Distinctions between modernism and avant-garde..

[Dmitry]

Pertaining to both music and visual arts of the 20th century, are these terms exchangeable or distinct?

[Rooster_Ties]

Not mutually exclusive, but somewhat distinct. The term "progressive" also fits in there too - probably closer to 'modern' than 'avant-garde' (at least in my view).

As I understand the terms (and admittedly, my definitions are probably very personal), I'd say that I'm generally a BIG fan of modernism (music, visual arts, you name it) -- and a slightly more moderate fan of the avant-garde. In my world...

Andrew Hill is closer to modernism.

Cecil Taylor is closer to avant-garde.

Sun Ra did both.

Edited March 26, 2004 by Rooster_Ties

[Brandon Burke]

Not mutually exclusive, but somewhat distinct.  The term "progressive" also fits in there too - probably closer to 'modern' than 'avant-garde' (at least in my view).

As I understand the terms (and admittedly, my definitions are probably very personal), I'd say that I'm generally a BIG fan of modernism (music, visual arts, you name it) -- and a slightly more moderate fan of the avant-garde.  In my world...

Andrew Hill is closer to modernism.

Cecil Taylor is closer to avant-garde.

Sun Ra did both.

Can't believe Thornton hasn't chimed in on this yet. As I understand it, the closer you get to the definitively "modern"--this is to say: sound for sound's sake, tone for tone's sake, etc--the more you approach what folks call "high-modernism". And it's here where people really walk the line between modernism and the avant-garde. Take Morton Feldman for example. I doubt he would call himself an avant-garde composer but listeners who rely on things like theme and resolution probably would.

The really tricky one is Cage becasue he was definitively "sound for sound's sake"; but almost to the point of being ironic, which would make him post-modern (again, by definition).

I think it's safe to say that there is no straight answer to this. If there were then a lot of people would be out of jobs and considerably fewer books would be published..... B)

Edited March 26, 2004 by Brandon Burke

[Larry Kart]

I took a somewhat abbreviated whack at this question in "The Avant-Garde: 1947-1967" chapter in The Oxford Companion To Jazz, as follows:

However haphazardly the label "avant-garde" might have been applied to this music -- the "new thing" was its other early name , "free jazz" would come a bit later on -- something more than labeling was involved. As critic Renato Poggioli explained in his pioneering study The Theory of the Avant-Garde (1968), artistic avantgardism is more than a modern-day version of the perpetual byplay between new styles of art and old; the concept of the avant-garde (the term was borrowed from radical politics, which had borrowed it from the military) reaches back no further than 1880s France and is, in the words of critic Massimo Bontempelli, "an exclusively modern discovery, born only when art began to contemplate itself from a historical viewpoint." Moreover, avant-garde art possesses a number of traits that art contemporary to it may not possess, while avant-garde attitudes can (and perhaps must) precede the creation of avant-garde works. An extreme but revealing example is the way John Cage’s notorious silent piano piece "4’33"" takes two key avant-garde traits -- Antagonism (a negative reaction to the traditional) and Nihilism (destructive labor) -- and links them to our sense of what normally occurs when a person sits down at a piano in a concert hall. (The other traits of the avant-garde identified by Poggioli are Agonism, an air of passionate, hyperbolic struggle ; Futurism, the quest for the new, the unknown, as an absolute; Alienation , profound doubt about one’s relation to society as a whole and to the audience in particular; and Experimentalism , new techniques seen as a means of more than technical transformation, the work as a transcendental laboratory or proving ground. ) Not every figure in the jazz avant -garde exhibit s all of those traits, but they all exhibit some of them and do so in ways that affect the purely musical choices they make. To say that Futurism and Alienation permeate the music of Sun Ra is not to dismiss that music but to explain how it arose in order to better judge its nature and value.

If the spectre of charlatanism seems to be lurking about here (as the poet LeRoi Jones once said, "I knew a guy in Newark who could whistle with peas in his mouth, but nobody ever said he was hip"), more often than not in jazz the byplay between avant-garde attitudes and specific musical choices has been both fruitful and unavoidable. For instance, when Albert Ayler said in a 1965 interview that "Music has changed so much from when Ornette Coleman started playing around the beat . [Coleman’s music is] neo-avant garde music and this beat will be eliminated ," surrounding those remarks with a host of avant-garde gestures ("[O]ur music is pure art.... I’m not trying to entertain people, I’m playing the truth for those who can listen.... [R]eal beauty [is] beyond most people, it’s only for the select few"), it seemed clear that, for Ayler, the elimination of the beat was a more than merely musical matter. But while it would be fair to ask whether Ayler was almost arbitrarily linking a particular technical-musical choice to a vision of liberation and transcendence, he and others did make that choice, which would turn out have specific and not wholly foreseeable musical consequences.

