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Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond
Michael Nyman's book is a first-hand account of experimental music from 1950 to 1970. First published in 1974, it has remained the classic text on a significant form of music making and composing that developed alongside, and partly in opposition to, the postwar modernist tradition of composers such as Boulez, Berio, or Stockhausen. The experimentalist par excellence was J...more
Paperback, 216 pages
Published
July 29th 1999
by Cambridge University Press
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Dull. Academic in the worst way. A prime example of why I hate reading about music. Nyman appeals from the outset, and not very subtlely, to readers' sense of social egalitarianism and differentiates between so-called "experimental" music and so-called "avant-garde" music, implying that the former is superior because of experimental composers' ability to accept the sovereignty of all sounds, whether intentional or not. It's better to just read some John Cage and form one's ow...more
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Read this with Christophe Cox and Dan Warner in 2001. Along with Jhn Cage's Silence and Morton Feldman's writing, it got me going down a totally different path than i could have imagined, in terms of both my listening and playing. I'm grateful to it for that, but honestly haven't returned to it since.
tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE
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review of another edition
Recommends it for:
all serious musicians
Shelves:
music
I estimate that I read this bk in the fall of 1976. I must've read it before the spring of 1978 b/c by then I knew who Nyman was & eagerly attended a concert of his in London during that time. Alas, I found the concert quite boring - it was bland 'new tonality' minimalism. Oh well.. Nonetheless, this bk was the most important bk I'd read on the subject at the time & I was very inspired by it. It still sticks w/ me the way formative experiences do.
I'm guessing that it was 1993 or so when I read this; whenever it was, it was a major turning point in the development of my thinking about music - my first encounter with so many of the great composers of the mid 20th century, and my first real immersion in the concept of "experimental music". Essential reading.
Brian
rated it
Recommends it for:
People interested in the old days of experimental music
Shelves:
general-non-fiction
This book was okay. I like a lot of the music related to the movements discussed. Some of the aleatoric musical games discussed were really cool. Overall though this was not a book that I felt driven to finish (though I did do so). I dunno, it just wasn't anything special.
I didn't finish this book, but I continue to pick it up and read passages and put it down again. It was a great way for me to start thinking about experimental music and there were some interesting exercises/pieces outlined inside.
Yet another revisit...
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