Avant-garde

The avant-garde (from French, "advance guard" or "vanguard", literally "fore-guard") are people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics.

The avant-garde pushes the boundaries of what is accepted as the norm or the status quo, primarily in the cultural realm. The avant-garde is considered by some to be a hallmark of modernism, as distinct from postmodernism. Many artists have aligned themselves with the avant-garde movement and still continue to do so, tracing a history from Dada through the Situationists to postmodern artists such as the Language poets around 1981.

The avant-garde also promotes radical social reforms. It was this meaning that was evoked by the Saint Simonian Olinde Rodrigues in his essay "L'artiste, le savant et l'industriel" ("The artist, the scientist and the industrialist", 1825), which contains the first recorded use of "avant-garde" in its now customary sense: there, Rodrigues calls on artists to "serve as [the people's] avant-garde", insisting that "the power of the arts is indeed the most immediate and fastest way" to social, political and economic reform.

Avant-garde music

The term avant-garde is applied to music that is considered to be at the forefront of experimentation or innovation in its field. Avant-garde music may critique existing aesthetic conventions, reject the status quo in favor of unique or original elements, and intentionally challenge or alienate audiences.

Usage

In a historical sense, some musicologists use the term "avant-garde music" for the radical compositions that succeeded the death of Anton Webern in 1945, while for others, this period is typically thought to begin with Wagner or Josquin des Prez.

Today the term may be used to refer to any other post-1945 tendency of modernist music not definable as experimental music, though sometimes including a type of experimental music characterized by the rejection of tonality.

Although some modernist music is also avant-garde, a distinction can be made between the two categories. Because the purpose of avant-garde music is necessarily political, social, and cultural critique, so that it challenges social and artistic values by provoking or goading audiences, composers such as Richard Strauss, Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern, George Antheil, and Igor Stravinsky may reasonably be considered to have been avant-gardists in their early works (which were understood as provocative, whether or not the composers intended them that way), but the label is not really appropriate for their later music. Modernists of the post–World War II period, such as Elliott Carter, Milton Babbitt, György Ligeti, Witold Lutosławski, and Luciano Berio, never conceived their music for the purpose of goading an audience, and so cannot be classified as avant-garde. Composers such as John Cage and Harry Partch, on the contrary, remained avant-gardists throughout their creative careers.

Avant-garde (disambiguation)

Avant-garde refers to a style in experimental work in art, music, culture, or politics.

Avant-garde may also refer to:

Music

See also

Avant

Myron Avant (born April 26, 1978), better known as Avant, is an American R&B singer and songwriter. He is best known for hits such as "Separated" (the remix featuring Kelly Rowland), "My First Love", one version of which features KeKe Wyatt, and "Read Your Mind" (remix featuring Snoop Dogg on the extended promo vinyl and released September 30, 2003). He was featured in the remix to the Lloyd Banks song "Karma" from the 2004 album The Hunger for More, and has had a cameo appearance in the 2004 feature film BarberShop 2: Back in Business.

His self-titled fifth album, Avant, was released on December 9, 2008. Avant is now signed to Verve Forecast and released his sixth studio album The Letter (formerly titled Wake Up) on December 21, 2010, featuring production from the likes of The Pentagon; Mike City; Marshall Leathers; and Kajun. Avant cites R. Kelly as his biggest influence and inspiration. His eighth album The VIII was released on September 25, 2015.

Discography

Studio albums

Singles

Synopsys

Coordinates: 37°23′32″N 122°02′50″W / 37.3921°N 122.0471°W / 37.3921; -122.0471

Synopsys, Inc., an American company, is the leading company by sales in the Electronic Design Automation industry. Synopsys' first and best-known product is Design Compiler, a logic-synthesis tool. Synopsys offers a wide range of other products used in the design of an application-specific integrated circuit. Products include logic synthesis, behavioral synthesis, place and route, static timing analysis, formal verification, HDL (SystemC, SystemVerilog/Verilog, VHDL) simulators as well as transistor-level circuit simulation. The simulators include development and debugging environments which assist in the design of the logic for chips and computer systems.

History

Founded in 1986 by Dr. Aart J. de Geus and a team of engineers from General Electric's Microelectronics Center in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, Synopsys was first established as "Optimal Solutions" with a charter to develop and market ground-breaking synthesis technology developed by the team at General Electric.

Glossary of ballet

Because ballet became formalized in France, a significant part of ballet terminology is in the French language.

A

A la seconde (French pronunciation: ​[a la səɡɔ̃d]) A position of the leg to the side or a movement with the leg held to the side in second position, as in a pirouette à la seconde, in which a dancer turns with the working leg à la hauteur ('elevated') in second position

Also, one of the directions of the body, facing the audience (i.e. en face), arms in second position, with one leg extended to second position.

À la quatrième

(French pronunciation: ​[a la katʁijɛm]) One of the directions of body, facing the audience (en face), arms in second position, with one leg extended either to fourth position in front (quatrième devant) or fourth position behind (quatrième derrière).

À terre

(French pronunciation: ​[a tɛʁ]) Touching the floor.

Adagio

Italian, or French adage, meaning 'slowly, at ease.'