# 1980-2000 Listening Group



## 20centrfuge

*1980-2000 Listening Group*

_The goal is to hear, discuss, and better appreciate music from 1980-2000. The selected works will be presented slowly over time, with each participant having the option of presenting the works they submitted._

*Alphabetical List of Works *


Note that No.11 and No.22 each consist of two works
Please see the "1980-2000 Listening Group - Selection Thread" for the schedule
Approximate duration of the work, in minutes, is given in [brackets]
 1. Adès: Living Toys, Op.9 (1993), [20] (20centrfuge)
2. Arnold: Symphony No. 9, Op. 128 (1986) [50] (Phil loves classical)
3. Benjamin: Palimpsests (1998-2002) [20] (Enthusiast)
4. Berio, Voci "Folk Songs II" (1984) [30] (PeterfromLA)
5. Birtwistle: The Cry of Anubis for Tuba and Orchestra (1994) [15] (Enthusiast)
6. Boulez: Sur Incises (1996-1998) [35] (mmsbls)
7. Carter: Symphonia: sum fluxae pretium spei (1993-96) [45] Blancrocher
8. Corigliano: Symphony No. 1 (1988-1989) [40] (SuperTonic)
9. Davies: Concerto for Trumpet (1988) [30] (20centrfuge)
10. Dhomont: Forêt profonde (1994-96) [60] (Trout)
11. Ferneyhough: Kurtze Schatten II (1983-19890 [15] & Kurtag: Grabstein für Stephan, Op. 15c (1989) [10] (Kjetil Heggelund)
12. Gann: Long Night (1980-81) [25] (tortkis)
13. Garland, Peter: String Quartet No. 1, "In Praise of Poor Scholars" (1986) [20] (tortkis)
14. Gubaidulina: Jetzt immer Schnee for chamber ensemble and chamber choir (1993) [30] (Art Rock)
15. Johnston, Ben: String Quartet No. 7 (1984) [25] (SuperTonic)
16. Ligeti: Piano Concerto (1988) [25] (Phil loves classical)
17. Lutoslawski: Piano Concerto "For Krystian Zimerman" (1988) [25] (Blancrocher)
18. Manoury: Pluton for Piano and Live Electronics (1988-89) [50] (calvinpv)
19. Messiaen: Éclairs sur l'au-delà... (1991) [60] (BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist)
20. Murail: Désintégrations (1983) [25] (mmsbls)
21. Nono: "Hay que caminar" soñando (1989) [20] (Portamento)
22. Penderecki: Song of the Cherubim (1986) [10] & Nystedt: Immortal Bach (1988) [5] (Ravn)
23. Rautavaara: Symphony No. 7 "Angel of Light" (1994) [35] (Ravn)
24. Rihm: Jagden und Formen (1995-2001, revised 2008) [50] (calvinpv)
25. Saariaho: Du cristal...à la fumée (1989) [40] (Kjetil Heggelund)
26. Sallinen: Songs of Life and Death, for baritone, choir and orchestra, Op. 69 (1995) [45] (Art Rock)
27. Schnittke: Symphony No. 5 "Concerto Grosso No. 4" (1988) [35] (PeterFromLA)
28. Takemitsu: From Me Flows What You Call Time (1990) [25] (BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist)
29. Vivier: Lonely Child (1980) [20] (Trout)
30. Xenakis: A l'île de Gorée (1986) [15] (Portamento)

_For any issues not related to the music, please use the previous "Selection Thread."_


----------



## 20centrfuge

*Thomas Adès: Living Toys, Op.9*

From the composer's website:

*I Angels
II Aurochs
-BALETT-
III Militiamen
IV H.A.L.'s Death
-BATTLE-
V Playing Funerals
-TABLET-*

_"When the men asked him what he wanted to be, the child did not name any of their own occupations, as they had all hoped he would, but replied: "I am going to be a hero, and dance with angels and bulls, and fight with bulls and soldiers, and die a hero in outer space, and be buried a hero". Seeing him standing there, the man felt small, understanding that they were not heroes, and that their lives were less substantial than the dreams which surrounded the child like toys."_

anon. (from the Spanish)

(this is just an excerpt from the program notes, there are more details if you want to check out the site)


----------



## 20centrfuge




----------



## 20centrfuge




----------



## 20centrfuge

20cent's rundown:

The piece is a commentary on our fascination and glorification of war, but also on the false ideals of politicians in using human bodies without much thought, as if they are toys.

1. Angels
2. Aurochs - an extinct bison. The music invokes bullfighting which is another example of trivializing death, this time for entertainment.
3. Militiamen- references the classic image of military music - snare drum and bugle, this time the bugle is a phantom talking bugle, menacing, and irreverent, there are possibly some jazz references in there (anyone?)
4. HAL's death - refers to the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey when the AI HAL is shut down (of course after HAL attempts to kill the human) - yet another example of one entity manipulating and planning the death of another entity. This movement is also really cool in that the contrabassoon(?) mimics the voice of HAL as HAL meets his demise. It's possible that the music is based on the song HAL sings near his death, but I wouldn't know without the score.
5. Playing Funerals

The three "interludes" BALETT, BATTLE, TABLET are anagrams and based on common musical material.

IMPORTANTLY, about 30-40 seconds before BALETT, and BATTLE (and maybe TABLET, but I'm not sure) there is a theme that Ades calls the "hero's theme."

I thought, hmmm, "hero's theme" -- THAT sounds like Ein Heldenleben by Richard Strauss. Indeed, it seems to be loosely based on that theme, but more like a transfigured, sickish mockery of it. Richard Strauss's melody features a leap of a major sixth, whereas Ades features a leap of a tritone.


----------



## 20centrfuge

*HAL's death scene*


----------



## Art Rock

Around 1998, Adès received quite some attention in the UK Gramophone magazine (I had a subscription, and ordered most of my CD's by mail from one of the many advertisements in that magazine). I ordered two Adès EMI CD's from their Debut series, one of which also includes _Living toys_. I was not really impressed by either CD, but I still tried one more in the course of the years (violin concerto etc on EMI). In the end, I more or less gave up on the composer, so it is interesting to see how I feel several years after I played Adès for the last time.

The version on my EMI CD is by the London Sinfonietta under Markus Stenz (the orchestra for which it was composed) - the sequence is different from the second Youtube links post above by the way (with BATTLE and Playing funerals reversed). For a 22 year old composer it sounds remarkably confident, but in the end, there's not a single moment where the work really grabs me, a few moments where I like what I hear (mainly the 5th and 7th movement, _H.A.L.'s death_ and _Playing funerals_ respectively) and several moments I really don't like (the whole of the 4th movement _Militiamen _for instance and a large part of the 6th _Battle_). So, unfortunately, my opinion on this composer has not changed. Soit.

Artrockometer score: 2/6, "not required", I don't need this.


----------



## 20centrfuge

But besides all of this, I love this piece and I picked it because it was the first thing I heard that really turned me on to Thomas Ades. The orchestral colors are unique. He seems to accentuate the very highs (piccolo trumpet, piccolo, upper woodwinds, violins) and the very lows (especially contrabassoon in this work).

I do think this piece is thoroughly enjoyable even without the program notes or an understanding of the references. In fact I liked it for years without knowing much about the piece.

Another thing I like about it is the moments of repose as in the last few movements. They are somber and cold but also moving. I really love them.

Besides all of this, I think the trumpet solo is very cool, probably tough as nails to play.

I hope you all will give it a listen or three and let me know what you think of it.

I'm thrilled to be in this listening group with all of you. I know that I probably go overboard at times with my planning and enthusiasm, but it's because I'm bottled up with almost no one to share this with at home. So, please forgive me if at times I get too nerdy. I think this listening group is a good set up for us to really listen and better understand the music.

Seriously, if any of you have any thoughts, ideas, gripes, or whatever, just let me know. I really want this to work for all of us and to be a positive outlet. Peace, my TC friends!


----------



## Kilgore Trout

The score is available here:
http://scorelibrary.fabermusic.com/Living-Toys-21494.aspx


----------



## Enthusiast

Apart from the names of the piece and the movements, I listened blind (without reading any notes or analyses). Ultimately it is about the music rather than how clever the composer is being. It is a very fluent piece for someone who was quite a young composer at the time - a mini tour de force, in fact - and its little movements are all memorable. I think I can hear links back to Stravinsky, Britten and Schoenberg - particularly their mature chamber music - among many others (I can't keep count of all the influences!). He seems to be making no allowances for his audience's willingness (or unwillingness) to engage with new music but the music is at the same time somehow very approachable. You can hear why there was by this time such hopes for Ades developing into a major and popular composer. 

I like the transitions between movements - Militiamen and H.A.L.'s Death, for example - and the way the Battle builds slowly. It isn't such a serious piece, though, is it? Or is it? The events depicted do seem to involve toys rather than real people but that is somehow especially disquieting in places. 

I do recommend repeated listening - even for those who have heard the piece before - it isn't very long and it attaches itself to your brain quite quickly!


----------



## Phil loves classical

I thought it made good use of winds and brass sonorities. The 2 pieces I liked more was Aurochs and Militiamen, since I felt it had they had the most momentum. The Militiamen clearly had some Jazz influences. I believe it's Harlem Jazz like the type Ellington played in his album Uptown (which I would take over this work). Wasn't too interested in the slower pieces. The 'Daisy' played in the death of Hal was kind of funny with the accompaniment, but without the reference I didn't find it very distinctive.


----------



## Kjetil Heggelund

I have heard some Adès before and liked it. It's been some years. This one seems different, maybe the sinfonietta sound. It's kind of noisy  It does sound playful and not so serious. A bit hysterical maybe...Aha! It's all representing a childs dream of being a hero, a bit like my "action dreams"  Wild and uncontrolled things happen in dreams.


----------



## 20centrfuge

Kjetil Heggelund said:


> I have heard some Adès before and liked it. It's been some years. This one seems different, maybe the sinfonietta sound. It's kind of noisy  It does sound playful and not so serious. A bit hysterical maybe...Aha! It's all representing a childs dream of being a hero, a bit like my "action dreams"  Wild and uncontrolled things happen in dreams.


"Noisy" is a perfect adjective for much of it, isn't it? There's an undercurrent of chaos, and I think it's an excellent point also about the work invoking a dream state.

Dreams are bizarre. They are strange and as flighty as the subconscious. There is that pervading the work.


----------



## tortkis

The first 3 movements (I-III and BALETT) are better, and I especially liked Auroches, which has some Spanish flavor. The slower movements are a bit elusive and less memorable. In general, I am less fond of recent compositions which are programmatic with multiple contrasting movements/parts. If a frantic movement is good, I like to hear it as a standalone work (with some expansion if necessary), even if it would lack a variety of moods or feelings of progress. This is just my personal preference. I have the recording included in Adès: Anthology but haven't heard it for some years. Overall, I enjoyed re-listening to it. I love the trumpet that takes a prominent role in the work.


----------



## Blancrocher

It was interesting to hear this piece this morning, then again this evening. I think I enjoyed the piece as music more than several members above. Both times, I felt I was hearing music I'd previously heard but couldn't put my finger on, leaving me wondering if I was hearing quotations or more general stylistic approximations--I'm interested in the Strauss reference above. I look forward to further hearings while attending more closely to the program, perhaps also to exploring other allusions. 

It's some time since I listened to Ades. I look forward to hearing some of his more recent pieces.


----------



## Portamento

I am not very familiar with Adès' work and hadn't heard this piece before. I like it! The horn solo in the beginning with quirky, unstable "accompaniment" reminds me a lot of late Ligeti. I just heard the _Hamburg Concerto_ (which was actually composed five years after _Living Toys_) yesterday, so both works are fresh in my mind. They are surprisingly similar in content (multiple short movements), length (~15 min.), and general character. While Ligeti is at this point an old master who has nothing to prove, Adès seems to be finding his voice still. That being said, the young man's orchestration is really innovative and everything is done so confidently that it is hard to fault. I don't agree that the slow movements were boring, and like 20centrfuge think they were necessary to give the listener a bit of a break.


----------



## Trout

I see quite a few similarities between Adès's _Living Toys_ and a talented film director's first feature. There is an undeniable wealth of interesting ideas and phrases, but there is also the latent tendency to shove in as many cool, disparate ideas that come to mind at the expense of fleshing out the strongest, most relevant ones. So I'd agree that the colors and orchestrations are fascinating and unique for its time. But, for me, it is a little light on depth and coherence to make a lasting impression. I notice that he attached quite an explicit, quirky program to each section so they may perhaps make more sense in context. However, I generally dislike a reliance on such a program. For me, the music has to work as absolute music first and foremost before I can try understanding the provided context, not the other way around.

Still, it is an impressive work and fascinating to see how he would continue developing and focusing his style in the pieces that soon followed like _Asyla_ and his _Violin Concerto_.


----------



## Kilgore Trout

I've known this piece for a while and my opinion is similar to those of many in this thread: it's a fine display of orchestral inventivness from a young composer, and a fun work, with lot of ideas (not always fleshed out, like my namesake have noted). Adès have written better stuff, but he would later lose the playfulness of his early works, and sadly his recent pieces have a been downright awful (_Inferno_ sounds like a forgotten Strauss work).


----------



## mmsbls

I like many of Ades' pieces (Violin Concerto, Arcadiana, Piano Quintet, Polaris, In Seven Days, etc.). I had heard Living Toys once awhile ago, and at the time it did not make a great impression. I knew nothing about the program although I doubt that would have mattered. Programs almost never seem to add much to my listening pleasure, and often I hear relatively little in the music that matches the program.

I heard both the London Sinfonietta and the Athelas Sinfonietta versions. In general I enjoyed the work more than during my first hearing although not as much as many other Ades works. My favorite movements were probably the first two (Angels and Aurochs), and I found myself losing a bit of focus during H.A.L.'s Death. I think Kjetil Heggelund's use of the word "noisy" applies well to several sections although I don't view that as a negative. Several mentioned the orchestration which is quite fun/interesting at times. 

Overall, I had a mixed view of the piece. It's interesting at times but seemed uneven to me.


----------



## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist

Trout said:


> I see quite a few similarities between Adès's _Living Toys_ and a talented film director's first feature. There is an undeniable wealth of interesting ideas and phrases, but there is also the latent tendency to shove in as many cool, disparate ideas that come to mind at the expense of fleshing out the strongest, most relevant ones. So I'd agree that the colors and orchestrations are fascinating and unique for its time. But, for me, it is a little light on depth and coherence to make a lasting impression. I notice that he attached quite an explicit, quirky program to each section so they may perhaps make more sense in context. However, I generally dislike a reliance on such a program. For me, the music has to work as absolute music first and foremost before I can try understanding the provided context, not the other way around.
> 
> Still, it is an impressive work and fascinating to see how he would continue developing and focusing his style in the pieces that soon followed like _Asyla_ and his _Violin Concerto_.


This was my first time listening to this piece or anything by Adès. I generally feel similar to you (and other posters here): impressive and somewhat engaging - certainly showing the signs of being created by a talented and skillful composer - but not particularly exceptional or compelling and, as you say, lacking in coherence. I will check out the works you mentioned and see if I like them better; thank you for the recommendations.


----------



## Kjetil Heggelund

Hey! One thing I came to think of when hearing early works...In rock music, the first album by a band often has a great vibe and spirit, that sometimes doesn't persist on later albums. I've talked to people who prefer that to later albums. Now isn't that something?


----------



## SuperTonic

For some reason Ades is a composer I've always struggled with. I've just never really warmed to any of the works I've heard from him, and, as probably the most well known young composer active right now, I have made an effort to get to know his work. I'm afraid I can't say this work has changed my opinion. There were parts that I liked in it, mainly the slower sections. But the fast sections, particularly where he uses a lot of high notes I thought were unpleasant. I also felt that the programmatic elements of the work were a little more "on the nose" than I would have liked (to be fair he was relatively young when he wrote it). I was intrigued by the sections with anagram titles. I'm assuming that this is reflected in the music as well, which I think is fascinating, but I couldn't hear any relationships between those movements from just a casual listen. I'm guessing I'd need to study the score to find the relationship.

I'm sure Ades' reputation is well deserved, and I do want to keep trying. But I don't this work is going to be my "way in" for this composer.


----------



## Ravn

I am not very familiar with his output other than his violin cocerto. But having given the piece ten or so listens the past week, I must say that I grew to like it. I didn't think much about it at first, but listening to it as a whole work and not as a series of movements did wonders. In particular I liked the "jazzy" parts, which kind of reminded me of both (the experimental phase of) Miles Davis and Schnittke. The ending was splendid. 

Otherwise, I don't think I can contribute with anything that hasn't been said already. I don't think that this piece will find its way to my listening reportoire in the future, but due to its fun and (to some degree raw) nature I will definitely attend any live performance of it that I can attend. An impressive piece by a young composer.

I did really love the sound of the London sinfonietta.


----------



## Ravn

Double post and at least 15 characers


----------



## calvinpv

Like SuperTonic, I also struggle with Ades. With a couple of exceptions, such as _Arcadiana_ or his solo piano works where I feel like everything that needs to be said has been said, I just find his music unnecessarily short and in need of fleshing out. So I was a little hesitant coming into the present work. I listened to it last Sunday and again a few minutes ago just to confirm my opinions. I think what is causing me to feel disappointed is not so much that I depended too much on the program notes only to find the music falling short of unrealistic expectations (unlike some others above, I don't have a problem reading notes ahead of time) but rather the music itself relied on simple gimmicks to make connections to the program. A Spanish sounding trumpet solo in "Aurochs", a snare drum in "Militiamen", HAL's voice as contrabassoon (this was admittedly a good gesture), fast ascending runs in the woodwinds in "Angels" (to convey soaring and flight), etc. Take all of these out and the music sounds like an indistinct blur. Maybe still technically interesting but no longer musically captivating. The only movement that improved for me upon repeated listening is "HAL's Death".

Nevertheless, it's always good to return now and again to composers who leave you cold. One of these days, Ades's music will click for me. But not yet.


----------



## 20centrfuge

Thank you, everyone, for your participation this last week. George Benjamin's Palimpsests is the work for this coming week. It was submitted by Enthusiast.

*Benjamin: Palimpsests (1998-2002)*


----------



## Enthusiast

A palimpsest is of course something written over something else, partially or completely obscuring or erasing it. The first of Benjamin's Palimpsests was written and performed in our time window and the second a little later. I think they are generally played together as one piece now. I find it an immensely attractive piece. Some of the music is incredibly beautiful and some is very powerful. It shows its debt to Messiaen (Benjamin was a favourite pupil of Messiaen as a teenager and was certainly Benjamin's most influential teacher), indeed it wears it openly. It isn't long - the first Palimpsest is less than 9 minutes and the second a little more than 11 - but it does build up a sense of gravitas. While the Ades piece we have been listening to is playful, this is more overtly serious but it is quite accessible: it gets inside you after a couple of hearings.

It starts gently with a strange woodwind song but this is quickly interrupted by a loud explosion from the brass. Interruptions like this seem like one of the themes of the work. It builds momentum, led by some fast piano music, and then goes into a slow churning section from which emerges a sort of looping tune/motif that gets repeated and played with throughout the rest of the movement. It dominates the faster music but is always in conflict with the slower music … The second Palimpsest is very much of the same world but sometimes builds even more powerful climaxes.

What the hell - I can't write about music! I lack the words and the technical knowledge. This is a piece I find very impressive and enjoyable. Much of the thematic material is almost tune-like (in a very traditional sense) and the whole seems to cover a lot of musical ground in its 20 minutes. Do you know any Borges short stories and the way that in a few pages he seems to have written a novel? Palimpsests is a little the same for me.

There is a recording of Palimpsests on Spotify, this one:














I have, and usually listen to, a different one:









The whole CD is great! Both accounts are conducted by Benjamin and they don't sound so different.


----------



## Phil loves classical

I liked this work. The orchestration is great. I like the more laid back approach in the music, compared to the Ades. I think the Messiaen influence is clear. Too clear maybe? It sounds great while I listen to it, but after listening twice, I don't take away much from it. It just makes me want to listen to Chronochromie or Turangalia again.


----------



## Art Rock

I have three Benjamin CD's (all on Nimbus, including _Ringed by the flat horizon_ and _Written on skin_), but not this work, which I've never heard. As I don't spotify, I went to YouTube for the work in the version of the Neos CD shown in post 27 (part 1, part 2).

