Contemporary Music Theory

[onthestrip]

I am a guitar player interested in soundscapes, noisy drones, ambient stuff, walls of sound, improv, prepared guitar techniques, electro-acoustics, etc. After years of "just playing around", then not playing at all for a couple of years, for about a year now I have a renewed interest in the guitar and making music, and also in "playing well", i.e., more structured than just fooling around.

I'm studying quite some theory at the moment and really like it, but my real interests lie in what I mentioned earlier and although I think a lot of the classical theory (scales, modes, rhythms, counterpoint, chord progressions) still applies to those genres, it seems many important concepts are not covered by these conventional theories. This is most noticeable in eai, I guess. Still, that music all seems pretty similar in how it develops, and what techniques are used. I'm wondering what theories there are regarding these newer forms of music, books you can recommend on this topic? I've seen books on amazon about contemporary counterpoint, for example, seems interesting but also expensive ..

[Dohol]

I can't think of specific texts that are particularly useful in this area..


I just follow the advice Jorge Luis Borges gave to young writers.

" Read a lot, write a lot and don't rush to get into print"

I would say, listen a lot, play a lot and record a lot...

Also, the stuff that gets argued to death around here (IHM) is worth digging up.

[JrF]

time



& allowing the music to come before the theory at least until ones theories & ones music converge.

[fearandpanic]

You might be better off reading the thoughts of twentieth-century modernist composers set in a historical account rather than outlined in theories, since a principal emphasis in post-war classical music is that each piece reinvent the wheel (for better or worse). The decline of a common practice in classical music almost defines its modernist period, and one result of this exponential diversity is that the composer is mostly the one left theorising for each piece and what it might represent. This leaves a kind of local rather than general or all-purpose theory. That might be unsatisfactoy, but it seems to suit the area itself. This same reluctance to be theorised is still at work in free improv and its offshoots (see the earlier posts...)

The revised edition (1995) of Paul Griffiths's book Modern Music and After: Directions since 1945 is a good book of the survey kind, since it sets each composer's own ideas in the historical situation.

[onthestrip]

Thanks all!

The decline of a common practice in classical music almost defines its modernist period, and one result of this exponential diversity is that the composer is mostly the one left theorising for each piece and what it might represent.

Well, this is exactly the reason I started this thread. From what I notice (with my limited knowledge of a lot of the music discussed here), it seems that there is definitely some common practice in contemporary music .. some "concepts" that apparently work, techniques or tricks to make the music interesting that are employed by many. I expected that that would have been documented already, and abstracted away from, giving room to more universal theories , but that doesn't seem to be the case then But yeah, I'll just have to try for myself what works and what doesn't!

[JrF]

yes, but the danger is assuming that musicians appearing to use these 'common practices' are doing so because of the theory that surrounds them or because they learnt it from others. Once things become a question of theory in writing it is largely nothing to do with the performers.

[milton.parker]

I can only advise you on the basics with this stuff, things that have already set in for 3+ decades or more

before 1960:
Busoni - Sketch Of A New Esthetic Of Music (1911)
Henry Cowell - New Musical Resources
Harry Partch - Genesis of a Music
Stockhausen on Music
Cage - Silence / A Year From Monday

after 1960:
>>>> James Tenney - Meta / Hodos
James Tenney - A History of Consonance and Dissonance
James Tenney - MusicWorks issue #27

all of these are slightly more explorative than summaries, but they're still definitively explorative in the directions you seem interested in going, and as some of them were written decades ago, their speculations carry an authority of their own

[cdeupree]

Jonathan Kramer's The Time of Music is one of the best theoretical accounts of contemporary music that I've found. It is the only theory book I've ever encountered that discusses the altered perception of time that comes with more static and textural types of music, although he has detailed examples from Beethoven, Schoenberg, Webern and Stravinsky as well (his detailed analysis of what he calls vertical time uses Rzewski's Moutons de Panurge). Sadly, it's way out of print, but it should be available in university music libraries and better public libraries. I checked it out so many times that I finally watched various online used book sellers and jumped on a mint copy for under $200, but currently on Amazon the only copies are over $1000 (yikes!).