End of excerpt: BTW, Poggioli's book is excellent, and he was, FWIW, the father of NPR's Sylvia Poggioli.

[Dr. Rat]

Ah, I didn't realize the Poggioli connection.

Poggioli (the AG guy, not the NPR reporter) has been criticized for not creating a set of categories and standards that make for clear distinctions between romanticism, modernism and the avant-garde.

Peter Burger is the main figure I know of who makes this criticism of Poggioli.

This is something I thought about when reading the 2nd late Coltrane thread here where there is such a decided drift toward romantic aestehtic thinking.

Larry have you read any of these periodization critiques of Poggioli?

Lately I've begun to think we've been a little to anxious to define ourselves wholly apart from the past on a lot of issues, and that we might just well be kicking around the same issues as the romantics were.

A lot of the Isaiah Berlin that Simon's got me reading seems to imply as much.

--eric

Edited March 26, 2004 by Dr. Rat

[Simon Weil]

...when Albert Ayler said in a 1965 interview that "Music has changed so much from when Ornette Coleman started playing around the beat . [Coleman’s music is] neo-avant garde music and this beat will be eliminated ," surrounding those remarks with a host of avant-garde gestures ("[O]ur music is pure art.... I’m not trying to entertain people, I’m playing the truth for those who can listen.... [R]eal beauty [is] beyond most people, it’s only for the select few"), it seemed clear that, for Ayler, the elimination of the beat was a more than merely musical matter. But while it would be fair to ask whether Ayler was almost arbitrarily linking a particular technical-musical choice to a vision of liberation and transcendence, he and others did make that choice, which would turn out have specific and not wholly foreseeable musical consequences.

It's not arbitrary. In my opinion Ayler is ultimately drawing on neo-Platonic ideas, as in Plotinus, or William of Ockham. Basically he's looking for God in music. But God is a hidden entity who is not articulated in ordinary, rationally accessible forms. So you have to go beyond these forms, and, in an act of faith, discover Him in the zone into which you have ventured.

This is very like Kandinsky's approach to art (ca 1913-4) - and they are entirely parallel figures. Kandinsky as a key progenitor of abstraction in Avant Garde Painting and Ayler as the same in Jazz.

In both cases they believe themselves to be creating an art for a new Millenial Age of spiritual perfection. One which never arrived, though their Art did accompany - and likely on some level reflects, revolutionary changes in their respective societies.

I think Ayler was akin to the Kandinsky of Jazz, in other words.

Simon Weil

[John L]

Isn't "modernism" in jazz usually associated with bebop?

[Larry Kart]

Eric --

Have to admit that my knowledge of Poggioli's book is pretty much confined to the book itself. When I have time, I'll look for P. Burger's response. Where would I find it?

P.S. As I recall, one of Poggioli's goals was to make as clear a distinction as possible between romanticism, modernism and the avant-garde. As I recall he did so by arguing backwards from his fairly direct experience with/understanding of avant-garde art and figures of the early 20th Century -- i.e. having divined the principles of avant-gardism in action, he looked backwards to see when and how they arose, and noted that those principles were only intermittently present (or present in nascent form) in romanticism and modernism. This approach, if I've described correctly, had a lot of appeal to me because it was rooted in things that P. himself had been through or witnessed close up.

Simon --

Do we really have to go back to Plato, Plotinus, or William of Ockham to find examples of the kind of thinking that's present in the words of Ayler I quoted? As I recall, at the time these were ideas that were virtually been knitted on the counterculture eq

[Larry Kart]

Oops, must have hit the wrong key.

I meant to add: ...counterculture equivalent of samplers. Of course, Ayler took such notions to directly to heart in a way that few others could or did, and made a lot of genuinely transcendent music as a result.

[Simon Weil]

Simon --

Do we really have to go back to Plato, Plotinus, or William of Ockham to find examples of the kind of thinking that's present in the words of Ayler I quoted? As I recall, at the time these were ideas that were virtually been knitted on the counterculture eq

Larry, he was devising his style in 1961, before the counter-culture existed. So, if he was generating his style intellectually (as I believe he was, as I think he was a black intellectual), then you have to wonder about where he got his ideas. He was steeped in Christian ideas - and he might have got this stuff from that (he approaches finding God in music very much in the way a medieval mystic would look for God). But, on the other hand, there is a souce where he says he was studying Arabian music in 1961 - and these neo-platonic ideas exist in that and would have been accessible to him if he really was studying it.