Right from the start, more quiet and louder passages alternate in an interesting way, with beautiful orchestral colours. The last few minutes of the first part are really awesome. Part 2 continues in the same mode, which stays effective. At times it almost reduces to chamber music, only to give way to a full orchestra quickly. It could have been nervous, but it's so well done, that I keep listening attentively - and it ends before you know it. Thanks for bringing this work to my attention.

Artrockometer score: 4/6 "desirable", I like to have it in my CD collection.


----------



## Kilgore Trout

This is a good example of the pseudo "avant-garde" of the last 30 years. It's impersonal enough (thanks to obvious influences like Messiaen and late Boulez) to be accessible but fragmented and noisy enough to convince the avant-garde wanabees they listen to "serious music". In the end, I don't think this has much to offer, and there isn't anything modern about it. It sounds like hundreds of other pieces, a bunch of trite orchestral ideas badly thrown together, with no sense of form or necessity. There are good moments here and there, but it seriously lacks in purpose, and, dare I say, soul. It's professionally written music, I guess.

That being said, I don't want to ever again listen to that piece simply because of the overuse of sudden brass/percussions chords. It's so unnerving, unoriginal and pointless that it just makes me want to scream "shut the **** up!" at Spotify.


----------



## Enthusiast

Kilgore Trout said:


> This is a good example of the pseudo "avant-garde" of the last 30 years. It's impersonal enough (thanks to obvious influences like Messiaen and late Boulez) to be accessible but fragmented and noisy enough to convince the avant-garde wanabees they listen to "serious music". In the end, I don't think this has much to offer, and there isn't anything modern about it. It sounds like hundreds of other pieces, a bunch of trite orchestral ideas badly thrown together, with no sense of form or necessity. There are good moments here and there, but it seriously lacks in purpose, and, dare I say, soul. It's professionally written music, I guess.
> 
> That being said, I don't want to ever again listen to that piece simply because of the overuse of sudden brass/percussions chords. It's so unnerving, unoriginal and pointless that it just makes me want to scream "shut the **** up!" at Spotify.


It is fine of course not to like some pieces - I guess we will all be in that position at some point during the 30 works - but it would be nice even if only in this thread for us to avoid putting down the people who do enjoy the piece that we don't. This is especially the case when the critic seeks to impugn the motives of people who do like the music. So suggesting that people who liked this piece must be "avant-garde wanabees" is frankly nothing but unpleasant. The reference to "serious music" that follows that statement is obviously aimed at me and OK, I can live with that! But I suggest that if this thread is not a safe zone where people can express themselves and their loves unguardedly it will not work very well and will be just as difficult as other threads that have tried to cover contemporary music.

More generally, there is a dilemma for a thread like this. If you don't like something after one hearing you may not want to listen again. Fair enough. But then I do not think you are likely to be in a position to offer any sort of considered and detailed critique, either. Can one say more than "I heard it once and found the following qualities irritating - so I have dropped it" and perhaps provide a statement on what music from the period should be doing? Despite the evident irritation with Benjamin's music, the above post leaves me wondering if it is a reaction to Benjamin's relative conservatism - the references to the actually superficial similarities with Messiaen and Boulez seem to suggest that composers at the turn of the century should have moved beyond that (as many have) - or a reaction against it's modernity? I imagine it is the former as the writer presents himself as familiar with the contemporary scene.


----------



## Kilgore Trout

Enthusiast said:


> This is especially the case when the critic seeks to impugn the motives of people who do like the music. So suggesting that people who liked this piece must be "avant-garde wanabees" is frankly nothing but unpleasant.


I've never suggested anything like this. I've made a statement about how I think the piece falls in the aesthetic spectrum of the time. You can like the piece for whatever reason you want.



Enthusiast said:


> The reference to "serious music" that follows that statement is obviously aimed at me and OK, I can live with that!


It never crossed my mind. Bad choice of words. I'm sorry if you think it was directed towards you, it wasn't.



Enthusiast said:


> But I suggest that if this thread is not a safe zone where people can express themselves and their loves unguardedly


I don't think any discussion about art should be a "safe zone", but ok, I got it, this is not a thread for debate. I won't be participating in it anymore.



Enthusiast said:


> More generally, there is a dilemma for a thread like this. If you don't like something after one hearing you may not want to listen again. Fair enough. But then I do not think you are likely to be in a position to offer any sort of considered and detailed critique, either.


I know Benjamin's music and had already heard this piece, but apart from that, I think you're wrong on that point. Don't forget that before the invention of disc, when classical music was the main music, people only heard the pieces one time, and judged them from that listen (and from the score if they had access to it). This didn't prevent the major composers to deliver complex and difficult works, and those to be understood. The idea of being able to listen several times to a piece in a short period is a recent one. 
So, you are in position to offer a considered critique after one listen if you've learnt to do so and if your music knowledge is suffisant, and as many others, I was taught to analyse (which is way more difficult than to give a simple critique) a full piece based on one listen.


----------



## Enthusiast

^ Your original words speak for themselves and denying your intention doesn't help or even convince. There may be no safe zone for discussing art but if this is a thread for the musically educated to analyse and discuss their analyses (not that I find any of that in your post) then I had misunderstood our intention here.


----------



## Kilgore Trout

Fine, you chose to take it that way, and decided to not believe me, so you're just admiting that you're an insecure and uneducated avant-garde wanabee. Have fun with your safe zone (I'm expecting some moderation soon).


----------



## Bulldog

Enthusiast said:


> It is fine of course not to like some pieces - I guess we will all be in that position at some point during the 30 works - but it would be nice even if only in this thread for us to avoid putting down the people who do enjoy the piece that we don't. This is especially the case when the critic seeks to impugn the motives of people who do like the music. So suggesting that people who liked this piece must be "avant-garde wanabees" is frankly nothing but unpleasant. The reference to "serious music" that follows that statement is obviously aimed at me and OK, I can live with that! But I suggest that if this thread is not a safe zone where people can express themselves and their loves unguardedly it will not work very well and will be just as difficult as other threads that have tried to cover contemporary music.


It appears you have changed your position about negative comments.


----------



## Bluecrab

Enthusiast said:


> The reference to "serious music" that follows that statement is obviously aimed at me...


Paranoid much?
.....


----------



## Enthusiast

^ Not at all. I can read and I understand English. I don't mind the odd slur or insult. But I had hoped this thread might be a bit different to the norm. Even now I don't want to spoil it by responding in detail. What is your interest in this spat?


----------



## mmsbls

Perhaps we can move on to discuss the work rather than make comments about each other? I assume Enthusiast's comment about "safe zone" was meant to imply that posts should be focused on the music and composer rather than on listeners. There obviously can be plenty of debate about the merits of the work. 

I've heard Palimpsests for the first time now. Interestingly, we recently listened to Benjamin in the Exploring Contemporary Composers thread. Unfortunately, no one discussed that work, and I did not listen to it for that thread. I have not heard many Benjamin works, but Palimpsests was definitely my favorite. I loved the brass blasts that overwrite the serene baseline. The kinetic frenzy ending the middle portion of the first Palimpsest was wonderful. The serene ending seems to suddenly break off. 

I'm not sure if Benjamin always intended to write the second work maybe picking up from the first. If not, the ending of the first maybe leaves one wondering a bit what's happening. I think I enjoyed the second work more than the first. I'll have to listne more to get more thoughts.


----------



## Enthusiast

Bulldog said:


> It appears you have changed your position about negative comments.


Not at all. I have consistently been against impugning people's motives in liking or not liking something as we cannot know what those motives are. And I had hoped this thread would progress in a friendly fashion without personal insults. I have no problem that he doesn't like the music and is quite visceral in his response to it. I do now think he could have given us more reasons why - given his apparent skill at analysing music quickly - and might have engaged with his weakly stated reasons were it not for what I still read as a personal slight.


----------



## Kilgore Trout

You're so paranoid it's scary. The world doesn't revolve around you.


----------



## Kjetil Heggelund

I love this <3 I learned about palimpsests maybe last year and can see why it's interesting for a composer. Since I'm basically traditional in music (even though I like black metal and disco), the occasional return to "normal" intervals and scale movements makes me think it's all well done. I don't analyse so much, but the music makes my mind psyched up, so I regard it as great. It's a masterpiece by a coming veteran! I'm listening to Ensemble Modern and think I'll hear them again soon in the newer recording.


----------



## Lisztian

So, uh, why are you guys having a go at Enthusiast, a highly valued member who I thought was quite reasonable here (except the idea about a safe zone), when the person he's talking to responded to very mild provocation by saying (while proving Enthusiast's point):



Kilgore Trout said:


> Fine, you chose to take it that way, and decided to not believe me, so you're just admiting that you're an insecure and uneducated avant-garde wanabee. Have fun with your safe zone (I'm expecting some moderation soon).


Even liking that post? Did I miss something?


----------



## 20centrfuge

I've been listening to this piece carefully over the last week. I'd say I have listened to it about 10 times.

the first time through I couldn't quite wrap my brain around the patterns. After about 2-3 repetitions it came more into focus for me. That first big punch that comes out of the blue is very shocking. The first time I heard it I found it very unsettling - like looking at a Rothko painting and suddenly seeing blood being splattered across it. It took me several seconds to recover from it. Even after a few times through, when I knew it was coming, I still had to brace myself for it. I have asked myself why Benjamin did that. Perhaps he didn't want us to get too relaxed, he wanted to keep us on our toes. 

Overall, I found Palimpsests I to be very enjoyable. Palimpsests II wasn't quite as successful for me. I would describe Palimpsests I as a meandering melodic tapestry that gets punctuated or interrupted by splintery orchestral splatters. I really like that it builds to a climax and has a glorious brass soli towards the end. The orchestral calm after that big moment is ethereal and beautiful. It contrasts well with the big moment.

Palimpsests II seemed a little too fragmented. Occasionally I would lose attention and have to remind myself to keep listening.

Overall, I can hear some influence of Messaien with the orchestration, but Benjamin's music is clearly his own.

Other thoughts I had: I kept thinking about the Rite of Spring for some reason. I was thinking about how the Rite of Spring always seems to feel spontaneous, like it had been written quickly by a creative madman of sorts. That is why I love it so much. This piece, and I don't necessarily view this as a negative, felt like the opposite. It felt like it had been crafted very slowly and carefully by a cunning person. A different type of experience. It does make me want to check out more of Benjamin's works, especially the opera: Written on Skin.


----------



## PeterFromLA

I'm a little bit behind, so will for now only comment on the Ades. I listened to this version:






I hadn't heard this piece in over twenty years. I believe it was previously available on an EMI CD, circa mid 1990s? At the time of its release I recall the work making not so much of an impression on me, falling in spirit and style somewhere between Ligeti and Birtwistle sound territory. I'm still not sure I'm that excited about it, but I do see it as foreshadowing a highly talented composer who was at that point still figuring himself out.

I think some of the composer's other earlier works, such as Darknesse Visible, make much more of an impact. In fact Darknesse Visible I first heard in a Green Umbrella concert in downtown Los Angeles, performed by the composer at what I believe was one of his earliest live performances in the US. This was in 1996. He strode across the stage, nervous but determined, sat down and without hesitation launched into the work's opening chords. He was fantastic and I was an instant admirer; it felt like we were witnessing an integral figure emerging on the scene.






But, yeah, the Living Toys work, it is not as captivating as other early works, including another slightly later (but still early) piano work, Traced Overhead.

[video]https://www.chambermusicsociety.org/watch-and-listen/video/2016-video-archive-5/ades-traced-overhead-for-piano/[/video]


----------



## tortkis

Although there are many things happening, the work as a whole feels organic and consistent. It is as if the orchestra is performing a free improvisation. (I don't know if there is a firm structure in the work.) The word palimpsest seems to attract certain contemporary composers, there are works with the title by Ten Holt (very good), Xenakis, Dhomont, etc. Does the title suggest the nature of music, a sound appears and disappears, then another different sound emerges? That seems what is happening in this work in a drastic way.


----------



## calvinpv

I wrote this little blurb on TC a few months ago about the piece, so I'll just copy and paste it here. My overall impression of _Palimpsests_ is similar to 20centrfuge's: I think the first movement is more successful at sustaining my attention than the second, and I think, instead of composing a whole new piece after the premiere of Palimpsest I, Benjamin should've just expanded the first movement into a longer piece. But I'll take another listen to it sometime this week and offer up a fresh perspective (I'm familiar with the second recording recommended by Enthusiast, so I'll take a crack at the first).



> Benjamin's _Palimpsests_ is, as the name implies, based on the concept of a palimpsest, a manuscript on which the original text is overwritten with one or more later texts such that traces of the original remain discernible, even if not understandable (such a practice was apparently common in medieval music). This informs us of the structure of the piece: musical ideas and textures are successively layered on top of one another, resulting in a piece of increasing complexity as time moves forward while retaining glimpses of the original layer offered at the beginning. Benjamin, of course, also puts a twist on this structure by having the original layer itself changes in time in light of those layers superimposed on it.
> 
> The two movements have different takes on the concept of palimpsest. The first movement opens with the original layer, a gentle song in the three clarinets before getting obscured by a staccato rhythm in the brass, short tremolos in the xylophones, quick strikes in the high strings, etc. Each of these textures, including the original, returns off and on throughout the movement, often expanded and fleshed out; it should be stressed, however, that every layer is restricted to the family of instruments in which it was introduced (or conversely, no instrumental family is ever cross-pollinated with a foreign texture). The result is that each layer possesses a clearly distinct and memorable timbre, preventing the music from ever getting too muddled. It should also be said that there are far more layers than families, meaning each family will be the source of multiple layers. From what I can tell in the score, the families are: piano, harp, xylophone/vibraphone, other percussion, brass, clarinets, flute, piccolo (however, the flute and piccolo textures are remarkably similar), high strings, and low strings (specifically, double bass; cellos are absent, probably to ensure that high and low strings are sharply differentiated).
> 
> The second movement starts anew with a new process of layering, but occasionally, layers from the first movement will resurface, especially the gentle song in the three clarinets. And each time this song emerges, new layers will proliferate until the climax is reached where everything seems to resurface at once, causing a lot of friction and conflict. Personally, I think this is a weakness of the second movement: there are almost too many layers to keep track of, and they appear and disappear too quickly. The first movement, in my opinion, is much better at conveying the notion of palimpsest. But that's just me.


----------



## Trout

Overall, I quite like the Benjamin. It might not be very surprising if you knew that Messiaen is a personal top-3 composer, as I agree with others' comments on some of their similarities. In particular, I find their writing for brass to be comparable: brash, colorful, monolithic, and powerful. But, in this piece, Benjamin's music has a layer of haze that Messiaen's lacks, as if obscuring the monster that lies beneath. And I quite like the overlap of and interplay between the powerful and the mysterious, especially in the first Palimpsest. Yet, while I find them well-written, the pieces did strike me as a bit forgettable, even after a third listen. Perhaps some of its complexities interfered with its musical cohesion, or perhaps I (unfairly) could not get the Messiaen comparison out of my head while listening.

Still, all things considered, this did make me interested in exploring more Benjamin. Upon hearing his acclaimed opera _Written on Skin_ recently, I was in awe of the power and intensity he managed to draw out of the orchestra, even right from the opening bars. I would love to attend a performance of this whenever it is programmed next. But aside from that, I am unfamiliar with the rest of his work. I plan to check out more of the pieces on this short list I compiled, but any other recommendations (especially from Enthusiast) are welcome!


----------



## Enthusiast

Trout said:


> Still, all things considered, this did make me interested in exploring more Benjamin. Upon hearing his acclaimed opera _Written on Skin_ recently, I was in awe of the power and intensity he managed to draw out of the orchestra, even right from the opening bars. I would love to attend a performance of this whenever it is programmed next. But aside from that, I am unfamiliar with the rest of his work. I plan to check out more of the pieces on this short list I compiled, but any other recommendations (especially from Enthusiast) are welcome!


Your list is a good one. I came to Benjamin through Written on Skin, which was broadcast of TV by BBC. I had to buy the CDs! This led to my getting this









earlier works but all at least interesting and attractive. Antara is the stand out piece for me on that CD.

Later, I also got this









again finding much to enjoy. Sudden Time was the stand out piece for me on that disc.

Early, interesting works of contemporary composers - usually British - are a constant fascination for me. Some mature into amazing composers, others perhaps don't go so far. Benjamin has, I think.

More recently, Benjamin has continued to demonstrate that operas are central to his work. The BBC broadcast this









and it is another powerful work (and another tour de force for Barbara Hannigan!). I've watched it on TV a couple of times but the discs are still on my wish list.


----------



## Trout

Thanks, Enthusiast! I gave some of those works a listen. I really liked his beautiful early work _Antara_. It felt very atmospheric and quite unlike some of his more recent, more heavy-handed orchestral pieces.

But that opera _Lessons in Love and Violence_ really blew me away. I only listened to the CD so I cannot comment on the plot or any of the visual aspects. But the music was extraordinary, similar to and just as good as _Written on Skin_, in my opinion. I think it, unfortunately, may be overshadowed by its older brother in the long run, given the positive but not as astounding reception (possibly just for coming second). Still, I hope it has a good life in opera houses and on disc.


----------



## Ravn

20centrfuge said:


> Other thoughts I had: I kept thinking about the Rite of Spring for some reason. I was thinking about how the Rite of Spring always seems to feel spontaneous, like it had been written quickly by a creative madman of sorts. That is why I love it so much. This piece, and I don't necessarily view this as a negative, felt like the opposite. It felt like it had been crafted very slowly and carefully by a cunning person. A different type of experience. It does make me want to check out more of Benjamin's works, especially the opera: Written on Skin.


I was thinking exactly the same. The harmonies made me think of Rite of Spring in some way I don't really know how to explain. The brass in the middle part of movement one sound very influenced by Messiaen's Turangalila. The ending was, as noted earlier, very good. I loved the strange form of melodicness throughout the movement. All in all i found the first movement very enjoyable, although I didn't really care for the explosive dynamics, which made it hard to find a decent listening volume (headphones).

I didn't care much for the second movement. I percieved it to be riddled with "jump scares" - so many that I got annoyed and constantly had to adjust the volume. Maybe the works as a whole works much better on speakers?

I will check out the other recommendations of Benjamin's works. Having never heard about the composer before, I found that the first movement had great promise.


----------



## Enthusiast

I have been wondering about how some of us are hearing the 2nd Palimpsest. I hadn't registered before that it was weaker and I am not sure it is. It is darker and perhaps more ambitious but it works well for me and adds a bit of weight to the 1st. 

Meanwhile, I'm glad many of us enjoyed this piece and getting to know Benjamin a bit better. He is more and more becoming an opera composer.


----------



## Ravn

There's also a recording with video of Palimpsests on Berlin Philharmonics digital concert hall (which at the time offers a free trial month). Included is also a highly interesting interview with the composer.

https://www.digitalconcerthall.com/en/concert/51892


----------



## 20centrfuge

As I was getting into this music, I decided to read up on George Benjamin, the composer. If anyone is interested, I really enjoyed this article in the New Yorker. It gave me some insight into his life, his compositional process and how he views music.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/...poser-george-benjamin-finally-found-his-voice


----------



## calvinpv

I'm having a bit of trouble hearing any resemblance to Messiaen or Stravinsky's _Rite_, especially Messiaen. In his larger pieces, one thing I notice in Messiaen is that he really likes to engage the entirety of the orchestra to play a single chord, and the word "monolithic", used by Trout, is really apt here. But for _Palimpsests_, I instead hear orchestral groups come and go, preventing chords from ever really taking place (you hear them at times in the brass, but not in the whole orchestra).

However, I'm getting some serious Julian Anderson vibes from the work. Anderson, like Benjamin, studied with Messiaen. Here's Anderson's _Symphony_, written just two years after _Palimpsests_:


----------



## 20centrfuge

*Nono: "Hay que caminar" soñando (1989) *
_submitted by Portamento _

(The following week will be Dhomont)


----------



## 20centrfuge

From The Guardian: A Guide to Luigi Nono's Music

"Here's what I'm talking about: this music of shimmering spaces, disturbed silences, sharp-edged fragments and dream-like unpredictability, his very last work, "Hay que caminar" Soñando for two violins, which Irvine Arditti and David Alberman premiered in 1989. It's music in which you participate almost as much as the performers, acting out your own dream-journey of moving through a landscape that's at once still and violent. It's one of a handful of pieces that Nono wrote at the end of his life inspired by a motto he discovered on the walls of a monastery in Toledo in Spain: "Caminante no hay caminos hay que caminar", one of the great aphorisms that's roughly but inelegantly translatable as "traveller, there is no way to travel, only travelling". It's a motto that encapsulates the search through unmarked musical territories on which Nono's late music embarks - and symbolises how far he and his music had come from any sense of artistic or cultural certainties. Nono isn't telling you how to listen in Hay que caminar, only offering a soundscape for your ears to navigate along with the progress of the two violinists."


