At The Playground Ensemble on February 4th

Thursday night, February 4th, I attended a concert on the Lamont Subscription Concert Series given by The Playground. The Playground is the Artists – In – Residence group of performers that has dedicated themselves to contemporary and avant-garde music. This particular concert had a theme, which was Music/Noise/Sound/Silence. The theme offers a hidden explanation as to why some of the pieces on the program were relatively old, as music of this century is considered. Keep in mind that the increase in speed of communications in this century has shortened musical periods, and indeed, the periods of all of the arts. The speed of communication has now allowed composers in America to know almost instantly what composers in Europe are doing. Therefore, something that seems new one day can be old in a couple of weeks, because many composers have tried it; some may have discarded it is a bad idea, while others may cling to it as a new source of expression.

The whole idea about the conflict between sound and silence reached its culmination in the years 1950 to about 1975 give or take a few years. This was a period of great experimentation. Generally speaking, all composers were searching for new sounds and new ways to make sounds. Some associated their ideas about sound with new philosophies (Joseph Schillinger’s Mathematical Basis For the Arts, 1942), while some turned to “new” technologies – tape recorders – to expand their possibilities (musique concrète, for example) as the computer (and the Experimental Music Studio at the University of Illinois) loomed on the horizon.

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