# What is Rock and Electronic Music's Influence on Classical Music?



## regenmusic (Oct 23, 2014)

I think there is some influence. I'm a synthesizer player going back to 1975, and I can't help but notice the effect of sequences on someone like Philip Glass (no, I'm not being silly here but it is
kind of funny), and John Adams. Terry Riley is a little more fascinating and he did seem like he
was twelve years ahead of time as far as doing what people could only barely figure out with electronics around 1982. So, really not just rock/electronic but the influence of electronic musical
techniques on classical. What do you think?


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## dgee (Sep 26, 2013)

Psychedelic rick has been influential - try Fausto Romitelli
Hard rock/heavy metal aesthetic has been influential too - for example, Bernhard Gander
David Lang and Nico Muhly work with rock/pop musicians regularly

Have a look at Bang on a Can too

The broader influence of electronics is too big to sensibly address in a thread. A primer article on the subject might be a good place to start - maybe someone else could recommend one


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## regenmusic (Oct 23, 2014)

regenmusic said:


> I think there is some influence. I'm a synthesizer player going back to 1975, and I can't help but notice the effect of sequences on someone like Philip Glass (no, I'm not being silly here but it is
> kind of funny), and John Adams. Terry Riley is a little more fascinating and he did seem like he
> was twelve years ahead of time as far as doing what people could only barely figure out with electronics around 1982. So, really not just rock/electronic but the influence of electronic musical
> techniques on classical. What do you think?


Ah, I'll have to read around a bit more before I post such original (ahem) topics. It's good to know
people are thinking about this. I classify it a way like the musicologist looks at folk songs. The
topic of actual instrument and technology influecing classical is interesting, as it's always been the
case, as in saxophones and pianos, really everything outside of two sticks being banged together.

(and I just learned how to hit the like button so many overdue likes to soon post).


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## Guest (Jan 19, 2015)

The influences are probably from "classical" to rock and to what you're referring to as electronic.

At first. Once you've got people working in a field--once the field is recognizable as such--the influences are probably circular rather than linear.

As far as that business about Riley being "twelve years ahead of time as far as doing what people could only barely figure out with electronics around 1982," I have to ask "Who do you mean by "people?" Usable electronic technology has been around since the 1930s. And with the perfection of the tape recorder, composers have been doing electroacoustic music since the late forties. By 1982, in composed music, anyway, electronics had been around for several decades and the techniques were quite familiar to many composers. That is, most things had already long been "figured out" in the musics of Varese and Stockhausen and Xenakis and Berio and Dhomont and Henry and Ferrari and Ferreyra and Smiley and Shields and Austin and Boerman and Raaijmakers and Radigue and Oliveros and a host of others.

Riley is one of many. And his work with electronics dates from the fifties, not the seventies.


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

I would say that electronic music was basically pioneered by 'classical' composers.

All of our modern conceptions in electronic music go back to people like Pierre Schaeffer, Pierre Henry, Varèse, Stockhausen, etc. The ideas of these composers settled the foundation of modern electronic music (both 'musique concrète' and 'absolute' electronic music with purely synthesized sounds).

These ideas spread later into other genres.

edit: nevermind, point already addressed by some guy above.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

I'd be curious to know if rock music could be considered an influence on the birth of minimalism. I know that the usual names are those of Perotin, Satie, Mosolov and stuff like that basically a lot of popular music was based on the idea of repetition of simple ideas, and that msuc was incredibly popular in America, much more than Mosolov or Perotin.


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## Guest (Jan 19, 2015)

Minimalism ≠ repetition of simple ideas. Even the repetitious variety of minimalism does not equal repetition of simple ideas. If you listen to a piece of popular music, you will hear the repetition being used for a purpose. If you listen to a piece by Terry Riley, you will hear the repetition being used for quite a different purpose. There's quite a lot of repetition in baroque and classical music as well. And in Schubert's ninth symphony and in Liszt's Faust symphony and in Dvorak's fourth symphony. None of those things uses repetition in the same way as a popular song would do.

As far as "the birth of minimalism" is concerned, the earliest things to be called minimal, in music, had already been done before the word was coined. That is, before the word was applied to those pieces. And those pieces were quite different from any of the more well-known minimalism that uses repetition of simple cells.

I'm curious about Perotin, Satie, and Mosolov being "the usual names." In what context are they the "usual" names?

