Karlheinz Stockhausen

however, Stockhausen utilizes helicopters as the primary instrument in his “Helicopter String Quartet”. This utilization of unique sounds manipulated by technology is what sets Stockhausen apart as an innovative composer of the 20th century. Stockhausen’s music often seems to better resemble noise rather than music when it is first heard. However, it is due to his deeper understanding of sound and new methods of composing that Stockhausen expands Western music through the usage of modern technology. Stockhausen’s music is unique in that it was amongst the first to begin utilizing technology to modify and record different sounds. These modified sounds would often appear to…

Prolific multi-instrumentalist and composer, Elliott Sharp, has been abundantly inventive throughout his three-decade career to deserve our particular attention. His boundless musical universe encompasses completely different styles that include avant-garde jazz, experimental ensembles, free improvisation, noise rock, electronic, contemporary classical, and music for film and opera/theater. The 66-year-old Cleveland native studied several theoretical correlations on music and scientific…

Concurrently in music, composers like Schoenberg, Webern, and Berg, were re-exploring the compositional process, resulting in the development of the twelve-tone method. This new method of composition was Arnold Schoenberg’s attempt to eliminate the conscious will in art and finding a new common language to replace tonality. These explorations led to various methods of composition that included ordered and unordered rows of pitches of various lengths that could manifest as an inversion,…