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Stephen Michael Reich is an American composer known for his contribution to the development of minimal music in the mid to late 1960s. Reich's work is marked by its use of repetitive figures, slow harmonic rhythm, and canons. His compositional style reflects his explicit rejection of Western classical traditions, serialism, and indeterminacy, because, unlike these traditions, he sought to create music in which the compositional process was discernible in the music itself. Reich describes this concept in his essay, "Music as a Gradual Process", by stating, "I am interested in perceptible processes. I want to be able to hear the process happening throughout the sounding music." To do so, his music employs the technique of phase shifting, in which a phrase is slightly altered over time, in a flow that is clearly perceptible to the listener. His innovations include using tape loops to create phasing patterns, as on the early compositions It's Gonna Rain (1965) and Come Out (1966), and the use of simple, audible processes, as on Pendulum Music (1968) and Four Organs (1970). The 1978 recording Music for 18 Musicians would help entrench minimalism as a movement. Reich's work took on a darker character in the 1980s with the introduction of historical themes as well as themes from his Jewish heritage, notably Different Trains (1988).
Chamber music is a form of classical music that is composed for a small group of instruments—traditionally a group that could fit in a palace chamber or a large room. Most broadly, it includes any art music that is performed by a small number of performers, with one performer to a part. However, by convention, it usually does not include solo instrument performances.
George Henry Crumb Jr. was an American composer of avant-garde contemporary classical music. Early in his life he rejected the widespread modernist usage of serialism, developing a highly personal musical language which "range[s] in mood from peaceful to nightmarish". Crumb's compositions are known for pushing the limits of technical prowess by way of frequent use of extended techniques. The unusual timbres he employs evoke a surrealist atmosphere which portray emotions of considerable intensity with vast and sometimes haunting soundscapes. His few large-scale works include Echoes of Time and the River (1967), which won the 1968 Pulitzer Prize for Music, and Star-Child (1977), which won the 2001 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Classical Composition; however, his output consists of mostly music for chamber ensembles or solo instrumentalists. Among his best known compositions are Black Angels (1970), a striking commentary on the Vietnam War for electric string quartet; Ancient Voices of Children (1970) for a mixed chamber ensemble; and Vox Balaenae (1971), a musical evocation of the humpback whale, for electric flute, electric cello, and amplified piano.
Shulamit Ran is an Israeli-American composer. She moved from Israel to New York City at 14, as a scholarship student at the Mannes College of Music. Her Symphony (1990) won her the Pulitzer Prize for Music. In this regard, she was the second woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music, the first being Ellen Taaffe Zwilich in 1983. Ran was a professor of music composition at the University of Chicago from 1973 to 2015. She has performed as a pianist in Israel, Europe and the U.S., and her compositional works have been performed worldwide by a wide array of orchestras and chamber groups.
Meredith Jane Monk is an American composer, performer, director, vocalist, filmmaker, and choreographer. From the 1960s onwards, Monk has created multi-disciplinary works which combine music, theatre, and dance, recording extensively for ECM Records. In 1991, Monk composed Atlas, an opera, commissioned and produced by the Houston Opera and the American Music Theater Festival. Her music has been used in films by the Coen Brothers and Jean-Luc Godard. Trip hop musician DJ Shadow sampled Monk's "Dolmen Music" on the song "Midnight in a Perfect World". In 2015, she was awarded the National Medal of Arts by President Barack Obama.
In music, extended technique is unconventional, unorthodox, or non-traditional methods of singing or of playing musical instruments employed to obtain unusual sounds or timbres.
Scordatura is a tuning of a string instrument that is different from the normal, standard tuning. It typically attempts to allow special effects or unusual chords or timbre, or to make certain passages easier to play. It is common to notate the finger position as if played in regular tuning, while the actual pitch resulting is altered. When all the strings are tuned by the same interval up or down, as in the case of the viola in Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante for Violin, Viola and Orchestra, the part is transposed as a whole.
Mario Davidovsky was an Argentine-American composer. Born in Argentina, he emigrated in 1960 to the United States, where he lived for the remainder of his life. He is best known for his series of compositions called Synchronisms, which in live performance incorporate both acoustic instruments and electroacoustic sounds played from a tape.
Elodie Lauten was a French-born American composer described as postminimalist or a microtonalist.
