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TAVISHIStockhausen Music that disturbs you, causes you discomfort but yet you still can’t seem to shut it off that’s the closest I can come to describe Stockhausen’s music. Karlheinz Stockhausen was a German composer, an important creator and theoretician of electronic and serial music who strongly influenced avant-garde composers from the 1950s through the ’80s.Stockhausen’s explorations of fundamental psychological and acoustical aspects of music were highly independent. Serialism (music based on a series of tones in an ordered arrangement without regard for traditional tonality) was a guiding principle for him. . Stockhausen also began using tape recorders and other machines in the 1950s to analyse and investigate sounds through the electronic manipulation of their fundamental elements, sine waves. From this point he set out to create a new, radically serial approach to the basic elements of music and their organisation. He used both electronic and traditional instrumental means and buttressed his approach with rigorous theoretical speculations and radical innovations in musical notation. I chose “Fische” his 1957 composition to listen to, which was rather interesting for me as these compositions were based on the 12 zodiac sign and without the slightest realisation I ended up choosing my zodiac sign which is Pisces. Initially as the song played my ears were thrown off by the erratic beats, the sound was eerie and left me with an uncanny feeling. The sustained notes seemed too long, the shrill sounds were too shrill, the pitch changed too frequently or not all. Harmony which is the essence of music seemed to be far away from this piece. Similar to classical music there was a lack of lyrics, however unlike classical music it also seemed to lack a sense of rhythm However I decided to give this music piece another chance as I felt my preconceived notion of what a song is and how music is supposed to sound clouded my judgement. This time my experience was slightly enhanced and refined. I realised that the more I listened to it, the more it seemed like the song was following a storyline and it had the ability to create a strong atmosphere around you. Much like Edgards composition many parts of the composition seemed similar to a background score in a movie which might be the reason I felt like the song was narrating a certain story through its notes. I personally wasn’t a fan of the overpowering flute that took over the calm yet static base in the beginning. I felt that it took away from uniqueness of it and caved more towards the classical side. Another rather interesting thing I felt was that, after each note I was in anticipation for the next one. As, even after listening to it for the third time the sounds were unexpecting and rather disorganised. This reminded me of a study I had read which was about “why we like music’, the study stated that since primitive times till now songs always seem to follow a rhythm or a pattern. And humans tend to enjoy detection of this pattern i.e. “knowing what will come next in the song.” This gives the brain a sense of achievement that in return makes you enjoy the song. Stockhausen songs however lacked this, thus I felt the sense of anticipation and songs seemed disorganised to me. Overall along with eerie feeling the song carried, there was something very compelling about the music, it made we want to listen Edgard Varese "I refuse to submit myself only to sounds that have already been heard," Varèse had said in his time and that is exactly how is music was to me, never heard before and unexpected. Edgard Varèse, an American composer and innovator in 20th-century techniques of sound production.. Varèse’s music is dissonant, non-thematic, and rhythmically asymmetric; he conceived of it as bodies of sound in space. After the early 1950s, when he finally gained access to the electronic sound equipment he desired, he concentrated on electronic music. Varèse's search for new sounds led him to utilize the percussion section to a greater extent than any composer before him. Edgard Varèse attempted a revolution not of style or structure, but of pure sound. Varèse's skill is not measured by the sheer number of different sounds he assembles, but the way in which he assembles them. His approach to orchestration involves an extreme fluidity of texture so that instruments might follow distinct paths in one moment and assemble to create a complex composite gesture or colour in the next. Hyper prism was my composition of choice to listen to from Edgard’s work. Though the name of the song does not infer specific meaning I would like to think just as a prism scatters light everywhere, the song and its beats were also scattered across a space. The song was overpowered with drum like beats and wind instruments. The song was rather strong and powerful with non-rhythmic pauses. While listening to the song I was weirdly reminded of “Tom&Jerry” and many other animated series as the music seemed very similar to the over the top dramatic background score used in such shows. Unlike Stockhausen’s music this seemed a little more organised to me and slightly more similar to mainstream music. The start of the song feels like the onset of something and throughout the entire song you can’t shake off the feeling that something is bound to happen, however its only the wait as that bass drop never comes. Overall the music is unlike I have ever heard before, and I would like to believe that this was the mere start of electronic niche music genre and even though we have come a far way, there is still something about this music which makes you want to shut out every other noise and listen to it, because every time you listen to it you feel like you might decipher some hidden meaning. |