From: rmc@wang.com (rmc)
Newsgroups: rec.music.compose
Subject: Re: Advances in composition
Date: 15 Dec 92 16:34:01 GMT
Organization: Wang Laboratories, Inc.

You might want to look at the integration of (often non-midi)
electronic instruments with acoustic instruments.  "Return:  A Triumph
of Reason" was an early attempt at this by Morton Subotnik.  There was
some amount of feedback and augmentation between the electronic and
human portions of the realization, but the Columbia electronics
weren't that wonderful and had some tendency to lose their place.
There's a nice recording of "Return" on Bridge. 

For more recent and more successful works in this are, look at Tod
Machover's "super intstrument" music coming out of the MIT labs.
Using an idea similar to the "Super Clarinet" of Martino's "Triple
Concerto", Machover extends the timbre and responsiveness of his
instruments by combining multiple players and electronics.  (The
Martino "Triple Concerto" used three live clarinetists, no
electronics.)  Try his "Spectres" CD, which i suspect is also by
Bridge but might be Wergo.

Collage New Music in Boston have actually performed "Return", "Flora"
and "Spectres" live.  They were amazed that someone in the audience
was actually familiar with the piece, especially "Return", as Subotnik
had not told them it was recorded.

As far as analysis of form and composition go, i would probably cite
Charles Wuorinnen and George Crumb.  They have found ways to structure
sound more simply without going back to chord progressions.

The "Bamboula" pieces of Wuorinen show that a cellular technique
similar to serialism can produce complext textures with an
intervalically simpler structure than is often the case for "proper
serialism" (what ever than might mean).  I described "Blue Bamboula"
as done with "four notes, smoke and one mirror" when i presented it at
composition class.  It really doesn't use much substitution or
transposition, but does it ever Move!  One might also want to look at
his orchestral works, like the "Notre Dame Mass" or the "Piano
Concerto" performed by the BSO a couple of years ago.  (Sorry, there's
a real French title to the piece but it's under some rubble in my
memory).

If you don't know George Crumb's "Night Music", "Night of the Four
Moons" and "Makrokosmos" pieces, well, again they are intervalically
simpler and produce a lot of motion through manipulation of sound
images.  I think the pieces may be a bit older than the 10 years that
you requested however.

In his "Aus Licht" operas, Karlheinz Stockhausen seems to be trying to
build a "sound image" language to center his pieces similar to the way
Ravel used heavily augmented chords to provide centers.  I am less
convinced that this is an "advance", but some might disagree.

Finally, you can try to go away from normal music notation entirely or
nearly so.  The controlled improvisation in Anthony Braxton's
"Composition 101" and "Composition 109" come to mind.  A completely
different graphical notation is used by (i think, memory is cloudy
again) Morton Feldman.  No pieces stand out in my mind as being
particularly successful, especially compared to the Braxton pieces,
and my prof thinks Feldman may have moved away from this technique.
It seems he had really strong feelings for what the notation meant
that were not readable by the players, who thought that they were
given more liscense to improvise.

Enjoy,

R Mark Chilenskas
rmc@wang.com
Newsgroups: rec.music.compose