The point about doing it like this is that if you say counterculture, people just say that was a bunch of drugged-out unthinking hippies - and therefore it helps the cultural politics associated with the avant-garde as chaos line. If you can reasonably assert that it goes back to (or has legitimate associations with) recognised important intellectual sources, that problem evaporates. And also, you get to compare him with Kandinsky.

But you have to have a taste for this stuff, which I do(obviously). It's just fun for me. Instead of playing with musical ideas, playing with intellectual ones, turning them round, seeing how they fit.

I just love it. But I want to get it right.

Simon Weil

[Chuck Nessa]

I think I'm getting dizzy.

[7/4]

I think I'm getting dizzy.

I'm with you. I don't think about this shit when I compose or play!

[Simon Weil]

I think I'm getting dizzy.

I know. That's what happens with most people in Jazz. Drives me up the f...ing wall. And then you get the needling and the flak and all the rest. Which is why I don't write about it, in general. I know the score. You get put off.

I'm getting fed up with being put off though.

Simon Weil

Edited March 26, 2004 by Simon Weil

[Chuck Nessa]

Guess I'll spend a few hours deciding if I was just insulted.

[7/4]

Don't worry 'bout it. It isn't about music.

[Simon Weil]

Guess I'll spend a few hours deciding if I was just insulted.

Well, actually that's how I felt. Undercut is how I'd put it.

Simon Weil

[Chuck Nessa]

Guess I'll spend a few hours deciding if I was just insulted. 

Well, actually that's how I felt. Undercut is how I'd put it.

Simon Weil

If you didn't perceive any self-deprecation and/or humor in my post we both may need a rest.

[Simon Weil]

I just have had very poor experiences being intellectual on Jazz boards.

Simon Weil

[Rooster_Ties]

Andrew Hill is closer to modernism.

Cecil Taylor is closer to avant-garde.

Sun Ra did both.

Detailed semantical analysis aside, anybody wanna tell me if my examples above ( Hill / Taylor / Ra ) hold any water??

I'm not saying I'm "right" - but I'd be curious if anybody classifies them similarly to the way do, relative to the discussion at hand.

[.:.impossible]

I have never heard of most of what Simon and Larry are discussing, but here is how I think of the terms modern and avant-garde when referring to art.

Modern refers to that which attempts to reflect the current, be it architecture or a canvas. As an idea, if we were starting now, this is what music, or art would sound or look like. This is what our skyline would look like.

Avant-garde refers to that which will never be modern. The avant-garde is just left of modern, a distorted reality that resides in the fray of modern. This is what our skyline would look like from out here.

.:. Very difficult to put into words.

[.:.impossible]

I can relate Rooster, and Hill's ANDREW!!! and Taylor's UNIT STRUCTURES were what I was using for my frame of reference. Probably a little myopic, but I had to start somewhere... its Friday and its happy hour for goodness sake!

I can see Sun Ra as a little of both, but more... pre-modern , when referring to Brandon's comments. I think he knew what modern was, and understood where his sound was in relation to it and its avant-garde, and often chose to go back a few years, as if to say, "if we were starting again, let's go back a few years and look at it from this angle."

Once again,

I've never used so many "clickable smilies" before.

[Simon Weil]

Well there's Modernism and there's Modern. I mean Modernism is a period of art history. Just to talk about visual art because I'm more familiar with that - starts maybe with the Impressionists mid 19th century, goes on to the Post-Impressionists (late 19th C) and then Cubism, Abstract Art, Expressionism etc ca 1900-1914. And that last period would be, for me, classic avant-garde visual art.

People like Ayler and Cecil Taylor I associate with that 1910-14 period in art, kind of dealing with the same sort of problems in Jazz as Picasso et al dealt with in visual art - basically moving further and further away from standard forms. I guess Hill would be Modernist but not avant-garde in that way.

There's a whole lot of stuff I wrote about Cecil Taylor and Picasso in this thread.

But I'm not really up on what these terms mean in a wider perspective.

Simon Weil

[Edit: I always associate Mingus with Post-Impressionism, kind of like Van Gogh or something. So I guess Bop would be the first Modernist Form in Jazz - equivalent to Impressionism. I'm not sure where Andrew Hill fits in, though.]

Edited March 27, 2004 by Simon Weil

[JSngry]

[Jazzmoose]

I'm just checking in to see if Chuck was insulted or not...

[Chuck Nessa]

At this point I think I was, but since I invited Simon to this group............

I'm editing to correct this post. I originally invited Simon to join the BNBB. I did this to get him away from RMB where I thought he was wasting his time. I don't regret this and still welcome everything he has to say. He's a valuable member. No real offense taken, or one intended.

Edited March 27, 2004 by Chuck Nessa