Avant Garde and Experimental as defined by the Cambridge History of American Music

The Cambridge article provided a little more insight into how we might study and interpret the avant garde and the experimental. A fine history lesson, the Cambridge viewpoint speaks of avant garde even as a slogan before a genre. An interesting idea.

Charles Ives experimented with the framework of what we consider 'traditional' music.  He incorporated polytonality, extreme chromaticism, tone clusters, polyrhythm, polymeter, polytempo, stratification, and spatial separation into his work, all to serve his own aesthetic motives. At some point, however, the avant garde began to take on a new face, become a different being altogether, and possibly even lost sight of what the original aim was.

Composers begin to break away from their own 'movement' and question the validity of their earlier aesthetic belief. Then the International Composers Guild tanked and the composers were left to start again. From the 40's to the 60's, it seems the point of music began to change. Composers sought to create something different to create something different. Was it that the idea of new music and different music was pleasing, or was the music itself pleasing? Without a statement of artistic reasoning from the reading, indeed, little or no content devoted to the artistic reasons the composer's had in mind, the reader assumes that the composers changed music for the sake of changing music, rather than to satisfy some aesthetic goal. This distinction is unique in the history of music. Composer's up until now have sought to change music for aesthetic reasons rather than to change music for the sake of itself, and thus the growth and evolution of sound became unnatural.

The text later called the visual changes that took place in music from the 40's to the 60's the "most obvious manifestation" (page 525) of the change in music where tones were written as tones and not pieces of a tonal puzzle, enjoyed for their own idiosyncrasies. How is this an obvious manifestation of the change? Music itself is the only art form that functions purely aesthetically, with no physical characteristic. The visual only plays part in communicating the idea behind a work. Why emphasize a characteristic that plays no true part in what makes music?

This distinction of music being focused on as visual furthers the idea that the composers were departing from the conventions of composition for the sake of departure. Without artistic or musical reason, why? What is gained musically by changing for the sake of change? Should not change serve some purpose beside itself? Change as a natural phenomena is solely used as a medium to transition and create a more quality, more durable, or more sustainable product. 

A departure from traditional notation notwithstanding, the avant garde composers seem to lose themselves in their own minds, a lack of caring for how their works are interpreted seems to be the norm. This is of course, only functions as a response to the short article on the history of the avant garde and experimental. However, how are we to say what a piece is without any true directive by the composer.  Does this idea and amount of thought provoked by a simple history of the avant garde point to the true point of avant garde as a whole? If the idea is to inspire thought and to promote a reaction from the audience, this musical genre has clearly succeeded, not just in it's own time, but ringing through decades later.