experimental music

n. avant-garde music, music which makes use of experimental or unconventional techniques and challenges accepted concepts of what music is

Experimental music is a term introduced by composer John Cage in 1955. Cage defined "an experimental action is one the outcome of which is unforeseen" and he was specifically interested in completed works that performed an unpredictable action.In a broader sense, it has come to mean any music that challenges the commonly accepted notions of what music is. There is an overlap with avant-garde music. David Cope describes experimental music as that, "which represents a refusal to accept the status quo" (Cope, 1997, p. 222Michael Nyman (1974) uses the term "experimental" to describe the work of American modernist composers (John Cage, Christian Wolff, Earle Brown, Meredith Monk, Malcolm Goldstein, Morton Feldman, Terry Riley, La Monte Young, Philip Glass, Steve Reich, etc.) as opposed to the European avant-garde at the time (Karlheinz Stockhausen, Pierre Boulez, Iannis Xenakis). The "experiment" in this case is not whether a piece succeeds or fails, but is in the fact that the outcome of the piece is uncertain or unforeseeable (Cage 1961, 13).
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