Experimental music is a general label for any music that pushes existing boundaries and genre definitions (Anon. & n.d.(c)). Experimental compositional practice is defined broadly by exploratory sensibilites radically opposed to, and questioning of, institutionalized compositional, performing, and aesthetic conventions in music (Sun 2013). Elements of experimental music include indeterminate music, in which the composer introduces the elements of chance or unpredictability with regard to either the composition or its performance. Artists may also approach a hybrid of disparate styles or incorporate unorthodox and unique elements (Anon. & n.d.(c)).
The practice became prominent in the mid-20th century, particularly in Europe and North America. John Cage was one of the earliest composers to use the term and one of experimental music’s primary innovators, utilizing indeterminacy techniques and seeking unknown outcomes. In France, as early as 1953, Pierre Schaeffer had begun using the term “musique expérimentale” to describe compositional activities that incorporated tape music, musique concrète, and elektronische Musik. Also, in America, a quite distinct sense of the term was used in the late 1950s to describe computer-controlled composition associated with composers such as Lejaren Hiller. Harry Partch as well as Ivor Darreg worked with other tuning scales based on the physical laws for harmonic music. For this music they both developed a group of experimental musical instruments. Musique concrète (French; literally, “concrete music”), is a form of electroacoustic music that utilises acousmatic sound as a compositional resource. Free improvisation or free music is improvised music without any rules beyond the taste or inclination of the musician(s) involved; in many cases the musicians make an active effort to avoid “clichés”, i.e., overt references to recognizable musical conventions or genres.
Terminology
The term is confusing because it can be used in many different ways: either as a synonym in the broad sense of contemporary music or, on the contrary, in a restricted sense, referring only to specific trends in that music. The term can also be used in an even broader sense and also encompass, with contemporary scholarly music, the ensemble of avant-garde folk music.
Definitions and usage
Origins
The Groupe de Recherches de Musique Concrète (GRMC), under the leadership of Pierre Schaeffer, organized the First International Decade of Experimental Music between 8 and 18 June 1953. This appears to have been an attempt by Schaeffer to reverse the assimilation of musique concrète into the German elektronische Musik, and instead tried to subsume musique concrète, elektronische Musik, tape music, and world music under the rubric “musique experimentale” (Palombini 1993, 18). Publication of Schaeffer’s manifesto (Schaeffer 1957) was delayed by four years, by which time Schaeffer was favoring the term “recherche musicale” (music research), though he never wholly abandoned “musique expérimentale” (Palombini 1993a, 19; Palombini 1993b, 557).
John Cage was also using the term as early as 1955. According to Cage’s definition, “an experimental action is one the outcome of which is not foreseen” (Cage 1961, 39), and he was specifically interested in completed works that performed an unpredictable action (Mauceri 1997, 197). In Germany, the publication of Cage’s article was anticipated by several months in a lecture delivered by Wolfgang Edward Rebner at the Darmstädter Ferienkurse on 13 August 1954, titled “Amerikanische Experimentalmusik”. Rebner’s lecture extended the concept back in time to include Charles Ives, Edgard Varèse, and Henry Cowell, as well as Cage, due to their focus on sound as such rather than compositional method (Rebner 1997).
Alternate classifications
Composer and critic Michael Nyman starts from Cage’s definition (Nyman 1974, 1), and develops the term “experimental” also to describe the work of other American composers (Christian Wolff, Earle Brown, Meredith Monk, Malcolm Goldstein, Morton Feldman, Terry Riley, La Monte Young, Philip Glass, John Cale, Steve Reich, etc.), as well as composers such as Gavin Bryars, Toshi Ichiyanagi, Cornelius Cardew, John Tilbury, Frederic Rzewski, and Keith Rowe (Nyman 1974, 78–81, 93–115). Nyman opposes experimental music to the European avant-garde of the time (Boulez, Kagel, Xenakis, Birtwistle, Berio, Stockhausen, and Bussotti), for whom “The identity of a composition is of paramount importance” (Nyman 1974, 2 and 9). The word “experimental” in the former cases “is apt, providing it is understood not as descriptive of an act to be later judged in terms of success or failure, but simply as of an act the outcome of which is unknown” (Cage 1961).