In any event, a pretty well-done Wiki article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimal_music) has a section on minimalism's influence on popular music.:lol:


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

some guy said:


> Minimalism ≠ repetition of simple ideas. Even the repetitious variety of minimalism does not equal repetition of simple ideas. If you listen to a piece of popular music, you will hear the repetition being used for a purpose. If you listen to a piece by Terry Riley, you will hear the repetition being used for quite a different purpose.


repetition is repetition, whatever the intention of the composer is; the difference is that in the kind of minimalism played by Reich there's the technique of phasing involved (and obviously that is a big difference). But there are also composers like Henry Flynt; the Velvet underground (one of the most influential rock bands ever) were influenced by him and he did albums that were clearly influenced by popular music.



some guy said:


> I'm curious about Perotin, Satie, and Mosolov being "the usual names." In what context are they the "usual" names?


in the context of the influences of those composers who are associated with the word minimalism. It's easy to find interviews to Steve Reich or Arvo Part where they say that they were influenced by Perotin (by the way, the first time a friend of mine made me listen to Perotin and I had never heard his name before I said to him that it sounded as minimalism, but that's another story). 
As it's easy to see how many see a piece like Satie's Vexations as a forerunner of minimalism (and that was exactly the repetition of the same idea repeated over and over).


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

regenmusic said:


> I think there is some influence. I'm a synthesizer player going back to 1975, and I can't help but notice the effect of sequences on someone like Philip Glass and John Adams. Terry Riley is a little more fascinating and he did seem like he was twelve years ahead of time as far as doing what people could only barely figure out with electronics around 1982. So, really not just rock/electronic but the influence of electronic musical
> techniques on classical. What do you think?


That sequencer feature on early synths I'm sure came about from the more relentless repetitiveness found in pop music, and the conceived forethought that many a buyer of those synths was going to be a non-player who was not nearly as able (or willing) to play all their repeated 4/4 drum tracks for the length of a piece -- ergo a 'make it appealingly simple and non-professional user friendly' as well as the feature being a plus of a user time-saver, was very much part of its inclusion, as much thought about re: marketing considerations as utility.

In the early 20th century, you already have composers looking into ethnic musics, Indonesian Gamelan, others, where a more minimal amount of notes (scale) and small cells of notes were the basic materials of the music. (A.o. -- Lou Harrison, b. 1917, was 'already there' in the 1930's.) This 'in the air' has much more to do with what later emerged as minimalism. As far as pursing new sounds and timbres, Henry Cowell (b.1897) was already going into the guts of the piano (extended techniques) in the early 1900's, yet another example of the general drift of interest in 'other' sound sources... Debussy being a concrete example of really going at the standard instruments of the orchestra in a way to get a radically different timbrel palette, i.e. this 'pursuit of sound and timbrel color' is part of the entire 20th century, from its beginning.

Early investigations of Musique concrète and then more purely electronic music were under way when composers Lemonte Young and Terry Riley (b.1935), Reich (b. 1936), and Glass (b. 1937) were in their very early tweens, Adams (b. 1948) in earlier childhood.

Rock, I think it is agreed, is a post WWII arrival, the electric guitar (1931) being until then in the domain of big bands and jazz.

In the pop music arena, electronica pop was limited mainly to amplification, compression in the studio, and then the effects came in with the invention of the wah-wah pedal  The forties and fifties had a lot going on in the Columbia-Princeton electronic music studio / lab (founded in the 1950's), and the hotbed we know as the Darmstadt music center (and composers active there who were later tagged as "The Darmstadt School") was in full drive. Stockhausen's 'tape' piece, a fusion of Musique concrète and pure electronica, _Gesang der Jünglinge_, from 1956, was made there -- when John Adams was eight years old, Riley, Young, Glass and Reich about ten years older 

Some of this inevitably bled into the pop arena, leading to the more adventurous affects, in studio and live.

Too, whether that earlier 20th century investigation into ethnic musics, the Theremin or later Ondes Martenot, that certainly in classical, from the advent of Debusy, the searching for other timbres from 'standard' instruments or other sound sources is clearly "in the general ethos" of the century.

But the later commercially available synths with their sequencer feature as influencing any of those composers? Naw... Reich "stumbled" upon phasing when he had left several tape loops running (old school hardware tech, Lol), and had left the studio and then returned to find them, out of sync... "Hmmm, that's cool and interesting."

Later generations, growing up with pop, classical, modern / contemporary classical, including all the electronica plugged in to both pop and non-pop certainly had 'all that of their time' as their collective influence(s). That generation of composers and performers who formed the 'Bang on the Can' ensembles, which included Michael Gordon and David Lang -- in their earlier works, especially, trap-set drum kits, electric guitars. Later, you still find electric guitars, more subtly as part of the instrumental texture, in some of their works. Often enough, John Adams uses one or two synthesizers in his orchestral textures.


