Electronic music?

The death of Muge, the pioneer of electronic music, aroused the memories of electronic fans. The dead often remind people of the end of the old times. From tapes in 1950s to Apple computers in the new millennium, music is no longer songs, operas or symphonies supported by traditional musical instruments. Today, it has become a number, a sound, and even any possibility in nature.

Nowadays, electronic music is booming all over the world, but in China, it is still among the avant-garde music. I don't know where it came from and what it has to do with the familiar music. The electronic music Historical Records tells the short but explosive history of electronic music.

Electronic music was born.

Shortly after the performance, some listeners were angry at Stravinsky's attempt to desecrate music. Some whistled and some screamed to show their dissatisfaction. Those of us who like this kind of music find that the freedom of speech in music is clamped down, so we protest aloud. The situation that night was like a life-and-death artistic struggle. The sound of the band could not be heard at all, and the actors on the stage could only ignore everything and dance by feeling. The conductor is also shouting to help the actors. "

-A critic described the premiere scene of Stravinsky's Sacrifice to Spring.

If we want to talk about modern music, it may be traced back to the evening of May 29th, 2003, at the Paris Theatre on the Champs Elysé es in France, which was also the premiere night of Stravinsky's "Sacrifice to Spring". According to the reports at that time, the audience in the performance hall was divided into two factions almost instantly, and the riot was no less than the chaos caused by Dadaism.

Today's music critics believe that Stravinsky didn't mean to create this kind of music division, but during the period before World War I, carnival, extravagance, strong desire for destruction, revolution and longing for the future industrial world were mixed together, which made some composers continue to follow the norms of classical romanticism in their music concepts, which was almost a kind of torture.

Stravinsky first conceived the Sacrifice of Spring as a symphony, and later adapted it into a ballet. In fact, no matter what form, this work, which is completely different from classical works in rhythm and harmony, is destined to become one of the origins of modern music.

Stravinsky's creation is multi-style. In the early stage, it had Russian national style, showing a preference for unusual musical instrument colors, intense rhythm, harsh strength and enthusiasm. The music in the middle period is clear, concise and simple, belonging to the neoclassical music school. The first work of this period was the ballet Pulchenella, which premiered at the Paris Opera House in 1920. The famous painter Picasso designed the scenery and costumes for the play. 1922, the author changed the play into a suite of the same name, which is a mixed music that the author indulges in 18 century music. In the later period, he criticized the twelve-tone system, but the sequential creation technique founded by Schoenberg and others appeared in his works.

Stravinsky: Igor Feodorovich Stravinsky 1882- 197 1, Russian-American composer. He studied law, then studied music with Limsky Gore Shakov as an amateur, and finally became a veritable leader of modern music genre. Stravinsky is eclectic in his creation, constantly absorbing various new means of expression. When people are commenting on one of his styles, he has turned to another new style. So great achievements have been made in the creation of various styles and genres.

Construction of "Twelve-tone System"

Compared with Stravinsky, arnold schoenberg, another contemporary composer, received less attention at that time. But in fact, the "twelve-tone system" created by Schoenberg provides strong support for modern music in theory and technology.

"Twelve-tone system", also known as "sequential music", simply means that within an octave, twelve tones, including semitones, are equally important, so composers can basically give up major or minor scales when creating, as long as the twelve tones are arranged into one or several sequences in a certain order.

You can imagine the confusion and anger of academic composers when they first came into contact with sequence music, but today's music must pay tribute to Schoenberg. It is the "twelve-tone system" that liberates music from certain rules. Although this is only the first step, it is the most important step. Although few people followed Schoenberg, the "New Vienna School of Music" founded by Schoenberg himself and his students Wei Bowen and Berger had a far-reaching influence on later avant-garde musicians. After a period of neoclassicism, Stravinsky naturally turned to embrace sequence music. You can't say it's just an accidental choice.

Schoenberg:/kloc-0 was born in Vienna in 874, and195/kloc-0 died in Los Angeles in. He started almost by self-study. He is the founder of atonal music. His early representative works: Silent Night (1899) and Song of Grey (1903) are romanticism and impressionism. 1908, he composed three piano pieces, which was the beginning of the twelve-tone system.

Being left out in the cold, fuck the electronic sound.

