Skip to main content

Listening report – Charles Ives:

 Prof. Dr. Herzogenrath

The Future of Avantgarde-Music

Blaha, Malte C.

Matrikelnummer 7509502

 

Listening report – Charles Ives:

 

It is outstanding that Ives firstly approaches music on a very rhythmical base. In the beginning of the songs Concorde Sonata/ The Alcotts, and The Unanswered Question, there is a feelingly musical and rhythmical order. Ives illustrates perfect accords. The accords fill up the space with a mystical vibe that is accomplished with deep mol-tones. The transcendentalism-influence is clearly visible, as it is expressed through an unexplored harmony instead of conveying the received sounds as disturbance.

It is characteristic that Ives mixes the given rhythmical order and start, with -what could be perceived as- disorder. Shorter notes are added and complement other meaning to the still clearly hearable rhythmical order. The idea of mixing order with disorder and therefore delivering a completely new element of sound, is also visible throughout the untypical notes like: “hold back a little”, or “slower and quietly” instead of making use of regular and common signs like forte or pianissimo. Further, as in Transcendentalism there is not such thing as disturbance, there needs to be the understanding, that the musical pieces of Ives where also made in that sense. To me, it seems as if he is forcing the listener to understand that “untypical” music is still not disturbance, but rather a new creation that also deserves recognition.

The song Central Park in the Dark expresses the idea of orderly disorder even further. The melodic beginning and rhythmical order is again influenced with later appearing asymmetrical and skew sounding tones. If you would concentrate on solely whether the musical part, or the background part, then it seems off. But if you concentrate on both, the melody and the background tones, then there is again an order, that does not sound like randomness, but rather room and space filling. Nowadays, one could argue that that is the stuff that horror movies are made off. The disorder that turns into order as soon as you conceive both, the rhythmical and the melodic, is especially recognizable in Central Park in the Dark at 6:50 min to 7:00 min, the disorder turns into a completion of musical order.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Listening Report on John Oswald: Plexure

 Sarah Kumar Dr. Bernd Herzogenrath The Future of (American) Music 06 Mar. 2023 Listening Report on John Oswald: Plexure According to John Oswald, “[a] plunderphone is a recognizable sonic quote, using the actual sound of something familiar which has already been recorded” (Lecture Slides 18). However, only if the source stays recognizable can it be called plunderphonics. In his album Plexure , several songs are played back and mixed together, thus creating a new sound. This is interesting because while the excerpts of songs that are used are recognizable or at least sound familiar to some degree, played backwards and mashed up as they are in Plexure , they create a new sound. Like on the cover of the album, on which a collage making up a man can be seen, the mixing of different songs played backwards gives a new feeling to something known. The way the songs are mixed makes them unintelligible. The meaning of the words of the original recordings are not able to be compr...
Post a Comment
Read more

William Basinski – The Disintegration Loops III

  The Disintegration Loops is a quartet of albums published in 2002 and 2003 by American avant-garde composer William Basinski. The pieces are made up of tape loop recordings that were played over time, with noise and crackles rising as the tape deteriorated. Basinski noticed this effect when attempting to convert his older recordings to digital format. The completion of the recordings coincided with the September 11, 2001 events, which Basinski witnessed and adds a deeper meaning to the composition. The composition is fascinating in many ways and makes the listener lose track of time. The tape loop recording had a very calming effect on me and put me in a trance-like state when I listened to it in its entirety. The tape loop is really soothing, so much so that I didn't even notice the loss of quality when I first listened to it. It makes you forget about time and allows you to really get into the piece capturing the calmness it exudes. You forget or don't really notice how i...
Post a Comment
Read more

John Cage – Inlets

  This does not sound like music to me. Depending on the interpretation of different players or performers, this piece will always sound different. In this case, it sounds to me like someone is walking through a cave with water at the bottom, dragging their feet through it. Sometimes it sounds like water in a toilet bowl, especially when we hear the water in a bigger shell being swished around. These sounds are relaxing in the background, it is like a gentle stream of water. I just wonder what went through the head of the composer while writing this piece. But I guess he had some experimental ideas that are interesting to try out. Those shells are quite pretty, I have never seen such big ones that are not broken. I was surprised when something else happened towards the end of the piece. That tone which came out of the one shell was so clear, it sounded like a trumpet. I didn’t know that shells can sound like that. It was quite beautiful. It was a nice way to end the piece. I di...
Post a Comment
Read more