Martin Arnold (composer)

Last updated

Martin Arnold (born 19 August 1959 in Edmonton, Alberta) is a Canadian composer of experimental music. [1] His music has been widely performed and commissioned by ensembles including the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Quatuor Bozzini, the pianist Eve Egoyan, the violinist Mira Benjamin and the cellist Anton Lukoszievieze. [2] [3] [4]

Contents

Education and career

Arnold studied at the University of Alberta, the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity (1981–82) and was a guest student at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague (1982–83). He completed a PhD at the University of Victoria in 1995. [5]

Arnold currently lives in Toronto, where he lectures at Trent University and York University, besides working as a landscape gardener. [1] He performs regularly within the city's free improvisation and experimental music communities on melodica, hurdy-gurdy, prepared autoharp, real-time manipulated and processed CD player and banjo. [1]

Musical style

A formative influence during Arnold's studies was the Czech-Canadian experimental composer Rudolph Komorous, to whose aesthetic Arnold has attributed "a skewed critical sensibility… [that] could embrace any musical background or predilection". [6] Arnold has written about the influence of Komorous' "aesthetic of the wonderful" on his music. [7] Komorous developed the aesthetic with musical colleagues in the Czech Republic before emigrating to Canada in 1969. According to Komorous, another translation of the Czech word for wonderful is strange. Composers influenced by the aesthetic seek to create musical encounters with the unexpected. [8]

Arnold's music is characterized by a sense of dislocation and discontinuity, effects which are created using atonal melodies and novel combinations of instruments and timbres. It is generally slow-paced and characterised by a drifting, directionless quality, which he terms "slack". [9] [3] He has said of his own work:

"All the music I make is in some way melodic. I also think of all of it as being slack, meandering, psychedelic and, even at its most ponderously enervated, dance music. Moby once said of The Flamingos’ version of "I Only Have Eyes For You" that, along with being a beautiful performance of a beautiful song, it sounded like it was recorded underwater in a Methadone clinic. Even at its clearest, my music somehow aspires to this ideal." [10]

The sound of Arnold's music is also influenced by his wide-ranging interests in music outside the spheres of experimental and classical music, such as mediaeval polyphony, 1970s progressive rock, jazz-lounge music, and Scottish folk music. [1] [11]

Significant compositions

Significant works by Arnold include Burrow Out; Burrow In; Burrow Music (1995), a 110-minute work [12] realised with recordings made in a variety of spaces of instruments including baroque flute, melodica, recorders, saxophones, brass, whistling and electronics including electronic panpipes and MIDI pianos. The work was significantly influenced by the work of filmmaker Trinh T. Minh-ha. [5]

Arnold's 40-minute work Tam Lin (2010), a setting of the Scottish ballad of the same name, was written for a combination of improvising trio The Draperies and experimental music ensemble Arraymusic. Writing of this work in The Wire magazine, the journalist Tim Rutherford-Johnson described this piece as "stretch[ing] its source material almost beyond recognition, the ending of each sumptuous multi-vocal phrase becoming a vehicle for increasingly langorous instrumental improvisations". [9]

Arnold's most recent large-scale commission was The Gay Goshawk (2019), written for the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, alongside improvising soloists Angharad Davies and Sharron Kraus. It was premiered at the Tectonics festival in Glasgow and subsequently broadcast by BBC Radio 3. [13] [14]

A weekend devoted to performances of Arnold's music, entitled of-the-now, was held in Victoria, British Columbia, in 2017. [15]

Recordings

Arnold's music is available on the UK-based record label Another Timbre, who released recordings of his works for violin and piano, Points & Waltzes (2012), Slip Minuet (2014) and The Spit Veleta (2015). [16] [3] His works for string quartet were recorded by Quatour Bozzini in 2012. [17] Tam Lin was released by the label Autumn Music in 2010, together with the work for violin and electronics, Cameras (1997), performed by Marc Sabat and Fergus (2000) for melodica and electronics, performed by the composer himself. [18]

