Music Hum: Modernism and the New Vanguards

Carlos Chavez

1899-1978

Impacted by machine music, but does not fully align with futurism

First composer to enunciate new Mexican nationalism and first composer to gain access to the inner circle of Mexican cultural politics

Sought to return to pre-conquest music forms

Machine music

popularized by a futuristic Italian art and political movement that fueled nationalism called Italian Futurism

Uses sounds from machines and often has a political/social message

Pratella’s Machine music in Italy

Textual propaganda, includes sounds from machines, fast moving piano, and removed traditional music while reprising Italian identity

36 (Post-Power)

1925

By Chavez

Atonal composition creates a cocophony

Mexican cultural politics

Sought to connect back to the indigenous Mexican art forms

Liturgical music had been used as a form of colonialism when colonizing the environment of indigenous people 

La Poloma Azul

By Chavez

Folkloric tune with harp

A march (demonstrated by the three eighths followed by the two quarters)

Symphonia India

1936

By Chavez

Used Aztec instruments to contribute to the Aztec Renaissance

Time signature shifts and polyrhythmic composition in an attempt to invoke a collective pre-colonial memory

Not a true recreation of  indigenous music, rather it is modern music with indigenous signifiers 

Toru Takemitsu

1930-1996

Major figure of Japanese classical music in the 20th century

A part of Jikken Kobo but eventually left

Jikken Kobo

A collective of different artists and professionals born as an experimental workshop in 1951

Strong influence from avant-gardes and Schoenberg/Stravinsky’s work on rhythmical disruptions

Challenged traditional understandings of music and what its body/kind of artistic expression relied on

Reprised Wagner’s consideration of musi

Dornstadt

Collective of experimental and seria music

Challenged traditional understandings of music and what its body/kind of artistic expression relied on

Vocalism AI

1956

By Takemitsu

Uses a new form of notation 

Explore the connection between sound and generation of sound

Combines voice, whisper, and electronic sounds

Uses phonemes of ‘a’ and ‘i’ (ai = love in Japanese) pronounced by a woman and man voice

Corona

1962

By Takemitsu

Non-traditional notation

five different experimental sections: 1) vibration, 2) intonation, 3) articulation, 4) expression, 5) conversation

November steps

1967

By Takemitsu

Aimed to juxtapose Japanese and western instruments in a way that emphasizes their differences of sonority

Correspondence emerges through biwa string plucking being reflected in the orchestra’s strings

Classical music form of a solo concerto

Woodwinds and picked instruments take the lead strengthened by the biwa and shakuhachi 

after soloist sections, orchestra’s performance cadence changed — biwa and shakuhachi’s sound spread through orchestra