If we want to talk about modern music, perhaps we have to go back to the night of May 29, 1913 at the Paris Theater on the Champs Elysées in France. It was also Stravinsky's "Spring" On the night of the premiere of "The Festival", according to reports at the time, the audience in the performance hall was divided into two groups almost instantly, and this riot was not inferior to the chaotic scenes caused by Dada.
Today's music critics believe that Stravinsky did not intend to create this musical schism, but that the period before the First World War was a mixture of carnival, extravagance, and intense destruction. In a time of desire, revolution, and longing for the future industrial world, it was almost torture for some composers to continue to follow the norms of classical romanticism in musical concepts.
Stravinsky first conceived "The Rite of Spring" as a symphony, and later rewrote it into a ballet. In fact, no matter what form it is, this work, which is completely different from classical works in terms of rhythm and harmony, is destined to become one of the origins of modern music.
Stravinsky’s creations are multi-style. The early stage had a Russian national style and showed a preference for unusual instrument colors, violent rhythms, harsh power and enthusiasm. The music in the middle period was clear, concise, simple and clear, and belonged to the neoclassical school. The first work of this period was the dance drama "Pulcinella", which premiered at the Paris Opera House in 1920. The famous painter Picasso designed the scenery and costumes for the play. In 1922, the author changed the play into a suite of the same name, a medley in which the author was obsessed with 18th-century music. Later, he criticized the twelve-tone system, but the sequence creation technique created by Schoenberg and others actually appeared in his works again.
Stravinsky: Igor Feodorovich Stravinsky1882-1971, Russian-American composer. Originally studying law, he later studied music as an amateur with Rimsky Korshakov, and finally became a veritable leader of the modern music school. Stravinsky was eclectic in his creations and constantly absorbed various new means of expression. When people were commenting on one of his styles, he had already moved on to a new one. He has achieved such great achievements in the creation of various styles and genres.
The construction of the "twelve-tone system"
Compared with Stravinsky, another composer of the same period, Arnold Schoenberg, was not a composer at the time. So get attention. But in fact, the "twelve-tone system" created by Schoenberg provided strong theoretical and technical support for modern music.
"Twelve-tone system" is also called "sequential music". Simply put, within the range of an octave, twelve tones, including semitones, are of equal importance. Therefore, when the composer is composing, the major or minor scale can basically be abandoned, as long as the twelve notes are arranged in a certain order into one or several sequences.
One can imagine the confusion and anger of academic composers when they first came into contact with sequence music, but today’s music must express its respect for Schoenberg. It was the “twelve-tone system” that transformed music into Liberation from certain rules, although that is only the first step, is the most important step. Although there are very few people who follow Schoenberg, the "New Viennese School" founded by him and his students Webern and Berg had a profound influence on subsequent avant-garde musicians. After going through a period of "neoclassicism", Stravinsky naturally turned to sequence music. You can't say that this was just an accidental choice.
Schoenberg: Born in Vienna in 1874, died in Los Angeles in 1951. He was almost self-taught. He is the originator of atonal music. His early representative works: "Pure Night" (1899) and "Grey's Song" (1903) have the flavor of Romanticism and Impressionism. In 1908, he composed three piano pieces, which were the beginning of twelve-tone works.
The neglected Hanqi electronic music
On the other hand, perhaps earlier, some scientists were simply obsessed with the use of electricity. Electric appliances that could not be used in real life were invented. These inventors also soon realized that the principle of radio waves is actually similar to that of sound waves. They are vibrations at a frequency. When the frequency generated by current vibration appears within the range that the human ear can hear, it becomes what we can hear. Generally speaking, people call this sound electric noise. It seems that this sound has nothing to do with music. Even most doctors believe that electric noise can cause nerve damage and make people behave Something crazy is coming.
But there are still some people who are obsessed with this sound that belongs to the future. The telephone invented by Bell in 1876 and the phonograph invented by Edison in 1877 can be regarded as reasonable uses of electric current. Through the phonograph, music was found for the first time. A popular carrier is completely different from sitting in a concert hall or reading sheet music at home. Compared with the telephone and the phonograph, around 1922, a machine invented by a young Russian scientist Leon Trimin
was not popular at all. A machine that uses changes in the sound field waveform to control sound, that is, it uses the phase change of the player's body between two metal antennas to emit corresponding sounds. He named the machine Thereminvox, which was later simply called his The name is "Trimin". Mr. Trimin firmly believed that electronics would play a very important role in the future great Soviet communist society. His idea was right, but his great dream was only really realized in the United States. That was after he immigrated to the United States.
