Music from 1900

Since recording has been around for only the 20th century, music that came before it has been reinvented to fit the recording. That mean, that all music, is contemporary.

Musicians have always taken previous ideas and then reinvented them. An example of reinvention would be the wheel. It was once realized that if you put an axle through a round object it would make a wheel. Thus came around the bicycle and then the motorbike. From the ipod, there first was the walkman, the tape recorder, Thomas Edison and before that; score writingin 1200. It is the same with music, where do you think the latest band has come from musically?

Musical Form

Musical forms are normally known to be things like ternary, binary, sonata and things like rondo. But these were not just invented. Sonata form came from Mozart and Haydn who spent many years perfecting this form. Musical forms are beyond Rondo, they spread to the orchestra or the piano, guitar.

Listening to Music

When listening to a piece of music, think to yourself, what am I listening to? What/How many instruments are playing? What do the different harmonies, tone colours conjure up. What musicians must remember, is that music is never wrong. Unlike subjects like Architecture where if your building suddenly collapses, it is because you, the architect, made a mistake. Not with music. Music belongs to every culture and its' musicians recognize music from other cultures. in the end, it is about your ears. The wider your response, the better.

Piece No. 1: Stravinsky, Symphony of Psalms.

Solume, high pitch oboe with large intervals. There is no clear tonal centre; C, Eb and B are the first 3 notes. You could say that Stravinsky has displaced the G from the C minor chord and in its stead he has put the leading note B in. The interval between Eb and G is a very weird one, this gives the music no real tonal centre. Then a solitary flute comes in fugally playing the same melody a 5th down. You can tell because of the intervals posed by C, Eb and B. This is also called canon, however, the canon does not stay because the flutes eventually pair up the give harmonies. A 3rd flute enters and exits the oboe.

AND THEN

A massive choir obliterate the 'Baroque' ensemble with their huge orchestration. Other choir parts enter fugally eventually pairing up with the other voices. This is called a 'double fugue.' The rest of the orchestra then also enter.

The thing about this piece and how it takes you by surprise is that you are not watching it. If you were, then you would see the choir. But, from the style of Bach to the new modern orchestra is quite a leap.

Piece 2 : Anton Webern (1883 - 1945) Variations for Orchestra, op. 30 (1940)

• 'Cello line to begin with
• Serialist
• No Tonal Centre
• Fragmented Melody
• A large Orchestra

'...The copy of variations is ready... It doesn't look like a score from before Wagner either - Beethoven, for instance, nor does it look like Bach... But it should still be possible to find certain similarity with the type of presentation that occurs in the Netherlanders... [it] doesn't reject the development that came then, but tries on the contrary to continue it into the future, and doesn't aim to return to the past. What kind of style then? I believe again, a new one.' 1960 'The path to the New Music, London: universal Edition, 61.

Webern always looked back to the old stuff, to get away from it.

Piece 3: Miles Davis (1926 - 91) 'Tout de suite' 68

The piece changes it's texture and tempo unlike conventional jazz. To begin with, the bass plays a walking bass line to keep the harmony and rhythm as that is what a rhythm section does in a jazz band. The bass is electric however, a move on from the upright bass and moving into rock. The other major difference about jazz and this piece of music is that this is recorded on a CD and jazz is normally improvised. Miles Davis gave his musicians their pieces about an hour before hand to learn so that the sound is more relaxed and thought of from the top of the head more. Chick Corea plays the Fender Rose here as does Miles Davis plays the Trumpet.

Miles Davis always wanted his music to move on; "... On live gigs, when there was a Steinway grand piano available, Chick Corea would try to sneak it in somewhere, but Miles would stop him saying, ' The piano is over. It's an old-fashioned instrument. I don't want to hear it any more. It belongs to Beethoven. it's not a contemporary instrument..."

What Miles says is total bollocks, but from him saying that, we can see just how much he wanted his music to move on.

Piece 4 : Stockhausen, Karlheize (b.1928). Kontakte (contact) (1958-60)

The pieces title, contact, communicates that there is contact within this piece to other mediums. The instrumentation is Piano and percussion, well at least that's the live musicians. The rest of the sound, is tape recorders and 1950s specials effects. It took about 18 months to make the tape is a lecture sized room full of computers and men in white coats. Nowadays, all is available on a MacBook.

If the piece was a film, we would have conventional characters / forms i.e. people, trying to make contact with a new, fast, futuristic life form. But unfortunately, the thing that dates faster than anything else is a culture's vision of the future. Paul Griffiths states some big things about this piece, stating that is revolutionary etc. That was then, this is now, he spoke too soon.