A Postmodern Convergence

The preceding four distinctions between popular music and art music remained useful for a long time, but in the last 30 years or so each of them has by and large broken down. Now, we will consider four ways in which the art music world has demonstrated some flexibility, while popular music (for the most part) has not.

I. TONALITY
While much of postmodern art music has re-embraced tonality (or, at the very least, triadic harmonies) after a period of time when serialism was in vogue, very little popular music has experimented with atonality. There are, of course, exceptions: free jazz was probably the most high-profile and widespread movement to dispense with traditional tonality, but other artists such as those associated with the Rock In Opposition movement also ventured into uncharted harmonic territory. It is also worth pointing out that certain sub-genres of popular music, including noise rock, “industrial” electronica, and hardcore rap, essentially ignore pitch as an element of music—a stance a number of avant-garde composers have taken as well. Nevertheless, the vast majority of popular musicians work with a solidly triadic harmonic language, borrowing chords and scales primarily from the jazz and blues traditions.

II. CONTINUOUS MOVEMENT
Twentieth-century art music bears no absolute allegiance to the notion of continuous movement; certain composers are notorious for their pointillistic scoring and pieces that actively seek to abolish any sense of rhythm or meter. This phenomenon is rarely seen in popular music; almost all songs feature a rhythmic drive, or “groove,” most often provided by the bass and/or drums. Even deliberately jerky rhythms tend to be jerky within some kind of structured, repeating pattern (usually the four-beat measure), giving the effect of syncopation rather than pointillism. Again, free jazz musicians did experiment with this technique, as well as a select few of the rock bands that they influenced, the most prominent being King Crimson (cf. “Moonchild” after 3:30, “We’ll Let You Know”). The opposite extreme, namely a sense of space created by placing rhythmic events as far apart as possible, is also much more common in 20th-century art music than in popular music—with one notable exception: writers of ambient electronica have exploited this particular practice as a defining aspect of their work. Nevertheless, the concept of “groove” remains a vital element of most popular music, and this distinction continues to set it apart from the world of art music, despite a growing number of composers who employ continuous movement in their pieces.

III. EXTREME CONTRASTS
A related issue separating the two traditions involves the avant-garde’s penchant for musical extremes—extremes of dynamics, metric/tempo fluctuations, affect—all piled on top of one another in the same piece. As with the previous two distinctions, this characteristic certainly does not hold for all art music of our time; however, popular music seldom exploits the full range of its materials in this way, at least not within the same song. It is true that much alternative rock of the early 1990s (e.g., Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins) did feature enormous differences in dynamic and timbre between the verse and chorus sections, but this obvious contrast was valued more for its visceral effect on the listener rather than for its aesthetic ramifications. John Zorn (if one considers him part of the jazz tradition) does merit mention as an exception here: his pieces/songs oscillate wildly and rapidly between stylistic and technical extremes. The European art-rock bands—King Crimson, Henry Cow, others—were also known to employ this technique on occasion. Of course, the work of the minimalists, as well as other pieces such as Stockhausen’s Stimmung, stand out as examples of postmodern art music that maintain a consistency of aural effect throughout.

IV. RATIONAL VS. INTUITIVE COMPOSITION
Finally, a favorite technique of 20th-century classical composers has been a reliance on theoretical, mathematical, or otherwise “rational” bases that then serve as generators of material for their pieces. Again, the period following the 1960s brought about a revival of “intuitive composition” in art music, but theoretical constructs have never claimed a large following among popular musicians. The art-rock group Emerson, Lake, and Palmer did write a 20-minute suite called “Tarkus” which employed quartal harmonies throughout the song. Jazz composer Anthony Braxton has developed a number of complex theoretical systems that inform his compositions. For the most part, however, intuitive composition and improvisation rule the roost when it comes to popular music.

Writings

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File Under: Ambiguous

A Postmodern Convergence (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

Relevant Links and Resources

ArtsJournal: Critical Conversation
ArtsJournal: PostClassic
ArtsJournal: Sandow
beepSNORT
The Fredösphere
Hertz-Lion Yields
NetNewMusic
NewFrontEars
NewMusicBox (guitar issue, rock issue 1, rock issue 2)
Sequenza21
The Rest is Noise