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Finally, the following works for two pianos were written at nearly the same time.
Listening to the Carter does not help teach you how to listen to the Cage. Listening to the Reich does not help you with the Boulez. Each work much be considered on its own terms.
The personality of individual musical languages were established in a myriad of ways. Some composers, such as Harry Partch, invented their own instruments. (Partch gave his instruments such fanciful names such as Cloud-Chamber Bowls, Diamond Marimba and Chromolodeon.)
Some, like Mario Davidovsky, pioneered the use of electronic sounds. In Davidovsky’s Synchronism No.9, live and recorded, electronically transformed violin sounds are intertwined.
Some, such as Charles Ives, blended familiar music in unusual ways. In this excerpt from his String Quartet No. 2, Ives creates a musical“discussion”in which American folk tunes from North and South are quoted in opposition to each other.
Some, such as Lou Harrison, incorporated influences from other cultures. This excerpt from Harrison’s Song of Quetzalcoatl uses many exotic percussion instruments.
Others, such as Elliott Carter and Milton Babbitt, developed sophisticated, very carefully constructed musical methods. In this excerpt from Carter’s Variations for Orchestra, ensembles within the orchestra are characterized uniquely—the winds, for instance, are soft and slow-paced—and then layered on top of each other in a complex counterpoint.
Now, over a hundred years after the end of the "common practice" period, there is an enormous proliferation of musical styles. The break-up of the musical community in favor of much more personal musical languages greatly heightened ambiguity.
A steady pulse or“backbeat,”so crucial to pop music, jazz and much world music, provides continuity and predictability: You tap your feet to the beat.
A steady meter divides musical time into a fixed cycle of beats. Classical ballet and ballroom dancing depend on a steady meter.
Removing the steady pulse or meter disrupts the musical continuity and makes events much harder to predict. There are two main ways to accomplish this: One is to make the pulse or meter erratic.
The second is to remove the sense of pulse and meter altogether, creating what Pierre Boulez has termed“unstriated time.”In the following example from Boulez’s Eclat, the solitary, sporadic events seem to float freely, unanchored by meter or pulse.
Weakening the sense of pulse or meter heightens ambiguity by removing an important frame of reference.
A surprise occurs when one outcome is strongly anticipated but another one occurs. Ambiguity arises when multiple outcomes are all equally expected or no good forecast can be made. Listen to the opening of the second movement of Igor Stravinsky’s Three Pieces for String Quartet. Can you predict what happens next?
Which of the various gestures that Stravinsky has introduced follows next? How sure are you? Here is how the music actually continues:
This time, you were likely to have much less confident of your answer. In the Bach example, a pattern was established: the upper register was repeatedly answered by the lower. Stravinsky does not establish a consistent pattern, making any predictions much more uncertain. When we cannot confidently forecast what will happen in the future, ambiguity is heightened.
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