If you're interested in the gory details of pitch-based 20th century music, Allen Forte's The Structure of Atonal Music has a good reputation. Another book that I know by reputation only is Louis Andriessen's book on Stravinsky, The Apollonian Clockwork, supposed to be among the very best work on that composer.

Leigh Landy has a resource web site for electroacoustic music, and the accompanying book (which I wrote about here) has a decent overview of various theoretical approaches, some of which are applicable to EAI and its relatives. A lot of the really interesting writing on electroacoustic music is in French because of the pioneering work from Pierre Schaeffer, but the Acoustic Ecology and Soundscape movements from Canada have also produced some thought provoking work.

[jkudler]

This is most noticeable in eai, I guess. Still, that music all seems pretty similar in how it develops, and what techniques are used

heh.

i think f&p sums it up well ("The decline of a common practice in classical music almost defines its modernist period, and one result of this exponential diversity is that the composer is mostly the one left theorising for each piece and what it might represent. This leaves a kind of local rather than general or all-purpose theory. ")

it seems that there is definitely some common practice in contemporary music .. some "concepts" that apparently work, techniques or tricks to make the music interesting that are employed by many. I expected that that would have been documented already, and abstracted away from, giving room to more universal theories , but that doesn't seem to be the case then

like jez said, i think it's a mistake to assume that this comes from any kind of "top-down" program - if anything, i'd locate it in a sort of flattening or lowest common denominator effect of people playing together and working out a common method, or label aesthetics, or whatever.

that said, i think some helpful books could come from the world of contemporary art theory or critical theory. more specific to music, i think these have some good sections (mostly improvised music related):
derek bailey's "improvisation"
eddie prevost's books
cardew's essay "towards an ethic of improvisation" (link)
michael nyman's book (link)
the "audio culture" reader (link)

there's a handful of books on atonal theory and such, but i assume you are looking for books that deal with music less based on pitch relationships?

-jesse

[einklavier]

I recommend Introduction to Post-tonal Theory by Joseph Straus, detailing the development and practice of musical set theory, providing examples, and discussing everything from Schoenbergs linear rows to circles to total serialism of Stockhausen et al. It's (relatively) understandable to non-students/academics. (I know nothing of modes or "common practice" theory, I went straight to post-tonal at the age of 15, so I may be biased.)

Besides that, any biographical books will usually provide lots of information about theory (Other Planets by Maconie and Harrison Birtwistle by Jonathan Cross are both great novels with lots of musical examples) , and because (as others have said) in contemporary/modern music almost every composer invents her or his own theory, they will give you multiple unique perspectives without being over-bearing. People say listen to a lot of music, which is true, but also learn as many instruments as you can to better understand music as a whole.

[Dan Warburton]

Wasn't there a thread about this before, with similar recommendations?

[fearandpanic]

Wasn't there a thread about this before, with similar recommendations?

Yeah, one or two. Like this one:

http://ihatemusic.noquam.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=585

But they were just about recommending general classical music theory books. This thread is a little more specific in looking for books that might have parts relevant to "soundscapes, noisy drones, ambient stuff, walls of sound, improv, prepared guitar techniques, electro-acoustics, etc." It's ended up much the same, though, since most of the prominent features in the "new" areas have been doing the rounds for decades in various forms.

[lukaz]

As a general overview on previous century thru very personal perspective and a bit of didactic note i would recommend (probably now hard to get) book from late Morphogenesis member Roger Sutherland called New Perspecitves In Music (Sun Tavern Fields, 1994). And on this note i am very glad that this book will soon see the light of the day in shitenian translation (shockingly the first of it's kind in our country) for which i along w the copy of the book prepared also one (the closing) chapter ... and here i would like to thank Mark Wastell for helping me getting this book and contacts ... i'll send you a copy Mark when it's out so you can learn shitenian

[Moon]

Books about listening I remember from my lectures:
Simon Emmerson writes about the Nine Language Types
Jean-Jacques Nattiez writes about poiesis and esthesis in analytic situations, didn't quite get into that whole things.
And Pierre Schaeffer wrote the PROGREMU.

Emmerson is the one I found most interesting, but I'm sure there's lots more fascinating stuff out there.
Learning about listening and classifying sounds has helped me more than the times I have tried to learn musical theory.
Actually, I have some of my lectures recorded and some pdf's, if any of it sounds interesting.