On the other hand, perhaps earlier, some scientists were fascinated by the use of electricity, and various electrical appliances that seemed impossible to be applied to real life at that time were invented. These inventors soon realized that the principle of electric waves is actually similar to that of sound waves, both of which are vibrations in frequency. When the frequency generated by current vibration appears in the audible range of human ears, it becomes the sound we can hear. Generally speaking, people will call this kind of sound current noise, which seems to have nothing to do with music. Even most doctors think that current noise will cause nerve damage and make people do some crazy things.

However, some people are still obsessed with this voice that belongs to the future. 1876 Bell invented the telephone and 1877 Edison invented the phonograph, both of which can be regarded as rational use of current. Music found a popular carrier for the first time through the phonograph, which is completely different from sitting in a concert hall or watching music scores at home. Compared with telephone and phonograph, in about 1922, a young Russian scientist Leon Tremin invented a machine.

However, it is far from universal. It is a machine that uses the change of sound field waveform to control sound, that is, it uses the phase change of the player's body between two metal antennas to make corresponding sound. He named the machine Thereminvox, and later simply called it "TriMing" with his name. Mr. Tremin is convinced that electronics will play a very important role in the great Soviet socialist society in the future. His idea is correct, but his great dream really came true in America after he immigrated to America.

It was around 1927 that this machine was first introduced into American society and pop music. It was the era of great development of American jazz. Although Trimming was immediately bought by RCA Records Company and made a large number of 500 sets, at that time, this "musical instrument" puzzled many people, especially jazz musicians who emphasized musical instrument playing skills at that time. This thing is not in their eyes at all. Many musicians think it is just another expensive toy. Even though Mr Trimming had held an extremely advanced electronic concert in Carnegie Hall in 1930s, it still did not arouse any repercussions in the music industry. But in the film industry, Trimming has received a lot of response, and it is often used in the background soundtrack of many later thrillers and spy movies. It was not until later that the value of trimming was recognized by electronic musicians and began to be widely used, perhaps even a little too widely.

After World War II, technology gave birth to the art of "sound".

The Second World War tore up not only the pattern of Europe and the whole world, but also people's yearning for a better world. To some extent, this war completely destroyed a slow and ancient classical pastoral in people's hearts and cut off the connection between the future and the past. The post-war world is moving towards a modern society at an accelerated pace, and this change is bound to be reflected in art and music.

Perhaps the most important musician after the war was John Cage. Although some people still scoff at him today, even those who despise him have to admit that without Cage, the face of modern music would be completely different from today. Cage is more like an orator and philosopher than other musicians. Although his own works are very convincing, it seems that his speech on music has a greater influence on the public.

From Cage's speeches in different periods, people gradually found that the word "music" was gradually replaced by "sound", and these speeches conveyed a new appreciation attitude. "New voices need new ways of listening. Don't try to understand, but pay attention to the activity of sound. " However, it is not easy to completely change the appreciation habit of classical music handed down overnight, especially for western audiences, which is even more difficult to accept Cage's oriental Zen thought.

Perhaps in order to stimulate critics and audiences who criticized him, Cage went further and further on the road of experiment, and most of its contents were beyond the acceptance of today's public, such as adding piano, tossing coins to compose music and so on. Perhaps it is because Cage can hardly find any influence of western music tradition in his music that his influence on this music tradition is so important.

Although Cage recorded one of the earliest electronic music works, Imagined Scenery 1 in 1939, this way of recording the current sound generated by the electron tube oscillator on a 78-turn bakelite record is too expensive and complicated. Generally, musicians like Varese, Russolo and Hillinger record their ideas, but it is another matter to realize them. This situation will not change until new recording equipment appears.

The music experimenter John Cage John Cage (19 12- 1992) abandoned the traditional playing and composing techniques. He is famous as the pioneer of "piano-adding", which is to place various objects on or between strings of traditional piano, thus changing the original sound and timbre. Cage studied the music of opportunity and electronic music, the most famous work "4 minutes and 33 seconds", which is an unprecedented silent music. Its pause lasted for 4 minutes and 33 seconds, setting a world record for the longest pause. ?

The birth of tape recorder

Obviously, as a music carrier, magnetic tape is completely different from previous music scores and bakelite records. The operation is simple and convenient, and the most important thing is that it is very easy to change and process the sound recorded on the tape. Therefore, the emergence of tape recorders immediately aroused the interest of musicians. This is a living example of the media changing music.

By the 1950s, the increasingly perfect tape recorder completely changed the way of avant-garde music. This musical revolution-like behavior is attributed to two French sound engineers, Pierre Schaeffer and pierre henry.

