Why do some rhythms get our toes tapping, while others make us feel mellow? How does a love song bring tears to our eyes? What links African drumming to J S Bach? In this new four-part series composer Howard Goodall strips music down to its essential parts to find out how music works. We all respond to music – whether clicking our fingers, humming along or dancing – there's something out there for everyone. In this series Goodall looks at melody, rhythm, harmony and bass to establish how music is made and how it comes to reflect different cultures. Setting out on a journey that spans the globe and moves through the centuries, Goodall uncovers the elements that are shared by all styles of music. Following a trail of diverse musical talents from Mahler to David Bowie; the blues to Bulgarian folk songs; medieval choral music to disco; he reveals the tried and tested tricks of the composer's trade.

Olivier Messiaen's 'Technique de mon langage musical' was originally published in 1944, in two volumes (textbook plus musical examples), and revised in 1956. Both editions were published by Leduc in Paris, France. Here's the english translation of the textbook, published in 1990 as 'The technique of my musical language', plus the french edition of the 'Examples musicaux' (musical examples), both in pdf.

Stockhausen is widely acknowledged as perhaps the European avant garde’s principal and most dignified figures, yet whose oeuvre is without question notoriously outré. The Helicopter Quartet is the realization of a dream that Stockhausen had in 1991, in which he saw and heard four helicopters, each bearing a string player. As the helicopters circled overhead, the four separated musicians made music with each other, while on the ground an audience listened to the resulting music through loudspeakers and watched the performers on television screens. Apart from the absurdity of this concept, Arditti String Quartet, for whom it was written, gives a strikingly vivid performance.

Stockhausen is widely acknowledged as perhaps the European avant garde’s principal and most dignified figures, yet whose oeuvre is without question notoriously outré. The Helicopter Quartet is the realization of a dream that Stockhausen had in 1991, in which he saw and heard four helicopters, each bearing a string player. As the helicopters circled overhead, the four separated musicians made music with each other, while on the ground an audience listened to the resulting music through loudspeakers and watched the performers on television screens. Apart from the absurdity of this concept, Arditti String Quartet, for whom it was written, gives a strikingly vivid performance.

Stockhausen is widely acknowledged as perhaps the European avant garde’s principal and most dignified figures, yet whose oeuvre is without question notoriously outré. The Helicopter Quartet is the realization of a dream that Stockhausen had in 1991, in which he saw and heard four helicopters, each bearing a string player. As the helicopters circled overhead, the four separated musicians made music with each other, while on the ground an audience listened to the resulting music through loudspeakers and watched the performers on television screens. Apart from the absurdity of this concept, Arditti String Quartet, for whom it was written, gives a strikingly vivid performance.

As their way of saying "bah-bye!" to a century of creative musical innovation, Sonic Youth launched a double album in 1999—probably their most ambitious project to date—by teaming up with radical geeks Jim O'Rourke, William Winant, Christian Marclay, and Wharton Tiers (plus Kim and Thurston's daughter, Coco Hayley Gordon Moore) to pay homage to a handful of legendary avant-garde composers such as John Cage, James Tenney, Christian Wolff, Pauline Oliveros, Yoko Ono, George Maciunas, Steve Reich, and on-site helpmates Takehisa Kosugi and Christian Wolff. Even if you're not familiar with Marclay's cut 'n' paste sound art or Reich's repetition theory, these at times wonderful pieces will work their way into your cranium—certainly not your standard Sonic Youth album by any stretch of the imagination. But just as A Thousand Leaves took Sonny Sharrock's Coltrane guitarscapes into pastoral territory, Goodbye 20th Century makes unknowable art, be it Cage's zoning "Six" or Wolff's evil electro-orchestral dry heave "Burdocks", seem atmospheric, natural, and even erotic. The oceanic build to James Tenney's "Having Never Written a Note for Percussion", Gordon Moore's 16-second screech through Yoko Ono's "Voice Piece for Soprano," the Youths pounding and piano plinking hammer at George Maciunas's "Piano Piece #13 (Carpenter's Piece)," or Lee Ranaldo and William Winant's take on Nicolas Slonimsky's short, lovely percussion piece, "Pièce Enfantine," wouldn't sound out of place even to this day.