Major Trends in the Development of Choral Music by the Western European Avant-Garde of the 1960s

Abstract

The article contains information on the main directions of the development of choral music of Western European avant-garde composers of the 1960s. The turning of attention to choral music of that particular decade is due to the considerable number of innovations that received dissemination in the musical compositions of Karlheinz Stokhausen, Luigi Nono, Mauricio Kagel, György Ligeti and a number of other composers associated with the Summer Courses of New Music in Darmstadt. Among these innovations are: phoneme composition, micropolyphony, stereophonic effects achieved by timbre modulation, by means of special dispositions of performers or by application of actually performed and previously recorded music. A study is made of the issues of texture organization, timbre-articulation techniques, as well as problems of interaction between words and music. The author aims not only to summarize the information on the vectors of the evolution of choral writing, but also to illustrate the connection between the experiments of the 1960s and the concrete solutions of choral composition in the following decades. For this aim, examination is made of the textual foundations of choral compositions, the phenomenon of phonemic composition, and the expansion of the techniques of vocal articulation, – which presented an important resource of development of the possibilities of choral timbres – as well as new textural solutions. As the result, the conclusion is arrived at that in the 1960s the composers rejected the traditional approach of “setting the literary source to music.” Instead of this, they combine simultaneously various verbal sets or “press together” the fragments of several initial source texts. A powerful source for disclosing the resources of traditional vocalization and intoning speech turned out to be a diverse incorporation of Sprechgesang. The multifaceted aspects in the correlation of music and the verbal text, the inclusion of the principles of phonemic composition and the development of techniques of speech also exerted their influence on the textural organization of the choral compositions. In their high textural-timbral mobility of vocal lines the author disclosed the dynamic stereo effect of stereomonody. The indicated innovation of the art of choral music of the 1960s make it possible to examine this decade as a focal point of solution of successful the multifarious artistic and technical aims which are conducive here to transforming the art of choral music into one of the most dynamic genres of the last decades of the 20th century and the early 21st century.

Keywords: modern choral music, post-war avant-garde, choral texture, timbres, music and the verbal text, phoneme composition, micropolyphony, stereophony