Michael Nyman's book is a first-hand account of experimental music from 1950 to 1970. First published in 1974, it has remained the classic text on a significant form of music making and composing that developed alongside, and partly in opposition to, the postwar modernist tradition of composers such as Boulez, Berio, or Stockhausen. The experimentalist par excellence was John Cage whose legendary 4' 33'' consists of four minutes and thirty three seconds of silence to be performed on any instrument. Such pieces have a conceptual rather than purely musical starting point and radically challenge conventional notions of the musical work. Nyman's book traces the revolutionary attitudes that were developed toward concepts of time, space, sound, and composer/performer responsibility. It was within the experimental tradition that the seeds of musical minimalism were sown and the book contains reference to the early works of Reich, Riley, Young, and Glass. This second edition contains a new Foreword, an updated discography, and a historical overview by the author.
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'Nyman's book remains a privileged window into that strange world, and its republication will be a boon to a new generation.' BBC Music Magazine
'... a welcome reissue of the book ... Above all, Experimental Music is a useful source book for a period of radicalism in musical practice in which the rule was to break the rules.' Music Teacher
'... a welcome reissue of the book ... Above all, Experimental Music is a useful source book for a period of radicalism in musical practice in which the rule was to break the rules.' Music Teacher
Book Description
This book, by the composer Michael Nyman, is a first-hand account of the postwar experimental tradition in music. The experimentalist par excellence was John Cage whose legendary 4' 33'' consists of four minutes and thirty three seconds of silence. Nyman's book traces the revolutionary attitudes that were developed towards concepts of time, space, sound, and composer/performer responsibility. It was within the experimental tradition that the seeds of musical minimalism were sown and the book contains reference to the early works of Steve Reich and Philip Glass.
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14 of 15 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Nyman's 1974 classic is here reprinted sans revisions. Brilliant! It captures a moment -- as Nyman concludes his preface, "Thank goodness I wrote it when I did." EM is not a survey of 20th century avant-garde music. It focuses on one trend, inaugurated by Cage, Wolff, Feldman and Brown in the 1950s, a trend which explicitly attempted to overturn the traditional avant-garde then marching under the banner of total serialism. Nyman contrasts Wolff to Stockhausen, then a leading serialist: "Stockhausen is speaking of an unwanted situation needing to be remedied by his intervention, Wolff of a situation he is quite happy to accept, leaving sounds to go their own way." (27) As Cage says in his "Silence,"
"Not an attempt to understand... Just an attention to the activity of sounds."
One of the great strengths of Nyman's short book is his careful attempt to define experimental music before he moves on to discuss the artists and their music. To summarize and paraphrase, he says experimental composers are excited by creating "a process of generating action," involving situations or fields delineated by compositional rules, but leaving them open to the performers. (4)
Experimental music is uncompromisingly radical, and represents an ongoing influence on creative music, but has certainly not become any sort of popular movement. So for instance, while the early "minimalists" Young and Riley were arguably part of the experimental tendency, as were Reich's early phase patterns, (and hence are included here by Nyman), the later works of Reich, and especially Glass, are no longer open and experimental. And while Eno and recent techno/ambient artists have been influenced, their innovations have been more technical than conceptual by comparison.
My recommendation if this sounds intriguing -- check out anything by the English free-improv group AMM, which is nowadays constituted by Eddie Prevost on percussion, Keith Rowe on guitar and electronics, and John Tilbury on piano!
9 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
In this work originally published in 1974, Nyman discusses the work of composers and performers who shifted the boundaries of music as regards notation, time, space, and the roles of the composer, performer and audience. The author seeks to identify and explain a whole body of musical work that existed outside the classical tradition and the avant-garde orthodoxies that flowed from it. He thus explores the Anglo-American musical tradition loosely associated with John Cage. Since 1974 this book has been considered the classical work on the radical alternative to the mainstream avant-garde as represented by Berio, Boulez and Stockhausen. Many of the current popular composers like Glass and Reich trace their root to this experimental school. The most fascinating chapter to me is "Minimal Music, Determinacy And The New Tonality" in which the Theatre Of Eternal Music (Tony Conrad, La Monte Young, Marion Zazeela and John Cale) as well as the work of Terry Riley is discussed. Photographs, illustrations and musical notations enliven the text and the book concludes with a selected source bibliography, a discography of experimental music and a bibliography of publications since 1974. Brian Eno has contributed an interesting foreword to this edition. The text can get a bit technical for the non-musician, but it remains a detailed work on a radical musical direction that has borne great fruit in the years since it was first analysed in this thorough and scholarly work.
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful
By Jeff Abell
Format:Paperback
When Michael Nyman first published this work in the 70s, it was the only book of its kind to discuss some of the most cutting-edge stuff going around. Most musical texts avoided discussing the Fluxus group as "music," but Nyman integrates these radicals easily, and provided the first discussion of the Scratch Orchestra (Cardew et al), and related topics. The book still contains some of the clearest discussions of these topics around. It's great to have it back in print, though too bad Nyman couldn't be bothered to provide updates on some of the folks discussed, like Hugh Skempton.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
2.0 out of 5 stars
Somewhat superficial
For me the most useful thing about this book is that it has a lot of score excerpts that are useful if you're teaching at a university with a poor library. Read more
Published on February 17, 2010 by Reader/Viewer
4.0 out of 5 stars
Not a revision, a reprint
The other reviews catch it all. Nyman's points are 'interesting', but it is Nyman. This is my second copy as I thought it was revised. It's a reprint.
Published on May 21, 2007 by Kevin Austin
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Classic Introduction
Not only is this a great introduction for someone who doesn't know his or her way around this subject, but it offers more experienced listeners and readers Nyman's own sensitive,... Read more
Published on February 21, 2004 by M. Hori
5.0 out of 5 stars
perhaps the only history of the what was the avant-garde
Before Michael Nyman was a successful composer topping a millionaire gross worth, he was indeed a perceptive writer,with a turn of poetic phrase as when he described Cardew's... Read more
Published on May 8, 2000 by scarecrow
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 37
books:
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58
books
cite this book:
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- Scratch Music by Cornelius Cardew on page 132, page 133, and page 174
- John Cage Ex(plain)ed by Richard Kostelanetz on page 172, and page 190
- The Great Learning by Confucius on page 122, and page 123
- Music by Philip Glass by Philip Glass on page 190
- All American Music: Composition in the Late Twentieth Century by John Rockwell on page 191
See all 37 books this book cites
- Four Musical Minimalists: La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Philip Glass (Music in the Twentieth Century) by Keith Potter on 9 pages
- Repeating Ourselves: American Minimal Music as Cultural Practice by Robert Fink on page 32, Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
- Fauré and French Musical Aesthetics (Music in the Twentieth Century) by Carlo Caballero in Front Matter, Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
- Electronic and Experimental Music: Foundations of New Music and New Listening by Thom Holmes in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
- Writings on Glass: Essays, Interviews, Criticism by Richard Kostelanetz on page 116, and page 127
See all 58 books citing this book
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