EX on Music Theory Print

Execution ballad

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Composition#

The use of song was a popular method of spreading news across a community in early modern Europe; music and lyrics were easier to remember, and thus made it easier to spread than written news, as many people were illiterate during the height of its popularity. The subject of the ballad usually spoke in first-person or, sometimes, in the third-person. They were modeled as if they were the last words of the criminal being executed. The person was always portrayed as undoubtedly guilty of the crime and remorseful for their actions, emphasizing the warning to the listener to learn from their mistakes and making an appeal to God to save their souls. Execution ballads from the early modern period briefly mention the trial proceedings of the verdict before they were to be condemned at the gallows.

Exotica

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

Les Baxter’s album Ritual of the Savage (Le Sacre du Sauvage) was released in 1951 and would become a cornerstone of exotica. This album featured lush orchestral arrangements along with tribal rhythms and offered such classics as “Quiet Village”, “Jungle River Boat”, “Love Dance”, and “Stone God.” Ritual is the seminal exotica record, influencing all that came after it. As the 1950s progressed, Baxter carved out a niche in this area, producing a number of titles in this style including Tamboo! (1956), Caribbean Moonlight (1956), Ports of Pleasure (1957), The Sacred Idol (1960) and Jewels of the Sea (1961). Baxter claimed Ravel and Stravinsky as influences on his work. In 1957, Martin Denny covered Les Baxter’s “Quiet Village”, with exotic bird calls and a vibraphone instead of strings, which established the sound of the Polynesian styled music. The song reached #2 on Billboard’s charts in 1959 with Denny’s Exotica album reaching #1. Soon the new technology of stereo further opened up the musical palettes of Denny and other prominent exotica artists such as Arthur Lyman and Juan García Esquivel. The distinctive sound of exotica relies on a variety of instruments: conga, bongos, vibes, Indonesian and Burmese gongs, boo bams (bamboo sticks), Tahitian log, Chinese bell tree, and Japanese kotos. Additionally intrinsic to the sound of exotica are bird calls, big-cat roars, and even primate shrieks, which invoke the dangers of the jungle. Though there are some standards which contain lyrics (including those by Yma Sumac), singing is rare. Abstract, siren-like ululations, chants, vocalized animal calls, and guttural growls are common. The music of American composer Raymond Scott is sometimes recognized as a precursor to exotica, as several of his songs were written with the intent of transporting the listener to exotic locations via novelty instruments and sound effects. As a result of the popularity of exotica during the late 1950s, a large number of records were released that featured covers of recently released exotica songs (mainly by Les Baxter) and Hawaiian and easy-listening standards. These recordings include “Exotica” by Ted Auletta, “Exotic Percussion” by Stanley Black and his Orchestra, “Orienta” by Gerald Fried, “Taboo” and “Taboo 2” by Arthur Lyman and “The Sounds of Exotic Island” by The Surfmen. Some composers pushed the bounds of the genre by producing albums of original content, often with unusual instrumentation. These recordings include Voodoo by Robert Drasnin, Africana by Chaino, Pagan Festival by Dominic Frontiere And His Orchestra, and White Goddess by Frank Hunter. By 1959, the majority of American record labels had released at least one exotica-themed album, usually utilizing composers and musicians that produced jazz, classical or easy listening recordings. After several years of rising excitement leading up to Hawaii becoming a state in 1959, the Hawaiiana fad waned in the United States and so did exotica’s commercial appeal. CD re-issues ignited a revival in the early 1990s.

Experimental music

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Origins#

The Groupe de Recherches de Musique Concrète (GRMC), under the leadership of Pierre Schaeffer, organized the First International Decade of Experimental Music between 8 and 18 June 1953. This appears to have been an attempt by Schaeffer to reverse the assimilation of musique concrète into the German elektronische Musik, and instead tried to subsume musique concrète, elektronische Musik, tape music, and world music under the rubric “musique experimentale”. Publication of Schaeffer’s manifesto was delayed by four years, by which time Schaeffer was favoring the term “recherche musicale” (music research), though he never wholly abandoned “musique expérimentale”. John Cage was also using the term as early as 1955. According to Cage’s definition, “an experimental action is one the outcome of which is not foreseen”, and he was specifically interested in completed works that performed an unpredictable action. In Germany, the publication of Cage’s article was anticipated by several months in a lecture delivered by Wolfgang Edward Rebner at the Darmstädter Ferienkurse on 13 August 1954, titled “”. Rebner’s lecture extended the concept back in time to include Charles Ives, Edgard Varèse, and Henry Cowell, as well as Cage, due to their focus on sound as such rather than compositional method.