----------



## Art Rock

I don't know whether this is a recommended version (Gidon Kremer & Tatiana Gindenko), but it was the only one I could find:

Part 1
Part 2


----------



## calvinpv

Art Rock said:


> I don't know whether this is a recommended version (Gidon Kremer & Tatiana Gindenko), but it was the only one I could find:
> 
> Part 1
> Part 2


Kremer and Gindenko were the dedicatees of the work, so there's that. At the same time, there's this 1994 recording (below) by Irvine Arditti and David Alberman, who gave the world premiere in 1989 and were probably in close contact with Nono, so their interpretation might be more authentic.
















And then there's this recording by Arditti and Graeme Jennings, which is the one I own and which I'm satisfied with.


----------



## 20centrfuge

In some ways, I have struggled with this piece. Struggled to understand it and come to terms with it. I am sure I will struggle to explain my experience with it. It doesn't seem right to say whether or not I liked it. I don't think Nono would have cared one way or the other. And frankly I don't think I could say whether I liked it or not. I can say that I experienced it. And I can say that I am glad I did.

This piece is more about a state of mind or state of being than about music - in the traditional sense. I guess I would say it is a meditation of sorts. The violins are usually playing quietly and in such a way that the very sounds they are making border on not quite being produced. Like whispers. Very fragile. As a listener, you don't dare breathe. It feels bleak. sparse. You become more aware of yourself and you can't help but retreat emotionally.

I know I am waxing poetical with all this, but that's what this piece is about, I believe.

I will also say that I think music like this is better experienced in person. I understand that the two violinists are to change positions in the room as the piece progresses. This gives the listener a different sonic perspective that is not experienced the same on a sound system.

I understand that Nono was very political and I am sure his view of the world shaped the piece. It was his last published work. I wonder if he knew it would be his last work when he was writing it. I looked it up and he died of complications relating to a liver disease. This probably did not come on suddenly. I would imagine he saw the writing on the walls, so to speak. In that sense, I imagine it occupies a place for him equivalent to Shostakovich's 14th symphony for Shostakovich or perhaps Wintereisse for Schubert.

I am going to listen to Nono's "No Hay Caminos, Hay Que Caminar" and see what relation that work has to THIS work.


----------



## Portamento

I'm just now making a conscious effort to get into Nono's late style, and this was the first work I ended up hearing. I haven't heard the rest of the "Hay que caminar" trilogy yet, so take my words with a grain of salt.



20centrfuge said:


> In some ways, I have struggled with this piece. Struggled to understand it and come to terms with it. I am sure I will struggle to explain my experience with it. It doesn't seem right to say whether or not I liked it. I don't think Nono would have cared one way or the other. And frankly I don't think I could say whether I liked it or not. I can say that I experienced it. And I can say that I am glad I did.


These are my sentiments exactly. There's that itch to evaluate the work. With a Beethoven symphony, you can easily express how memorable you thought the melodies were or how gut-wrenching that key change was; with Nono, however, you're left stranded. It's one of those situations where you ask yourself: "Was the composer successful at achieving what they set out to do?" I _think_ so.

As far as the "experience" is concerned, I enjoyed it very much. I agree that hearing it live would be very different (and, given how infrequent Nono performances are, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity!).


----------



## Art Rock

I have a handful of Nono CD's, but this work is new to me. I listened to the recording by Arditti and Graeme Jennings that calbinpv linked to. it is an interesting work, contrasting moments of almost silence with regular higher volume parts. At times I wondered whether it would work better for me if the composer had chosen different instruments, but I realize that this is largely because I'm not a big fan of solo violin(s) without the setting in a string quartet or as a concerto. In the end, I found 26 minutes not too long, which shows that the work really grabbed my attention. It goes on my wish list to have it on CD. A good recommendation for this thread!


----------



## Phil loves classical

I found the work hard to like. I got the sense of the ebb and flow, but without distinctive rhythms and harmonic material, it couldn't really sustain my attention. I tend to accept it for what it is to me and move on. I tried out a few other works by him, and he just isn't my thing. The only one I found more interesting is his "… sofferte onde serene …" for piano.


----------



## Kjetil Heggelund

Luigi Nono was one of my "discoveries" in the last 2 years. This is one of the pieces that got my attention. I even bought a book, "Nostalgia for the Future" with writings and interviews. The piece is the second of 3 pieces inspired by an inscription on the wall of a cloister, he says. "Caminantes no hay casinos hay que caminar" which he translates as " Oh you who walk, who go, there are no paths, no road is shown, but you have to walk, go". He says "it's the Wanderer of Nietzsche, of the continuous search, of Cacciari's Prometeo. It's the sea on which he goes inventing, discovering the route." 
The 3 pieces he mentions are on the 2011 Kairos recording.
I like the piece! It's calming and surprising at the same time, making a magic experience.


----------



## 20centrfuge

Kjetil Heggelund said:


> "Caminantes no hay casinos hay que caminar"


I know this is a typo but it is a hilarious typo. I'll loosely translate it as:

"travellers, there are no casinos here, so you may as well keep travelling"

Maybe that one was written, not on the wall of the cloister, but on a bathroom wall at the convenience store down the street. :lol:


----------



## Kjetil Heggelund

Autocorrect there! HAHA


----------



## tortkis

Someone said he likes Nono's late works because they evoke images of slowly decaying ruins in his mind.
I listened to the Arditti/Alberman recording I have. The music gives me transient, fleeting feelings. It sounds like wind blowing across an abandoned village with occasional flurry, which reminds me of some traditional shakuhachi music. The uneven, hoarse violin timbre is created by slow bowing? I saw a video presenting it as an example of bad violin playing. It is effective on this work and I think the technique is widely used in contemporary music.


----------



## Enthusiast

It is new to me and not very like other pieces by Nono that I know and enjoy. But on my first and second hearings it intrigued me and I certainly didn't resent the time given to it. On my third hearing I am getting more than a sense that two violins playing music that is apparently so simple/sparse are somehow yet producing music of some considerable power! I can't wait to see if this sense blossoms further.


----------



## Trout

The Nono drips with a sense of existential distress. This and other late Nono works strike me as existing within worlds of meditative stasis, only to be perturbed when the listener gets too comfortable. In a sense, I think Nono is creating a musical path for us only to pull it out from underneath us repeatedly. We are always walking with trepidation on unsteady ground but walking nonetheless. The two violins appear to navigate this world in an intimate togetherness, yet lacking in consonance and harmony. Many times, it is not even obvious that there are two instruments playing and that we are instead hearing a single voice of a forlorn, fractured messenger. For me, the piece is truly a masterful and unique joining of the beautiful and the visceral, the static and the dynamic. While the piece eventually faces into nothingness, it appropriately never reconciles the dichotomy, leaving it up to us to face the uncertainty of a future with no path.

It also forms the third piece of an informal trilogy of "walks" with the first two pieces being _Caminantes... Ayacucho_ and _No hay caminos, hay que caminar... Andrej Tarkowskij_. The titles originate from a paraphrased line of Spanish poet Antonio Machado: "Caminantes, no hay caminos, hay que caminar" ("traveller, there is no path, there is just walking"). They all are worth hearing. The second piece in particular pays homage to Andrei Tarkovsky and his last film _The Sacrifice_ right before his early death. I have seen a few Tarkovsky films but not that one; however from my understanding, it deals with the profound fears and spiritual anguish of an impending nuclear holocaust. Naturally, those themes perfectly complement the internal crises of Nono's works. Additionally, there is the added eeriness of these pieces being the last ones before Nono's own death. Does anyone know if either artist had an awareness of their fate while creating their last masterworks? If not, it makes for a fascinating mystery.


----------



## 20centrfuge

Trout said:


> In a sense, I think Nono is creating a musical path for us only to pull it out from underneath us repeatedly. We are always walking with trepidation on unsteady ground but walking nonetheless. The two violins appear to navigate this world in an intimate togetherness, yet lacking in consonance and harmony. Many times, it is not even obvious that there are two instruments playing and that we are instead hearing a single voice of a forlorn, fractured messenger. For me, the piece is truly a masterful and unique joining of the beautiful and the visceral, the static and the dynamic. While the piece eventually faces into nothingness, it appropriately never reconciles the dichotomy, leaving it up to us to face the uncertainty of a future with no path.


That is some tremendous writing. So good, because it really hits the nail on the head. We are never left to get comfortable. In my own little blurb about the piece I thought about writing that it is a piece involving stasis, but I couldn't write that because there are too many jolts are pulls from the music. Your analogy of walking on an uneven path, a precarious path is spot on. I also like that you write about how the two instruments aren't really in harmony with each other but at times it is like there is only one instrument.


----------



## Portamento

20centrfuge said:


> That is some tremendous writing. So good, because it really hits the nail on the head. We are never left to get comfortable. In my own little blurb about the piece I thought about writing that it is a piece involving stasis, but I couldn't write that because there are too many jolts are pulls from the music. Your analogy of walking on an uneven path, a precarious path is spot on. I also like that you write about how the two instruments aren't really in harmony with each other but at times it is like there is only one instrument.


Ditto.

When should a composer decide to end a work in this vein? Nono's is _ca._ 25 min., and it is certainly never boring. However, the "pulling the rug from under" dynamic is established within the first 5 min. If things went on for another half-hour, how would this affect our perception of the work's quality? Food for thought.


----------



## 20centrfuge

Portamento said:


> When should a composer decide to end a work in this vein? Nono's is _ca._ 25 min., and it is certainly never boring. However, the "pulling the rug from under" dynamic is established within the first 5 min. If things went on for another half-hour, how would this affect our perception of the work's quality? Food for thought.


Maybe it's because my mom did cocaine while I was in utero, but I feel like a lot of music is too long. I am almost never telling myself, "if only it were a little longer..."

_disclaimer: my mom didn't do cocaine. _


----------



## Phil loves classical

20centrfuge said:


> Maybe it's because my mom did cocaine while I was in utero, but I feel like a lot of music is too long. I am almost never telling myself, "if only it were a little longer..."
> 
> _disclaimer: my mom didn't do cocaine. _


I feel the same way. I can sustain attention to very little music all the way through. Usually in the 3rd movement my mind is gone after listening to the opening theme or motif (which is usually repeated a lot). Only in a concert when I'm glued to a seat I can stop my mind from wandering.


----------



## 20centrfuge

Are any of you fluent in French? I started listening to the Dhomont piece. There is a lot of spoken French in it. I would love a translation. I can’t seem to find anything on the internet.


----------



## SuperTonic

Nono is a composer that I enjoy, but this was the first time I've heard this work. I listened to it earlier today for the first time, and then immediately listened to it again. I honestly was a little apprehensive because I don't usually like violin music with no other accompaniment, but I had no problem with this piece. I loved the barely audible bowed notes (I listened to the Arditti/Jenning recording on Youtube) and then the sudden outbursts. It created such an ethereal yet also intense atmosphere. I need to go listen to the other 2 pieces in the series as well now too.


----------



## Trout

20centrfuge said:


> Are any of you fluent in French? I started listening to the Dhomont piece. There is a lot of spoken French in it. I would love a translation. I can't seem to find anything on the internet.


All of the texts as they appear in the piece can be found here: https://laboiteauxparoles.com/titre/70836/francis-dhomont-foret-profonde. This unfortunately doesn't have the English translations, but you can use your language translator of choice to help. Note that, while the majority of the texts are French, there are also a few spoken lines in German, Spanish, and English.


----------



## Enthusiast

Well, I've enjoyed my time with this (Nono) piece and have also explored the companion works enjoyably. For '_Hay que caminar' soñando_, I think I probably preferred this one









to this one









Both seem authoritative but the Kremer may explore a greater range of tones and seems a little more articulate (= it talked to me a little more!). Great to have had the reason to focus on this and some other late Nono over several days!


----------



## calvinpv

I'm not sure how I should assess this piece given that I'm not hearing it live. On recording, the two violins sound as if I'm right next to them. But in an auditorium, they will be several meters apart on opposite sides of the room. I just don't see how the dynamics or the subtleties in bowing techniques could be sustained and projected across an entire auditorium without dissipating into the air (and there's no live electronic processing to help out). In a live performance, I suspect there is far more silence than what appears on CD -- and maybe that is intentional. A lot of commenters above are emphasizing the seemingly aimless nature of the music, but maybe we also need to take into account the silences. Is Nono channeling John Cage here? He might be.

In each of his very late works -- Prometeo, La Lontananza, the Hay que caminar trilogy -- Nono is posing a series of question to the listeners: What are, or ought to be, the constituent elements of a musical work? What should I be listening for in a given musical performance? Should these listening criteria serve as a template for forming an aesthetic judgment? Do I need to unlearn any listening frameworks from my past? Beyond this, does my physical surroundings serve as a natural filter to the music such that I must not only evaluate the music but also the acoustical/musical properties of the performance space? Etc. I'm not sure Nono had answers to any of these questions; I think he was in too much of an artistic and political crisis to feel confident in offering such answers. I don't have definitive answers either. But I think my listening of the present work unintentionally gave me an answer to the final question. Obviously, what appears on CD is different than what is heard in a live performance. However, there are works like _"Hay que caminar" sognando_ where the difference is probably so vast that assessing them from multiple perspectives (CD, live) leads to conflicting and inconclusive evaluations.

I guess this entire post was a long-winded way of saying "I don't know where I stand."


----------



## 20centrfuge

*Dhomont: Forêt profonde (1994-96) *

_submitted by Trout _

(the following week: Gubaidulina)


----------



## Ravn

A couple of hours late: I enjoyed the Nono piece. It was beautiful and really intimate, and the way it was recorded (Arditti & Jennings) made quite the impact! I don't think that I can add anything else really, I didn't feel the need for further analysis.

Art Rock, you forgot to post your Artrockmeter score!


----------



## Art Rock

Art Rock said:


> I have a handful of Nono CD's, but this work is new to me. I listened to the recording by Arditti and Graeme Jennings that calbinpv linked to. it is an interesting work, contrasting moments of almost silence with regular higher volume parts. At times I wondered whether it would work better for me if the composer had chosen different instruments, but I realize that this is largely because I'm not a big fan of solo violin(s) without the setting in a string quartet or as a concerto. In the end, I found 26 minutes not too long, which shows that the work really grabbed my attention. It goes on my wish list to have it on CD. A good recommendation for this thread!


I was not sure whether people would find it interesting, but since you asked:

Artrockometer score: 4/6 "desirable", I like to have it in my CD collection.


----------



## 20centrfuge

Art Rock said:


> And CD's were expensive - typically around 23 euro, so taking chances on composers you had never heard of was indeed quite a risk.


I remember those times too. When I was in high school my brother and I were trying to explore classical music. We would go to the local CD store and go to the fairly small classical music section and basically pick albums off the cover! It was downright silly in hindsight, though we did hear Rite of Spring and the Firebird suite that way and got even more hooked. Later, my brother bought the Penguin guide to classical music and we made choices through its recommendations.


----------



## 20centrfuge

Regarding the Gubaidulina piece....

I am a fan of her music, though I admit I have to listen to it in moderation. The words that always come back to me when I think of describing her music are "murky spiritualism."

Sometimes her music comes across as bleak, or downright sad but there is always a beauty and soul that rings through it. I was reading recently about her life. She fell out of favor with the Soviet cultural system and became blacklisted. At one point she was on her way back to her apartment when someone grabbed her and started strangling her. She apparently became so angry that she said something like 'if you're going to kill me, just get it over with, stop taking so long.' This statement jarred the attacker and he left. It is supposed that it was a KGB agent who was sent to take her out.

I feel like there is a sadness in Gubaidulina's and Schnittke's music, reminiscent of Shostakovich's bleak late works. I don't know if this is coincidental or if there is a pervading cultural sadness in Russian culture towards the end of the 20th century. (sidenote: I'm curious how Russian music is now in the 21st century).

Regarding this piece: First of all there is the text. The essence of the text is: Snow, there is always snow, the Lord is like the snow...

Here is a link to a translation of the text:

https://www.lyrikline.org/en/poems/teper-brvsegda-snega-890?showmodal=en

My own personal take on this metaphor: snow is white and pure and beautiful, but it is also cold, covers the earth in a state of dormancy and even death. It is also something that you need to protect yourself against (in terms of the cold). I don't know for certain what Gubaidulina's feelings are about the text but it seems to me that her relationship with God is complex and, as mentioned before, deals with sadness.

The music in some ways is very simple, lots of half step melodies. It is haunting. I really do like it quite a bit. But, in summary, I'd say her music is a lot like snow as well. I can only be out in it for so long before I need to come back into a warm dwelling.

Thank you Art Rock.


----------



## Allegro Con Brio

I don't plan to participate too frequently in this thread, but I have been trying to get into contemporary classical lately and Gubaidulina is one of the composers that I've briefly touched on. The other day I heard the _Offertorium_ for violin and orchestra, and for the first time I was legitimately moved by a piece of contemporary classical music (the closest I had come previously was with Takemitsu, though that was more of an abstract sense of enjoyment). I thought there was an incredible amount of variety in the half-hour of music, and how she orchestrates the Bach theme Webern-style is pretty ingenious (although, of course, that was King Frederick's theme!) It started out very alien for my conservative ears, but as the piece wore on I began to become accustomed to its strange, fascinating world; and by the end, when the completely tonal hymn arrived, I was almost in tears. I don't know if it was a revelatory moment to totally sell me on contemporary classical, but it was a big step. Yesterday, I tried out _Jetzt Immer Schnee_, having seen it in this thread. I'm lukewarm on the spoken-voice-in-classical-music thing, but I still thought it was interesting, kind of like a postmodernist take on a Renaissance motet. I didn't read the translation, which would probably have helped decipher the meaning. Anyway, just my two cents - like I said, a lot of the music in this thread is still beyond my current level of comfort/comprehension, and I'm fully willing to admit my limitations; which is why I won't be appearing here often, but I will keep an eye on the week's selections and try my hand at listening to some of it. I at least want to experience as much of this kind of music as I can, and if I can't get into it, at least I can say that I tried. If I have any further revelations, I will write back about them here


----------



## Enthusiast

The Gubaidulina is a fine piece, one I have enjoyed for years. It has some resemblance to Gubaidulina's famous masterwork, the Canticle of the Sun, but that work has a lot more fibre. I also feel it has resemblances to Ligeti's Requiem in parts.


----------



## Portamento

I'm behind, so I'll comment briefly on _Forêt profonde_. I heard some of this work a few years ago and remembered being confused by it. The work definitely has somewhat of a schizophrenic nature, jumping from one idea to the next abruptly. That is not a bad thing -- I particularly liked the garbled piano and string samples in the "Chamber Music" movement. There is a stigma that electronic works are overly academic, but _Forêt profonde_ is anything but that. I did not have a translation of the text with me, so I do not know how much 'meaning' I missed out on (my guess is not very much). I read that Dhomont was a student of Koechlin and Boulanger (which French composer _wasn't!_), so I wonder if any of those influences made their way into his computer-generated music. I have not listened to enough Koechlin to answer that myself. Either way, it was an enjoyable experience and can see this work being regarded highly many years from now.


----------



## tortkis

Dhomont: Forêt profonde - (sorry for delay...) A fantastic sound collage of electronic effects, catchy melodies, musique concrete, raw & manipulated voices. I used to avoid spoken word but it is no longer a problem with me. Each foreign language has its own rhythm, timbre, color, and a good narrator can make it very musical. I wonder if the sound which is like squeaking wooden door is an homage to Shaeffer/Henry. The last minute of the AAC file I have may be corrupted - there is an abrupt digital noise (it exists in the youtube video too), but I imagine it could be a part of the work.

Gubaidulina: Jetzt immer Schnee - The beginning is magical. The repeated short motif creates a mysterious, ritualistic mood. There are upsurges and intense bursts of the choir and the orchestra, but overall impressions are static and monochrome, not in a negative sense. Gubaidulina has been a difficult composer to me, but I feel the music is worth repeated listening.


----------



## Enthusiast

What's next? 

Hopefully it will have 15 characters.


