I think of Nono as a particularly political member of the immediately post-WWII avant-garde, but this shows a different side. The music's sensibility is very Japanese. The coolest thing about the YouTube clip is that when I posted it, it had only 287 views. I take a somewhat perverse pleasure in stumbling across significant pieces of music with astonishingly small numbers of views. Which I like to contrast in my mind with those astonishingly insignificant pieces of music with horrifically large numbers of views: "Gangnam Style" by Psy with 3.3 billion views. That's a "b".
(The clip with the 3.3 billion is another one of the same song that won't embed.)
Now you have to listen to Nono again. Yes, sorry, but that's the price you pay. Besides you need something to clear your palate.
I'm listening, for a few minutes, anyway; almost 80? I imagine not. Last week I tried listening to Kaikhosru Sorabji's Opus clavicembalisticum that goes on for four da... hours or so. Distracted too many times, I may try some of his work that is timed in minutes and not days.
ReplyDeleteSshh, don't tell anyone, but I skipped around a bit and didn't listen to all of the Nono. But each segment I did listen to I found more pleasing and more interesting than Gangnam Style.
ReplyDeleteHa; yes indeed. I wonder if any of the studies people study which Eurocolonial cultural exports or impositions have taken root and flourished in the righteous fields of the formerly oppressed? My guess is that the explosion of mass media too closely following the collapse of the actual colonial enterprises has resulted in lots of more or less derivative Kenyan or Korean pop music and not so much composition of 'art music' in those countries: but of course I may be very wrong.
ReplyDeleteThere certainly seems evidence of strong classical performing traditions taking root in a lot of countries. China, Japan, Korea. We know that because they keep winning all these competitions. Composition seems to take longer, but there are significant composers in again, Japan, China, South Korea. Africa, I dunno, haven't heard much except from South Africa and that was a white composer.
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