Anglo-American Experimental Music 1950s-1970s

Experimental music, appearing in the course of development of modern music in 20th century, is a new music concept with a set of radical ideas and practices.Composers, musicologists, critics and other academics whose understanding of it is not always in a steady state, have constantly expanded the new content according to their own comprehension. So,the definition of the term 'Experimental Music'is still unclear, its concept is fuzzy.Uncertain and varying nature of experimental music determines that the starting point of our comprehension of it should begin with manifestation, not with ontology. When people were talking about experimental music, they did not even make effort on explaining what experimental music is, but directly treated it as a music category. Thus, as their conclusions, there are a variety of selections for which musical phenomenon attributed to experimental music.Experimental music which argued in the topic is not generalized,involving all the conclusions in general, but has its own choice of certain category. Here, the experimental music means a new music tradition which formed under the influence of John Cage's ideas and ideals of composition, originated in the aleatory music in the field of contemporary Anglo-American music after World War II.It creats chance and indeterminacy as the main methods,the results can not be foreseen as the common feature,and makes radical reforms in sound materials,notations,musical forms, composition and performance,etc. Thus it fundamentally changed the nature of music and the relationship between composers, performers, audiences. It took the opposite path with the total serialism in the same period.The ideas of research and discussion in the dissertation are determining the object.observing the environment,analysing the phenomenon,probing into nature and drawing a conclusion.Discussing the premises and roots which caused experimental music successfully going beyond the boundary of Western art music tradition, unique ideas and creative practices for exploring new territory outside the boundary by observing and interpreting the development and characteristics of experimental music during 1950s and first half of 1970s. Furthermore,it is combined with ontological and macro-historical and social points of view to reveal the essence of experimental music.The conclusion is, the key point of experimental music going beyond the boundary of the art music tradition is to subvert the foundation of the composition-full control of the process of sound, deconstruct its entrenched system of internal structure and methods. It discards artificial relationship between the sound materials, but also forms features of new relationship-the inertia and complexity generated in the state of nature-for sound materials to link to each other and be organized. The inherent understanding of the close and inevitable relationship between works and composers was broken.People began to realize, ideas can exist independently departing from the material object. However, the music history is not a history of replacement,and the internal logic formed during the development of experimental music shows that, it does not expect the music within the boundary of tradition to be eventually abolished. And a good recipe for it to make the music reborn,when facing shackles after its development to a high peak.is the high intensity, high-level rebellion, releasing people and music from the increasingly heavy restrictions and enjoying the regression in the alienation.