String piano is a term coined by American composer-theorist Henry Cowell (1897–1965) to collectively describe those pianistic extended techniques in which sound is produced by direct manipulation of the strings, instead of or in addition to striking the piano's keys. Pioneered by Cowell in the 1920s, such techniques are now often called upon in the works of avant-garde classical music composers.
Tod Machover, is a composer and an innovator in the application of technology in music. He is the son of Wilma Machover, a pianist and Carl Machover, a computer scientist.
Black Angels, subtitled "Thirteen Images from the Dark Land", is a work for "electric string quartet" by the American avant-garde composer George Crumb. It was composed over the course of a year and is dated "Friday the Thirteenth, March 1970 " as written on the score. The Latin phrase in tempore belli, in time of war, written into the score by Crumb is a reference to the Vietnam War taking place at the time when Black Angels was composed. Crumb numerically structured the piece around 13 and 7, as numbers traditionally related to fate and destiny. The piece is notable for its unconventional instrumentation, which calls for electric string instruments, crystal glasses, and two suspended tam-tam gongs. The work quotes a portion of the second movement, Andante con moto, from Schubert's "Death and the Maiden" String Quartet.
Ancient Voices of Children is a musical composition written in 1970 by the American composer George Crumb. The work was given the subtitle "A Cycle of Songs on Texts by Federico García Lorca."
Biomusic is a form of experimental music which deals with sounds created or performed by non-humans. The definition is also sometimes extended to include sounds made by humans in a directly biological way. For instance, music that is created by the brain waves of the composer can also be called biomusic as can music created by the human body without the use of tools or instruments that are not part of the body.
Makrokosmos is a series of four volumes of pieces for piano by American composer George Crumb. The name alludes to Mikrokosmos, a set of piano pieces by Béla Bartók, one of Crumb's favorite 20th-century composers. The first volume of the set was composed in 1972, while the last was completed in early 1979; the first performance of all four volumes in sequence was given by Yvar Mikhashoff, Aki Takahashi, Stephen Manes, Freida Manes, Jan Williams and Lynn Harbold, in Buffalo, New York, on 12 June 1980.
Des canyons aux étoiles... is a large twelve-movement orchestral work by the French composer Olivier Messiaen. American Alice Tully commissioned the piece in 1971 to celebrate the bicentenary of the United States Declaration of Independence. In 1972, while preparing the work, Messiaen visited Utah, where he was inspired by the birds and the landscape, particularly at colourful Bryce Canyon. It received its premiere in 1974. Performances of the work can have a duration in the range of 90 to 100 minutes.
Mimi Stillman is a professional concert flutist.
Specializing in chamber music and Eastern influences in 20th-century music, British contemporary music ensemble Dreamtiger was created and directed by composer Douglas Young in 1974 while he was studying at Trinity College in Cambridge.
Star-Child is a piece written in 1977 for orchestra and voices by the American composer George Crumb. Harold C. Schonberg of The New York Times said of the work, "Star-Child…is sensitive, powerful, full of personality, and it marks a significant step in Mr. Crumb's development…. This is big music and even passionate music. In a way, it is a synthesis both of what Mr. Crumb has been doing and of many contemporary techniques. Mr. Crumb has tied everything together, creating a score that transcends any derivations."
Christine Southworth is an American composer of postminimal music and works with combinations of Western ensembles, electronics, and world music ensembles including Balinese gamelan and bagpipes. She performs Balinese gamelan and gender wayang with Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Gamelan Galak Tika, as well as Galician Gaita and Great Highland Bagpipes. She co-founded Ensemble Robot, a cooperative of engineers, artists and musicians working together to invent robotic musical instruments. She was also the general manager of Gamelan Galak Tika from 2004 through 2013. Her own music incorporates her work with Balinese gamelan and with technology and electronics, as well as reaching beyond these influences with an expanded palette of contemporary classical, jazz and rock, and world music from Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe.
References
- 1 2 3 4 Berger, Melvin (1889). Guide to Chamber Music. Mineola, New York: Dover Publications. pp. 139–140. ISBN 0486316726.
- 1 2 George Crumb. "An Idyll for the Misbegotten - Vox Balaenae : Madrigals" (PDF). Newworldrecords.org. Retrieved 2014-03-12.
- 1 2 "George Crumb Voice of the Whale" . Retrieved 2014-03-11. A Study Module Created for the Associated Colleges of the South Composers Forum Patricia Gray, ACS, Craig Hultgren, Birmingham Southern College, Anthony Brandt, Rice University
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