Experimental pop

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Characteristics#

Author Bill Martin states that while the term “experimental pop” may sound “seemingly oxymoronic”, it is possible to identify three criteria for characterizing its music: *It is rooted in existing popular forms *It experiments with or stretches the use of these popular forms *It attempts to draw the audience of those forms toward these new developments, in the manner of the avant-garde Some tendencies among artists include the incorporation of experimental techniques such as musique concrète, aleatoric music, or eclecticism into pop contexts. Often, the compositional process involves the use of electronic production effects to manipulate sounds and arrangements. According to musicologist Leigh Landy, experimental pop settings combine sound-based work and note-based work, though not always simultaneously. Composer Nico Muhly described the world of experimental pop as “celebrations of sonic juxtapositions”.

Experimental rock

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Etymology#

Experimental rock was originally referred to as “avant-garde rock and roll” by music publications throughout the mid- to late 1960s. The earliest known use of the term was in 1966, in an issue of Sing Out!, which labelled New York City band the Fugs an “avant-garde rock and roll group”. That same year, Record Research also used the term “avant-garde rock” in an issue describing the musical catalog of radio station WPMU, while the following year Canadian publication Take One used the phrase to describe California’s the Mothers of Invention and the Gas Company, as well as New York’s the Velvet Underground. By the late 1960s and 1970s, several music publications published articles using the term as well as “experimental rock”. Additionally, some experimental rock acts would be referred to as “art rock”.

Expressionist music

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Major figures#

The three central figures of musical expressionism are Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951) and his pupils, Anton Webern (1883–1945) and Alban Berg (1885–1935), the so-called Second Viennese School. Other composers that have been associated with expressionism are Ernst Krenek (1900–1991) (the Second Symphony, 1922), Paul Hindemith (1895–1963) (Die junge Magd, Op. 23b, 1922, setting six poems of Georg Trakl), Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971) (Three Japanese Lyrics, 1913), Alexander Scriabin (1872–1915) (late piano sonatas). Another significant expressionist was Béla Bartók (1881–1945) in early works, written in the second decade of the 20th century, such as Bluebeard’s Castle (1911), The Wooden Prince (1917), and The Miraculous Mandarin (1919). American composers with a sympathetic “urge for such intensification of expression” who were active in the same period as Schoenberg’s expressionist free atonal compositions (between 1908 and 1921) include Carl Ruggles, Dane Rudhyar, and, “to a certain extent”, Charles Ives, whose song “Walt Whitman” is a particularly clear example. Important precursors of expressionism are Richard Wagner (1813–1883), Gustav Mahler (1860–1911), and Richard Strauss (1864–1949). Later composers, such as Peter Maxwell Davies (1934–2016), “have sometimes been seen as perpetuating the Expressionism of Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern”, and Heinz Holliger’s (b. 1939) most distinctive trait “is an intensely engaged evocation of … the essentially lyric expressionism found in Schoenberg, Berg and, especially, Webern”.

Extempo

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Art of extempo#

It is characterised either by the “single tone”, consisting of four-line stanzas or the “double tone”, which has eight-line stanzas. There are four basic melodies common to extempo: “Sans Humanite”, “Matilda”, “Miss Mary Ann”, and “Big Bamboo”. The most widely used is “Sans Humanite”. Another characteristic of extempo is that the performer must be able to think quickly since the subjects are handed out on the spot and the lyrics are then improvised.

Extreme metal

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Definitions#

“Extreme metal” generally refers to heavy metal that is extreme in terms of its sound, instrumentation, vocals, lyrics, and imagery. Extreme metal usually has heavily distorted guitars, harsh vocals (such as shouting, screaming and death growls), and complex drumming (such as double bass drumming and blast beats). Most extreme metal styles have very fast tempos (usually between 150 and 250 beats per minute). Most extreme metal eschews conventional melody and verse-chorus-verse song structure. It also tends to omit the blues element of traditional heavy metal. Extreme metal’s lyrics and imagery typically deal with dark themes such as death, killing, war, horror and the occult. They are often anti-Christian and may include references to Satanism or Paganism. A small number of extreme metal bands reference Nazi Germany, for example Slayer and Marduk. the defining characteristics of extreme metal are clearly transgressive: the “extreme” traits noted above are all meant to violate or transgress cultural, artistic, social or aesthetic boundaries. Kahn-Harris says that extreme metal can sometimes sound “close to being a formless noise” to the uninitiated listener. In most of the world, extreme metal does not receive much radio-play or achieve high chart positions.