Culture and Coexistence into the Great Unknown
On the inimitable and controversial Karlheinz Stockhausen, German composer who fused science fiction with classical music, whose 20th Century groundbreaking creations expanded the bounds of electronic music and serial compositions from the brightest star Sirius.
Iannis Xenakis, the Greek composer trained as an architect, created expressive works of mind-bending mathematical complexity that according to one critic, have “all the teeming unpredictable power of a glacier, the thrilling complexity of shape and movement of a mass animal migration.”
John Cage’s 1948 magnum opus for prepared piano, takes the listener through an hour-long journey told as a meditative story. Influenced by the Hindu aesthetic theory of rasa, or emotional character, it intones the listener toward tranquility.
Composer, dishwasher, hobo, fruit picker, sailor, microtonal theorist, instrument builder, writer, visual artist, philosopher, musicologist, iconoclast teacher Harry Partch was one of the first 20th Century composers to work with microtonal scales, writing much of his music for custom-made instruments that he built himself, tuned in 11-limit (43-tone) just intonation.
“Dream” (1948) was written for Merce Cunningham’s dance, minimal fixed tones of sustained resonance, influenced by Balinese Gamelan and divinations through the I Ching.