Avant-Garde/ Experimental

Experimental music is any music that challenges the commonly accepted notions of what music is. There is an overlap with avant-garde music. John Cage was a pioneer in experimental music and defined and gave credibility to the form. more...

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David Cope (1997), describes experimental music as that, "which represents a refusal to accept the status quo."

Michael Nyman in his book Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond uses the term "experimental" to describe the work of American modernist composers (John Cage, Christian Wolff, Earle Brown, Morton Feldman, Terry Riley, LaMonte Young, Philip Glass, Steve Reich, etc.) as opposed to the European avant-garde at the time (Karlheinz Stockhausen, Pierre Boulez, Iannis Xenakis). The "experiment" is not whether a piece succeeds or fails, but is in the fact that the outcome of the piece is uncertain (or unforeseeable).

In general, as David Nicholls stated in "Avant-garde and Experimental Music" (Cambridge History of American Music, CUP, 1998), "...very generally, avant-garde music can be viewed as occupying an extreme position within the tradition, while experimental music lies outside it" (p. 318). That tradition is the inheritance of common-practice Western art music, with its concern for increased technical complexity, historical inheritance, composer intention and other features. In general, and at least originally, experimental music took its inspiration from non-Western sources and from varying times. It may take its inspiration (directly in terms of generating systems) from other media; practitioners may or may not be professionals in the traditional sense of the word, although they may still be trained in their work and adept at it.

As with other edge forms that push the limits of a particular form of expression, there is little agreement as to the boundaries of experimental music, even amongst its practitioners. On the one hand, some experimental music is an extension of traditional music, adding unconventional instruments, modifications to instruments, noises, and other novelties to (for example) orchestral compositions. At the other extreme, there are performances that most listeners would not characterize as music at all.

While much discussion of experimental music centers on definitional issues and its validity as a musical form, the most frequently performed experimental music is entertaining and, at its best, can lead the listener to question core assumptions about the nature of music.

The term "experimental music" was used contemporaneously for electronic music, particularly in the early musique concrète work of Schaeffer and Henri in France and in the Experimental Studios at the University of Illinois, run by Lejaren Hiller. "Experimental" electronic composition may be "experimental" in the sense used in Nyman (for instance, Cage, Cartridge Music or the early work of Alvin Lucier); it may also lie more comfortably with the avant garde.

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