----------



## Art Rock

According to the schedule linked to in the first post: 
Boulez: Sur Incises (1996-1998)


----------



## 20centrfuge

Here is the schedule for quick reference:

*SCHEDULE*

3/1 20centrfuge - Ades
3/8 Enthusiast - Benjamin
3/15 Portamento - Nono
3/22 Trout - Dhomont
3/29 Art Rock - Gubaidulina
4/5 mmsbls - Boulez
4/12 Ravn - Penderecki/Nystedt
4/19 Phil loves classical - Arnold
4/26 Kjetil Heggelund - Ferneyhough/Kurtag
5/3 Super Tonic - Johnston
5/10 Blancrocher - Carter 
5/17 BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist - Takemitsu
5/24 calvinpv - Manoury
5/31 tortkis - Gann
6/7 PeterfromLA - Berio
6/14 Enthusiast - Birtwistle
6/21 Art Rock - Sallinen
6/28 Portamento - Xenakis
7/5 Trout - Vivier
7/12 mmsbls - Murail
7/19 Ravn - Rautavaara
7/26 Phil loves classical - Ligeti
8/2 Kjetil Heggelund - Saariaho
8/9 Super Tonic - Corigliano
8/16 calvinpv - Rihm
8/23 20centrfuge - Maxwell Davies
8/30 Blancrocher - Lutoslawski
9/6 BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist - Messiaen
9/13 tortkis - Garland
9/20 PeterfromLA - Schnittke


----------



## calvinpv

I've listened to _Jetzt immer Schnee_ three times during the week, and despite its alien sound world, there was something about its overarching structure that sounded so familiar but I couldn't put my finger on. Then it hit me today: this piece is almost structured like a cantata. You have in the first movement (that is, the first movement on the CD) an opening chorus singing in polyphony. The third movement is like an aria for solo alto with an accompanying choir and the minimalist use of the instruments acts as a sort of basso continuo; the preceding second movement is like an instrumental introduction to the aria. The fourth movement opens with unsung speaking by a tenor -- a recitative? And in what follows, the choir sings in unison, like what you see in a chorale. It's only the fifth movement that hard to pin down, so maybe this cantata analogy isn't really appropriate. But this is what I keep hearing.

As far as liking it, I'll admit that Gubaidulina is a difficult composer for me. I've probably listened to a dozen of her works, but I only care for two of them, _Canticle of the Sun_ and _Fachwerk_. The rest of them aren't bad but they're too monochrome for my tastes. They either evoke overly bleak, murky colors or overly radiant, bright colors. Sometimes you get both in one piece, but never anything in between, at least from my perspective. I'm not sure how else to explain it, nor am I sure why this feeling arises. Just reading her wiki page, it seems like she loves to make strong contrasts between thick tone clusters and harmonics, so maybe this is the reason. But as far as the present work is concerned, I did like the opening movement and the layering of the melodic line by the choir. I also liked the third movement and how the choir and the instruments seemed to be echoing and enlarging fragments of the alto solo. The other movements were alright but not as memorable.

Overall, a solid piece that has given me some more appreciation of Gubaidulina's music, though I'm still not at the point of "liking" it.


----------



## 20centrfuge

*Boulez: Sur Incises (1996-1998)*

_submitted by mmsbls _


----------



## mmsbls

*Boulez: Sur Incises*

Sur Incises is a chamber work for 3 pianos, 3 harps, and 3 pitched percussion instruments. Boulez originally composed Incises for piano and wanted to expand it into a larger work similar to a concerto. Ultimately, he decided against a concerto and produced a work for the 9 instruments.

I struggled to hear Sur Incises in a pleasurable way until I heard a video with Boulez discussing the work as the ensemble played portions of it. Unfortunately, I can't find that video on youtube, but I think one can view it here on Medici TV (maybe only in French).

I love how the various figures or gestures flit about from instrument to instrument throughout the work. The figures are often played very fast, yet to me, the work does not seem frenetic. The instrumentation is interesting with harps and percussion along with the pianos. This is the first work of Boulez's that I learned to enjoy, and it opened up many other of his works.

I own the CD on Deutsche Grammophon by Ensemble intercontemporain with Messagesquisse and Anthemes 2.

Here is a youtube video performed by Ensemble intercontemporain.


----------



## 20centrfuge

Reading that helps me a lot, mmsbls, because I have generally struggled with Boulez. I have managed to listen to this piece twice so far over this last week and I can tell it has some potential for me though it has still been a fairly difficult listen. I get more engaged towards the end of the first movement and through most of the second. I have a feeling that the links you have shared will help me, as also, will seeing a performance (while I hear it).

I admit that sometimes I have thought, "Well maybe I'm not smart enough to like Boulez" or I have even thought "Boulez had so much clout and power in the industry, that even though his music is purely intellectual, he could intimidate people who don't 'get it' into saying it's the real deal."

I hesitate to even acknowledge either of those thoughts, cuz someone will surely be angry with me because of them. After all, who am I to judge? Someone else could say that about Messiaen, and I adore Messiaen. It's all in the ears of the beholder, right?

Anyhoo, I'm going to keep my mind and ears open and explore your links above. Thanks mmsbls.


----------



## Phil loves classical

I like the work. For me it's sensual, the way a lot of Debussy strikes me. Looking further, it may be because it is based on a musical cryptogram, which drives certain tone colours.


----------



## calvinpv

Pierre Boulez is my favorite composer and this might be one of my favorite pieces by him (_Répons_ beats it out by a hair). There is something about the obsessive nature of his music that draws you in; his music (especially his late music) is like a swirling vortex centered around a single idea that sucks you in to its inner logic and throws you around in the Platonic realm from one perspective to the next of a single musical essence. Few works outside of Boulez's oeuvre have had this type of sway over me; off the top of my head, only Wolfgang Rihm's _Jagden und Formen_ (I've nominated the Rihm to this listening group for this precise reason) and Enno Poppe's _Speicher_ have reached such Boulez-ian heights for me.

I think a lot people get confused by the late Boulez because they see his music from this time as simply a retreat from the so-called "dogmatic" worldview of serialism, and viewed from this narrow lens, pieces like _Répons_ and _... explosante fixe ..._ and _Sur Incises_ just come off as atmospheric and pretty uses of orchestral color. But from what I've been able to read about the music, this couldn't be further from the truth. In these late works, Boulez is still using all of the serialist techniques and transformations from his early days; the only difference, from what I can tell, is that he's not using actual 12-tone rows. In nearly all of his late works from _Répons_ on, Boulez is using serialist techniques on a now famous 6-note sequence called the SACHER-hexachord, a musical cryptogram named after Paul Sacher, a wealthy patron of contemporary music ([Eb, A, C, B, E, D] or "eS, A, C, H, E, Re" in German). And the atmospheric quality of his music, with it heavy use of percussion, quick runs followed by suspended notes, and peculiar use of doubling up instruments on the same musical gestures: this could be traced back to his close relations to the IRCAM institution. Remember, serialism isn't the apex of musical civilization; much has been discovered since then, and the IRCAM at the time was the hotbed for live electronic manipulations and the emerging spectral movement. Boulez is no spectralist, but you can certainly hear distant influences of spectralism in his late works.

As far as _Sur Incises_ is concerned, I've been reading this paper (see here) about its construction. I'm only about 40% finished, but let me summarize what I've learned.

Boulez originally wrote a 2-minute piano piece called _Incises_ in 1994 for a piano competition. In 1996, he expands this solo work into a roughly 10-minute work for 3 pianos, 3 harps, and 3 percussionists (now part 1 of _Sur Incises_, which in French could be translated as "On _Incises_"). In 1998, Boulez revises _Sur Incises_, adding what is now part 2 of the final work. Finally, in 2001, Boulez reverse engineers from the now 2-part _Sur Incises_ a 10-minute long revision of _Incises_, which is also now in 2 parts. The key takeaway is that one should listen to both _Incises_ and _Sur Incises_ together to get the full appreciation of each.

When I say that _Sur Incises_ "expands" _Incises_, I mean that Boulez is refracting through a prism all of the musical gestures of _Incises_ into their basic constituent elements as well as all of their alternate possibilities. Some people even believe that the piano itself is getting refracted into its basic elements of sound production. The keyboard of the piano remains the piano (though multiplied by 3), the strings of the piano become the harps, and the soundboard of the piano becomes the percussion (marimba, vibraphone, bells, etc). Whatever the interpretation, one thing is clear is that refracting the music of _Incises_ will put a limit on the structure of _Sur Incises_. Specifically, notions of opposition between musical parts and responsorial (key ideas in _Répons_) are absent and what we get instead is heterophony and variation between musical parts. The ensemble is like a 9-headed hydra of a single musical source; in fact, it might be more appropriate to call the ensemble one super instrument.

To give an example of this refraction idea, take the very first gesture in the 1994 version of _Incises_ (the first two seconds of the first video below). This gesture consists of a 5-note appoggiatura followed by a sustained fermata on an F. These 6 notes (C, D, Eb, F, F#, G) together make up a SACHER-hexachord (not _the_ SACHER hexachord that I mentioned earlier; Boulez takes the original and transposes it up 3 semitones). Now suppose we were to rotate the SACHER-hexachord around F such that we get all of the forms of the hexachord that involve an F. We would get

[C, D, Eb, F, F#, G] <-- the one that opens _Incises_
[D, E, F, G, G#, A]
[Eb, F, F#, G#, A, Bb]
[F, G, G#, Bb, B, C]
[Bb, C, C#, Eb, E, F]
[B, C#, D, E, F, F#]

Why rotate around F? Because Boulez probably thought that fermata on the F sounded nice and he wanted to preserve it while refracting the chord into all of its possibilities in _Sur Incises_. And that is what he did. In _Sur Incises_, he multiplies that opening gesture 21 times across the three pianos, which makes up the first 45 seconds in the third video below. The first 18 iterations of the gesture use one of the six hexachords I listed above, all with the fermata on the F. The final 3 iterations are simultaneous by all three pianos and they all play the original one in _Incises_. It's as if Boulez is testing out all of the different potential forms of the gesture before finally settling on the one found in _Incises_. It's as if Boulez is notating out in _Sur Incises_ all the latent thought processes that he had at one time or another when composing _Incises_. 2 seconds becomes 45 seconds. Refraction at work.

You can read the score here.

Below is, in order, the 1994 version of _Incises_, its 2001 revision, and the final version of _Sur Incises_.


----------



## Art Rock

*Boulez: Sur Incises
*
Although I have six Boulez CD's, he is a composer I sometimes have problems connecting with, aside from a few usual suspects such as Pli selon pli, Explosante fixe, and Le marteau sans maitre. One of these six CD's is the one mmsbls mentioned that has the currently featured work on it. Here we go.

Right from reading the work's description, I recall why I had some reservations on this work - the piano is not exactly my favourite instrument in contemporary music, and this features three of them on a total of nine instruments. Upon listening again, that feeling is still there. I feel the rather percussive piano sounds dominate too much - I can't even hear the harps at all lots of the time (or maybe they have little to do...), but I love the marimba sounds (one of my favourite instruments). I usually scribble some notes as I listen to a work for these types of threads, and around the 7 minutes mark I wrote "Messiaen on speed?". For me composers like Boulez are still firmly rooted in the continuous development over the years, in this case from Debussy via Messiaen to Boulez. The second part starts of more promising with the tuned percussion taking over more of a shared lead, but pretty soon the piano starts dominating again. I do find the second part more varied than the first, with some more quiet moments and even passages that reminded me somewhat of gamelan music. All in all, I like the longer second part clearly better.

In spite of some reservations, it was good to hear this work again. In terms of ranking, it comes in at the lower end of the "desirable" range.

Artorockometer: 4/6 "desirable", I like to have it in my CD collection.


----------



## tortkis

Boulez: Sur Incises (Oeuvres complètes, DG)
Compared with his complex and abstract early works, this is much more listenable and entertaining. The 1st section could be a good soundtrack of a suspenseful film. Not sure if it is due to this performance, the music sounds a bit rigid and blatant. The 2nd part is more interesting. It has moments that give feelings of spontaneity. (After listening to this work, I got the urge to listen to the piano sonata no. 2. Brilliant.)


----------



## Enthusiast

Sur Incises is a work I enjoy a lot. On one level it is music that seems uncomplicated and easy enough to fathom. Indeed, initially it seems no more challenging or avant garde than Bartok. It establishes itself from the start as, in turns, a beguiling and exhilarating work of chamber music. But, it is not a short work (nearly 40 minutes) and the challenge for me as a listener (and the special rewards of the work) are to be found in what it does over time. I can't pretend to understand what Boulez does (no more than I can discern what Haydn does in a symphony) but it does take me on a journey of sorts and I am in a different place from where I started. I will try to post more after trying to consciously track what Boulez does over time (a rather alien approach to music for me) but until then I can just say that it satisfies and never seems over-long.


----------



## Phil loves classical

Enthusiast said:


> Sur Incises is a work I enjoy a lot. On one level it is music that seems uncomplicated and easy enough to fathom. Indeed, initially it seems no more challenging or avant garde than Bartok. It establishes itself from the start as, in turns, a beguiling and exhilarating work of chamber music. But, it is not a short work (nearly 40 minutes) and the challenge for me as a listener (and the special rewards of the work) are to be found in what it does over time. I can't pretend to understand what Boulez does (no more than I can discern what Haydn does in a symphony) but it does take me on a journey of sorts and I am in a different place from where I started. I will try to post more after trying to consciously track what Boulez does over time (a rather alien approach to music for me) but until then I can just say that it satisfies and never seems over-long.


A bit off-topic, but I've always found Bartok and Prokofiev as the epitome of 'out-there' in that their rules have more conventional or traditional implications, but they go way beyond those bounds. With dodecaphony and serialism, the playing ground is already more convoluted, and I feel those composers are actually trying to gear the music to make more sense. As if both camps are building a bridge from the opposite sides of the same river.


----------



## 20centrfuge

Phil loves classical said:


> A bit off-topic, but I've always found Bartok and Prokofiev as the epitome of 'out-there' in that their rules have more conventional or traditional implications, but they go way beyond those bounds. With dodecaphony and serialism, the playing ground is already more convoluted, and I feel those composers are actually trying to gear the music to make more sense. As if both camps are building a bridge from the opposite sides of the same river.


I love that analogy. It also makes me think, because Prokofiev and Bartok are two of my very favorite composers and I quite like Wolfgang Rihm, who seems to, as you say - attempt to build the bridge back to tonality from the dodecaphonic side.


----------



## Portamento

It's true that composers in Boulez's generation started to move away from "pure" serialism in the early '60s. I think they found out pretty quickly that it's impossible for an audience to parse what is going on without a score in their hands. Many pieces from this era are (to my ears at least) important artifacts more than they are 'enjoyable' experiences. From _Le Marteau_ onwards, Boulez started to add more coloristic and evocative aspects to his music. In my view, this was for the better.


----------



## 20centrfuge

*Penderecki: Song of the Cherubim (1986)

&

Nystedt: Immortal Bach (1988)*

_submitted by Ravn_

next week: Arnold - Symphony No.9


----------



## Portamento

I liked both works but didn't find them particularly memorable. (Perhaps this is because I am not a religious person.) Penderecki's tribute to the Russian Orthodox tradition is similar to Schnittke's choral works--I'm not too familiar with Penderecki post-1970s, but the latter's _Penitential Psalms_ and _Concerto for Choir_ are profound and beautiful. I gave Penderecki's neo-Romantic works another try following his passing, but to me most are overlong and boring after a while.


----------



## Ravn

*Nystedt: Immortal Bach. *

Knut Nystedt is a Norwegian composer most known for his choral music. He studied composition under Aaron Copland

Immortal Bach is quite famous and often performed in Norway. The idea of the piece is quite simple: The chorale (written by Bach) is first sung as it is written, and then the choir is split into five equally sized choirs which then sings the chorale again, but in five different tempi. This makes for some really interesting harmonies, which totally blew my mind the first time I heard it (it was the first piece of "modern" classical music I heard, which I found by complete accident), and in particular, the last chord is held for so long that the attack of the human voice dissappears, which in my ears makes the choir almost sound like an organ. It is still one of my favorite pieces, and to me it is still as haunting today as the first time I heard it.

It has to be said that Nystedt insisted on calling this piece an _arrangement_, and not a composition. 
As the piece is very short I will include the sheet music









_Instructions: 
1. Sing the choral once as written.

2. Then: All begin on 'Komm' and sustain the chord for 4 seconds, and - without a break - sing the first 2 measures according to the following scheme: Some hold each quarter-note 4 seconds, others: 6, 8, 10 and 12 seconds. (Divide Sopranos, Alt, Tenors and Basses in 5 in each group)

3. When you get to 'Tod', sustain your note until all are singing their note on 'Tod'.

4. Sopranos begin 2nd phrase, holding the Eb for 4 seconds before alt, tenors and basses enter simultaneously, and everyone sings the 2nd phrase according to the scheme, sustaining your note on 'Ruh' until all are singing their note on 'Ruh'.

5. All begin measure 5 together and sing according to the scheme, holding the final note until all are singing their note on '-de'. The chord will be sustained with the fermata.

6. Scale the dynamics: Begin with pp and increase to forte by measure 5. Then begin a gradual decrescendo, ending the piece in pianissimo. The piece will take approximately 5 minutes._

My recommended recording is with Ensemble 96 on the CD _Immortal Nystedt_. If you like this kind of music the CD in its entirety is extremely enjoyable (the rest of the pieces are original compositions and not arrangements). The performance by The Norwegian Soloists' Choir (which you can find on Idagio) is also very good. Nystedt does also have quite a few larger pieces for orchestra. I like in particular _Apocalypsis Joannis_, which you can find on CD with the Oslo Philharmonic.






*Penderecki: Song of the Cherubim*

Penderecki is a well-known composer that I believe does not need an introduction on this forum. _Song of the Cherubim_ is one of his later, tonal pieces. I discovered this the same day as I heard "Threnody for the victims of Hiroshima" for the first time, and I remember I was both relieved and dissappointed in that it was tonal after the assault Threnody made on my ears. Later on, when I became more and more interested in choral music, I rediscovered this piece and its beauty really clicked with me. My favorite recording is made by _Lege Artis Chamber Choir_.






Both pieces are quite tonal, made by tonal composers that still manage to sound quite "modern". I chose these two pieces for their tonality, since I believed that tonal composers should be represented in a listening group of this kind as well as the more atonal pieces other participants have included. These two pieces may not be masterworks (although I believe they are) on the same level as many of the other pieces included in this group, but they are both quite enjoyable and should be included in any collection of modern classical music.

I look forward to reading you thoughts.


----------



## Ravn

Portamento said:


> I liked both works but didn't find them particularly memorable. (*Perhaps this is because I am not a religious person.*) Penderecki's tribute to the Russian Orthodox tradition is similar to Schnittke's choral works--I'm not too familiar with Penderecki post-1970s, but the latter's _Penitential Psalms_ and _Concerto for Choir_ are profound and beautiful. I gave Penderecki's neo-Romantic works another try following his passing, but to me most are overlong and boring after a while.


Neither am I, but I don't see how that is relevant. There is a lot of very religious music that everyone may enjoy irregardless of religious views, for example _all_ compositions by Messiaen. Or did I misinterpret your point?


----------



## Enthusiast

Portamento said:


> It's true that composers in Boulez's generation started to move away from "pure" serialism in the early '60s. I think they found out pretty quickly *that it's impossible for an audience to parse what is going on without a score in their hands.* Many pieces from this era are (to my ears at least) important artifacts more than they are 'enjoyable' experiences. From _Le Marteau_ onwards, Boulez started to add more coloristic and evocative aspects to his music. In my view, this was for the better.


Probably because I can't read music I am not sure what you mean when you say audiences found it "impossible ... to parse what is going on" in serial music. You may be right but I think it is now fairly common for audiences these days to listen to early serialist music with pleasure. I'm also a bit baffled by your saying that the Boulez of Sur Incises is less enjoyable (and even less coloured) than later works. Could you expand on these points a little?


----------



## calvinpv

Enthusiast said:


> Probably because I can't read music I am not sure what you mean when you say audiences found it "impossible ... to parse what is going on" in serial music. You may be right but I think it is now fairly common for audiences these days to listen to early serialist music with pleasure. I'm also a bit baffled by your saying that the Boulez of Sur Incises is less enjoyable (and even less coloured) than later works. Could you expand on these points a little?


