In diving into the American avant garde movement, I am struck by the number of pieces that seek to play on our expectations to provoke an emotional response. This manipulation of expectations is not new though-- Mozart comes to mind as being particularly brilliant at setting up expectations and delaying their resolution through some unexpected and interesting diversion. Ultimately Mozart leaves us feeling emotionally satisfied in a way that many new works do not though. Perhaps works of the American avant garde pursue shock value as more central to the work's emotional journey than had been previously explored, Haydn's Surprise Symphony notwithstanding.
As with defining most every other movement, we struggle to deploy accurate and meaningful terms. Wikipedia defines "avant garde music" as "music which is thought to be ahead of its time, i.e. containing innovative elements or fusing different genres."
This definition is problematic in that it could include any work that seemed to be modern or included elements from another genre; all the Great composers pushed boundaries of what was expected at the time. Wikipedia continues to define avant garde music as "the radical, post-1945 tendencies of a modernist style in several genres of art music after the death of Anton Webern in 1945. In the 1950s the term avant-garde music was mostly associated with serial music." This is more helpful as it includes parameters of time and radicalism, but no aesthetic goals are included.
Wikipedia has a similarly difficult time defining experimental music:
"A compositional tradition which arose in the mid-20th century, applied particularly in North America to music composed in such a way that its outcome is unforeseeable." How are they defining outcome? The musical content resulting from the work's performance? In this case, chance music seems like a better term. Or does the definition refer to the visual impression of the printed musical score? Or to the audience's reaction to the performance? The outcome of the audience reaction is almost always unforeseeable, so might all most of all time periods be included in this definition?
The Wikipedia definition continues to include music that is a hybrid of desperate styles or music that incorporates unorthodox, new, or unique ingredients. Again, much music written throughout history incorporates new elements, including relatively conservative works, and thus this definition also seems inadequate to define its intended movement.
The article in Grove by Jim Samson has a much more artistically informed and nuanced view but requires some length to view the movement through its musical and cultural roots. I was especially interested in Samson's suggestion that the avant garde has deep historical connections to intellectual specialization and social dissent as these two elements would become extremely important in the postwar era. Indeed, these two ideas seem to relate to the two streams which Samson proposes evolved in the twentieth century: the first being the "project of Greatness in art," the advanced stage of expression advanced by Stockhausen and Boulez; the second being the "subversive, anti-bourgeois protest" advanced in music by Satie and Cage which rejected the institution of art. These two streams have continued to battle for relevance in today's cultural environment where both seem a small part of mass media.
It seems this movement defies easy definition and I return to my initial impressions of shock and emotional impact. Artists of the avant garde movement were seeking to make their own unique statement and concise terms seeking to define everything in the realm seem woefully unhelpful and do not further understanding of the composer's aesthetic goals. Perhaps the diverse personalities and agendas embodied in the experimental movement are too broad to be distilled to a single term. I will for the time being avoid labeling as this or that and instead seek to experience each piece on its own terms, exploring the artistic world suggested by its creator. After surveying the sphere of this art, I might be able to assign aesthetically meaningful designations that compare the work of pioneering artists to their more conservative counterparts.
I will close this blog's inaugural post with an homage to its namesake who continues to defy categorization: Frank Zappa leading Ensemble Modern in the exciting finale of the inexplicable Yellow Shark tour, "G-Spot Tornado."
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