# Outsider Music



## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

In painting and sculpture there's a category called Outsider Art - art created by people who have no contact with the mainstream art world of galeries and art schools or collectors, for example art made by mentally ill people, or people who are on the economic margins of society. Some of their work is challenging and imaginative. You can read about it here on wiki

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outsider_art

Is there an analogous "outsider classical music" phenomenon?


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## flamencosketches (Jan 4, 2019)

What about the likes of Harry Partch? Possibly Charles Ives as well. His music certainly gives me the impression that its composer was not exactly sane. 

Maybe someone like Bernd Alois Zimmermann to give an example from the European avant-garde.

I mostly know of outsider "popular" music in the form of people like Daniel Johnston (RIP) and the Shaggs.


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

Not "classical" but rather lo-fi. Wiki has an article on outsider music linking to modern popular "music".

While classical music often uses popular tunes, the popular composers never get a mention. It is more a case of polishing the found artefacts rather than simply displaying them,


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

It seems surprising that Cornelius Cardew, Howard Skempton, people of that movement, didn’t investigate this. Maybe they did and I don’t know about it.


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## numinisgos (May 10, 2017)

Moondog! 

Jandek could be mentioned alongside Daniel Johnston.


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## GucciManeIsTheNewWebern (Jul 29, 2020)

Billy McBride. Prolific composer of symphonies and heralded outsider artist.

My Symphony Three


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

GucciManeIsTheNewWebern said:


> Billy McBride. Prolific composer of symphonies and heralded outsider artist.
> 
> My Symphony Three


oooooooo, strange!

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## RICK RIEKERT (Oct 9, 2017)

Conlon Nancarrow was a quintessential outsider.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

RICK RIEKERT said:


> Conlon Nancarrow was a quintessential outsider.


Nice

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## Oscar South (Aug 6, 2020)

I feel that there's a a huge amount of 'outsider music' available in any given field at any given time -- the difficulty is in finding it, since it is rarely well preserved or noted by history. On the rare occasion that you run into these artists in the first person, some of the most thrilling and exciting moments of musical experience are to be found! Sadly, I don't have any digital reproductions of my own personal experienced here to reference.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

flamencosketches said:


> What about the likes of Harry Partch? Possibly Charles Ives as well. His music certainly gives me the impression that its composer was not exactly sane.


I tend to see them more as mavericks (same for Nancarrow), than outsider artists. Their music was certainly extremely original but in outsider art there's an element of naivety that certainly both Partch and Ives didn't have. And Ives was absolutely sane and quite successful in his work as a insurance executive.


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## cheregi (Jul 16, 2020)

Came into this thread primarily to mention Nancarrow, glad to see he's already linked above...
I think none of these examples fully fit the 'naivete' criteria outlined by norman bates, but I'm thinking about Kaikhosru Sorabji, a pathologically reclusive, mostly self-taught, and largely friendless piano composer who rejected and was rejected by the 20th century modernist mainstream (also, he was a homosexual, which I'm sure distanced him even more):




I also recently read about an Inca aristocrat during and after the Spanish conquest who studied (was forced to study?) Western music theory and wrote choral motets in the then-current Renaissance style... unfortunately his works have all been lost.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

I think Julius Eastman is an outsider composer, recently rediscovered and assimilated into the avant garde establishment. I suddenly thought of him reading Jean Dubuffet's comments on Art Brut on the wiki page I put in the first post, this seems to sum up Eastman's music



> Those works created from solitude and from pure and authentic creative impulses - where the worries of competition, acclaim and social promotion do not interfere - are, because of these very facts, more precious than the productions of professionals. After a certain familiarity with these flourishings of an exalted feverishness, lived so fully and so intensely by their authors, we cannot avoid the feeling that in relation to these works, cultural art in its entirety appears to be the game of a futile society, a fallacious parade


He was of course an outsider in the real sense, rejected by Cage and his acolytes after a promising start which fell apart bacause of his uncompromising militant queerness, he finished up an isolated impoverished drug and sex addict in New York.


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## Heck148 (Oct 27, 2016)

Patch and Nancarrow certainly spring to mind for me....Henry Brant, possibly....


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## calvinpv (Apr 20, 2015)

Giacinto Scelsi?

