New Complexity

(more) complexity

I have been obsessed with this. The emotions it brings up are confusing and compelling and I still don’t quite know what it’s communicating. It’s mood is just at the edge of recognition. So, I’m doing closer listenings than before and hope to understand it better.

(I’m not sure how I encountered this. Some sort of internet spelunking but who-knows-where.)

New Complexity is a composition style that originated in the 80s, consisting of inconceivably difficult music with beautifully difficult scores. Upon first listening, I felt that it was just a rehash of mid-century serial technique, at least in expressiveness. I fell into the “I’m smart enough to understand this immediately” trap of the moderately informed. It is instead yet something different and contains more performance/conceptual art aspects that put the responsibility of process on the performer as a way to manifest the ideas in the score. It may be a pendulum swing from what has been called the “downtown” style of minimalism that appeared in the late 60s/early 70s, which was itself a pendulum swing away from the atonality of decades prior. No style completely disappears, but I am happy to see a rhythmically- and harmonically-difficult style return.