To add to your point, I also don't think it was the audiences themselves that prompted the '50s composers to move away from serialism; I think the composers did it of their own volition, often for theoretical reasons. Stockhausen, for example, begin to notice in pieces such as Messiaen's _Quatre études de rythme_, Babbitt's _Composition for 12 Instruments_, or even his own early _Klavierstücke_ that flattening out harmony, rhythm, dynamics, and duration created an undifferentiated mass of music, leading listeners to read false patterns into the music. Stockhausen called this "point music" (after the artistic movement pointillism), and he responded to it with "group music" where groups of notes would share some sort of cohesion or identity. But then you have composers like Xenakis who _doubled down_ on point music by claiming that true point music can only be achieved through the use of mathematical models, not serialist methods.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that:

1. "pure serialism" really has no meaning. There are, in fact, many different types of serialism that use different combinations of techniques. In fact, though it was written in 1996, I'd call _Sur Incises_ a serialist work of sorts. The only thing that really unites all of these different flavors is an explicit desire to avoid tonality.
2. you can "move away" from serialism and still have incredibly complicated music. Xenakis is a great example of this.
3. Saying that "it's impossible to parse what is going on" was precisely the end goal of early serialism, or point music in Stockhausen's terminology.


----------



## Art Rock

*Nystedt: Immortal Bach.
*
New? Yes, never even heard the name before. I like the concept to reach back to Bach over many centuries and give the material a distinctive modern treatment. It worked for me, I found the resulting sounds interesting and at this length of course it does not outstay its welcome. I'll give it another listen in a few days.


----------



## Portamento

Ravn said:


> Neither am I, but I don't see how that is relevant. There is a lot of very religious music that everyone may enjoy irregardless of religious views, for example _all_ compositions by Messiaen. Or did I misinterpret your point?


You're right, it's not relevant. I have been able to connect with some religious music more than other, but then that's the same for secular music.



Enthusiast said:


> I'm also a bit baffled by your saying that the Boulez of Sur Incises is less enjoyable (and even less coloured) than later works. Could you expand on these points a little?


I said that the music became more colored from _Le Marteau_, composed in 1955, onward. If I'm not mistaken, _Sur incises_ was composed much later in the '90s.



calvinpv said:


> To add to your point, I also don't think it was the audiences themselves that prompted the '50s composers to move away from serialism; I think the composers did it of their own volition, often for theoretical reasons. Stockhausen, for example, begin to notice in pieces such as Messiaen's _Quatre études de rythme_, Babbitt's _Composition for 12 Instruments_, or even his own early _Klavierstücke_ that flattening out harmony, rhythm, dynamics, and duration created an undifferentiated mass of music, leading listeners to read false patterns into the music. Stockhausen called this "point music" (after the artistic movement pointillism), and he responded to it with "group music" where groups of notes would share some sort of cohesion or identity. But then you have composers like Xenakis who _doubled down_ on point music by claiming that true point music can only be achieved through the use of mathematical models, not serialist methods.
> 
> I guess the point I'm trying to make is that:
> 
> 1. "pure serialism" really has no meaning. There are, in fact, many different types of serialism that use different combinations of techniques. In fact, though it was written in 1996, I'd call _Sur Incises_ a serialist work of sorts. The only thing that really unites all of these different flavors is an explicit desire to avoid tonality.
> 2. you can "move away" from serialism and still have incredibly complicated music. Xenakis is a great example of this.
> 3. Saying that "it's impossible to parse what is going on" was precisely the end goal of early serialism, or point music in Stockhausen's terminology.


Very informative post. Could you expand on point #3? The idea that serialism's goal was to confuse its audience is new to me.


----------



## Phil loves classical

I thought the Penderecki was a lot more interesting than the Nystedt. The Nystedt seemed to be all about sustained sonorities, without much movement between voices, and to me switches between sounding either traditional or very dissonant. I suspect he is overlapping certain chords together. I wonder how many pitches he has at the most dense moment (suspect close to all 12).

The Penderecki between the 5:30 to 6:20 marks was unbelievably intense, clearly the climax of the piece. This is clearly my favourite piece/work so far presented.


----------



## calvinpv

Portamento said:


> Very informative post. Could you expand on point #3? The idea that serialism's goal was to confuse its audience is new to me.


Sorry, I should've been clearer. You're right, the goal wasn't to confuse audiences -- at least, not in a sort of haughty, elitist way (Boulez's antics aside). But the goal was, as far as I can tell from the couple of books I've read, to remove any semblance of relationships between notes, to remove any functional roles for chords or note sequences (i.e. melodies), to remove any rhythmic patterns, etc. Key word, of course, is "semblance" because there were still relationships within the music, it's just that the relations were based on set-theoretic operations (retrograde, inversion, retrograde-inversion are basic ones) that can't be immediately understood by just listening.

You could say that Schoenberg's 12-tone method (where only notes were serialized) was already achieving this to a degree, but Schoenberg wasn't thinking in these terms yet; it took someone like Boulez and Stockhausen to see the "violent" and "irrational" potential in 12-tone music and expand the method to include not just serialized notes but also serialized durations, dynamics, register, articulation, etc ("violent" and "irrational" are Boulez's own terms).

I think you know all of this already, judging from other posts of yours I've read in the past. But I think we need to subtly shift the way we _frame_ this information. Instead of viewing techniques like retrograde inversion, derived sets, or chord multiplication as attempts to turn away an audience, I think we need to view them on their own terms, as an artistic movement in its own right. And from my own experience, one interesting result from this change in viewpoints is to recognize that there are multiple variants of so-called "serialism" (my first bullet point in the previous post). The variations are really subtle, and I'm not knowledgable enough to talk about them at length, but they're there. For example, compare Stockhausen's very first _Klavierstuck_ to one of his later ones. They're both serialist, yet they sound so different.


----------



## 20centrfuge

I've enjoyed both works. I really like the recording Ravn suggests with Ensemble 96 of the Nystedt arrangement. Much credit of course goes to Bach for writing such a beautiful chorale.

I think it also bears noting that the Nystedt arrangement seems to be immensely popular (based on the number of ad hoc video recordings on youtube of different groups doing it). This can only be a good thing for contemporary classical music. If nothing else, it teaches people how delicious dissonance can be. Though with the Nystedt the dissonance is ALWAYS resolved, people could easily see that a perfect harmonic resolution is not necessarily needed to still have great music.

Regarding the Penderecki, I haven't sat down to really listen to the differences between the standard Russian Orthodox version of the hymn and Penderecki's version. Is there a significant difference?


----------



## Allegro Con Brio

A little late, but I wanted to report another big revelation for me with contemporary music. This afternoon I put on the Boulez _Sur Incises_ just for the heck of it since I saw it here. Inexplicably and delightfully, I found myself utterly gripped by the music. The colors and timbres were amazingly pleasing and even moving, and I sat through 10 minutes of it without realizing any time had passed. Dare I say it, this is _ravishing_ music, music that makes me want to lose myself in its universe. Even though I did think the length was a barrier and didn't get to listen through the whole thing, I enjoyed the second movement even more. So far, this and the other Boulez works I've heard (Repons and Le Marteau) have not been even close to the level of inaccessibility that I had heard they would be (though I understand that they're more coloristic and less obtuse than his earlier "total serialist" stuff). I'm just excited that I experienced such a wonderful reaction to such music. I still can't commit to being a regular participant in this thread, but I will listen to as many of the weekly selections as I can, and will be reporting back tomorrow on the Nystedt and Penderecki


----------



## Portamento

calvinpv said:


> I think you know all of this already, judging from other posts of yours I've read in the past. But I think we need to subtly shift the way we _frame_ this information. Instead of viewing techniques like retrograde inversion, derived sets, or chord multiplication as attempts to turn away an audience, I think we need to view them on their own terms, as an artistic movement in its own right. And from my own experience, one interesting result from this change in viewpoints is to recognize that there are multiple variants of so-called "serialism" (my first bullet point in the previous post). The variations are really subtle, and I'm not knowledgable enough to talk about them at length, but they're there. For example, compare Stockhausen's very first _Klavierstuck_ to one of his later ones. They're both serialist, yet they sound so different.


Thanks for clarifying -- I see what you mean regarding Stockhausen. As for the techniques you list, I don't view them as attempts to turn away audiences, but their over-formalization certainly had that unintended effect. After all, there was a strongly _implied_ hierarchy of composer-performer-audience. Deep divisions between these parties is a main reason why classical music is not a commercial force anymore. Then there are the elitist statements: Berio once said that improvisation is "a haven for dilettantes" who "normally act on the level of instrumental praxis rather than musical thought"; and the late Wuorinen saw himself as a protector of "high" culture (whatever that means).

EDIT: sorry for bleeding last week's discussion into this week!


----------



## Art Rock

*Penderecki: Song of the Cherubim
*
Not a new composer for me (I have over 20 CDs), but somehow this particular composition is not on any of them. I do not have a clear preference for early or late Penderecki - my two favourite works from his oeuvre are _Threnody for the victims of Hiroshima_ and _Symphony 6 'Chinese songs'_. I found the selected _Song of the Cherubim_ not surprising in its sounds, a bit like Ligeti meets Pärt, but I'd prefer either the complexity of the first or the serenity of the second. The louder section for male voices around the 6 minutes mark disturbs me a bit. Perhaps this would work better for me in a live concert. I'll try again in a few days.


----------



## calvinpv

I just listened to the Penderecki, for the first time in a couple of years. At the time, I just dismissed it as a piece Penderecki churned out for a quick commission. But listening now, it's not bad. I particularly like the rhythm of the middle section. It basically has all of the eighth note figurations end on a weak beat, so it sounds like all of the individual words trail off at the end without any resolution. You can't really hear it in Ravn's video above. Here's another video that captures that rhythm beautifully.

By the way, here's the text of the work (taken from the score):

Let us the cherubim mystically representing,
and unto the life-giving Trinity
the thriceholy chant intoning,
now lay aside all earthly care;
That we may raise on the King of all,
by the angelic hosts invisibly attended,
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.


----------



## Allegro Con Brio

I heard the Nystedt and Penderecki yesterday. They were both wonderful choral pieces full of beauty, originality, and spirituality. Nystedt sure does some great things with that Bach chorale - unmistakably modern harmonies, but very easy on the untrained ear. I'd like to see him do similar things with other Bach pieces! The Penderecki, however, was the more substantial work and, for me, the greater one. I'm not very familiar with his music outside of the terrifying but strangely beautiful St. Luke Passion. This represents a radical change in his language from that work. Mystical, meandering, but ravishing harmonies; great polyphony, and a smashing climax. It definitely made me want to explore more from his "neo-Romantic" period. Thanks, Ravn, for nominating these two tonal pieces - I do think it's important for people to know that not all contemporary music has to be atonal and hard for people raised on more "traditional" music to understand. These were perfect examples of how modernism can produce beautiful, colorful music within all sorts of harmonic idioms. I'll try to keep listening...I've only heard a couple weeks' worth of nominations, but it's been really illuminating for me so far. I may feel somewhat out of place here as someone who is slowly adjusting to contemporary music, but lately I've discovered that keeping an open mind has many merits


----------



## Art Rock

I listened to both pieces again, but came away with the same feeling. Time to apply the artrockometer:

Nystedt: 3/6 "take it or leave it", OK for my CD collection, OK if not.
Penderecki: 2/6 "not required", I don't need this.


----------



## Portamento

Can someone recommend me favorite Penderecki compositions from the last 20 years? In my opinion, by this point he had become self-satisfied and was just going through the motions. Subtitles such as "Resurrection" and "Winterreise" strike me as gimmicky, and there is nothing in the music that I couldn't find in, say, Shostakovich. I keep returning to the (late) neo-Romantic works in search of an epiphany because I love his earlier stuff so much, but it just never happens.


----------



## Art Rock

My absolute favourite is Symphony 6 'Chinese songs'.


----------



## calvinpv

Portamento said:


> Can someone recommend me favorite Penderecki compositions from the last 20 years? In my opinion, by this point he had become self-satisfied and was just going through the motions. Subtitles such as "Resurrection" and "Winterreise" strike me as gimmicky, and there is nothing in the music that I couldn't find in, say, Shostakovich. I keep returning to the (late) neo-Romantic works in search of an epiphany because I love his earlier stuff so much, but it just never happens.


I agree, for the most part, Penderecki has been phoning it in for a few decades now, not because of his neo-Romanticism per se (I don't have a problem with that) but because he literally recycles material from one work to the next. There's one musical gesture in particular that I keep hearing over and over, where an instrument will ascend upwards on a part of the chromatic scale and will then jump up an octave to finish up the remainder of the scale by descending downwards. For the longest time, I thought this was a musical cryptogram, but the more I listened, the more I realized that Penderecki was just being lazy.

With that said, there are a couple of works where the "gimmick" works: the 3rd symphony and the sextet. The symphony is a pretty cohesive work by Penderecki standards, using an ostinato figure as its basic motif throughout (it's the very first thing you hear).

And then you have three beautiful song cycles that don't really sound like any of the other late works. They sound like a hybrid between Szymanowski's late choral/vocal works and Abrahamsen's _let me tell you_ (I know, a weird combo, but that's what I hear).

Symphony No. 6
Symphony No. 8
A sea of dreams did breathe on me ...


----------



## tortkis

I have been listening to Nystedt's Immortal Bach repeatedly during this week. The extended voices in different tempos create intriguing ethereal harmonies. The music gives feelings of stillness and immortality. I imagine it would become a beautiful drone if the work is expanded to 30 min, 1 hour or even longer.


----------



## Enthusiast

The Penderecki is an attractive piece. The Nystedt is a novelty.


----------



## mmsbls

I've heard Immortal Bach several times now. I think it's fun to hear and mildly attractive, and the mixture of harmonies sounds interesting for awhile. But after a few listens, I'm not really interested any more, and the piece no longer does much for me.

Song of the Cherubim is more enjoyable and more interesting for me. I enjoy quite a few Penderecki works, and although this would not be one of my favorites, I've added it to my list of works to possibly get.


----------



## 20centrfuge

*Arnold: Symphony No. 9, Op. 128 (1986)*

_submitted by Phil loves classical_

next week: Ferneyhough & Kurtag


----------



## Phil loves classical

Arnold described the symphony as the story of his life. He said he'd been through hell in the period before he wrote the symphony, struggling with alcoholism and depression. He also intended it to be his last work. In the last movement, he said he wanted it to fade into infinity (can't find the source now). His music was not considered in with the times, being labelled as Romantic by some.


----------



## mikeh375

^^^If I'm not mistaken Phil, I think Arnold was sectioned under the Mental Health Act whilst writing this. I think the staff let him go to his flat each day to compose it. This, amusingly, is the work that also calls for a piccolo which plays one note only....in the moment before the final chord of the whole work.


----------



## Phil loves classical

Here's a more detailed biography of Arnold. According to this, he began the 9th symphony on his carer's birthday in 1986, while out of the hospital.

https://corymbus.co.uk/malcolm-arnold-a-life-in-symphonies/


----------



## 20centrfuge

Phil loves classical said:


> Here's a more detailed biography of Arnold. According to this, he began the 9th symphony on his carer's birthday in 1986, while out of the hospital.
> 
> https://corymbus.co.uk/malcolm-arnold-a-life-in-symphonies/


That is a wonderful article, well worth the hour or so that it took to read. I didn't realize he had such a battle with alcoholism and mental illness. I did some quick research and read that at one point he was diagnosed with schizophrenia, but it seems his major psychological diagnosis was bipolar disorder and depression.

I worked as a nurse in a psychiatric unit for 6 months. It gave me some experience with individuals with all sorts of mental illness. Alcoholism is rampant with the mentally ill. It serves as a sort of pain reliever for them, though it always makes matters worse as it obscures their treatment, complicates and damages relationships, and serves as a highway to severe depression.

I find the life of Malcolm Arnold to be interesting, tragic, and touching. It seems that his symphonies form a biography of his life. The ninth symphony is dedicated to his caregiver, a young, very patient nurse, and was written, as stated above, in the midst of depression with a rear view of a long life, with all of its pain and difficulties.

The article also touches on the chasm between his works and the approval of the establishment that was very pro avant-garde. They dismissed his music -- too romantic, too simple. It seems this lack of approval tore at him. I think anyone composing tonal music in the second half of the 20th century faced criticism to different degrees. Ironically, contemporary composers of tonal music face less criticism now than they did 50 years ago.

Lastly, I have to say that I'm very much looking forward to getting to know this symphony. I gave it a quick cursory listen, but I will live with it for the next few days to try to really understand what Arnold has to say.

I am a huge fan of his symphony no. 5 and I feel like it is one of the unsung gems of the 20th century. His brass quintet is also, IMHO, the greatest work for brass quintet ever composed (which probably isn't the most amazing compliment, given the magnitude of the repertoire, but still... :lol

Thank you, Phil


----------



## 20centrfuge

I've listened to it a bunch. There are good things about this piece though I don't think it is Arnold's finest work. It is clear that he is a gifted tune-smith, but there are times in the first movement when I feel like the energy lags when it shouldn't. It feels at times unfocused. Movements 2 and 3 are ok. Movement 4 is the real heart of the work. It feels like a musical relative to Holst Planets: Saturn "Bringer of Old Age." There are moments when I get that sense and feel of being old and of having to just pass time. I'm not saying this in any negative way. I think the 4th movement is successful in invoking those feelings of waiting, of depression and determination in the face of physical and mental decay. It is a harmony driven movement and I enjoy the harmonic tensions and resolutions.

After this exploration, I feel like Arnold deserves more attention, at least from me. He was a very gifted composer who was very happy composing accessible tonal music. It's too bad that the critics and musical elite of his time swept him under the rug.


----------



## Art Rock

*Arnold: Symphony No. 9, Op. 128 (1986)
*
Malcolm Arnold has been one of my extended favourite composers for a few decades already. I've collected a lot of his works, including his nine symphonies. I always thought that a lot of his works were very positive (favourites include his English and Scottish dances, the Commonwealth overture, and his many concertos) and tuneful. I like his symphonies 1-8, but would rate them lower than the aforementioned works (with the possible exception of the fifth). His ninth on the other hand... it is a work I had considerable problems with over time - until it finally clicked a few years ago. My version by the way is by the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland under Andrew Penny on Naxos.

I find this work very bleak compared to his other compositions. The first movement may be marked 'vivace', but here we already have a sad undertone throughout. The allegretto does not lift the mood, but it does contain some beautiful melodies and orchestration. The scherzo (giubiloso) is the most like his other compositions, and does provide a good noisy intermezzo. Even here though, the sadness is never far under the surface.

And then we have the slow final movement, which at 23 minutes takes as long as the other three combined. Shades of Mahler's ninth, as confirmed in an interview with Arnold. But where Mahler struggles with his fate, Arnold seems to accept it, in quiet resignation.

In spite of my initial difficulties to come to terms with it, I now consider this symphony his masterpiece, and one of the best symphonies of the post-Mahler era.

Artrockometer: 6/6 "hors concours", one of about 100 most favourite compositions.


----------



## Enthusiast

I didn't like the Arnold very much. It has some attractive parts - often short enough to be called "gestures" - but a lot of it seemed rather boring. I do like some of his symphonies (and dislike others) but this seems to be one I can do without. Perhaps it is an example of how mental illness and artistic genius cannot co-exist at the same time in a person? Or perhaps it was just my mood or the performance (Andrew Penny's)? Given the strong advocacy here I find it hard to believe I am listening to the same music so I'll try again in a day or two and report back if anything changed for me.


----------



## mikeh375

20centrfuge said:


> .......................After this exploration, I feel like Arnold deserves more attention, at least from me. He was a very gifted composer who was very happy composing accessible tonal music. It's too bad that the critics and musical elite of his time swept him under the rug.


He also made a lot of enemies within the music establishment due to his oft times outrageous behaviour, often alcohol fuelled. The stories about him are legendary, often hilarious and at other times distressing and very sad. At one stage he ended up living above a pub, not a good move. The man was however a genius who could write at breakneck speed and did not need a piano to do so. I recommend his 17 concertos as there is a great deal of wonderful inventive music in them. The clarinet concerto written for Benny Goodman was done in just a few weeks and the score was left in Goodman's hotel room to surprise him, also left was a bottle of Goodman's favourite whisky.

He may have been shunned by certain parts of the establishment but he made a fortune from his film scores and would often pull out huge wads of money to buy everyone in a pub a drink.


----------



## 20centrfuge

Mikeh375: That’s very helpful information and I’ll be sure to check out the concertos.


----------



## Phil loves classical

20centrfuge said:


> I've listened to it a bunch. There are good things about this piece though I don't think it is Arnold's finest work. It is clear that he is a gifted tune-smith, but there are times in the first movement when I feel like the energy lags when it shouldn't. It feels at times unfocused. Movements 2 and 3 are ok. Movement 4 is the real heart of the work. It feels like a musical relative to Holst Planets: Saturn "Bringer of Old Age." There are moments when I get that sense and feel of being old and of having to just pass time. I'm not saying this in any negative way. I think the 4th movement is successful in invoking those feelings of waiting, of depression and determination in the face of physical and mental decay. It is a harmony driven movement and I enjoy the harmonic tensions and resolutions.
> 
> After this exploration, I feel like Arnold deserves more attention, at least from me. He was a very gifted composer who was very happy composing accessible tonal music. It's too bad that the critics and musical elite of his time swept him under the rug.