[niwi]

i'd be interested in the lectures/pdfs

[Adam Asnan]

Emmerson is the one I found most interesting, but I'm sure there's lots more fascinating stuff out there.
Learning about listening and classifying sounds has helped me more than the times I have tried to learn musical theory.
Actually, I have some of my lectures recorded and some pdf's, if any of it sounds interesting.

Seconded.

I recommend The language of electroacoustic music and especially Denis Smalley's article on Spectromorphology, its quite complicated at times, but the notion of spectromorphological approaches serves to identify, and fomalize the structures and complexities of non-tonal musics.

[Moon]

As I read somewhere lurking around here, you're a student of Smalley's?
At City?
So you're probably familiar with my tutor, John Dack. He's the one giving me my lectures. And I envy your locales, shiny place it is.
Was trying to find out which was the ones I wanted earlier at a spare moment, but he does tend to ramble on, which makes it hard to find out which is which browsing leisurely. Not to say his rambles aren't interesting too.
Anyway, they'll be up as soon as I have access to real internet and isn't buried in words to write.
So I hopes you're not angry impatient peoples.

[visa tapani]

Leigh Landy has a resource web site for electroacoustic music, and the accompanying book (which I wrote about here) has a decent overview of various theoretical approaches, some of which are applicable to EAI and its relatives. A lot of the really interesting writing on electroacoustic music is in French because of the pioneering work from Pierre Schaeffer, but the Acoustic Ecology and Soundscape movements from Canada have also produced some thought provoking work.

I second the recommendation for the Landy book as a good concise overview of electroacoustic music theory. After that you can go on reading some of the original texts:

- Schaeffer's theories are significant of course, but his writings are quite lengthy and have not been translated to English. That's why I'd recommend Michel Chion's Guide des Objets Sonores as a good, concise summary of Traité des Objets Musicaux. The Chion book has been translated to English very well by the already mentioned John Dack. I couldn't find it by quick googling, so maybe it's not yet available. I already read it about 2 years ago though and Chion said in his Paris Transatlantic interview that "It'll soon be available online", so it should pop up any time now. Another work by Schaeffer I'd recommend is the Solfege de L'Object Sonore, 3-CD box of electroacoustic music eartraining with English translations in the booklet. There are a couple of clips of it on Youtube so you can take a glimpse on the style.

- Denis Smalley's theories on spectromorphology are very interesting. Spectromorphology: explaining sound-shapes, (in Organised Sound (1997), 2 : 107-126) is a good starting point, but he has many other interesting articles as well.

Speaking of Organized Sound, it's a great journal focusing on electroacoustic music theory, edited by Leigh Landy. A lot of the articles are poo but there are gems in there as well. Every issue tends to have a theme which of course dictates a lot what kind of stuff you'll be likely to find inside. If you browse the issues and abstracts, I'm sure you can find something of interest. There's one issue available for free download at the moment, but unfortunately it doen't look too interesting (IMO of course).

Trevor Wishart has also written about electroacoustic music theory, his book On Sonic Art is relevant for this thread.

Also, I highly recommend Katharine Norman's book Sounding art: eight literary excursions through electronic music. Not theory per se but a very personal, poetic style of analytical writing, very successful IMO.

[Adam Asnan]

As I read somewhere lurking around here, you're a student of Smalley's?
At City?
So you're probably familiar with my tutor, John Dack. He's the one giving me my lectures. And I envy your locales, shiny place it is.

..Yes that is correct, and am familiar with John Dack, but perhaps not as much as I should be?

Anyway, yes our facilities are quite good, and have recently undergone a refurbishment of the studios (of which I havent even touched - still using the old ones)

As I understand, Mr. Dack is translating Chion's Guide des objets sonores? - can you ask him when that will be available??

[Moon]

Lecture on Pierre Schaeffer's "Programme de la Recherche Musicale" (PROGREMU).
This is the first part in a series and explains mostly typology.
Lecture:
Dack, John 1-10-08

PDF:
PROGREMU

I'm trying to find out where the other parts start and begin, and I might try to cut up some of the others. Editing lectures that I might have misplaced the date on is harder than I thought.

(as of posting this it's still an hour left until the lecture is fully uploaded)