Wednesday 12 October 2011

C'est Magnifique

    I find music as art hard to describe as music is essentially a form of art itself, but, it becomes muich easier when you think of art music as being something that is very different from contemparary music of the time, check out this Avant Garde piece by John Cage, called "4.33".


4'33" is an experimental composition that consists of three movements. The piece tells the performers not to play thier instruments for each of these movements, which is quite different already from what we are used to as we obviously expect to hear some kind of instrumentation when we listen to music. People tend to dedscribe the piece as four minutes thirty three seconds of silence, however, the point of the piece is not to show silence but the opposite, it shows how it is quite impossible to create a state of silence i.e. in this piece the audience are not experiencing silence, instead they are just hearing the atmosphere of the room (people coughing etc).What makes this piece Avant Garde music then, is that it is different from the contemperary music of the time it was composed (1952).

    One function of Avant Garde music that I can think of is its use in advertising, the following is an advert for the car manufacturer Ford for one of it's new models.



   In this example, it is not the music itself that is experimental but the instruments that are being used, with this 31 piece orchestra ranging in instruments from guitar to cello to harp. As spectacular as it seems, the real purpose behind the use of Avant Garde here is of course to make people feel like the product that is being advertised is a very new, very exciting product therefore making the person feel that they would be part of the excitement if they go ahead and buy one of the cars.

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