Related Research Articles

Free jazz or Free Form in the early- to mid-1970s is a style of avant-garde jazz or an experimental approach to jazz improvisation that developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s when musicians attempted to change or break down jazz conventions, such as regular tempos, tones, and chord changes. Musicians during this period believed that the bebop and modal jazz that had been played before them was too limiting, and became preoccupied with creating something new. The term "free jazz" was drawn from the 1960 Ornette Coleman recording Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation. Europeans tend to favor the term "free improvisation". Others have used "modern jazz", "creative music", and "art music".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James Tenney</span> American composer and music theorist (1934–2006)

James Tenney was an American composer and music theorist. He made significant early musical contributions to plunderphonics, sound synthesis, algorithmic composition, process music, spectral music, microtonal music, and tuning systems including extended just intonation. His theoretical writings variously concern musical form, texture, timbre, consonance and dissonance, and harmonic perception.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Malcolm Goldstein</span> American classical composer

Malcolm Goldstein is an American-Canadian composer, violinist and improviser who has been active in the presentation of new music and dance since the early 1960s. He received an M.A. in music composition from Columbia University in 1960, having studied with Otto Luening. In the 1960s in New York City, he was a co-founder with James Tenney and Philip Corner of the Tone Roads Ensemble and was a participant in the Judson Dance Theater, the New York Festival of the Avant-Garde and the Experimental Intermedia Foundation. Since then, he has toured extensively throughout North America and Europe, with solo concerts as well as with new music and dance ensembles.

Linda Catlin Smith is a Canadian composer based out of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. In 2005 she became the second woman to win the Jules Léger Prize for New Chamber Music.

Allison Cameron is a Canadian composer of contemporary classical music. She composes works for conventional classical instruments, early music instruments, and modern electric instruments such as the electric guitar. She is also a performer of free improvisation and experimental music.

Experimental music is a general label for any music or music genre that pushes existing boundaries and genre definitions. Experimental compositional practice is defined broadly by exploratory sensibilities radically opposed to, and questioning of, institutionalized compositional, performing, and aesthetic conventions in music. Elements of experimental music include indeterminacy, in which the composer introduces the elements of chance or unpredictability with regard to either the composition or its performance. Artists may approach a hybrid of disparate styles or incorporate unorthodox and unique elements.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Owen Underhill</span>

Owen Underhill is a Canadian composer, flutist and conductor based in Vancouver. He is currently a professor of music at Simon Fraser University. He has been an active contributor to the new music scene on the West Coast, as a flutist, as co-music director of Western Front New Music (1982-3), as the artistic director (1987–2000) of the Vancouver New Music Society, and as a conductor in Magnetic Band and the Turning Point Ensemble, for which he is also currently the Artistic Co-Director.

Jimmie LeBlanc is a Canadian composer specializing in instrumental and mixed music. His music has been performed throughout his native country and internationally, including by the Ensemble Contrechamps, Hwaum Chamber Ensemble, Kore Ensemble, Les Enfants Terribles, Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, Pentaèdre, Quatuor Bozzini, and the Trio Fibonacci, and many soloists.

Experimental rock, also called avant-rock, is a subgenre of rock music that pushes the boundaries of common composition and performance technique or which experiments with the basic elements of the genre. Artists aim to liberate and innovate, with some of the genre's distinguishing characteristics being improvisational performances, avant-garde influences, odd instrumentation, opaque lyrics, unorthodox structures and rhythms, and an underlying rejection of commercial aspirations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Taylor Brook</span>

Taylor Brook is a composer of contemporary classical music who currently resides in New York City.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Quatuor Bozzini</span> Musical artist

The Quatuor Bozzini is a string quartet that specializes in new and experimental music based in Montreal, Canada.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Taylan Susam</span> Musical artist

Taylan Susam is a Turkish-Dutch composer of experimental music. He is a member of the Wandelweiser group, which has been described by The New Yorker as "an informal network of twenty or so experimental-minded composers who share an interest in slow music, quiet music, spare music, fragile music."

Anna Höstman is a Canadian composer. She currently lives in Victoria, British Columbia.

Mira Benjamin is a Canadian violinist and researcher. She currently lives in London.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sarah Davachi</span> Canadian musician

Sarah Davachi is a Canadian composer and experimental musician of electroacoustic and minimalist music. She is a pianist and an organist.