It was probably around 1927 that this machine was first introduced to American society and the popular music industry. It was the era of great development of American jazz, although Trimin was immediately bought by RCA Records. However, at that time, this "instrument" that neither used fingers to pick, tap, nor used to play with the mouth confused many people, especially jazz musicians who emphasized the skills of playing instruments at that time. In other words, this thing was not in their eyes at all, and many musicians thought it was just another expensive toy, even though Mr. Trimin had already demonstrated a live performance to the public at Carnegie Hall in the 1930s. It was an extremely advanced electronic music concert at the time, but it still had little repercussions in the music industry. However, in the film industry, Trimin has received a lot of response, and it is often used in the background sound effects of many subsequent thriller movies and spy movies. It was only later that the value of the theremin was recognized by electronic musicians and it began to be used widely, perhaps even a little too widely.
After World War II, technology gave rise to “sound” art
The Second World War tore up not only the structure of Europe and the entire world, but also people’s belief in a beautiful world. The longing of the world, in a sense, this war completely destroyed a slow and ancient classical pastoral in people's minds and severed the connection between the future and the past. The post-war world is moving toward modern society at an accelerated pace, and this change will inevitably be reflected in art and music.
Perhaps the most important musician after the war was John Cage. Although some people still sneer at him today, even those who disdain him must not It is undeniable that without Cage, the face of modern music would most likely be completely different from what it is today. Compared with other musicians, Cage was more of a speaker and philosopher. Although his own works were already very persuasive, it seemed that his speeches about music had a greater impact on the public.
From Cage’s speeches in different periods, people gradually discovered that the word “music” was slowly replaced by “sound”. These speeches conveyed a new attitude of appreciation, “new Sound requires a new way of listening. Don't try to understand, but pay attention to the activity of the sound.
"But it is not easy to completely change the appreciation habits inherited from classical music overnight, and it is especially difficult for Western audiences to accept Cage's Eastern Zen thinking.
Perhaps in order to stimulate the critics and audiences who criticized him, Cage went further and further on the road of experimentation, and most of the content seems to be beyond the scope of what the public can accept today, such as adding ingredients to the piano and throwing coins. Composition, etc. Perhaps it is precisely because there is almost no influence from the Western musical tradition in Cage's music that his impact on this musical tradition is so important.
Although Cage in 1939. One of the earliest electronic music works, "Imaginary Landscape No. 1", was recorded in 2001. However, this method of recording the current sound generated by a tube oscillator on a 78-rpm Bakelite record was too expensive and expensive. It's complicated. Typically, musicians like Varese, Russolo and Schillinger write down their ideas, but actually executing them is another matter. The emergence of new recording equipment changed things.
John Cage (1912-1992), a musical experimenter, abandoned traditional performance techniques and composition techniques and became a pioneer of "added piano". Cage is famous for his "added piano", which is to put various objects on or between the strings of a traditional piano to change the original sound and timbre. Cage studied opportunity music, electronic music, and finally music. The famous work "4 Minutes and 33 Seconds" is an unprecedented silent piece. The rest of the piece is 4 minutes and 33 seconds long, setting a world record for the longest rest. ?
The birth of the tape recorder
Obviously, tape as a music carrier, this medium is completely different from the previous music scores and bakelite records. It is simple and convenient to operate. The most important thing is that it is very easy to change and process the sound recorded on the tape, so the tape recorder It immediately aroused the interest of musicians as soon as it appeared. This is a living example of the medium changing music.
By the 1950s, the tape recorder, which had been developed to perfection, completely changed the way avant-garde music was played. , this act that resembles a musical revolution is attributed to two French sound engineers, Pierre Cheffire and Pierre Henri.
Cheffire and Pierre were colleagues in the 1940s. *** both work at the French National Broadcasting Corporation's recording studio, but strictly speaking, their works and electronic music actually follow two completely opposite paths. The sounds recorded on tapes do not come from any electronic device. Musical instruments are directly taken from real life, and then the musicians use the unique functions of the tape recorder to perform technical processing on these sounds, such as changing the speed, reversing, cutting, overlaying tracks, etc., due to the sound inside They are all sounds that exist in reality, so this kind of music is called "concrete music" or "concrete music".