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## Guest (Jan 19, 2015)

norman bates said:


> repetition is repetition


I disagree. The repetition of Schubert's ninth seems worlds away from the repetition of Tony Conrad, for instance. And both of them from the repetition of a pop tune. They all use repetition, but the results are wildly different.



norman bates said:


> It's easy to find interviews to Steve Reich or Arvo Part where they say that they were influenced by Perotin (by the way, the first time a friend of mine made me listen to Perotin and I had never heard his name before I said to him that it sounded as minimalism, but that's another story).


Ah. Thanks, Norman. I obviously don't look for interviews with either one of those guys, and I had never heard anyone like Feldman or Yoshihide or Young mention any of those three you mentioned.

Satie I could understand. Cage loved Satie. But it's hard to see how _Vexations_ could have had any influence on minimalists before 1949 at the earliest, and that's because that's when Cage published a facsimile in a French journal. It wasn't published in the U.S. until nine years later.

It wasn't performed, at least in a version that takes the remark about preparing to play it 840 times by serious immobilities as a performance instruction, until 1963. And that's all Cage, too. So not really Satie as an influence so much as Satie as interpreted by Cage. And, of course, Cage had been being influencial since around 1939, maybe earlier. Certainly the essay "The Future of Music: Credo" was an important statement of the Geist of the Zeit.

The dates are more or less OK, as "minimal" was first applied to music in 1968, by Michael Nyman. But this was about performance art of Charlotte Moorman and Nam June Paik, not usually referred to as minimalists. And Nyman's remark was about how that 1968 show, in London, just by the way, was "a recipe for the successful 'minimal-music' happening." Not quite "minimalism" and certainly not the minimalism of Glass, Reith, and Riley, which did feature repetition prominently. What Nyman was originally referring to was a Fluxus show.

But now I'm curious to hear some Perotin. Not sure I've ever done that. I mean, I'm sure I have. But it hasn't been something I remembered.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

some guy said:


> I disagree. The repetition of Schubert's ninth seems worlds away from the repetition of Tony Conrad, for instance. And both of them from the repetition of a pop tune. They all use repetition, but the results are wildly different.


it's obvious that there many aspects involved, it depends if there are polyrhythms or phasing, the lenght of the repetion etc... but I remember listening the last movement of the 9th symphony of Bruckner and thinking that the repetitions at a certain point sounded a bit like minimalism too.


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## regenmusic (Oct 23, 2014)

PetrB said:


> That sequence feature on early synths I'm sure came about from the more relentless repetitiveness found in pop music, and the conceived forethought that many a buyer of those synths was going to be a non-player who was not nearly as able (or willing) to play all their repeated 4/4 drum tracks for the length of a piece -- ergo a 'make it appealingly simple and non-amateur user friendly' as well as the feature being a plus of a user time-saver, was very much part of its inclusion, as much thought about re: marketing considerations as utility.


I'm sorry, I meant to say sequencer and not sequence.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

regenmusic said:


> I'm sorry, I meant to say sequencer and not sequence.


Whoops, so did I.

I'm a player, enough anyway that when I made a multi-track piano piece via desktop software and midi, that gear all brand new to me at the time, and then played that piece for some acquaintances who were more into haus musik than classical (now you know that was all in the 90's , one of them said, "I see you found the sequencer right away." I had no idea what they were talking about, which surprised them.

"Then, how did you....?" 
"I just played it." 
-- which surprised them again.

Haven't had an occasion yet to use that feature


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## DeepR (Apr 13, 2012)

Not to diminish anything of the above but I wouldn't credit "classical composers" for all the invention and innovation in electronic music. When synthesizers became smaller, more portable and easier available to the public in the late 60s/early 70s there were many artists and bands experimenting with synths and they too contributed a lot to the development of electronic music in general. Some of these artists may have influenced classical composers in their turn, who knows..


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## Guest (Jan 20, 2015)

DeepR said:


> Not to diminish anything of the above but I wouldn't credit "classical composers" for all the invention and innovation in electronic music. When synthesizers became smaller, more portable and easier available to the public in the late 60s/early 70s there were many artists and bands experimenting with synths and they too contributed a lot to the development of electronic music in general. Some of these artists may have influenced classical composers in their turn, who knows..


I don't think any of the above would do so, either. For much of it. For most of it, even.

