Avant-garde music
Avant-garde music is music that uses new or unusual ideas. It often tests the accepted rules of music and asks what music can be. It is not one single style or genre. An idea that is avant-garde in one period may become common later.
Avant-garde music and experimental music are closely related, but the terms do not always mean exactly the same thing. Music writers have used different definitions, and there is no clear border between the two.
History
Avant-garde music has roots in the early 20th century. In 1913, Italian artist Luigi Russolo argued that noise could be used as musical material. Composers such as Charles Ives, Henry Cowell and Edgard Varèse later explored dissonance, unusual rhythms, percussion and new kinds of sound. Cowell also used tone clusters and sometimes played directly on the strings inside a piano.
After World War II, composers and artists developed more ways of making and writing music. John Cage, Earle Brown and Morton Feldman used unusual instructions and forms of graphic notation. Some works allowed performers to make choices, while others used chance, recorded sound or live electronics. These ideas became important in concerts, performance art and the Fluxus movement during the 1950s and 1960s.
Methods
Avant-garde composers may use ordinary instruments in new ways or combine them with recorded and electronic sounds. Their music may include:
- noise and sounds from daily life;
- unusual ways of playing an instrument;
- tape loops and other recorded material;
- chance or choices made by the performer;
- pictures, words or symbols instead of normal sheet music.
Not every avant-garde work uses all of these methods.
Examples
4′33″
John Cage wrote 4′33″ in 1952. It has three movements in which the performer does not intentionally play the instrument. The sounds made by the audience, the room and the world outside become part of what people hear. For this reason, the piece is often called a “silent” work, although its performance does not contain complete silence.