David Cope also distinguishes between experimental and avant garde, describing experimental music as that “which represents a refusal to accept the status quo” (Cope 1997, 222). David Nicholls, too, makes this distinction, saying that “…very generally, avant-garde music can be viewed as occupying an extreme position within the tradition, while experimental music lies outside it” (Nicholls 1998, 318).
Warren Burt cautions that, as “a combination of leading-edge techniques and a certain exploratory attitude”, experimental music requires a broad and inclusive definition, “a series of ands, if you will”, encompassing such areas as “Cageian influences and work with low technology and improvisation and sound poetry and linguistics and new instrument building and multimedia and music theatre and work with high technology and community music, among others, when these activities are done with the aim of finding those musics ‘we don’t like, yet,’ [citing Herbert Brün] in a ‘problem-seeking environment’ [citing Chris Mann]” (Burt 1991, 5).
Benjamin Piekut argues that this “consensus view of experimentalism” is based on an a priori “grouping”, rather than asking the question “How have these composers been collected together in the first place, that they can now be the subject of a description?” That is, “for the most part, experimental music studies describes [sic] a category without really explaining it” (Piekut 2008, 2–5). He finds laudable exceptions in the work of David Nicholls and, especially, Amy Beal (Piekut 2008, 5), and concludes from their work that “The fundamental ontological shift that marks experimentalism as an achievement is that from representationalism to performativity”, so that “an explanation of experimentalism that already assumes the category it purports to explain is an exercise in metaphysics, not ontology” (Piekut 2008, 7).
Leonard B. Meyer, on the other hand, includes under “experimental music” composers rejected by Nyman, such as Berio, Boulez and Stockhausen, as well as the techniques of “total serialism” (Meyer 1994, 106–107 and 266), holding that “there is no single, or even pre-eminent, experimental music, but rather a plethora of different methods and kinds” (Meyer 1994, 237).
Abortive critical term
In the 1950s, the term “experimental” was often applied by conservative music critics—along with a number of other words, such as “engineers art”, “musical splitting of the atom”, “alchemist’s kitchen”, “atonal”, and “serial”—as a deprecating jargon term, which must be regarded as “abortive concepts”, since they did not “grasp a subject” (Metzger 1959, 21). This was an attempt to marginalize, and thereby dismiss various kinds of music that did not conform to established conventions (Mauceri 1997, 189). In 1955, Pierre Boulez identified it as a “new definition that makes it possible to restrict to a laboratory, which is tolerated but subject to inspection, all attempts to corrupt musical morals. Once they have set limits to the danger, the good ostriches go to sleep again and wake only to stamp their feet with rage when they are obliged to accept the bitter fact of the periodical ravages caused by experiment.” He concludes, “There is no such thing as experimental music … but there is a very real distinction between sterility and invention” (Boulez 1986, 430 and 431). Starting in the 1960s, “experimental music” began to be used in America for almost the opposite purpose, in an attempt to establish an historical category to help legitimize a loosely identified group of radically innovative, “outsider” composers. Whatever success this might have had in academe, this attempt to construct a genre was as abortive as the meaningless namecalling noted by Metzger, since by the “genre’s” own definition the work it includes is “radically different and highly individualistic” (Mauceri 1997, 190). It is therefore not a genre, but an open category, “because any attempt to classify a phenomenon as unclassifiable and (often) elusive as experimental music must be partial” (Nyman 1974, 5). Furthermore, the characteristic indeterminacy in performance “guarantees that two versions of the same piece will have virtually no perceptible musical ‘facts’ in common” (Nyman 1974, 9).