Juliet Fraser is a British soprano, based in London and specialising in contemporary classical music. She has commissioned more than 20 solo vocal works and premiered several hundred new works, many written for her. Fraser is the artistic director of eavesdropping, an experimental music festival in East London, and co-director of all that dust, the record label she founded in 2018 with Mark Knoop and Newton Armstrong. She was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Music by the University of Southampton in 2023.

Bryn Harrison is a British experimental composer. His works have been widely performed by international ensembles and he was a recipient of the 2013 Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award for Composers. He is currently Reader in Composition at the University of Huddersfield.

Matthew Ricketts is a Canadian composer of contemporary classical music. He is a 2019 Guggenheim Fellow as well as the recipient of the 2020 Charles Ives Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the 2016 Jacob Druckman Prize from the Aspen Music Festival, the 2015 Salvatore Martirano Memorial Composition Award, a 2013 ASCAP Foundation Morton Gould Young Composer Award, and eight prizes in the SOCAN Foundation's Awards for Young Composers. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

John Lely is British experimental composer, improvising musician and curator based in London, UK.

Another Timbre is a record label, based in Sheffield and known for its releases of free improvisation, experimental and contemporary classical music. It was founded by television sound recordist Simon Reynell, who also engineers and produces most of the label's recordings.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Höstman, Anna K. (2016). "Tuber, Rhizome, Tendril and Corm: On the Music of Martin Arnold". Tempo. 70 (277): 16–33. doi:10.1017/S0040298216000164. ISSN   0040-2982. S2CID   148407598.
  2. ↑ Thomas, Philip (30 October 2012). "CANADA CONNECTIONS" (PDF). University of Huddersfield.
  3. 1 2 3 "Another Timbre: Canadian Composers Series (Part 1)". 5:4. 2017-04-28. Retrieved 2020-07-02.
  4. ↑ "Martin Arnold".
  5. 1 2 Arnold, Martin (1995). Observations About, around and Beside "Burrow out; Burrow in; Burrow Music. University of Victoria.
  6. ↑ Petty, Sheila; Sherbert, Garry; Gérin, Annie (2006). Canadian cultural poesis : essays on Canadian culture. Waterloo, Ont.: Wilfrid Laurier University Press. ISBN   1-4237-6108-1. OCLC   65173944.
  7. ↑ Petty, Sheila (2004). "Candid Eyes: Essays on Canadian Documentaries (review)". University of Toronto Quarterly. 74 (1): 375–376. doi:10.1353/utq.2005.0179. ISSN   1712-5278. S2CID   162447379.
  8. ↑ Backus, Joan (2002), "Komorous, Rudolf (opera)", Oxford Music Online, Oxford University Press, doi:10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.o902589 , retrieved 2021-07-15
  9. 1 2 Rutherford-Johnson, Tim (March 2017). "Experimental music from Canada". The Wire: 24–29. ISSN   0952-0686.
  10. ↑ "Spit Veleta". www.anothertimbre.com. Retrieved 2020-07-02.
  11. ↑ Steenhuisen, Paul (2003). "'Martin Arnold—Getting Lost, an Art of Musical Meandering'". Musicworks.
  12. ↑ Priest, Eldritch. Boring formless nonsense : experimental music and the aesthetics of failure. New York. p. 141. ISBN   978-1-4411-2408-1. OCLC   828736623.
  13. ↑ "BBC Radio 3 - New Music Show, Tectonics Glasgow 2019". BBC. Retrieved 2020-07-02.
  14. ↑ "LIVE REVIEW // Myles goes to Tectonics Glasgow". CutCommon. 2019-05-13. Retrieved 2020-07-02.
  15. ↑ indivisionnetwork.com. "of-the-now: Martin Arnold: Mira Benjamin, Philip Thomas, Quatuor Bozzini, Anton Lukoszevieze @ Open Space - Sep 22, 2017 Victoria BC". artsvictoria.ca. Retrieved 2021-07-15.
  16. ↑ Klang, Boring Like A. Drill A. Blog » Annea Lockwood at Kammer. "Boring Like A Drill. » The Canadian Composers Series on Another Timbre: Smith, Arnold, Szlavincs" . Retrieved 2020-07-02.
  17. ↑ "Quatuor Bozzini - Martin Arnold - Aberrare". Discogs. Retrieved 2020-07-02.
  18. ↑ "Martin Arnold - Tam Lin". Discogs. Retrieved 2020-07-02.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.