# How avant-garde is too avant-garde?



## rgz (Mar 6, 2010)

Kind of hesitant to post this but since most everyone here is pretty laid back I guess there won't be too much backlash 

So, besides opera, another favorite genre of mine is electronic music, and I've idly speculated about what a fusion of the two would be like and whether it would even be viable.

There's a fairly well-known example from the movie The 5th Element, where an alien starts off singing Il Dolce Suono and it evolves into something rather different





The electronic portion features just a vocalisation from the singer, and it's not quite what I'm talking about.

Another example





The song itself is absolutely 2nd rate in my opinion, but I'd really be interested in seeing more in this vein. There would be several advantages to new works written in this manner: 1, it would be more immediately appealing to a younger audience. I doubt anyone can deny that opera as such is not on the radar of most people, particularly with, say, the sub 40 year old bracket. 2, performances could be cheaper -- instead of a full orchestra, only a couple people with keyboards or computers would be required.

So, guess I'd like others' opinions, since I may skew a bit on the young side and have a different view. Is this something you would listen to, if the electronic music were of sufficiently high quality? Is it something you'd be adamantly against?

Note that I'm absolutely *not* saying older works should be updated to be trance or techno  Just as a possible format for new works.


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## Herkku (Apr 18, 2010)

Difficult to say when things are too avant-garde. Probably, when the music ceases to have any positive emotional effect in the listener. Admittedly, it can be very discordant etc., if it serves the dramatic situation in some way. After all, we have modern paintings that convey a powerful message, but are far from "beautiful" in the traditional sense. So, perhaps the effect of music doesn't necessarily have to be even positive, but when we fail to see - or rather hear - any meaning in it, it's too avant-garde.


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## Almaviva (Aug 13, 2010)

I've always liked that 5th element scene. Lots of fun.
The second example is pure crap, very annoying music, and the canned beat is even worse. However the visuals are not bad and the singer is strikingly beautiful. wow, what an attractive woman!
Would I want to hear more of the same? Nah. I mean, I would like to *see* the singer more often, but I don't care for what she sings.


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## Guest (Feb 2, 2011)

There are several electronic operas already, and none of them are even remotely like the two examples you cited, both being fairly traditional opera singing with a pop beat.

That's because the word "electronic" as you're using it (to refer to trance and house types of music, among others) is quite different from the word "electronic" as it has been used in the classical or avant garde classical worlds.

The two examples you offered are not avant garde at all, but simply a fusion of two familiar but different styles. I would guess that no one would like this particular juxtaposition, neither the lover of traditional opera nor the lover of techno, but there are undoubtedly people who would like it very much.

Here's an "electronic opera" by TheSpyCollective, _Iminami, from Mother to Smother_:






And here's another, this one from Miguel Azguime, _Itinerario do Sal_:

[YT]



[/YT]

There are many more music theatre type works that use electronically produced or altered sounds. Alice Shields, Barry Truax, Heiner Goebbels, and Wolfgang Mitterer are a few who have done works of that sort.

And, as with the examples you offered, there will be people who will dislike them and people who will like them very much. The two examples I gave are both things I have seen live, and everyone else in the audiences for them liked them very much.


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## Guest (Feb 2, 2011)

There are several electronic operas already, and none of them are even remotely like the two examples you cited, both being fairly traditional opera singing with a pop beat.

That's because the word "electronic" as you're using it (to refer to trance and house types of music, among others) is quite different from the word "electronic" as it has been used in the classical or avant garde classical worlds.

The two examples you offered are not avant garde at all, but simply a fusion of two familiar but different styles. I would guess that no one would like this particular juxtaposition, neither the lover of traditional opera nor the lover of techno, but there are undoubtedly people who would like it very much.

Here's an "electronic opera" by TheSpyCollective, _Iminami, from Mother to Smother_:






And here's another, this one from Miguel Azguime, _Itinerario do Sal_:






There are many more music theatre type works that use electronically produced or altered sounds. Alice Shields, Barry Truax, Heiner Goebbels, and Wolfgang Mitterer are a few who have done works of that sort.

And, as with the examples you offered, there will be people who will dislike them and people who will like them very much. The two examples I gave are both things I have seen live, and everyone else in the audiences for them liked them very much.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

All sound sources are 'instruments;' the rest of 'what we get' depends on the composer and how they use those elements.

There is this brilliant and disturbingly beautiful tour de force piece for mezzo-soprano and tape:
Luciano Berio ~ Visage (1961)





and two of a very different order, from a later generation, and very recently composed:
Nico Muhly:
Mothertongue I - Archive




Mothertongue: III. Hress 





Neither, very different pieces, are 'too avant garde' to my ears or ways of thinking. The Berio is a profound emotional piece, they Mulhy, only a little dark here and there, mainly 'up', fun, sounding quite well, and young-man brash and exuberant.

I'm mainly a classicist by musical sensibility: that out of the way, if the electronics seem 'in place,' i.e. not merely gratuitous, and as in any other element of a piece are handled 'musically,' i.e. taken advantage of for their character and quality, I think they work. That is awfully general, but so is 'good composing is good composing,' and that is the thrust - handled as well and as with much thought as given to any instrument being used in the piece.


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## kv466 (May 18, 2011)

In a word: COAG


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

There is no such thing as "too avant-garde"


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

kv466 said:


> In a word: COAG


The two operas I have written are very traditional. In "The Death of Osiris" the use of mythology and continuous through composed music throughout entire acts is reminiscent of the music dramas of Wagner, and in "The King's Horn" I was very much inspired by Britten's chamber operas, traditional Macedonian music and the use of leitmotifs.


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## mamascarlatti (Sep 23, 2009)

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> The two operas I have written are very traditional. In "The Death of Osiris" the use of mythology and continuous through composed music throughout entire acts is reminiscent of the music dramas of Wagner, and in "The King's Horn" I was very much inspired by Britten's chamber operas, traditional Macedonian music and the use of leitmotifs.


The "king's horn" sounds just what I enjoy listening to. Hope you get it produced.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

kv466 said:


> In a word: COAG


Dude, that is an Acronym:

as in "chronic open angle glaucoma"
or as in "Council of Australian Governments"
or as in "______________________," "_______________________" or "_____________________" ?

You know, Acronym, Ohio.


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## Moira (Apr 1, 2012)

A number of years ago, when I was still young and beautiful, I was keen on the friend of a friend, an arty type who designed and built his own home. He was finally persuaded to invite me to dinner at this new home. My friend, knowing my blunt outspokenness, took me for a drive past his home. She explained to me how much he loved it, how proud he was of it, and how sensitive he really was to criticism of any of his creative processes.

She delicately prepared, nay coached me, in an appropriate response to the question which came as to whether I liked it or not. My response was "It's very avant-garde". 

The very word now conjures of visions of what might well be a public ablution building on a hill. 

Having said that, I have never been in a house which "lives as well" as that house did. It was truly a building of convenience such as I have never otherwise experienced. 

It was, however, one of the ugliest homes I have ever seen.


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## Kopachris (May 31, 2010)

How avant-garde is too avant-garde? When avant out-gardes the garde of avant-garde and avant-ness gets all over the place and the avant-garde guard has to clean it up, of course!


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## LordBlackudder (Nov 13, 2010)

dis no such ting as too avant garde ya errin me lah?


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## AmericanGesamtkunstwerk (May 9, 2011)

Clara Schumann: "[Tristan und Isolde is] the most repugnant thing I have ever seen or heard in all my life"

there's your answer!


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