His only formal musical education was, I believe, with a pupil of Schoenberg. Otherwise he was self-taught. He did initially write in the prevailing 12-tone method (though his music from this period sounds more like Sorabji, another candidate for this thread), but an artistic/psychological crisis (in combination with his wife leaving him) got him admitted to a sanatorium in Switzerland. And -- I kid you not -- his therapy consisted in playing a single note over and over on the piano, kind of like the stereotypical madman banging his head on the piano. And through this therapy, in combination with a new interest in Eastern spirituality, he eventually abandoned the 12-tone method and wrote his single-note works. Over the next couple of decades, Scelsi basically became a recluse other than occasional contacts with performers, refusing to even have photos of him become public. I think towards the end of his life he did make more frequent public appearances, as his music was starting to become better known.

This is an underrated work for me, underrated even among Scelsi's oeuvre:


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## tortkis (Jul 13, 2013)

Jean Dubuffet, the founder of Art Brut movement, created several musical works.

Temps Radieux





Side B of Musique Brut





_"(...) my music was slovenly and dirty, and therefore anti-musical, anti-humanistic"_ - Jean Dubuffet


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## Lisztian (Oct 10, 2011)

I don't know his music at all...but from what I've heard Jandek is a good example.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

Lisztian said:


> I don't know his music at all...but from what I've heard Jandek is a good example.


It definitely is. But he's not a classical composer by any stretch of imagination.
Same for Dubuffet above (I've never heard his music before, quite interesting, it sounds like certain things of Sun Ra), who by the way had too much awareness of art history to me to be seen as an outsider artist.


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## Lisztian (Oct 10, 2011)

norman bates said:


> It definitely is. But he's not a classical composer by any stretch of imagination.
> Same for Dubuffet above (I've never heard his music before, quite interesting, it sounds like certain things of Sun Ra), who by the way had too much awareness of art history to me to be seen as an outsider artist.


Whoops my fault: I didn't see the 'classical music' specification in the OP


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Mandryka said:


> In painting and sculpture there's a category called Outsider Art - art created by people who have no contact with the mainstream art world of galeries and art schools or collectors, for example art made by mentally ill people, or people who are on the economic margins of society. Some of their work is challenging and imaginative. You can read about it here on wiki


Also, in painting and sculpture, there is also a clear distinction* between "classical art" and "contemporary art". I've been saying that while there's a genuine artistic merit (that's not objectively inferior, but different from classical music) in contemporary music, but I think there needs to be a stricter line of criteria dividing "the old" and "the new" in music.

*nobody calls the modern stuff presented in this video "classical":


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

hammeredklavier said:


> Also, in painting and sculpture, there is also a clear distinction* between "classical art" and "contemporary art". I've been saying that while there's a genuine artistic merit (that's not objectively inferior, but different from classical music) in contemporary music, but I think there needs to be a stricter line of criteria dividing "the old" and "the new" in music.


since you keep repeating this in a lot of threads, personally where would you put the line between "classical art" and something that doesn't belong to that tradition? Also considering that those three criteria you mentioned would not change absolutely nothing, since a lot of works of modern composers are a continuation of the music of the previous generation, are inspired by much older music and older composers like Beethoven had already the "who cares if you listen" attitude.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

norman bates said:


> since you keep repeating this in a lot of threads, personally where would you put the line between "classical art" and something that doesn't belong to that tradition? Also considering that those three criteria you mentioned would not change absolutely nothing, since a lot of works of modern composers are a continuation of the music of the previous generation, are inspired by much older music and older composers like Beethoven had already the "who cares if you listen" attitude.


Much discussion gets dominated by this issue and I don't want that to happen here. Please take it somewhere else.