Interesting perspective. I thought the 1st movement had an incredible amount of tension. The thin parts with the woodwinds were kind of funny and uncomfortable at the same time for me, with the chromaticism weaving in an out, which suggested to me a kind of loose grip on reality (of course, only from knowing the back story). The end of the movement was pretty morose. It seemed to have a lot of sarcasm in the movement, very different from say Beethoven, who seems to wear his heart on his sleeve more, and showed a very complex personality. I really liked the 2nd movement, real nice theme and development. Kind of reminded me of Vaughan Williams. 3rd movement sounded cinematic and over the top dramatic, almost like a John Williams film score. But to think it was not intended for that, and reflected his personal life makes me glad I wasn't in his shoes. I still feel the last movement drags a bit. Real slow and a bit out of character from the previous movements, kind of overly serious to me, not to mention kind of repetitive. Also had the least amount of original material per run time. Maybe Arnold was being more openly expressive, but it didn't really work for me.


----------



## Kjetil Heggelund

Sorry I've been absent from this thread...This morning I started with the 1st mvt. but had to do this and that. Now I continued with the 2nd mvt and 4th mvt. jut started. I can't come up with a lot more to say about the symphony after reading other peoples thoughts, but I like the slow mvts. the best. I haven't heard much by Arnold before. A long time ago I heard his guitar concerto and remember it as strange music that I didn't really enjoy. This made me want to hear that again, not strange at all. At one point I was thinking if Arnold is the English equivalent to Poulenc...


----------



## Allegro Con Brio

The Arnold 9th is a very interesting symphony. My previous exposure to Arnold's music included his Scottish/English/Cornish Dances (which are some of my favorite unabashedly fun and "light" classical music) and his 5th symphony, which I just heard a couple days ago and liked quite a bit. Again I like the idea of nominating a more tonal work for this group to prove that great music can still be written in traditional idioms; so thanks for that, Phil. As for my thoughts - I enjoyed parts of it, but as a whole I thought it was quite overlong and meandering, not really reaching many satisfying resolutions. I realize that Arnold's personal circumstances had a lot to do with this symphony, so perhaps I'm being unsympathetic. It just belongs to a kind of style that I don't normally care for - late/post romantic, highly chromatic, too extended, with melody lines that are hard for me to follow (even though there were long, Prokofiev-esque melody lines I can't remember any of them). It is a symphony that I would be glad to revisit again down the road (I think I would get more out of the finale especially if I gave it more time) but for now I don't think I'm at a stage in my listening journey to spend a whole lot of time with it. I liked the 5th a lot better.

Well, it appears I've become fully immersed in this group now I took the opportunity today to listen to the previous selections which I had not heard (though not in their entirety). I found something to enjoy in all of them except the Dhomont, which to my totally uninitiated ears (uninitiated with electronic music) sounded like someone randomly pressing different sound effects on a digital keyboard. So far my favorites have been the Boulez and Penderecki. This is very exciting for me; things like this are why I enjoy this forum so much.


----------



## Enthusiast

I'm obviously missing something given the praise from normally sober members but a second listen has done little to make me feel there is much of value in the work! Sorry. It's not about tonality vs atonality - I like plenty of modern British tonal music (although this work doesn't sound like something from the 1980s) - but is just that I found little to like. Maybe another day ...


----------



## Blancrocher

Nice gloomy symphony for a dark, rainy day. Enjoyed the haunting sonorities of the opening and the long, dirge-like finale. Lots of repetition of simple gestures with hints of melodies from other composers (or maybe they're simply reflections of a common style). Very reminiscent of Shostakovich for me at many points. Decided to buy a copy to see how it wears over time.


----------



## Portamento

I don't mind tonality, but to my ears Arnold doesn't have the edge of his conservative contemporaries Shostakovitch and Britten. From my limited exposure, he is at his best in the Fifth Symphony and Guitar Concerto; this symphony, by comparison, has less memorable tunes and drags in places. 

Interestingly, Arnold's work shares a lot of common ground with Schnittke (whose String Quartet No. 2 is being discussed in another thread): there is the same potent combination of pain and grief with sarcasm and absurdity. However, I'm not convinced that Arnold does this as successfully as Schnittke. With the latter's atonal language, you get a much greater contrast between the two worlds.


----------



## calvinpv

After listening to this work three times the past week, the best way I can describe it is "flat". There's very little verticality in the melodies, the textures are thin, the dynamic range feels compressed, and there are almost no tempo changes or any rhythmic complexity. I'd hate to psychologize the composer behind the music, but given what has been said above, I can't help but do so. I don't really hear any depression or any tortured pain; I hear more resignation and lifelessness. As if Arnold was in a vegetative state -- sapped of any emotional range or personality -- when he wrote this symphony. Then again, this is the first Arnold work I've heard, so maybe this symphony is par for the course. On the whole, I'm with Enthusiast in that I didn't really find the symphony memorable or noteworthy. Of course, given the backstory and his personal circumstances, I can't really hold that against him.


----------



## 20centrfuge

calvinpv said:


> I don't really hear any depression or any tortured pain; I hear more resignation and lifelessness


depression is "resignation and lifelessness"


----------



## Enthusiast

calvinpv said:


> After listening to this work three times the past week, the best way I can describe it is "flat". There's very little verticality in the melodies, the textures are thin, the dynamic range feels compressed, and there are almost no tempo changes or any rhythmic complexity. I'd hate to psychologize the composer behind the music, but given what has been said above, I can't help but do so. I don't really hear any depression or any tortured pain; I hear more resignation and lifelessness. As if Arnold was in a vegetative state -- sapped of any emotional range or personality -- when he wrote this symphony. Then again, this is the first Arnold work I've heard, so maybe this symphony is par for the course. _On the whole, I'm with Enthusiast in that I didn't really find the symphony memorable or noteworthy._ Of course, given the backstory and his personal circumstances, I can't really hold that against him.


... but you summed up the reasons so much better than I did.


----------



## tortkis

Malcolm Arnold: Symphony No. 9
The beginning movement is intriguing. The 2nd and 3rd are less interesting, but the unusual, long and slow last movement is melodic and beautiful, reminding me of Mahler a bit. The ending sounds as if a vigorous finale were going to follow, but the music ends there quietly. I think this is a fine work. I listened to recordings of Groves (youtube) and Gamba (Chandos), both with BBC Philharmonic.


----------



## mmsbls

I had heard a number of Arnold's works but never his 9th symphony. This symphony was an interesting work to hear. I read what others had said so I did have a sense of what to expect. The first movement was probably my favorite with the second and third not making much of an impression on me. I listened to the last movement twice feeling at times bored with the plodding repetition and at other times engaged with the music. The falling phrase, although repeated throughout the movement, seems to hold it together and had me listening for it to repeat. 

The movement has been characterized as bleak, anguished, depressing, and it certainly has those aspects. I was stunned by the last few seconds where the bright, major chord creates a remarkably beautiful and serene ending. I played the last few seconds over and over. I'm really not sure what to make of the movement. Over 23 minutes of sadness with a repeated phrase that pulls one down, and suddenly a ray of fresh sunshine that lifts us up but all too briefly. 

I enjoyed the last movement more the second time, and overall I would say I enjoyed the work but not as much as some of his concertos that I quite like. 

I knew nothing about Arnold's life before reading his problems in this thread. I was rather surprised to realize that the man who was plagued with depression and other mental issues would have written one of the funniest, satirical works I've ever heard - A Grand, Grand Overture for orchestra, 3 vacuum cleaners, floor polisher, and 4 rifles. I always assumed that Arnold had a wonderful sense of humor and was rather comfortable with himself.


----------



## 20centrfuge

*Ferneyhough: Kurze Schatten II (1983-1989)

&

Kurtag: Grabstein für Stephan, Op. 15c (1989) *

_submitted by Kjetil Heggelund_

next week: Johnston


----------



## Art Rock

Kurze Schatten, without the t in the first word.


----------



## Enthusiast

Kurtag's piece is such a haunting and elegant work. I know it quite well but will enjoy listening to it again. The Ferneyhough is new to me - in fact I know very little solo guitar music from any period - so it will be very interesting seeing if it can get under my skin.


----------



## Art Rock

*Ferneyhough: Kurze Schatten II (1983-1989)
*
I have this on CD in the version of Magnus Andersson, coupled with a.o. the fourth string quartet by the Arditti, on Auvidis. In fact, this is the only Ferneyhough CD in my collection. The choice to divide the work in snippets of 1-3 minutes could have made it fall apart, but it actually works for me. Contemporary solo guitar music is not my favourite genre, but I don't mind listening to this. Not a favourite though.

Artrockometer: 3/6 "take it or leave it", OK for my CD collection, OK if not.


----------



## Phil loves classical

Always liked the Kurtag piece. It came together with my Stockhausen Gruppen.

Some translated program notes: 
https://translate.google.com/transl.../brahms.ircam.fr/works/work/9761/&prev=search

Found the Ferneyhough difficult to get into. Not a fan of those snap pizzicatos.


----------



## Art Rock

*Kurtag: Grabstein für Stephan, Op. 15c (1989)
*
I have this on CD, in the version by Elliot Simpson and Reinbert de Leeuw's Asko-Schonberg Ensemble with the Netherlands Radio Choir (a 3CD package on ECM, picked up at a thrift store years ago). I remember this as one of my favourite Kurtag pieces (although frankly he's a composer that I like less than most people interested in contemporary music). Re-listening just now confirmed my memory. I like the strong contrasts in this work, very powerful. The last minutes are particularly effective. At the high end of the 4/6 stars range.

Artrockometer: 4/6 "desirable", I like to have it in my CD collection.


----------



## Kjetil Heggelund

*Ferneyhough: Kurze Schatten II (1983-1989)*
This is from another world, don't you think? I just looked at the score while listening to this guy. I managed to keep up. The score is fantastically complex. Just look at the ending (in mr. Ferneyhough's handwriting)...







The initial impetus leading to this seven-movement work for solo guitar was the powerful image, found in the text of the same name by Walter Benjamin, of the sun which, as it approaches its zenith, casts shadows which become progressively shorter and darker until, at noon, they are so perfectly united with their objects that the latter stand uniquely and completely themselves, naked, without residue.
This image captures rather effectively, I think, the way in which I sought to inscribe my musical language into the rigorous limits of the historically and physically delimited "text" of the guitar. In effect, each movement stages a densely-woven confrontation between temporal and formal modes of compression, the result of which aspires to an evocation of the sort of simultaneous total presence and mysteriously veiled withdrawal to which Benjamin alludes.
On the large scale, two devices conspire to unify this succession of disparate structures. On the one hand, the convention, common in the baroque suite, of pairing a slow and fast movement was adopted; on the other, the gradual re-tuning of several scordatura strings (initially tuned in quarter-tone intervals) leads to the progressive re-emergence of the guitar's customary acoustic profile from an initial period of reduced or distorted sonority. The last scordatura string remaining, the Bb, characterises the entire final movement, a mercurial fantasia, and the work concludes with a virtuoso passage entirely executed on this string.

Brian Ferneyhough


----------



## SuperTonic

I'd like to apologize for not being as active in this thread as I had hoped I would be when it started. I had hoped I would have more free time during this time of social distancing, but that has not proven to be the case unfortunately. I do plan to participate as much as possible going forward.

*Arnold - Symphony No. 9*
My initial exposure to Malcolm Arnold's music a few years ago didn't really inspire me to dig further. I didn't find anything of particular interest at the time. However, recently I have started to get into his music. I listened to his 1st String Quartet a few weeks ago as part of our ongoing post-1920 string quartets game, and I found it quite enjoyable. I decided I should try again with him, so I was excited to see this work come up on this thread. After listening a few times on Youtube, I've been inspired to add this work to my collection. That last movement is amazing. I agree with other posters who hear shades of Mahler and Shostakovich; I thought the same thing to myself the first time I heard it. I look forward to diving back into his other symphonic output when time permits.

*Ferneyhough: Kurze Schatte II *
I'll be honest, this is a composer who I've never really gotten into. Every attempt has left me cold. I do somewhat enjoy following along to his music with the score because I think the level of complexity in his musical notation if fascinating, but without the score the music just doesn't stand on its own for me. Unfortunately this work offered no breakthroughs for me. Obviously, I'm only speaking for myself here, no disrespect intended.

*Kurtag: Grabstein für Stephan, Op. 15c*
Kurtag is probably my favorite living composer right now, and I was excited to hear this work for the first time, and I was not disappointed. Such a fascinating sound world. I did find myself wishing that the guitar had more of a prominent role; it often felt like it was just another member of the ensemble. I had gotten the impression it would be more of a concertante work for guitar and orchestra. But that is a minor quibble, overall I really enjoyed it. A fair warning for those who haven't heard it yet; there is a very sudden fortissimo about 3 and a half minutes into the work. The first few minutes are very quiet so you are tempted to turn the volume up. I was listening with headphones and I just about jumped out of my skin lol.


----------



## Kjetil Heggelund

*Kurtág: Grabstein für Stephan, Op. 15c*
Last year I suddenly became aware of Kurtág. Guess it's hard to keep up with all the composers. Yes it is! Now I've heard the piece 2 times in a row, first on DG and then ECM. I think I heard the ECM version several times last year and is one of the reasons I immediately liked Kurtág. A piece featuring the guitar by a famous major modern composer is a big deal in my book. When this thread started a while back, I had lined up articles about the piece, but now I couldn't find them...wait, one more time...

This piece, written in memory of Stephan Stein in 1989 for guitar solo and chamber ensemble, grew out from sketches made in 1978-79
At the core of the musical texture is a choral-like sequence of guitar chords occasionally completed or interrupted by chordal or melodic commentaries of other groups of instruments. An essential element of the composition is the placing of various groups of instruments at different points of the room. Thus, space functions as a type of acoustic filter, similarly to the majority of Kurtág's instrumental pieces around 1990. The physical distance at which the notes and the groups of notes sound is of decisive importance. The music produced farther away is not necessarily softer because its energy is felt: we are aware that even if it sounds farther away it is of great intensity. What sounds closer, on the other hand, is not necessarily the most important at the given moment of the process. It is as if space were observed through lenses of differing magnifying forces or if the air around us were felt thicker or thinner by our skin. It depends on the nature of the musical texture whether we still take notice of the directions or we are captivated by the sound that suddenly fills the room (as, for example, at the dynamic climax of the piece when gas horns and whistles join).
Grabstein für Stephan represents an exceptional phase in Kurtág's lifework. Even if he has compositions of similar tone (for example in the series Games for piano) or similar solutions (in some of the other pieces of op. 15 or the Twelve Microludes for string quartet) the relaxed mood and the narrative character of Grabstein stand without precedence. It seems as if a composition of aphoristic brevity were enlarged here. The gestures are more extended, with much more time left for them. In this way, the larger form does not emerge as constructed from mosaics but viewed from the angle of the whole as the attention focuses on one or another motif.


----------



## 20centrfuge

*Ferneyhough: Kurze Schatte II *

A composer like Ferneyhough normally wouldn't be in my wheelhouse, but somehow, on some level I always enjoy what I hear from him. I've been listening to a recording of the work on Spotify with guitarist Diego Castro Magas. I would characterize Ferneyhough's style of composition as splintery modernism. I think of him as a manipulator of color and energy more than as a traditional composer who focuses on melodic development.

The piece keeps my attention, which frankly is always ground zero for me. If my mind wanders a lot while listening than I view that as a negative. When that happens I know one could say that I'm the one failing and not the composition, but still...

I really like the virtuosity and the display of sounds and colors that Ferneyhough gets from the instrument. I wouldn't sit down to relax with this piece, but I really like hearing it.

I've also come to realize how much I like the sound of classical guitar. I find myself wishing I would have taken classical guitar lessons as a child.


----------



## 20centrfuge

*Kurtag: Grabstein für Stephan, Op. 15c (1989) *

"Gravestone for Stephan" is a beautiful, elegiac piece of music that instantly makes me want to explore Kurtag's works. I admit to having heard almost none of his other works. The orchestration, tonality, and feel of the piece are wonderful. This piece seems like it should become standard repertoire. A few things I wonder about: 1) the mournful cat-like like "meews" about 1/3 of the way through, 2) the inspiration for the aforementioned fortissimo passages, 3) the bass drum that seems to be frequently quietly thumping - is that death tolling?

Anyone have any thoughts?

Also, what else by Kurtag should I check out?


----------



## SuperTonic

20centrfuge said:


> Also, what else by Kurtag should I check out?


My favorite Kurtag work is the Kafka Fragments, a song cycle for soprano and violin on short texts taken from Kafka's writings. The approximately hour long work is made up of 40 short movements. Each movement feels densely packed with musical ideas and expression.

I also like his collection of piano miniatures called Játékok (Games), which I believe is still a work in progress. For orchestra music I'd recommend Stele and ...concertante..., a double concerto for violin and viola.


----------



## Allegro Con Brio

Well, I'm lukewarm on classical guitar music at best; so this was going to be a challenge for me no matter which you slice it. The Ferneyhough maintained my cerebral interest for a bit but I did not understand the logic of the composer in choosing his sounds and textures. I was reminded of Carter's string quartets - seemingly random, exceedingly complex flurries of notes that become more coherent as you pay attention to their interrelationship - but there wasn't the same level of invention here IMO. Lots of seemingly unnecessary "slap-plucking." It has me wondering whether Ferneyhough really expected the performer to follow every single minute detail of his incredibly specific scores? Or are his scores more of a conceptual experiment in complexity? Anyway, I don't think he is a composer that I could get into at this early stage of my time with contemporary music.

I liked the Kurtag a bit more, but I was disappointed at how seemingly minimalistic it was (a perfect contrast to the Ferneyhough!). It just seemed to feature the same progressions at a very low volume, randomly interjected with startling _fortissimi_. Like SuperTonic says, it's not really a concertante work (which I was somewhat relieved at) but it did feature some creative soundscapes and seemed to portray a very bleak emotional world as necessitated by the title. I don't think it's a piece I would return to often if at all, but Kurtag is now on my growing list of contemporary composers to look further into.


----------



## Enthusiast

I love the Kurtag ... but then I love what I have heard of most of his music. I am not sure why, though. Many of his pieces seem to belong to his/our time and many are apparently very sparse chamber pieces ... but there is nearly always something a little special. And I hear an elegance in his music. The Grabstein fur Stephan is an amazing work. On the one hand it is very calm - a simple motif played on guitar with very little accompaniment from the strings of the orchestra and a very effective vocal interlude. It is all very simple but there are big explosions of orchestral sound completing the picture. There is a lot of variety and music for such a short piece and yet it is easy to feel that little happens in it. I think probably the de Leeuw account is my preference - it is on a wonderful set that came out a couple of years ago (pictured below) - but Abbado is also very good.









The Ferneyhough seems pleasant enough but I have found it hard to focus on it. It slips too easily into the background and so far it hasn't really engaged me. This may be partly to do with my coolness towards classical guitar. I wonder what I am missing.


----------



## calvinpv

I don't have much more to add to what's been said above. I'll just say that the Kurtag sounds Feldman-esque to me. The opening chord on the guitar -- basically the open strings of the guitar -- undergoes a slow transformation note by note and receives help along the way from the other instruments. Sometimes the other instruments provide a full chord themselves; other times, just a note or two. And the open string chord will occasionally return. This piece was written from 1978-1989 -- which is literally the same time as Feldman's late pieces. Also, it's worth noting that many of Feldman's late works are also tributes to composers/friends of his, some of whom recently passed. Perhaps there's a connection here?

About the Ferneyhough: I thought it was so-so, but my reaction to it reminded me of something I read (I forget where or by whom) by a 20th century composer about the harp, that basically late 20th century composers thought earlier uses of the harp were too eroticized and were reduced to coloristic arpeggios and chords. And that they wanted to give the harp the proper treatment it always deserved. I'm reminded of this because maybe the guitar is in the same boat as the harp. That maybe the reactions above to _Kurze Schatten II_ (as well as my own reaction) are conditioned by an old-fashioned view of the guitar that is no longer tenable in the contemporary scene. Just speaking for myself, it can't be Ferneyhough himself that's bothering me about this piece, because I'm a big fan of some of his other stuff, for example the string quartets. Maybe it's the way the guitar is played that's bothering me. Just something to think about.


