When talking about experimental music today, the word is often used to define music that differs from traditional and popular music and is based on the same principles as the experimental music of the second half of the twentieth century. It is said that composer John Cage was the first to use the word experimental music to describe the music he created. Later music critic Michael Nyman used the word to describe the specific music movement of the fifties and sixties (Duch, 2010). As a result, today the word describes both an era in music history and a musical genre.
The word experimental music originated in the mid-twentieth century, and has been used to describe a number of styles of music that do not necessarily share any common features. Everything from early minimalism to the Fluxus movement has been defined as experimental music. What all these sub-branches have in common is that the composers went against the tendencies of European art music and distanced themselves from music institutions and institutionalised music values (Grove Music Online 2024, p.1). In addition, one of the common features is that they stood against the fundamental assumptions of music, which explains their resistance to the institutions. Experimentalists have managed to remove or soften some of these assumptions, such as the role of the composer, performer and audience. As a result, the boundaries between music and noise, music and other art forms and music and everyday life have been blurred (Grove Music Online 2024).
A central figure for this expression is the composer John Cage. In several essays he has discussed the characteristics of the term. One of these texts, the essay Silence, is a key text in the history of experimentalism, in which he writes about compositional techniques, important composers and artists, and the nature of experimentalism (Grove Music Online 2024, p. 2). As a strong voice in this movement, his work can be used to describe what characterises experimental music.
According to Cage, one of the characteristics of experimental music is that an experimental action is one action whose outcome is unknown (Grove Music Online 2024, p. 4). This idea allows for the fact that composed pieces often have an element of interderminacy, which often gives the performer and external factors more influence on the final result of a piece. Pieces by Cage like 4, 33, where the sounds of the hall and audience becomes the music, and Variations II , where every sound parameter is decided by the performers, is examples where interderminacy is a big part of the music (Grove Music Online 2024, p.4).
The chance and indeterminacy of experimental music has led many experimental composers to change the way they notated their music. There are many examples of this, such as Earle Brown's December 1952, Morton Feldman's Projection 1 for solo cello and John Cage's Fontana Mix. Many of these graphic notations leave a lot of room for interpretation by the performer both in the rehearsal phase but also in many cases in the actual performance. Some composers also went completely away from a graphic element and used text as instructions for the piece, like you can find in Christian Wolff´s Play and in Pauline Oliveros Deep Listening (Grove Music Online 2024, p. 5).
The final characteristic of experimental music worth mentioning in the context of this research is the element of what a musical act is. The experimental music movement pushed the boundaries of what was considered a legitimate musical act in a performance. With pieces such as Young's Poems for Chairs, Tables and Benches Etc. (Or Other Sound Sources) and Piano Piece for Terry Riley #1, moving furniture and instruments around, something that requires minimal to no musical training for the performers (Grove Music Online 2024, p. 6). Often related to the Fluxus movement, these pieces challenge performer and audience perceptions, as performance is no longer limited to those with years of musical training. This has opened up participation from the audience and non-musicians in a new way that differs from traditional music.
In this research, the definition of experimental music is used both as a definition of the music played in these workshops, as inspiration for an approach to making music together with the children and as a definition to go against the fundamental assumptions about music.
To be more specific, I would define the music played in this project as free improvised music, but since the graphic notation element is also present, you could argue that the music is not completely free. The term experimental music, as we see above, covers such a broad field that it is difficult to give it a clear definition. Free improvisation is often seen as a genre within the definition of experimental music, for example (Duch, 2010). I define the music in this project as experimental as it is free improvised music in the sense that nothing is planned in advance, using extended techniques, non-traditional instrumentation, graphic notation and the influence of the children present. In other words, it's music that uses many non-traditional elements to perform the experimentation.
The concept of experimental music is also used as inspiration for an approach to music in this research. In most musical traditions, such as classical music, jazz and folk music, music education begins by reproducing the tradition before adding your own touch to the tradition (Tinkle 2015, p 31). Since experimental music is experimentation, it can offer a different approach to music making. If experimental music is an experiment with an unclear outcome, it means that you don't require the same prior knowledge to create as you do in more traditional genres.
With these thoughts in mind, the fact that this is a performer project, and not an educational project, is relevant. My goal with the workshop is not to teach experimental music, but rather to give the children an aesthetic experience they can also take part in. If I and my fellow musicians play free improvisation together, we use all the musical references we have gained through life and education, but what will happen if children with no musical education do the same? What will happen if children with their references are given the opportunity to explore and create music together?
This project, like the experimental music movement in the latter part of the 20th century, arose as a reaction to the music establishment and the way we define music within these establishments. Drawing inspiration from experimentalism, this project is an attempt to develop a workshop in which everyone in the room participates equally regardless of experience and expertise.
In many ways, the idea of using drawing as a tool to participate in music creation also comes from experimentalism. Because I wanted to become a better improviser, graphic notation was a way for me, as a classically trained cellist, to enter the world of improvisation more easily. The idea of using drawings comes from this being a different method of notating music, which does not have set rules in the same way as the standard notation system. Therefore, the performer is often a bigger part of the result because the interpretation of each individual performer influences how it sounds, thus leaving more room for personal interpretation. The idea of using drawing in these workshops is that we can use this as a tool to get to know sound through visualisation, but not be dependent on an already existing notation system.