most obvious example probably being the piano), genres have often arisen for reasons other than technology. It's plausible that our excursion through a hyper-speed series of technological drivers of musical novelty was just a crazy detour. But then we're back to the earlier question, what will it mean to put aside technological novelty as a driver? Or is it absurd to suggest that it has ended?
I'd link you to some but I don't really care about convincing someone with unknown tastes.
Synths and sequences are tools, and are no more limiting than fingers or strings. Throwing away every musical convention might be interesting, but so is experimenting to see why those conventions developed in the first place. What parts of the structure can be removed? When and why?
Computers are generally very unrestrictive--they can be used to put together virtually any sound one can think of, as opposed to physical instruments which have physical limitations (although there are exceptions - the people doing pop music or the boring wub-wub-wub of dubstep or the endless 4/4 oontz of Eurodance have different goals in mind than mere experimentation, and they enforce their restrictions with their tools to help produce their ideas more effectively).
One of the best modern music performances I've ever heard was a live electronic performance where a single tone was generated and then manipulated on the spot beyond recognition. It was complex, dynamic, exciting, and above all, musical - but it worked only because of the availability of electronic musical tools.
That said, I've used the tools of electronic music. I've composed with sequences and samples. I find physical instruments to be more directly expressive (I play guitar and drums myself, but I get the same vibe from keyboard, horn, and string players).
More importantly, though, I find restriction to be essential to playing interesting music. The more "unrestricted" the instrument, the more problematic it is. As a musician, I often use deliberately-imposed restrictions to narrow my choices and channel myself in certain directions. That's especially important in the improvisation world, where you don't have musical conventions to serve as boundaries.
I agree that it's extremely important to understand why musical conventions came to be, and experiment with structures that either generate or break those conventions. The flip side of my own music is playing with folk and "world music" forms. The contemporary music I find most interesting these days is cultural fusion music coming out of Israel, and out of the western Sahara desert. The "desert blues" of the Tuareg and other western Sahara tribes is an incredible reinterpretation of centuries-old tradition with modern instruments (mostly, electric guitar). And in Israel, there are second and third generation Arab Jews discovering the music of their grandparents and filtering it through their own Millennial internet-driven sensibilities. Musicians like Riff Cohen and Yemen Blues just boggle me. So, so cool.
And their reply to mine found computers "unrestrictive" and that they "find restriction to be essential to playing interesting music"
To be more clear, though, I think I should have used the word "expressive" rather than "restrictive". I find it difficult to be expressive with computer-based music. And this is personal - I'm typing this while listening to a friend play an amazing live show with nothing but a Roland MC-808 beat box.
Given a guitar, I can do a lot with just one note, by modulating the timing and tone of that note. But I'm dependent on the direct physical feedback. The indirectness of computer interfaces dismays me. This isn't to say all computers are bad... certainly, I play with digital effects in my chain. My sound passes through computers and still sounds like me. But hopefully you see the point here.
I played for years in a free improvisation duo. One of the constraints we used (only for gigs) was "set lists". We would write titles for "songs", and interpret the titles. This helped us have beginnings and ends and moods.
If you're interested in this stuff for serious, seek out the book "Improvisation", by Derek Bailey. He was a famed improviser himself, and wrote a moderately academic book on musical improvisation in a wide variety of different contexts around the world.
Beautifully put.
Off topic, but I think the same is true of brutalist architecture.
Anyway the article does actually mention electronics at least twice, althouh both times mostly in passing:
"I draw your attention to the example we heard yesterday, when Nathan Davies used live filtering to give the effect of resonators, extracting tones from white noise, and turning those tones towards music."
"Joanna Bailie, to take just one example, has used the recorded and digitally processed sounds ..."
It just goes to show how the so-called "avant garde" in classical music is disconnected, and frankly, quite old. It really has nothing to do with the future.
https://www.amazon.com/Nature-Order-Phenomenon-Environmental...