In 1949, Pierre Scheifele created his first music. The successful work "Symphony for One Man", from then on, he has been constantly collaborating with other avant-garde musicians, such as Varèse, Messiaen, Stockhausen and others, these people have played an important role in the later Electronic music has made huge contributions, but not many people know about them.
Although the sound research group led by Pierre Scheifele and Pierre Henry carefully avoided the immature field of electronic music, other composers of the same generation were very natural It combines these two very similar auditory effects. Also in 1949, American engineers built the first Vocoder, also known as the "Voice Changer." This machine was immediately shipped to the Phonetics Association in Bonn, Germany.
What is special about this machine is that it can bring a unique electronic effect to the sounds of nature. The Vocal Changer immediately aroused the keen interest of Robert Beyer, a producer at Radio Cologne.
In the following year, Beyer established an electronic music laboratory based on this machine. This laboratory later became an important stronghold of early electronic music in Germany, and Stockhausen once worked here. Through the efforts of this laboratory, concrete music, or experimental music and avant-garde music finally began to have the flavor of electricity.
Changes in jazz and rock music
Only a small part of jazz and rock music can be regarded as modern music, but even such a minority has had a significant impact on jazz and rock music. influence, and this influence is even decisive in jazz.
In most cases, modern music does not appear in one form, but no matter what, all kinds of music that can be called modern music have some common characteristics, such as Talking about the destruction of the harmonic function, such as unstable rhythm or no rhythm at all, such as the use of noise in a general sense, such as the redefinition of the function of sound-producing instruments. From these perspectives, only a small part of jazz and rock music can be considered modern music, but even this small minority has had a major influence on jazz and rock music, and this influence is even decisive in jazz. of.
Since the 1950s, a group of jazz musicians have been determined to reform traditional jazz, starting with Charlie Parker and Charles Mingus, and ending with Onie Coleman and San La. Jazz went from a traditional black music played in honky-tonks to radical experimental music. This change is indeed intriguing, but in fact it is not sudden. There has always been a certain tendency to break the rules in black music.
Since parting ways with classical music, avant-garde music has also been looking for music forms that can bring vitality to itself. Musicians are becoming more and more interested in ethnic music from all over the world, and they suddenly discover those The sounds produced by simple homemade instruments and the structures composed of these sounds completely represent the modernity of music.
In the field of rock music, the Beatles' recording of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Souls Club" in 1967 transformed these four young men from pop singers into serious musicians. In this record, producer George Martin makes full use of the tape processing techniques passed down from Pierre Scheifele and Pierre Henry, and everyone who hears this record will be surprised. The wall of sound and the unpredictable effects, you know, this was still the era of three-minute love pop songs.
Of course, later rock musicians went further than the Beatles. For example, the "no wave" movement that emerged in New York in the 1980s fundamentally shook the foundation of rock music, but the technological factors cannot be eliminated. ignore. Just like what happened to experimental musicians in the 1950s, the emergence and popularization of new media are also changing the face of music. Works that previously required musicians to carefully complete with scissors and glue can now be completed by just one person using a mouse on a computer. Changes in recording methods have caused changes in the music itself. Modern electronic musicians cleverly use the former The results left behind by people.
The explosion of electronic music in the 1990s
Since the explosion of electronic music in the mid-1990s, almost all music has an electronic flavor, and even world music has become It is often used as a material in electronic music. But this also brings some problems. When musicians face more possibilities, music becomes more about choice rather than creation, and such choices are always accompanied by a certain tendency to overflow.
In fact, from the beginning, modern music was based on a concept that broke with classicism, and based on this concept, it followed the development of technology, or equipment. Moreover, the future of music as a whole is probably closely related to the transformation and development of technology. At least from the current perspective, changes in musicians' composition techniques will not have a decisive impact on the future of music. The real key remains technology.
However, although technology plays a major role in it, the works that can really move people are still those deep emotions that come directly from the heart and are expressed in clear language. In other words, humanized electronic music is not a luxury wish, nor is it a propaganda strategy of popular electronic music. In fact, we should understand that Stravinsky, or Schoenberg, or John Cage , or those musicians who were the first to use electronic devices to create music. They believed that by destroying the structure of music, destroying people's accustomed listening experience, and through the sound generated by electric current, emotions between people can be communicated.