The Modernistic Metamorphoses

From the usual perspective of the musical world of XX century, the main happening was the appearance of jazz and pop music and subsequent division between classical and popular music scene. However, this picture obscured another story that was happening - a singular musical metamorphoses, stemming from classical music and resulting in music that was neither traditional classical nor popular. It appeared as a result of efforts of musicians who were, in the shadows of modern but shallow popular and highly artistic but traditional classical music striving towards music both modern and artistic.

This happening began with the beginning of XX century. Experimental musicians were striving towards unusual artistic concepts, both in aesthetic and formal sense, that are to take musical art further from familiar territories.

Wikipedia:

In a broader sense, it (experimental music) has come to mean any music that challenges the commonly accepted notions of what music is. /.../ As with other edge forms that push the limits of a particular form of expression, there is little agreement as to the boundaries of experimental music, even amongst its practitioners. On the one hand, some experimental music is an extension of traditional music, adding unconventional instruments, modifications to instruments, noises, and other novelties to compositions. At the other extreme, there are performances that most listeners would not characterize as music at all. /…/ While much discussion of experimental music centers on definitional issues and its validity as a musical form, the most frequently performed experimental music is entertaining and, at its best, can lead the listener to question core assumptions about the nature of music…

Passion of experimental music was to show that beauty can come in more strange and more improbable forms than anyone could imagine.

Although experimental music isn’t necessarily electronic, lack of limitations that electronic instruments brought pushed experimental musicians towards electronic instruments. Therefore, experimental music was from the beginning entangled with synthesizers. Musicians weren't only making music in traditional sense; they were also into the search for new sounds.

These experimental musicians are soon to be named "modernists". Modernism is a musical direction which is defined as an approach to music based on experiment. Modernist musicians were indeed like crazy scientists in theirs approach to music. But even more; they were not only being apart from most musicians, but also a bit from human race itself. When asked where he was educated, German modernist Karlheinz Stockhausen would answered “on Sirius”. When they asked French composer Jean Michel Jarre if he believes in aliens, he answered that he has no choice but to believe in them, since he often feels like one.

They way on which these “extra-terrestrials” were into music, is a combination of playfulness and seriousness. The creation of this music was supposed to be a birth of new circle of “classical” music; a continuation and evolution of the ancient stream of musical art, yet through a sudden twist. They wanted to transform classical music towards what classical composers didn't even dream of.

In this chapter we will present, through three generations, key musicians, concepts and music that belonged to experimental line of XX century music. This story of modernist revolution, which inside the semi-conscious XX century had a misfortune to remain untold, I will ornament with fantastically appropriate excerpts from a chapter of Nietzsche's famous book "Thus Spoke Zarathustra", called “Three Metamorphoses Of The Spirit”.

I name you three metamorphoses of the spirit: how the spirit shell become a camel, and the camel a lion, and the lion at last a child. Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra