Conceptualism Enough mainstream music. Now we move into the avant-garde with a vengeance! 1. Read the web page by Mark Bollora about conceptualism. • What happened in the early 1960s that helped conceptualism develop? • What are some of the characteristics of conceptualist pieces? Were they all actually intended to be performed? • John Cage can be thought of as the father of conceptual art. How did he directly contribute to the beginning of the movement? • What did Cage say about music and theater that influenced the conceptualist vanguard? • Which famous John Cage piece was a particularly important influence on conceptualism? 2. Watch the YouTube video of “Variations V” by John Cage and Merce Cunningham, which we first viewed two days ago when we studied Cage. Mark Bollora discusses this conceptualist piece on his web page. • How were the sounds produced by the dancers? • How were they modified by Cage and his compatriots? 3. Bollora discusses Fluxus on his web page. Read the Wikipedia article on Fluxus. • What was Fluxus? What role did this group play in conceptualism? Describe some of the Fluxus pieces mentioned in the reading. • George Maciunas organized the first Fluxus event. Listen to Maciunas’s “Piano Piece #13 for Nam June Paik” performed by Sonic Youth and watch the YouTube video of this same performance. o What is happening during the performance? o What does Bollora say about actions and objects in conceptualist pieces? o How does “Piano Piece #13” qualify as a conceptualist piece? • You read “Towards (a Definition of) Experimental Music” last week when we studied John Cage. One section of this essay is on The Instrument as Total Configuration . How does “Piano Piece #13” fit with this section of the essay? 4. The Wikipedia article on Fluxus discusses the role of event scores in Fluxus art. • How are event scores different from the happenings we discussed earlier in the John cage lesson? • Listen to “Pendulum Music,” performed by Sonic Youth and watch the video of “Pendulum Piece” performed in the Dartmouth Contemporary Music Lab. Why is the pendulum music “composed” by Steve Reich a good example of an event score? 5. Both Bollora and Wikipedia mention the influence of the Dada movement on Fluxus and conceptualism in general. We discussed Dada last week and the reading for today has links to web pages about Dada. • When and where did the Dada movement begin? What did the Dadaists seek to do? • Who was Marcel Duchamp and what was his contribution to Dadaism? • What kind of “art” did Duchamp produce? How did this influence the conceptualists? • What else did the conceptualists draw from Dada? December 29, 2009 1 6. Read the Rolling Stone article on Lamonte Young written by Robert Palmer. Listen to the recording of “Drift Study.” • How does Palmer say Young “plays the blues”? How does this description correspond with “Drift Study”? • What is a “drone”? What kind of music introduced drones to Western musicians and composers? What jazz musician to whom we have listened used drones? • On page 395, Palmer describes the Theater of Eternal Music as a group of gifted young musicians. Listen to the YouTube video of “B Flat Dorian Blues,” which is played by this group in 1962 (La Monte Young : Sopranino Saxophone, John Cale : Viola, Marian Zazeela : Voice Drone, Angus MacLise : Hand Percussion, Tony Conrad : Bowed Guitar). o How does this piece make use of a drone? o What does it have in common with some of the jazz we have heard? o John Cale is playing the viola. Who is John Cale and in what rock group did he play a few years later? We will listen to the music of this group tomorrow.. • Young is one of the originators of minimalism, which we will study next week. From the name, what would you guess music by composers associated with “minimalism” is like? • Palmer discusses Young’s studies of the psychophysics of sound. o Young is part of an ongoing project in which they play sine waves in perfectly tuned ratios to observe the effect (if any) on the human nervous system and spirit 1. This excerpt from Drift Study is made by playing two pure sine waves with frequencies that have the ratio 31:69. What effect do you perceive on your nervous system and spirit? • Young is recognized as a major composer who has been an important influence on modern music. Yet he seldom performs and is virtually unknown to the general public. What have you learned from Palmer’s article why this is so? Where does Young perform his music and what are the performances like? 7. Read the Wikipedia article and Avant Rock section on Yoko Ono. • What was her childhood like? • Yoko Ono was a prominent conceptual artist in the sixties. How did her loft figure into Fluxus events of the time? Describe some of her own conceptual art works? • In spite of her prominent role in the conceptual movement, Ono is famous for another reason. For what is she best known? • Ono also is a prominent avant garde musician. Listen to the three Ono pieces from the early seventies and watch the YouTube video of a 1974 festival performance. • In Avant Rock, Bill Martin writes that “ Plastic Ono Band is true avant rock, in the sense that Ono is absorbing the most contemporary sounds of Ornette Coleman and John Cage, and putting the sounds in a rock context.” Explain what he means, making specific references to the assigned listening. • Martin expresses the opinion that Ono’s singing may not correspond with Cage’s ideas on expressivity. Why does he say this? 1 Kyle Gann, American Music in the Twentieth Century , p 190 December 29, 2009 2 8. Listen to Pauline Oliveros’s Bye-Bye Butterfly, which was recorded in 1965. • How is this piece appear to be influenced by Young? • Gann has called Bye-Bye Butterfly a “meditation on sound. Why does he say this? 9. Listen to the excerpt from “Automatic Writing” by Robert Ashley. • In his fascinating sleeve notes, Ashley explains that ”the 46-minute 'Automatic Writing' developed out of an interest in and a mild affliction from Tourette's Syndrome; in the composer's case this manifests itself in occasional involuntary speech. Recordings of Ashley's mostly incomprehensible utterances, subjected to electronic treatments, are accompanied by Mimi Johnson's whispered French ‘translation.’” 2 • Listen to the recording carefully – with earphones if possible. Can you understand what is being said? It has been said that Ashley is communicating more through language then with it 3. How is this so? • What kind of feeling does listening to “Automatic Writing” give you? • In “Automatic Writing,” how does Ashley draw on the example of Pierre Schaeffer from 30 years before? 10. In this course we will follow five general trends that characterize most, if not all, of the ways that the avant-garde music has influenced popular music. Which of these trends do we hear in this lesson? • Simplicity • Decomposition of Musical Structure • Electronic Music • Noise as Music • Pastiche 2 http://www.btinternet.com/~rubberneck/ashley.html 3 http://www.web-malls.net/sound323/listings/2024.html December 29, 2009 3 .