Reddit reviews Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond (Music in the Twentieth Century)
We found 4 Reddit comments about Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond (Music in the Twentieth Century). Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Used Book in Good Condition
Here are few I've read and would recommend:
> I don't see how established genres can be experimental?
> more signed artists should be posted
Those two statements conflict almost 100%. The only artists who are signed to even indie record labels, are ones on whom the record label can make money, which means established genres.
Not all self-posts are non-experimental, but you do need to have open ears.
I'd strongly suggest reading Nyman's Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond. It's a very short academic book with short, digestible chapters. It's 40 years old at this point, but still absolutely relevant, and I am pretty sure you would like it. It would help you clarify the core of the point you were trying to make in this comment.
Oh, and also Listening Through the Noise by Demers. It totally explains your point about genres not being experimental. One of the best books I've ever read on electronic music.
If you want more experimental play with fundamental western conceptions of music there are some here: http://www.amazon.com/Experimental-Music-Beyond-Twentieth-Century/dp/0521653835
It depends which direction you want to go, and what you consider fundamental. Alvin Lucier creates music using electrodes attached to his brain that control drums kits and various other sounds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIPU2ynqy2Y
If you want to experience what is probably the opposite of silence check out Merzbow, which comes out of Japan and meant to be an artistic response to atomic bombs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGzrL8J0t-c
In Australia we had a contemporary composer who wrote music for the bionic ear: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLX-rPsphV8
Also see
Acousmatic music - Robert Normandeau -
Electroacoustic music -
Concrete music - Pierre Shaffer -
Field recording -
Radiophonic music
Specialism movement - Tristan Murrail -
Intercultural: There is more to music then the Western cannon. Time isn't linear. History isn't linear. You can read it linearly but it doesn't have to function that way. History is made up, it is fabricated. You can make whatever you like. And really aim for a genuine expression of yourself and express it to the world. If that leads you to a definition of music then so be it.
Tan Dun: Water Music
Cross-disciplinary - Table Music (Musique de Table) by Thierry de Mey
If you want my opinion Cage doesn't know it all. He was a very influential person, but his ideas he borrowed from Asian cultures (from the I-Ching) where not correct. He made his own interpretation, he saw it as chance, whereas Chinese people see it not as a chance but as acausal. (Chou Wen-chung, Locating East Asia in Western Art Music, 2004).
There is more to composition than redefining music, and there is a great deal of fulfillment you can get when you just express what is genuine in yourself.
Here are some books:
Many of the best books written about 20th century music were written by relatively unsuccessful composers. Eric Salzman, Robert P. Morgan, even Alex Ross who is known as a journalist and not a composer studied under Peter Lieberson (Ross wrote The Rest is Noise).
That said, perhaps you'd enjoy The Aesthetics of Survival: A Composer's View of Twentieth-Century Music by George Rochberg. There's also Michael Nyman's book, Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond, and George Perle's collection of essays The Right Notes.
If you're really concerned about what composers consider important in composing music, I would read a book about 20th century theory & composition, not a history book. If it must be written by a "successful" composer, check out the classic by Vincent Persichetti - Twentieth-Century Harmony: Creative Aspects and Practice.