But certainly not all of it. Jazz, classical, and rock musicians of the more edgy, avant sorts have been hanging out together and playing together since the fifties. And of course they influenced each other. I once played some Zorn, some Nurse With Wound, and some Foss at a listening party, asking if anyone could place them according to their origins: Jazz, Rock, and classical.

No one could. And, as I pointed out at the time, had I not already known, I would not have been able to, either.

That is, some of "these artists" most definitely did influence classical composers, no "may" about it. Indeed, some of the classical composers came from rock (Goebbels) or jazz (Zorn) backgrounds.

And some things just sorta happened at around the same time. Turntablism would have happened if there had been no Christian Marclay. But it would equally have still have happened had there been no hip-hop, either. Two independent sources for the same thing. (Marclay's main influence, according to him, was punk rock.)

And if you baulk at calling Christian Marclay or John Zorn or Heiner Goebbels "classical" composers, join the crowd. I would say the lines between the three types started to blur almost as soon as such a thing as "jazz" or "rock" came to be things. "Classical" was a problematic term from the get-go. Musicians make music. That's what they do. Everything else is more for the convenience of music stores (online or off) than anything else.


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## Guest (Jan 20, 2015)

some guy said:


> I would say the lines between the three types started to blur almost as soon as such a thing as "jazz" or "rock" came to be things. "Classical" was a problematic term from the get-go. Musicians make music. That's what they do. Everything else is more for the convenience of music stores (online or off) than anything else.


This is so good to read. :tiphat:

As well as marketing and shop stocking, labels help us in our communication; but they can also be barriers. Often-times I think the most ground breaking and well, interesting, music creation comes where "genres" cross-pollinate or are ignored; when labels are _transcended_.


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## julianoq (Jan 29, 2013)

gog said:


> This is so good to read. :tiphat:
> 
> As well as marketing and shop stocking, labels help us in our communication; but they can also be barriers. Often-times I think the most ground breaking and well, interesting, music creation comes where "genres" cross-pollinate or are ignored; when labels are _transcended_.


Agreed.

"The day you teach the child the name of the bird, the child will never see that bird again" - Jiddu Krishnamurti


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## Guest (Jan 20, 2015)

Nice quote, julianoq.

I _will_ be stealing it. Again and again.:devil:


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## Guest (Jan 20, 2015)

Yeah, nice one.


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## Albert7 (Nov 16, 2014)

Radiohead => Steve Reich's Radio Rewrite.


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## tortkis (Jul 13, 2013)

albertfallickwang said:


> Radiohead => Steve Reich's Radio Rewrite.


I believe it was like this: Jonny Greenwood, Radiohead's lead guitarist, has been a fan of Steve Reich. Reich heard Greenwood's performance of _Electric Counterpoint_ and was impressed. Then he checked out Radiohead, and composed Radio Rewrite based on the band's pieces. So, as some guy wrote, the influence has been "circular."

BTW, I like Radio Rewrite very much.


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## julianoq (Jan 29, 2013)

some guy said:


> Nice quote, julianoq.
> 
> I _will_ be stealing it. Again and again.:devil:





gog said:


> Yeah, nice one.


Not wanting to hijack the thread, but K wrote a lot about the subject. I read his book 'Freedom from the Known' and found it fascinating.

Some random quotes:

"The ability to observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence."

"All ideologies are idiotic, whether religious or political, for it is conceptual thinking, the conceptual word, which has so unfortunately divided man."

"Tradition becomes our security, and when the mind is secure it is in decay."

"When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European, or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence. So a man who is seeking to understand violence does not belong to any country, to any religion, to any political party or partial system; he is concerned with the total understanding of mankind."


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

norman bates said:


> I'd be curious to know if rock music could be considered an influence on the birth of minimalism. I know that the usual names are those of Perotin, Satie, Mosolov and stuff like that basically a lot of popular music was based on the idea of repetition of simple ideas, and that msuc was incredibly popular in America, much more than Mosolov or Perotin.


Culturally and socially, yes. By the early 70s, the "academy" was irrelevant, and so was the serialism of the avant garde.

Composers like Glass, Riley, and Reich were alienated by atonal music, and by the entire "establishment" it represented.

Composers are people who like to hear their music played; so they did what they had to do: they formed "groups" or specialized ensembles; and played through large PA systems on alternative venues, instead of the concert halls; played to younger audiences who also liked rock and were open-minded and "artistically" oriented, ready to explore and cross genres.


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## farris (Nov 5, 2015)

I classify it a way like the musicologist looks at folk songs. The
topic of actual instrument and technology influencing classical is interesting, as it's always been the
case, as in saxophones and pianos,


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