Computer composition
In the late 1950s, Lejaren Hiller and L. M. Isaacson used the term in connection with computer-controlled composition, in the scientific sense of “experiment” (Hiller and Isaacson 1959): making predictions for new compositions based on established musical technique (Mauceri 1997, 194–95). The term “experimental music” was used contemporaneously for electronic music, particularly in the early musique concrète work of Schaeffer and Henry in France (Vignal 2003, 298). There is a considerable overlap between Downtown music and what is more generally called experimental music, especially as that term was defined at length by Nyman in his book Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond (1974, second edition 1999).
History
Influential antecedents
A number of early 20th-century American composers, seen as precedents to and influences on John Cage, are sometimes referred to as the “American Experimental School”. These include Charles Ives, Charles and Ruth Crawford Seeger, Henry Cowell, Carl Ruggles, and John Becker (Nicholls 1990; Rebner 1997).
New York School
Artists: John Cage, Earle Brown, Christian Wolff, Morton Feldman, David Tudor, Related: Merce Cunningham
Musique concrète
Musique concrète (French; literally, “concrete music”), is a form of electroacoustic music that utilises acousmatic sound as a compositional resource. The compositional material is not restricted to the inclusion of sonorities derived from musical instruments or voices, nor to elements traditionally thought of as “musical” (melody, harmony, rhythm, metre and so on). The theoretical underpinnings of the aesthetic were developed by Pierre Schaeffer, beginning in the late 1940s.
Fluxus
Fluxus was an artistic movement started in the 1960s, characterized by an increased theatricality and the use of mixed media. Another known musical aspect appearing in the Fluxus movement was the use of Primal Scream at performances, derived from the primal therapy. Yoko Ono used this technique of expression (Bateman n.d.).
Minimalism
Minimal music is a form of art music that employs limited or minimal musical materials. In the Western art music tradition the American composers La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, and Philip Glass are credited with being among the first to develop compositional techniques that exploit a minimal approach. It originated in the New York Downtown scene of the 1960s and was initially viewed as a form of experimental music called the New York Hypnotic School. As an aesthetic, it is marked by a non-narrative, non-teleological, and non-representational conception of a work in progress, and represents a new approach to the activity of listening to music by focusing on the internal processes of the music, which lack goals or motion toward those goals. Prominent features of the technique include consonant harmony, steady pulse (if not immobile drones), stasis or gradual transformation, and often reiteration of musical phrases or smaller units such as figures, motifs, and cells. It may include features such as additive process and phase shifting which leads to what has been termed phase music. Minimal compositions that rely heavily on process techniques that follow strict rules are usually described using the term process music.
Transethnicism
The term “experimental” has sometimes been applied to the mixture of recognizable music genres, especially those identified with specific ethnic groups, as found for example in the music of Laurie Anderson, Chou Wen-chung, Steve Reich, Kevin Volans, Martin Scherzinger, Michael Blake, and Rüdiger Meyer (Blake 1999; Jaffe 1983; Lubet 1999).
Free improvisation
Free improvisation or free music is improvised music without any rules beyond the taste or inclination of the musician(s) involved; in many cases the musicians make an active effort to avoid overt references to recognizable musical genres. The term is somewhat paradoxical, since it can be considered both as a technique (employed by any musician who wishes to disregard rigid genres and forms) and as a recognizable genre in its own right.
Influence
The Residents started in the seventies as an idiosyncratic musical group mixing all kinds of artistic genres like pop music, electronic music, experimental music with movies, comic books and performance art (Ankeny n.d.). Rhys Chatham and Glenn Branca composed multi guitar compositions in the late 1970s. Chatham worked for some time with LaMonte Young and afterwards mixed the experimental musical ideas with punk rock in his piece Guitar Trio. Lydia Lunch started incorporating spoken word with punk rock and Mars explored new sliding guitar techniques. Arto Lindsay neglected to use any kind of musical practise or theory to develop an idiosyncratic atonal playing technique. DNA and James Chance are other famous no wave artists. Chance later on moved more up to Free improvisation. The No Wave movement was closely related to transgressive art and, just like Fluxus, often mixed performance art with music. It is alternatively seen, however, as an avant-garde offshoot of 1970s punk, and a genre related to experimental rock (Anon. & n.d.(b)).
