Igor Stravinsky - Prog? I think so!

tokenrove wrote: Although I'm still more a fan of composed music than of improvised music, I agree with you here. Musicians who can't improvise lack the soul of music, and can't be trusted to perform composed works. (but, then, I'm a fan of the idea that the performer should be trusted by the composer with a lot of freedom.)

^ "Musicians who can't improvise lack the soul of music, and can't be trusted to perform composed works."

Very true. I think the reverse is also true, and to generalize that statement a bit I would say that in order to be recognized as a musician you have to have a certain level of skill, be able to perform composed works and also to improvise at least to a certain extent - not so much totally free improvisation, but you have to be able to add your own ideas and interpretation to otherwisely fixed compositions.

Certif1ed wrote: They're not "pitch-classes" - they are notes.

I appreciate what you're trying to do here with a set of less-than-precise words, but I think that pitch-classes are exactly what they are (pitches modulo octave). Twelve note is even fuzzier to me (for some reason it implies to me a bag of pitches rather than an ordered set of pitch classes), but I can't say that I've thought as much about the linguistic distinctions there as you have.

Certif1ed wrote: This is merely how I've come to the conclusion - I found that the term 12-tone was inadequate, whilst studying music theory, and submitted this theory (in a greatly expanded form!) to various musical institutions - however, the reason so many people use "tone" in this context is because, like "Classical", it has become conventional in many institutions (particularly in the US, but not so much in the UK) to do so.

You might find that the terms used by Babbit and Forte are more to your liking in precision. I don't know what's taught in musical institutions, though.

Certif1ed wrote: Serialism in itself is trivial, as a composition tool - you could easily rattle something off that would take no more than day or two - once you'd worked out your note rows and stuff (the bureaucratic bit can take a while - especially when you're trying to be artistic with it). I always found more traditional styles of composition took much longer, because there's much less to predefine, and more to work out artistically.

But, surely you can see that the same is true of tonal harmony. Pick a key, pick a progression, derive a scale, and churn out as much as you want. Real artistry always takes work and inspiration, it seems.

I've always found pitch-class sets (and serial-ish approaches) to be powerful, in controlling the interval content I want to use to express an idea, but no easier to use than functional harmony or anything else.

Certif1ed wrote: I've always found serial music hideous to rehearse - many performers don't seem to "get it" until after they've heard a recording of the performance, even after weeks of rehearsal.

Yeah, maybe this will change as ears change. I find it depends on the backgrounds of the performers. I always figured death metal would be the right genre to do it in, since my experience with performers with death metal backgrounds, at least once they achieve a certain level of musicality, is that they're very receptive to highly dissonant, or harmonically unpredictable (not necessarily dissonant), music.

Certif1ed wrote: tokenrove wrote: The Rite of Spring and Symphony of Psalms are both totally prog metal. I think just Prog will do - neither are actually metal, since metal is necessarily played using electric guitars

To play Devil's Advocate -- what about Apocalyptica, as I mentioned earlier? Surely they're metal, not classical, despite playing on cellos.

Certif1ed wrote: 12-note music, please, not 12-tone - there is no such thing as 12-tone music (Alright, I understand that's what some cultures call it, (including most US universities), it's just that the term 12-tone is so misleading that I consider it worse than using "Classical" to describe all orchestral music).

Well, twelve-tone is the term Schoenberg used in his English writings. Twelve note is a bit more deceptive, IMHO... not that twelve-tone is a great term, but anything else I could have used is just as bad. How about "twelve pitch-class"?

Certif1ed wrote: Anyway, the real point to this post is that serial music is so straightforward to write and hideous to rehearse that you'd probably be better off writing the music and recording it all yourself.

I probably will end up doing just that, but I disagree that serial music is straightforward to write, or hideous to rehearse... just 90% of what's out there, just like 90% of tonal music. Stravinsky's late serial period is awesome, and it can't have been trivial to write something like Agon, or Schoenberg's op.42.

Give me lots of time, and it'll happen eventually. ;-)

tokenrove wrote: The Rite of Spring and Symphony of Psalms are both totally prog metal.

Alright, I added the tags. I even introduced a separate group for the tags:

http://ratingfreak.com/home/music.xhtml?path=tags/musical/musical_composers/overview

I'll work on that overview page today - right now it just lists all the tags, it will list short descriptions of the composers too (including links to wikipedia) and the top tracks for each tag will be listed.

Now, in order to contribute all you need to do is:

- Create an account at RF
- Submit the basic info for each album which contains tracks influenced by these composers
- For each track assign the proper composer tag. The best way to do this is to - as soon as you assigned the basic infos - go to the "Editor" page - there you'll see all the albums you rated in a list and can assign specific tags more easily. It's probably best if you assign level "0" to the album first and then the proper level for the individual tracks (the small symbol to the right of the level buttons opens the track level editor).

- You should assign level 10 for tracks which contain extended parts of the composer's work (or are cover versions), level 8 for tracks which are very clearly influenced, level 6 for tracks which are influenced to a lesser extent.


Let me know if you have any questions, or if you know other composers which I should add. We shouldn't add all the composers there are though ... you should know at least a few rock/metal albums with clear influence of those composers.


Edited by MikeEnRegalia - May 25 2008 at 09:46

KeleCableII wrote: How has Stravinsky influenced prog? I'm not saying he hasn't or anything, I just want some specific examples. There isn't really any resources for this kind of thing. I'm not familiar at all with most classical (or whatever you want to call it) composers although I am really interested in those that influenced prog.

just listen to Stravinsky's "Rites of Spring"; the influence is obvious. the contrast between fast and slow, loud and quiet. that is of course something you will get in most classical pieces, but what you don't get are those rhythms! they are incredible, and it is no wonder that this piece of music caused one of the biggest scandals in music when it was first played in Paris in 1911. half of the people booed, the other half applauded frenetically, and there were fisticuffs in the audience

Heh. Along this line, apparently whatever Windows Media Player use to recognise CDs thinks that VDGG are classical.

BaldJean wrote: being bald myself I have to point out It is not the "bad mountain" though, it is the "bald mountain"