This is a potentially valuable thread which gives a glimpse on unknown music. Don't spoil it.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

hammeredklavier said:


> Also, in painting and sculpture, there is also a clear distinction* between "classical art" and "contemporary art". I've been saying that while there's a genuine artistic merit (that's not objectively inferior, but different from classical music) in contemporary music, but I think there needs to be a stricter line of criteria dividing "the old" and "the new" in music.
> 
> *nobody calls the modern stuff presented in this video "classical":


Same as post above to you, basically please stop this here, do it somewhere else,


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

Mandryka said:


> ZzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzz.
> 
> Too much discussion gets derailed by this issue and I don't want that to happen here. Please take it somewhere else.
> 
> This is a potentially valuable thread which gives a glimpse on unknown music. Don't spoil it.


ok, but I answered to that only because I think you will not find any classical musician that fits your request. You could find a lot of mavericks like many of those mentioned, but outsider art (and outsider music) implies a lack of awareness of cultural context and a naivety that all the artists mentioned did not have, and I suspect that the very fact of being part of the classical tradition (which is debated by Hammerklavier) makes impossible to a composer to be considered an outsider artist because of the knowledge requested to be considered as such. Altough maybe for you that distinction is irrelevant and you're simply interested in very original composers.


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

I wonder if the fact that a composition needs a performer (or a set of performers) tends to change the paradigm of outsider art to a degree that makes it harder to accomplish for music. The ability to use electronic means to simulate an orchestra or chamber group might address this limitation. (I make no further comment about the likely value of such a thing.)


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

JAS said:


> I wonder if the fact that a composition needs a performer (or a set of performers) tends to change the paradigm of outsider art to a degree that makes it harder to accomplish for music. The ability to use electronic means to simulate an orchestra or chamber group might address this limitation. (I make no further comment about the likely value of such a thing.)


Not these days, outsider composers can play their music through software.

In outsider art, they're not doing it to show it in galleries. They're doing it as a sort of therapy (I remember an artist who made intricate pencil designs because he said it helped him deal with grief) , or because they believe that they have visions which they want to record (a sort of psychosis - I remember an artist who thought he had access to parallel universes) or just for the fun (I remember a sex addict who just wanted to celebrate and record all the fun she was having)

Presumably the same with music.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

tortkis said:


> Jean Dubuffet, the founder of Art Brut movement, created several musical works.
> 
> Temps Radieux
> 
> ...


 Thanks for this, quite a challenge in a good way.


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

Mandryka said:


> Not these days, outsider composers can play their music through software.
> 
> In outsider art, they're not doing it to show it in galleries. They're doing it as a sort of therapy (I remember an artist who made intricate pencil designs because he said it helped him deal with grief) , or because they believe that they have visions which they want to record (a sort of psychosis - I remember an artist who thought he had access to parallel universes) or just for the fun (I remember a sex addict who just wanted to celebrate and record all the fun she was having)
> 
> Presumably the same with music.


So, that would be a yes . . .

The other question might be at what point does "outsider art" get enough attention and acceptance that it is no longer "outsider art"?


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

JAS said:


> So, that would be a yes . . .


Indeed. Sorry! Drunk half a bottle of Gigondas with Sunday lunch.


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

Mandryka said:


> Indeed. Sorry! Drunk half a bottle of Gigondas with Sunday lunch.


Depending on where you are, the day is not necessarily over, and so that second half is not yet safe.


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## Roger Knox (Jul 19, 2017)

I have relevant experience here having worked for a long time with adaptive music technology for people with disabilities. Your idea is a good one. I'm not aware of "outsider music" as such, certainly not within classical music, but it's possible. It's rather a complicated area but I'd be willing to offer some specifics, maybe on a pm depending on how much detail you're looking for.


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## GraemeG (Jun 30, 2009)

Up to a point, I'd nominate Elgar. Became the establishment, sure, but started out nowhere near that. Wrong class, wrong religion, wrong education, you name it. Even wrong country!


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

GraemeG said:


> Up to a point, I'd nominate Elgar. Became the establishment, sure, but started out nowhere near that. Wrong class, wrong religion, wrong education, you name it. Even wrong country!


That's a different thing, Elgar was always part of the musical establishment as a student and performer and in a minor way as a composer.


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## Roger Knox (Jul 19, 2017)

It's quite a while since I worked in the arts and disabilities area, but there is a multi-disciplinary arts centre in Toronto called Workman Arts that offers programs for people with mental health and addiction issues who want to develop in arts areas. Their offerings in music are not specifically classical though. The question is, "How do you get to the point of being able to work independently, or partially independently."


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

Lisztian said:


> I don't know his music at all...but from what I've heard Jandek is a good example.


Just listened to some of this now. Same chord for most of the album.


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