Evolution and employment in the United States
During the 1960s, the term has taken a more restricted sense especially the United States. It was then mainly used to distinguish anti-traditional composers (like John Cage) in contrast to the European avant-garde trend 3. This music is characterized by a willingness to disempowerment of the composer, a non-determinism of the creative act and therefore a musical result in unpredictable part. A will of non-control that goes contrary to the approaches of the official European avant-garde music of the more formal era such as integral serialismcharacterized by determinism and total control of all musical parameters.
It is in a rather similar sense that Michael Nyman uses the term but extends it to minimalist and post-modernist composers in a general way. Indeed, in his book Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond considered repository of experimental music, he uses the term “experimental” to mean primarily the work of contemporary American musicians (John Cage, Christian Wolff, Earle Brown, Meredith Monk, Morton Feldman, Terry Riley, The Young Monte, Philip Glass,John Cale, Steve Reich, etc.) as opposed to the avant-garde European music of the time (Karlheinz Stockhausen, Pierre Boulez, Iannis Xenakis).
In this sense, the avant-garde approaches of contemporary European music even the most innovative are not considered experimental music. In this sense, the term “experimental music” presents only one of the many trends of contemporary music and therefore does not include European avant-garde forms such as serial music or concrete music. In this sense, the composer John Cage was one of the pioneers of experimental music; by his compositions, he helped to define the bases of this movement. It is most often in this sense that Americans hear the term “experimental music”.
Contemporary music
But it often happens that the term experimental music is simply used to refer to contemporary music in fact by certain specialists as well as by persons unfamiliar with the genre, for whom the term “experimental” seems to them more explicit than the term “contemporary”. “. The term contemporary music is a technical term that refers to all of the avant-garde scholarly music that historically descends from classical music but has challenged most of the principles of this music to create new music. the term “contemporary music” thus refers to a very broad set of new aesthetics that have developed as a result of thesecond school of Vienna and the integral serial movement. And in this respect, considering the extremely innovative side of this music, many people consider it experimental music. Some American theorists do not consider these avant-garde forms to be experimental music, while others, like the American musicologist Léonard B. Meyer, include under the term “experimental music” the music of avant-garde contemporary music composers such as Pierre Boulez, Luciano Berio or Karlheinz Stockhausen and integral serialism.
But many composers of contemporary music reject the name “experimental” they find reductive. Indeed, the term may have many connotations suggesting that composers do not really control their material and try anything and everything. Vision that many composers reject, even if their music is seen by many as “experimental” because outside the norms.
Avant-garde music
Finally, in the most popular sense, the term “experimental music” is used to denote in an undifferentiated way all the music as well learned as popular with an avant-garde or out of the ordinary approach. It is in this broader sense that Philippe Robert approaches the notion of “experimental music”. The term “experimental music” includes in this sense both:
All the various trends in contemporary music, the serialism, the concrete music, the electroacoustic music, the minimalist music, the stochastic music, the spectral music, etc.
The case apart from the improvised music that is not aesthetically and conceptually situated in any of the so-called scholarly or popular currents but borrows, depending on the protagonists, elements to these or those to make an instant creation literally unheard of, by definition.
And the various avant-garde and experimental popular music such as: avant-rock (also called ” experimental rock “), the avant-garde jazz, rock art, free rock, free jazz, metal before -gardist (also called “experimental metal”), industrial music (or industrial), no wave, noise rock, glitch. And sometimes, progressive rock and progressive metal.
Source from Wikipedia