----------



## 20centrfuge

*Johnston, Ben: String Quartet no. 7 (1984)*

_Submitted by SuperTonic_

Next week: Carter


----------



## SuperTonic

Ben Johnston's String Quartet No. 7 has been called the most difficult string quartet ever written. It was completed in 1984 and was left unperformed for over 20 years until it was recorded by the Kepler String Quartet. Several well-known quartets had expressed interest in taking it on over the years, such as the Kronos and La Salle quartets for example, but their touring schedules were always too busy to allow them to give the rehearsal time needed to learn the work. The Kepler Quartet was formed for the specific intention of learning and recording the entire cycle of 10 quartets. It took them 14 years of rehearsal and close collaboration with the composer before the felt they were ready to record their efforts.

The reason the music is so difficult is because of the microtonal tuning system that Johnston employs. Johnston studied with Harry Partch early in his career, and he adopted a similar microtonal just intonation system. However, Johnston didn't want to be relegated to having his music only played on specially designed instruments or in electronic media. He wanted to write for traditional, unaltered instruments. So the members of the quartet had to basically relearn how to play their instruments and to retrain their ears to hear the distinctions between the notes in the tuning system, which are sometimes only a few cents apart.

The 7th quartet is probably Johnston's most uncompromising work, so if you are not familiar with his music, I'm kind of throwing you into the deep end here by suggesting this as a starting place. (The 4th quartet is generally considered the most accessible I believe). I find that the music becomes more comprehensible as you get deeper into the piece. I think partially this is because it takes time for our ears to acclimate to his tuning system. The opening 2 movements also feature more angular material too which doesn't help matters I'm sure. There's a lot of tremolo and sul ponticello (bowing near the bridge) writing which can sound harsh on its own even in a tuning system that we are familiar with. I think the music really comes into its on in the last movement though, where the writing is more harmonic. By the end it is almost radiant sounding. 

I have a feeling this piece might not be popular with some people, even people who tend to approach new music with an open mind. It is difficult to adapt to a new tuning system when you've been exposed to equal temperament for most of your life. For those who want to make the effort but find it difficult, I'd recommend trying not to focus so much on how it sounds "out of tune." It is out of tune relative to what you are used to, but that doesn't mean it is wrong. You really have to make an effort to accept the music on its own terms I think.

I look forward to hear what everyone thinks of this work.


----------



## SuperTonic

Here is a link to Youtube video that has the score for those who like to follow along with the music.


----------



## Kjetil Heggelund

It starts pretty awesome! Never heard music by Johnston before. I'm a bit surprised that the intonation does not get on my nerves. The 3rd mvt. is quite beautiful! I won't mind checking out some more of his music


----------



## Enthusiast

Allegro Con Brio said:


> I liked the Kurtag a bit more, but I was disappointed at how seemingly minimalistic it was (a perfect contrast to the Ferneyhough!). It just seemed to feature the same progressions at a very low volume, randomly interjected with startling _fortissimi_. Like SuperTonic says, it's not really a concertante work (which I was somewhat relieved at) but it did feature some creative soundscapes and seemed to portray a very bleak emotional world as necessitated by the title. I don't think it's a piece I would return to often if at all, but Kurtag is now on my growing list of contemporary composers to look further into.


You are not the only one to find minimalism in the Kurtag work. But it is very short and has quite a variety of thematic material and moods. Its calmness is somewhat miraculous.


----------



## Enthusiast

20centrfuge said:


> *Kurtag: Grabstein für Stephan, Op. 15c (1989) *
> 
> Also, what else by Kurtag should I check out?


The top set is very rewarding and, as already mentioned, the Kafka Fragments is great. But there is lots more to dig into even though there are not so many orchestral pieces.


----------



## Enthusiast

Meanwhile, Ben Johnston is new to me but on first hearing - and like Kjetil, above - I find his Quartet 7 to be instantly appealing. Often that can be a bad sign but I sense that I am going to like this one more as I get to know it.


----------



## Art Rock

*Johnston, Ben: String Quartet no. 7 (1984)
*
The only work I have of Johnston on CD (and the only one I heard before now) is his early string quartet "Amazing Grace" from a Kronos CD. Pretty new territory for me therefore. I just finished a first listen. In general, I find string quartets a great introduction to contemporary composers; this one left me with some mixed feelings. It is interesting, and I kept listening throughout, but I thought 24 minutes was a bit much. It did make me want to check him out further, so I'm planning to listen to the quartets available on Youtube the coming days, including a re-listen of this work.


----------



## Mandryka

Kjetil Heggelund said:


> It starts pretty awesome! Never heard music by Johnston before. I'm a bit surprised that the intonation does not get on my nerves. The 3rd mvt. is quite beautiful! I won't mind checking out some more of his music


I think that that's not the most experimental of his quartets. I'm very keen on the 5th and 6th.


----------



## 20centrfuge

So, as I'm getting into this music that is based more on just temperament (as opposed to equal temperament), I'm exploring the harmonic series and reading articles and doing some basic research.

One of the things I found that is helpful and interesting in this regard is to hear the actual Harmonic series. This snippet has the first 16 in the series. I know Johnston uses harmonics and tuning past 16 but this is a good place to start to HEAR the differences between just and equal tempered scales.


----------



## Phil loves classical

SuperTonic said:


> Here is a link to Youtube video that has the score for those who like to follow along with the music.


I'm a fan of Johnston. I read there are over 1200 distinct pitches in this work. In some sources they say over 1200 pitches within an octave (can't believe that one, total is already nuts).


----------



## 20centrfuge

The first time I heard the piece I thought, hmmm...pitch gimmicks. I've since listened to it about 4 times. I find the alternate pitch system strangely addicting. I like it a lot. 

Now, from a theoretical standpoint, I understand that if a note is played on any acoustic instrument, the strength of the harmonics that sound in addition to the fundamental decreases as the frequency increases. The human ear can supposedly only usually pick up on the first 8 or so harmonics. So, for Johnston to be writing with over a thousand pitch variations and using things like the 31s partial (harmonic) seems excessive and may just be mental ma#@$%bation. 

I'm also extremely surprised that he would go to those lengths of pitch differentiation. As a working composer he would almost never get to hear his work performed because it is just too difficult. I mean here we are and only one professional quartet has ever taken on these works and it took them 14 years!

Anyhoo, all of that aside, I really, genuinely like the music. I especially like when he does scalar passages (at about minutes 4-6 of the last movement for example). I am going to check out other works by this composer.

One other thing - I'm also very surprised that it doesn't just always sound like out-of tune music, but it really doesn't. On the other hand it does feel like the pitch is sliding around like a deer at an ice skating rink. It is slipping around like mad trying to find stability. In spite of that, and maybe because of it, it is very enjoyable. I mean, who wouldn't want to see a deer dance around on ice?


----------



## Ravn

SuperTonic said:


> ...I have a feeling this piece might not be popular with some people, even people who tend to approach new music with an open mind. It is difficult to adapt to a new tuning system when you've been exposed to equal temperament for most of your life. For those who want to make the effort but find it difficult, I'd recommend trying not to focus so much on how it sounds "out of tune." It is out of tune relative to what you are used to, but that doesn't mean it is wrong. You really have to make an effort to accept the music on its own terms I think.
> 
> I look forward to hear what everyone thinks of this work.


The same might be said for folk music, in particular Norwegian folk music when played by proper folk musicians (i.e not classically trained musicians playing folk music). Often when hearing such music, the first fifteen minutes sounds like trash to my ears. Thankfully, my ears tend to adapt and I can enjoy the music.

However, for this piece, I am having even bigger problems, since it does not sound like a piece simply using a non-tempered scale, but something completely different. I have managed to listen through the piece twice, and even though some parts are very enjoyable, much of it sounds "off" to me. Given your description of the piece, I think that I need much more time to grasp this kind of music. I do however find it thrilling! I have never heard such music before.


----------



## Ravn

mikeh375 said:


> ^^^If I'm not mistaken Phil, I think Arnold was sectioned under the Mental Health Act whilst writing this. I think the staff let him go to his flat each day to compose it. This, amusingly, is the work that also calls for a piccolo which plays one note only....in the moment before the final chord of the whole work.


I may be wrong, but isn't the piccolo playing in the second movement as well? In the recording of Handley & Bournemouth, the piccolo plays the main melody from 0:52 and onwards.

The piece is otherwise pretty great. I apologize for my late answer, but I needed some time to get to know the piece. I love the thin orchestration! It makes it sound like a chamber ensemble within a symphony orchestra, making it sound very intimate. The orchestration sounds to me more American then European, if that's allowed to say. It made me think of Copland. I don't know if the "quotation" of Dvorak in the fourth movement is intentional or if it is just my mind playing tricks on me, but it works really well. All in all a very great piece. I did only know his fifth symphony and Tam o'Shanter before listening to this, and I have now ordered his complete symphonies.


----------



## flamencosketches

I'm thinking of joining up for this group. The Johnston seems like a great place to jump in as I'm clueless about microtonal music and the recently deceased Johnston is something of a poster boy for the whole movement. Are there any requirements of the group other than listen to the piece and comment on it in this thread...?


----------



## 20centrfuge

flamencosketches said:


> I'm thinking of joining up for this group. The Johnston seems like a great place to jump in as I'm clueless about microtonal music and the recently deceased Johnston is something of a poster boy for the whole movement. Are there any requirements of the group other than listen to the piece and comment on it in this thread...?


We'd love to have you join us! The only expectation is to listen to the music and participate.


----------



## Mandryka

20centrfuge said:


> The first time I heard the piece I thought, hmmm...pitch gimmicks. I've since listened to it about 4 times. I find the alternate pitch system strangely addicting. I like it a lot.
> 
> Now, from a theoretical standpoint, I understand that if a note is played on any acoustic instrument, the strength of the harmonics that sound in addition to the fundamental decreases as the frequency increases. The human ear can supposedly only usually pick up on the first 8 or so harmonics. So, for Johnston to be writing with over a thousand pitch variations and using things like the 31s partial (harmonic) seems excessive and may just be mental ma#@$%bation.
> 
> I'm also extremely surprised that he would go to those lengths of pitch differentiation. As a working composer he would almost never get to hear his work performed because it is just too difficult. I mean here we are and only one professional quartet has ever taken on these works and it took them 14 years!
> 
> Anyhoo, all of that aside, I really, genuinely like the music. I especially like when he does scalar passages (at about minutes 4-6 of the last movement for example). I am going to check out other works by this composer.
> 
> One other thing - I'm also very surprised that it doesn't just always sound like out-of tune music, but it really doesn't. On the other hand it does feel like the pitch is sliding around like a deer at an ice skating rink. It is slipping around like mad trying to find stability. In spite of that, and maybe because of it, it is very enjoyable. I mean, who wouldn't want to see a deer dance around on ice?


To me the first two movements sound quite conventional. The last movement is more interesting, though for my tastes it's a bit too heavy in The Kepler Quartet performance. I have the impression of a series of studies "eerie" "solemn" "scurrying" etc, as a single work it seems unbalanced and a bit of this and that. Shame that there's only one recording


----------



## Mandryka

20centrfuge said:


> Anyhoo, all of that aside, I really, genuinely like the music. I especially like when he does scalar passages (at about minutes 4-6 of the last movement for example). I am going to check out other works by this composer.


I like it most after that, from about 9'30'' for a couple of minutes. The textures are sparer and lighter. The music sounds like it's from a 1960s science fiction series!

Not very solemn though, maybe there are different instructions in the score.


----------



## Art Rock

Art Rock said:


> *Johnston, Ben: String Quartet no. 7 (1984)
> *
> The only work I have of Johnston on CD (and the only one I heard before now) is his early string quartet "Amazing Grace" from a Kronos CD. Pretty new territory for me therefore. I just finished a first listen. In general, I find string quartets a great introduction to contemporary composers; this one left me with some mixed feelings. It is interesting, and I kept listening throughout, but I thought 24 minutes was a bit much. It did make me want to check him out further, so I'm planning to listen to the quartets available on Youtube the coming days, including a re-listen of this work.


I've now listened to all his quartets on Youtube (3 CDs worth), and I must say I'm impressed. I found the intonation easy to adjust to, and I really enjoyed this little trip through Johnston country. Predictably, the ones where he includes a well-known melody in his own distorted way are the easiest to appreciate, but the complete cycle is well worthwhile. That also holds for the 7th, which the second time around sounded far more convincing. Glad to have had this opportunity to explore this composer.

Artrockometer: 4/6 "desirable", I like to have it in my CD collection.


----------



## Knorf

Art Rock said:


> *Johnston, Ben: String Quartet no. 7 (1984)
> *


Good choice. Ben Johnston was a really terrific composer, and his sring quartet cycle is arguably one of the most important post-Shostakovich.


----------



## Art Rock

Not my choice, though.


----------



## Knorf

Oops, you're right. Apologies!


----------



## 20centrfuge

ArtRock, I’m curious which other quartets you most enjoyed?


----------



## Allegro Con Brio

I was very pleasantly surprised by the Johnston. I didn’t find it inaccessible at all, instead finding the variety of colors produced by the different tuning system quite fascinating. The tuning wasn’t much of a nuisance (though of course it takes time to get used to) and it really makes you open up your ears and listen anew. That said, though the first two movements were captivating, I thought the third was way too long and repetitive and could easily have been 10 minutes shorter. The work would have been in a more manageable bite-size if that was the case. But the music was great, and it was a great addition to my recent listening to contemporary string quartets. I’ll have to bookmark Johnston for future nomination in the Weekly Quartet thread that I’m “running."


----------



## Art Rock

20centrfuge said:


> ArtRock, I'm curious which other quartets you most enjoyed?


1, 4 and 10. But I would expect some of the others to click more on second hearing as well.


----------



## tortkis

Ben Johnston: String Quartet No. 7
The first movement is short but rich and condensed, flowing fantastically, followed by the "eerie" movement, which sounds like trembling with great anticipation. Then comes the grand finale with wonderful harmonies, one of the most beautiful string quartet movements.

Ferneyhough: Kurze Schatten II
I have been listening to this work with Derek Bailey's solo guitar improvisations alternately. There are interesting similarities, but in this listening, Ferneyhough sounds very sophisticated and classical. I used to wonder if new complexity has any fundamental differences from random pieces (like Cage), but after listening to this work repeatedly, I feel I am finding exquisite structure, though I am still not sure.

Kurtag: Grabstein für Stephan, Op. 15c
The beginning and the end are very fine but too quiet, and the sudden burst is too loud.


----------



## 20centrfuge

*Carter: Symphonia: sum fluxae pretium spei (1993-96)*

_submitted by Blancrocher_

5/17: Takemitsu
5/23: Manoury


----------



## flamencosketches

Too bad I missed the Johnston by forgetting about this thread, but I have this Carter work on CD so I will definitely make it a point to hear it during the week and write back with my thoughts about it here.


----------



## Phil loves classical

I'm really impressed by the Carter. It is probably my favourite work of his.


----------



## Enthusiast

OK, on to the Carter. I did enjoy the Johnston well enough each time I heard it but it has yet to grow on me. The first two movements are not so consequential and the work's merit is all in the slow movement. I enjoy listening to it but by my third listening (over a week) I was not feeling a desire to return to it. I did return one more time and again enjoyed it well enough but it is not doing that much for me. Maybe another time.

I know the Carter quite well - or, rather, I think I do. Let's see what a concentration of several hearings do for my understanding of it.


----------



## 20centrfuge

Each movement of the Carter was commissioned separately and each movement can be performed separately.

The first movement was commissioned by the Chicago Symphony. Here's a review of it, "Partita" by the Chicago Tribune:

"Partita [...] vividly conveys that sense of flying over an ever-changing landscape. Carter's web of sounds and silences continuously shifts as one kind of music breaks in upon another, moves to the fore and then is pushed aside by another. As with many of his recent works, you feel time itself is moving forward at many different rates. But so refined is his workmanship that, despite the density of musical information at any given moment, everything sounds, everything tells. For most listeners it will require several hearings to be able to clear a path of understanding through this music, but Carter has made the effort rewarding. Partita attests to the extraordinary creative vitality of America's most famous living composer. In time, no doubt, his technical demands will be so second nature that the Chicago musicians will make more of the score's sportive qualities. But no one could fault their dedicated virtuosity, or the skill with which Barenboim put this musical Rubik's cube together.[6]"


----------



## Knorf

Here's what I posted about Elliott Carter's _Symphonia: sum fluxae pretium spei_, in the "Current Listening" thread that may be of interest here.

Such a masterpiece! When the first movement, "Partita," came out first 1997 (or thereabouts) as a stand alone piece, I was very much taken with it. I was still in my doctorate program in composition, and brought it in for discussion to our composers seminar. It immediately provoked a remarkably heated argument between two of my composition professors! I learned then and there I could not have both of them on my doctoral committee. Oddly enough, it was the professor who hated the piece who ended up on my committee. Despite hating Carter's music, which was and is a major influence for me, he was actually a really good teacher and mentor.


----------



## flamencosketches

_Symphonia Sum fluxae pretium spei_, which translates to something like "I am the prize of flowing hope", is a really great piece by Elliott Carter. I'm listening now. Each movement is totally unique from the others and has its own charms. Moreover I find it much more accessible than just about any other orchestral work of Carter's that I've ever heard. That being said, I wonder if anyone else thinks that it's a little much to take all in one sitting. I've made it through the first two movements and now that I'm onto the third, I'm feeling a little burnt out. But I'm going to finish it and see what I think.


----------



## Allegro Con Brio

I'll listen later this week, but for now here's an essay by Tom Service, who included it in his "50 Greatest Symphonies" series (is it commonly considered a symphony?): https://www.theguardian.com/music/t...liott-carter-symphonia-bubbles-colours-energy


----------



## Knorf

Allegro Con Brio said:


> I'll listen later this week, but for now here's an essay by Tom Service, who included it in his "50 Greatest Symphonies" series (is it commonly considered a symphony?): https://www.theguardian.com/music/t...liott-carter-symphonia-bubbles-colours-energy


Wow, that's a great essay. Honestly, I have nothing more to add beyond what Mr. Service has said so eloquently.

But sure, it's a symphony, Carter's Third by my count: Symphony No. 1, Symphony of Three Orchestras, and this Symphonia.


----------



## flamencosketches

Yes, this is a great read. Good call, ACB.


----------



## 20centrfuge

Have you ever been in a conversation and someone starts saying something really interesting and then they get interrupted and you are left wondering what else they were going to say? That’s how I feel about the Partita (1st movement). Carter will say something that I’m really enjoying but it is brief and then he interrupts himself with a new idea. I find it somewhat frustrating. I wish he would carry his ideas further. It’s too schizophrenic.

I’d say I almost really like this piece so far. 

I’ll keep listening.


----------



## Allegro Con Brio

If you liked the Service article, you should definitely sample the other 49 essays in his series. Some of the finest music writing I’ve encountered. I really like how he gives us fresh perspectives on old warhorse symphonies while including some more contemporary and obscure works.


----------



## flamencosketches

20centrfuge said:


> Have you ever been in a conversation and someone starts saying something really interesting and then they get interrupted and you are left wondering what else they were going to say? That's how I feel about the Partita (1st movement). Carter will say something that I'm really enjoying but it is brief and then he interrupts himself with a new idea. I find it somewhat frustrating. I wish he would carry his ideas further. It's too schizophrenic.
> 
> I'd say I almost really like this piece so far.
> 
> I'll keep listening.


From what I can tell it seems Carter took a lot of inspiration from the intricacies of human interaction, communication, and feeling. Your response might not be all that far from his intent.


----------



## calvinpv

I found the only two commercial recordings of the work on youtube, so I'll post them here:





















I'll post my thoughts in the next day or two when I listened to both, but so far, I really like what I've heard -- and I don't often say that about Carter.


----------



## 20centrfuge

flamencosketches said:


> _Symphonia Sum fluxae pretium spei_I wonder if anyone else thinks that it's a little much to take all in one sitting. I've made it through the first two movements and now that I'm onto the third, I'm feeling a little burnt out. But I'm going to finish it and see what I think.


I think it is a lot to digest and would think that perhaps these three movements are best experienced on three separate occasions.


----------



## flamencosketches

20centrfuge said:


> I think it is a lot to digest and would think that perhaps these three movements are best experienced on three separate occasions.


Yet at the same time, I'm sure that as Carter has fashioned it a symphony that they all work together as one piece. I may have just not figured it out yet.


