# Is the avant-garde just a lab for popular music?



## fbjim (Mar 8, 2021)

apologies in advance for the wandering tone here- this is just a few thoughts i've had that i'd wanted to set down on paper.

one interesting thing i've noted about "greatness" discussions of avant-garde composers is the idea that they had little lasting impact compared to the likes of Bach/Brahms/Beethoven etc. which surprised me, because the context of putting classical avant-garde music in the scene of professional music as a whole would seem to make their impact relatively obvious.

Cage, for instance, gets his share of mockery, but when noise, drone, and ambient records are popular enough for professional musicians to make livings off them- it's hard for me to look at that and conclude that his ideas on music had anything other than a profound effect on music culture at large, even if it's a bit reductive to attribute all of this to Cage himself.

As for minimalism, well, just from an electronic music writer-



> Technically Minimalism is the aesthetic godfather of all electronic music. It introduces structure, rhythm, timbre, and an earnest repetitiveness that is offputting to anyone not used to music that doesn't fit the verse-bridge-chorus template. Even today, 50 years later, Techno and Tech House are still adhering to the basic theories introduced by Minimalism, and are filling clubs and festivals with it. We all love hypnotic, repetitive music. That's what makes it music.


electronic music as a whole started in the avant-garde classical sphere, and once synthesizers became cheap enough for people outside of university laboratories to play with, completely transformed the face of popular music, in ways that arguably date back not just to minimalism, but tape music (still around!), musique concrete, and electroacoustic experiments.

in fact this sort of down-filtering happens within the popular music sphere as well. Pop music is full of songs which appropriate experiments and creativity in more niche spheres of electronic music and hip-hop, and package them in a way fit for mass market sales. historically, techno music was, like hip-hop, a regional form of black music which rapidly exploded in popularity and was appropriated by mass culture at large, and packaged for sale, to the extent that you can make millions on electronic music festivals. (an obvious recent example is dubstep, which started as a relatively "underground" progression in electronic, and was appropriated into what gets derisively called "brostep", aka festival-grade mass-market dubstep. similar things happened in hip-hop, where trap started as a regional phenomenon and a few years later you couldn't throw a rock without hitting a recent popular hit with trap beats).

if there's a question here- it'd be: Can the avant-garde, at least in part, be understood as a sort of experimental laboratory for techniques and musical philosophies which slowly propagate into music with more popular appeal (not specifically pop)? and if so, to follow up- does this give it value as a form? is it a problem if one believes the music has better value as experimentation than as music in itself?


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)




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## 59540 (May 16, 2021)

^ "ARE the Beatles Avant-Garde?" Good grief, the Beatles broke up 51 years ago.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

Fascinating video and definitely they were avant garde.


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

hammeredklavier said:


>


Avant-garde?

Actually, I think they are (from left to right) Ringo, John, Paul, and George.

But whoever they are, the video is well-worth a look for those with even some small interest in their music.


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## Forster (Apr 22, 2021)

No, the Beatles were not avant-garde by any stretch of the imagination or definition of the term. They may have been innovative and creative (and certainly the best pop band of the 60s) but 'avant-garde'?

The OP has an interesting point which is illustrated by what actually happened, but whether it was always thus, and ever will be, I'm not so sure.


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## Ethereality (Apr 6, 2019)

Beethoven and Mozart are closer to Rock n roll than Stockhausen, in terms of form, harmony. Maybe even some of their works are Rock n roll:


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## progmatist (Apr 3, 2021)

The most avant-garde sub-genre of prog rock is called Rock in Opposition, or RIO. It was started in opposition to the commercialism of the recording industry. Creating music unappealing to the masses was exactly the point.


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## Forster (Apr 22, 2021)

progmatist said:


> The most avant-garde sub-genre of prog rock is called Rock in Opposition, or RIO. It was started in opposition to the commercialism of the recording industry. Creating music unappealing to the masses was exactly the point.


Thanks - I'd not heard of RIO, though I am familiar with Henry Cow and, connected to them, the Canterbury Scene.

https://web.archive.org/web/20061229153235/http://www.rarevinyl.net/canterbury.htm

I'm not a fan of 'avant garde' for its own sake, but some of the music produced by the acts and individuals connected to it finds a treasured place on my CD shelves.


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