In the 1940s, as colleagues, Schaefer and Pierre both worked in the studio of French National Broadcasting Corporation, but strictly speaking, their works and electronic music actually took two completely opposite paths. The sound recorded on the tape is not from electronic instruments, but directly from real life, and then musicians use the unique functions of the tape recorder to do technical processing on these sounds, such as speed change, inversion, cutting, overlapping tracks and so on. This kind of music is called "figurative music" or "figurative music" because all the sounds in it are real sounds.

1949, Pierre Schaeffer wrote his first successful work, A Man's Symphony. Since then, he has been cooperating with other people in avantgarde music, such as Varese, Mei Xian and Stockhausen, who have made great contributions to later electronic music, but few people know them.

Although the sound research group led by Pierre Sheffield and pierre henry carefully avoided the immature field of electronic music, other composers at the same time naturally combined the two methods and produced extremely similar auditory effects. Also in 1949, American engineers made the first vocoder, also known as "voice changer", which was immediately transported to the Phonetics Society in Bonn, Germany.

What is special about this machine is that it can bring unique electronic effects to the sound of nature. "Voice Changer" immediately attracted the keen interest of Radio Cologne producer Robert Beye. The following year, Beye established an electronic music laboratory based on this machine, which later became an important stronghold of early German electronic music, and Stockhausen worked here. Through the efforts of this laboratory, figurative music, or experimental music and avantgarde music finally began to smell 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 small part has a great influence on jazz and rock music, which is even decisive in jazz.

In most cases, modern music does not appear in one form, but in any case, all kinds of music that can be called modern music have some common characteristics, such as the destruction of harmony function, such as unstable rhythm or no rhythm at all, such as the use of noise in general, such as the redefinition of the function of vocal instruments. From these perspectives, only a small part of jazz and rock music can be regarded as modern music, but even such a small part has had a great influence on jazz and rock music, which is even decisive in jazz.

Since 1950s, a group of jazz musicians have been determined to reform traditional jazz. From Charlie Parker and Charles Mingus to Ernie Coleman and Sangla, jazz has changed from a traditional black music played in a low-level bar to a radical experimental music. This change is really intriguing, but it is not sudden. Black music has always tended to break away from convention.

Since parting ways with classical music, avant-garde music has been looking for music forms that can bring vitality to itself. Musicians all over the world are more and more interested in folk music. They suddenly found that the sounds made by those simple homemade instruments and the structure of these sounds fully represented the modernity of music.

In the field of rock music, 1967 recorded the Beatles record "Sgt Pepper's Lonely Mind Club", which turned these four boys from pop singers into serious musicians. In this record, producer george martin gave full play to the tape processing technology inherited by Pierre Sheffield and pierre henry. Everyone who has heard this record will be surprised by the sound wall and unpredictable effects. You know, it was still the era of three-minute love pop songs.

Of course, later rock musicians went further than the Beatles, such as the "no waves" movement in new york in the 1980s, which fundamentally shook the foundation of rock music, but scientific and technological factors can not be ignored. Like experimental musicians in the 1950s, the appearance and popularity of new media are also changing the face of music. In the past, musicians needed scissors and glue to finish their works carefully, but now they only need one person to move the mouse on the computer. The change of recording mode has changed the music itself, and modern electronic musicians skillfully use the achievements left by their predecessors.

The rapid development of electronic music in 1990s.

Since the explosion of electronic music in the mid-1990s, almost all music has electronic flavor, and even world music has become a kind of material in electronic music, which is often used. However, it also brings some problems. When musicians are faced with more possibilities, music is more about choice than creation, and such choice is always accompanied by a certain trend of flooding.

In fact, from the very beginning, modern music was based on a concept that was divorced from classicism, and on this concept, it followed the development of technology or equipment. And I'm afraid the future of the whole music has a lot to do with the change and development of science and technology. At least for now, the change of musicians' composition techniques will not have a decisive impact on the future of music. The real key is technology.

However, although science and technology occupy the main factor, the works that really touch people are the deep feelings expressed directly from the heart and in clear language. In other words, humanized electronic sound is not an extravagant hope, nor is it a propaganda strategy of popular electronic sound. In fact, we should understand that whether Stravinsky, Schoenberg, or John Cage, or the first musicians who used electronic devices to create music, they all think that human emotions can be conveyed by destroying the structure of music, destroying people's accustomed auditory experience, and the sound generated by electric current.