From: kkothman@weber.ucsd.edu (Keith Kothman)
Newsgroups: rec.music.compose
Subject: Re: Advances in composition
Date: 15 Dec 92 21:36:17 GMT
Article-I.D.: network.1glj4hINNn9b
Organization: University of California, San Diego
NNTP-Posting-Host: weber.ucsd.edu

>In article <1992Dec11.212136.13971@gecko.uucp>, josh@Tekelec.gecko.uucp (Josh Barinstein) writes...
>> 
>>David V. Feldman writes:
>> 
>>> In the opinions of readers of this group, what pieces of music
>>> composed recently represent the most important theoretical 
>>> developments in compositional technique.
>>> By recently I mean, so within the last five or ten years.
>>> I am not here concerned in anyway with whether the music is good or
>>> bad, beautiful or ugly, but simply with innovations in melody, harmony,
>>> rhythm, timbre, form, tuning, theatre, spacial location, integration
>>> of new technology, etc. whose significance is potentially wider than
>>> the individual piece where they are instantiated.  I am especially
>>> interested to hear about the work of younger or lesser known composers
>>> whose work I am unlikely to know from recordings or broadcast.
>> 
>> 
>>I found this particular question quite interesting.  The problem is
>>that those who have replied have not really answered David's question.


DISCLAIMER:  Not all of these pieces/develpments fall within
	     the "last ten year" period, but they are significant.

--Live/interactive electronic music performance
	Repons, by Boulez.  (the computer "responds" to the 
	acoustic input in real-time, with various processing
	and spatialization routines.  This is probably one 
	of the most organized pieces in this genre.)

--Extreme complexity in rhythmic and tonal organization
  (sometimes referred to as the "New Complexity.")
	Brian Ferneyhough is the saint to which most disciples of
	this church pray.  He has several string quartets 
	recorded by the Arditti Quartet, plus solo flute, cello,
	bass clarinet pieces.  Extremely complex rhythmic
	structures are derived from multiple layers of number
	patterns.  The number of steps used to create these
	structures are so many that Ferneyhough himself 
	sometimes cannot retrace the steps.

	He has a huge following among composers in Europe, 
	although he teaches here in the U.S.  (he is English,
	and taught for many years in Germany).  Probably his
	most famous pupil is the Finnish composer Saarieho (sp?).
	She has already had multiple performances by the LA Phil
	under new music director Salonen.

--Computer Music:  sound exploration/expansion
	Jonathen Harvey's In Mortuous Plango, Vivos Vicos is 
	a masterpiece.  (Both this work and Boulez's mentioned 
	above were done at IRCAM, so the next time someone 
	says "no masterpieces have ever been produced out of
	all that technology" just realize that they are talking
	from a personal bias or ignorance).  Harvey merges his 
	son's singing (a choirboy) with a very rich bell sound,
	producing extremely musical results.  Tonal organization
	derives from the non-tempered overtone structure of 
	the bell.

--Linguistic models for music organization
	Ligeti has produced some masterful works using Linguistic
	theory as a post-serialist means of organizing pitch material.
	In his Second String Quartet (circa 1970, i think) Ligeti
	uses what he calls a letter-box approach, referring to 
	printing presses that have more copies of certain letters
	that are used more often ("a" and "e", for instance).
	This is only one linguistic approach, and doesn't even
	really convey the overall structure of Ligeti's work, but
	linguistic approaches to theory and composition have 
	gained in importance.

These are only a few things that I consider important.  Consider
that all items presented as fact could have slight errors due to
my typing off the top of my head.

Keith Kothman
kkothman@ucsd.edu		Dept. of Music, UC, San Diego