----------



## Enthusiast

The Carter Symphonia is one of those works where when you first hear it, and before you get much understanding of it, you instantly recognise as a great work. You recognise that quality before anything else. Of course, when I write "you" I mean me - but I imagine I am not alone in this.


----------



## Knorf

Enthusiast said:


> The Carter Symphonia is one of those works where when you first hear it, and before you get much understanding of it, you instantly recognise as a great work. You recognise that quality before anything else. Of course, when I write "you" I mean me - but I imagine I am not alone in this.


It was the same for me.


----------



## Art Rock

_Carter - Symphonia Sum fluxae pretium spei
_
I have nine Carter CD's, both orchestral and chamber music, and of these nine I clearly prefer the chamber music. I don't have this particular piece. I've just listened to it, and I'm afraid I have the same reaction as with the CD's I own - I do not like his orchestral works. I'm sure it's all highly accomplished, and it's clear that there are people who enjoy it, but it's not for me. The immense length is a further drawback given my reactions to it. Soit.

Artrockometer: 1/6 "bad", I really prefer not to hear this.


----------



## Allegro Con Brio

I listened to the entirety of the _Symphonia_ this morning, something I wasn't initially sure if I had the patience and endurance to do, but I did it! I was introduced to Carter only about a month ago when his 3rd quartet was featured in the Weekly Quartet thread, and I gradually grew to appreciate it through repeated listening. I was also familiar with his very interesting cello concerto. My general opinion of him thus far is that I find his style of composition highly creative and brilliant, but he more often engages my intellect rather than my sense of aesthetic appreciation. I can't say those impressions have changed very much after listening to this work, but I thought the experience was worthwhile. Carter's use of orchestral color was quite ingenious throughout, he managed to create variety and interest in every bar of this long work while always keeping the listener on his feet in anticipation of the next gesture. I feel like Carter was making an attempt here at combining the intense dramatic style that he was known for with the sensuous coloristic effects of the Webern/Messiaen/Boulez school, and I think he does a darned good job at it. The outer movements both held my interest, especially the finale which is one of the more beautiful things I have heard from contemporary music. However, the Adagio was a huge slog for me and I became somewhat annoyed by it. I don't think I will repeat the experience of listening to this composition straight through - IMO it works better as individual movements, and after I was done with that long slow movement I was getting pretty close to overload - but it was still an experience I was glad to have. I have no hesitations about calling it a late-20thc masterpiece even if I do have some reservations about it.


----------



## calvinpv

The Carter sounded like a summation of every single musical gesture from the mid to late 20th century, the gestures getting sequenced into a stream of consciousness like setting where one immediately gives way to another and another. I felt like I could hear every modern composer of the postwar period: Xenakis, Stockhausen, Maderna, Messiaen, Boulez, Babbitt. Or some of the more recent orchestral composers like Norgard, Rihm, Birtwistle, or Ades. The image I kept getting in my head was a billowing cloud of smoke whose outer layer keeps expanding and adding new contours and shapes. Though the musical textures would pass by me rapidly, causing me to forget some of the details, I always retained the sense that every gesture was adding some new perspective or meaning to the overall profile of the music. Also, I noticed there were almost no instrumental solos to speak of (a flute solo at the end, and a couple small trumpet solos in the second movement, but I can't think of any others); as if they were working towards the collective good of building up that billowing cloud of music.

A solid 9/10; if I had a score to follow along with, I'd probably gain some further insight and rate this piece even higher. I also enjoyed listening to the piece all at once; breaking up the listening experience into the separate movements would, I think, ruin the momentum and the adrenaline rush that I get.


----------



## 20centrfuge

On the whole I feel like I don’t really “get” Carter. The orchestration is beautiful but, how do I explain it....

To me, a listener is the fish, the composer is the fisherman and the music is the line and the bait. Somehow this music doesn’t do enough to pull me through the water. I nibble on the bait but even if I bite, the line is too slack. I don’t feel enough connection. 

It’s strange to me that I seem to understand Ferneyhough but both Boulez and Carter escape me. 

Trust me, it’s not for lack of trying.


----------



## Art Rock

I know how you feel. But at a certain moment I just give up and move on. There are so many composers I love (including contemporary) that I stop trying the respected ones I've tried often and did not like.


----------



## Art Rock

Allegro Con Brio said:


> My general opinion of him thus far is that I find his style of composition highly creative and brilliant, but he more often engages my intellect rather than my sense of aesthetic appreciation..


That is quite possible, and would explain why I cannot connect with him - I never listen to music as an intellectual exercise, for me it's all about emotion. I have no theoretical knowledge about music beyond the very basic things.


----------



## Enthusiast

I also have no theoretical knowledge of music but I know and love a lot of music. That is an emotional engagement I suppose - what else could it be? - but I do not find myself mystified (or alienated) by Carter's music. On the contrary, I love it. It is true that on the surface it can seem very rigorous, serious and intellectual but those "flavours" do not sum up what it is - rather they are an aspect of his musical world and one of the things I love about his music. I don't feel a need to follow his argument or to understand it. Indeed, I would not know how to go about doing so. I'm the same with, say, Haydn - I don't try to understand _his_ musical arguments either - and don't really get much from discussions of how music is constructed. I feel the construction rather than understand it in a way that I could describe.

I spent a long time not liking Carter. It mirrored an earlier time when I had felt that Schoenberg was too dry and heartless (what a misunderstanding that was!). In both cases I tried again every so often but never forced it. I never listen to music that I am not enjoying. But I do keep going back if I feel that I am missing something worthwhile. I can remember the time when a piece by Carter (it was the Concerto for Orchestra) suddenly seemed to be "making sense" to me. That doesn't mean I know what he's doing or "saying" in a way that I could put into words. It merely means that I am experiencing a meaning, and experiencing it emotionally. Don't ask me what that meaning is!

The Symphonia is such a rich piece. It is beautiful and filled with attractive (yes, and spiky) moments and a sense of going somewhere. Each movement is like a jewel. In my synaesthesic way I experience it as about light and how light can be changed and twisted by passing through coloured gems ... but the light is strong so the colours do not dominate or become lush - they retain brilliance with the colour adding a gentleness that ensures the music is not strident or dazzling.

I'm sure this only makes sense to me! So I'll stop here.


----------



## Knorf

Beautifully stated, Enthusiast, thanks.

Not everyone will like everything, of course. I appreciate how many people put forth sincere and fair-minded effort. You never know when something will click. For me, recently, it was Mahler 8. I won't say I hated it, but it did not provide for me the degree of interest and emotional connection of the others, for years. Actually, decades. But I didn't give up on it, and now I love it.

Something similar happened with me and asparagus, but that took less time. Mushrooms, that's better. It took me _many_ years to like mushrooms beyond the standard, boring white ones in the supermarket!


----------



## Portamento

Enthusiast said:


> The Symphonia is such a rich piece. It is beautiful and filled with attractive (yes, and spiky) moments and a sense of going somewhere. Each movement is like a jewel. In my synaesthesic way I experience it as about light and how light can be changed and twisted by passing through coloured gems ... but the light is strong so the colours do not dominate or become lush - they retain brilliance with the colour adding a gentleness that ensures the music is not strident or dazzling.


This is an amazing description! Carter's "late" compositions are surely one of the best bodies of work we've had in the last 50 years. They are so colorful and imaginative, all without losing a vital sense of humor; Carter has been described as a "new music's Haydn," a fair comparison in my opinion.


----------



## Knorf

Portamento said:


> This is an amazing description! Carter's "late" compositions are surely one of the best bodies of work we've had in the last 50 years. They are so colorful and imaginative, all without losing a vital sense of humor; Carter has been described as a "new music's Haydn," a fair comparison in my opinion.


Agreed about that comparison, especially in the long career and getting better and better all the way to the end!


----------



## tortkis

This work is busy, colorful, and eventful, but for some reason it gives an impression of repetitiveness. Though there may be no exact repetition, there are few patterns (for example, sustained notes followed by fast crescendo) which occur again and again. I don't dislike repetition itself, but I feel this work lacks attractive details.



20centrfuge said:


> On the whole I feel like I don't really "get" Carter. The orchestration is beautiful but, how do I explain it....
> 
> To me, a listener is the fish, the composer is the fisherman and the music is the line and the bait. Somehow this music doesn't do enough to pull me through the water. I nibble on the bait but even if I bite, the line is too slack. I don't feel enough connection.
> 
> It's strange to me that I seem to understand Ferneyhough but both Boulez and Carter escape me.
> 
> Trust me, it's not for lack of trying.


I listened to the DG recording 3 times and I am feeling the same way.


----------



## SuperTonic

I've always struggled with Carter's orchestra music on first listen, though I can usually hear things that catch my interest and give me reason to keep trying. And eventually I usually come to enjoy his orchestra works. I heard this work for the first time this week, and it seems like the process will be similar here as well. There's always so much going on in his music, and particularly his orchestral music, and its hard to know what to really listen for. I think my favorite individual movement was the second movement. It wasn't quite as dense it seemed and the orchestration was wonderful I thought. I'll definitely be coming back to this again in the future.


----------



## Art Rock

Art Rock said:


> _Carter - Symphonia Sum fluxae pretium spei
> _
> I have nine Carter CD's, both orchestral and chamber music, and of these nine I clearly prefer the chamber music. I don't have this particular piece. I've just listened to it, and I'm afraid I have the same reaction as with the CD's I own - I do not like his orchestral works. I'm sure it's all highly accomplished, and it's clear that there are people who enjoy it, but it's not for me. The immense length is a further drawback given my reactions to it. Soit.
> 
> Artrockometer: 1/6 "bad", I really prefer not to hear this.


The past few days I've suffered from prolonged spells of dizziness and hypersensitivity to loud unexpected noises (it comes and goes, the last time was about a year ago, and the doctors can't cure it). This started shortly after I had listened to the Carter - no correlation intended, but I wondered now whether I already had the problem when I listened to this piece, which is new and has several loud outbursts - and which may have affected my judgment.

So, in the interest of fair play, I decided to listen once more, since the hearing problems are gone now. I listened to the DG version, like the first time, and taking all in one sitting, treating it as a symphony. The Partita has some interesting moments, but there's a nervousness about the writing that does not sit well with me. I think I hear a composer at work who really knows how to make an orchestra sound like he wants to. It's just not my taste. The second movement starts out more promising, and keeps being more interesting for me than the first, even though there is some deterioration in my appreciation starting around the 5 min mark, and then there's still a long way to go. Still, a marked improvement for me over the first, even though, as in the first, I find it goes on too long. The final movement again has some interesting parts in terms of orchestral colours, but it's all a bit much. All in all, some interesting moments in this movement, and it's the only one where the length did not bother me. Would I pick this up as a bargain CD in a thrift store? Actually, probably no. Since the movements can be played as separate pieces, I will also give them separate ratings: 1.5/6, 2/6, and 2/6.

A slightly higher reading on the Artrockometer than the first time: 2/6 "not required", I don't need this.


----------



## Art Rock

Interestingly, and not on purpose, I'm now listening to Schnittke's first cello concerto. It is in some ways similar to the Carter symphony, in terms of sudden outbursts and overall length, but there's a sense of continuity here that I find lacking in the Carter. It's not my favourite cello concerto by far, but I rate it clearly higher than the Carter symphony.


----------



## Portamento

Art Rock said:


> Interestingly, and not on purpose, I'm now listening to Schnittke's first cello concerto. It is in some ways similar to the Carter symphony, in terms of sudden outbursts and overall length, but there's a sense of continuity here that I find lacking in the Carter. It's not my favourite cello concerto by far, but I rate it clearly higher than the Carter symphony.


The discontinuity in Carter is kind of "the point." He was very interested in recreating the unpredictability of our lives in music. As for the Schnittke cello concerto, that is one of my favorite pieces of his. The first two movements are routine polystylistic Schnittke -- well-crafted and maybe a tad predictable -- but the last two (composed after his first stroke in 1985) are some of his most personal utterances.


----------



## flamencosketches

Personally, I hear just about zero connection between the Schnittke Cello Concerto No.1 and Carter's Symphonia. They seem to be polar opposites. Definitely makes sense that someone would like one and hate the other.


----------



## 20centrfuge

REVISED SCHEDULE: (to give some space for new members: Knorf, Allegro Con Brio, flamencosketches)

3/1 20centrfuge - Ades
3/8 Enthusiast - Benjamin
3/15 Portamento - Nono
3/22 Trout - Dhomont
3/29 Art Rock - Gubaidulina
4/5 mmsbls - Boulez
4/12 Ravn - Penderecki/Nystedt
4/19 Phil loves classical - Arnold
4/26 Kjetil Heggelund - Ferneyhough/Kurtag
5/3 Super Tonic - Johnston
5/10 Blancrocher - Carter 
5/17 BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist - Takemitsu
5/24 calvinpv - Manoury
5/31 tortkis - Gann
6/7 PeterfromLA - Berio
*6/14 Allegro Con Brio - MacMillan: Veni, Veni, Emmanuel (1991-1992)
6/21 flamencosketches - TBD
6/28 Knorf - Saariaho: Graal théâtre (1994)*
7/5 Enthusiast - Birtwistle
7/12 Art Rock - Sallinen
7/19 Portamento - Xenakis
7/26 Trout - Vivier
8/2 mmsbls - Murail
8/9 Ravn - Rautavaara
8/16 Phil loves classical - Ligeti
8/23 Kjetil Heggelund - Saariaho
8/30 Super Tonic - Corigliano
9/6 calvinpv - Rihm
9/13 20centrfuge - Maxwell Davies
9/20 Blancrocher - Lutoslawski
9/27 BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist - Messiaen
10/4 tortkis - Garland
10/11 PeterfromLA - Schnittke 
* 10/18 Knorf
10/25 flamencosketches
11/1 Allegro Con Brio*


----------



## 20centrfuge

*Takemitsu: From Me Flows What You Call Time (1990)*

_submitted by BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist_

5/24: Manoury: Pluton for Piano and Live Electronics (1988-89) [50] (calvinpv)


----------



## Allegro Con Brio

Now the Takemitsu is a work that I can wholeheartedly get behind without any reservations! In fact, it was probably the work that turned the tide for me on contemporary music. I had heard quite a bit about it on this forum, so I tried it and was hooked from the first bars. It sounded like a dazzling kaleidoscope of blending, shifting, evolving colors. I couldn’t stop listening for fear of missing the next gorgeous brushstroke the composer would apply. I have listened to other Takemitsu works since (November Steps, A Flock Descends, Riverrun) and this remains my favorite, and, I would say, probably his most accessible composition I have heard from him along with the Requiem for String Orchestra. There are certainly Debussy/Messiaen influences in his work, and I think that’s why I connect with him - I prefer contemporary composers who focus on “tone painting” rather than “experimentation.” Much has also been made of his fusing Japanese music with Western classical - I can’t speak to that, all I can say is that I certainly consider this to be one of the greatest musical compositions since 1980 and it will always hold a special place in my heart for selling me on contemporary music. I will definitely listen to it again later this week to see if I have any fresh impressions.


----------



## Portamento

Allegro Con Brio said:


> I prefer contemporary composers who focus on "tone painting" rather than "experimentation."


These two aren't mutually exclusive, of course!


----------



## Knorf

Portamento said:


> These two aren't mutually exclusive, of course!


Certainly not! For me, Boulez is in the union of the two Venn diagrams.


----------



## Allegro Con Brio

Portamento said:


> These two aren't mutually exclusive, of course!


True! What I was trying to say is that I often (not always, but often) prefer the compositional style of Webern, Boulez, Messiaen, Dutilleux, and Takemitsu to Schoenberg, Ives, Carter, Ligeti, and the "electronic school" who often strike me as being "experimental" for its own sake and who engage my intellect but not necessarily my aesthetic appreciation. I certainly agree that Boulez is one of the greatest examples of mixing voluptuous beauty with formal innovation. I haven't found his music nearly as inaccessible as some people seem to think it is.


----------



## flamencosketches

Takemitsu is a composer who I'd expect to be right up my alley. He reminds me a lot of Dutilleux and Lutoslawski, two favorites of mine. But his music has never quite clicked with me. I'll look forward to hearing this work during the week. Unfortunately I don't have it on CD so I'll have to find it online somewhere.


----------



## Portamento

Allegro Con Brio said:


> True! What I was trying to say is that I often (not always, but often) prefer the compositional style of Webern, Boulez, Messiaen, Dutilleux, and Takemitsu to Schoenberg, Ives, Carter, Ligeti, and the "electronic school" who often strike me as being "experimental" for its own sake and who engage my intellect but not necessarily my aesthetic appreciation.


Which Ligeti pieces are you familiar with? The micropolyphonic "clouds" of texture he conjures up in earlier works such as _Apparitions_ and _Atmosphères_ share many similarities with Takemitsu. And Ligeti's later music is IMO very accessible; check out the piano, violin, and Hamburg concertos, _Études_, _Hungarian Rock_, and _Síppal, dobbal, nádihegedüvel_ if you haven't already.


----------



## flamencosketches

Portamento said:


> Which Ligeti pieces are you familiar with? The micropolyphonic "clouds" of texture he conjures up in earlier works such as _Apparitions_ and _Atmosphères_ share many similarities with Takemitsu. And Ligeti's later music is IMO very accessible; check out the piano, violin, and Hamburg concertos, _Études_, _Hungarian Rock_, and _Síppal, dobbal, nádihegedüvel_ if you haven't already.


Agreed, Ligeti definitely belongs in the "sensuous" camp. That being said, I don't really like what I've heard of his music.


----------



## Knorf

flamencosketches said:


> Agreed, Ligeti definitely belongs in the "sensuous" camp. That being said, I don't really like what I've heard of his music.


Don't give up on Ligeti. From what I know of your tastes, I'd expect his music to click with you. Regardless of that, it's some of the best, most inspired, creative, and emotionally powerful music post-1950!


----------



## NightHawk

This live recording from the early 70's begins with an amazing performance of the Brahms' 1st Sym in C minor Op. 68 - Bernstein is still in good health and the orchestra truly understands this great work. The orchestral style is quite individual, meaning it had not (and maybe has never) acquired the stereotypical sound and execution that became normative in the Jet Setting Age of Conductors. Cleveland was another orchestra that maintained its distinct personality, as well. I discovered this in my DVD collection just recently and was shocked - I didn't purchase it, so it must have been given to me along with other items and just got overlooked for perhaps several years. I was also shocked that I wept sharply in the finale of the 4th movement. It was so thrilling - the orchestra's papable connection with Bernstein _and_ Brahms was just so greatly moving. Highest recommendation for the 1st Symphony performance.


----------



## flamencosketches

Knorf said:


> Don't give up on Ligeti. From what I know of your tastes, I'd expect his music to click with you. Regardless of that, it's some of the best, most inspired, creative, and emotionally powerful music post-1950!


I'm sure you're right. One of these days I will get that "Ligeti Project" box set and just dive in the deep end.


----------



## Phil loves classical

Always had mixed feelings towards From Me Flows What you Call Time. It's evocative, but nothing I feel I can really chew on.


----------



## Knorf

flamencosketches said:


> I'm sure you're right. One of these days I will get that "Ligeti Project" box set and just dive in the deep end.


_Highly_ recommended. Also: the "Clear or Cloudy" box on Deutsche Grammophon.


----------



## flamencosketches

Phil loves classical said:


> Always had mixed feelings towards From Me Flows What you Call Time. It's evocative, but nothing I feel I can really chew on.


This about sums up my experiences with Takemitsu's music thus far.


----------



## calvinpv

For me, I have two problems with Takemitsu. First, with the exception of _From me flows what you call Time_ and a couple of other works, his music tends to be really short in length. Like, 15 minutes or less kind of short. I want to hear what a composer can do in long form. I want to see how they can sustain an idea (and my attention), develop it, cross-pollinate it across multiple instruments, etc. You can certainly do that in shorter works, but longer forms give you more wiggle room to experiment and really exhaust all possibilities, if that makes sense. And I think this issue of length leads to my second problem with Takemitsu, that I think he's using short forms to hide the fact that very little goes on in his music. I don't have a problem with music being exotic, sensual, evocative, but just I think Takemitsu is too much in this direction. More specifically, I think the exotic timbres of the Japanese instruments he chooses are doing a little too much work in the music.

With that said, I'm now going to completely contradict myself and say that _In an Autumn Garden_ -- which exemplifies my second issue to a tee -- is a masterpiece:


----------



## calvinpv

Here's _From me flows what you call Time_, for anybody that's interested:


----------



## 20centrfuge

Takemitsu - I am new to this piece (maybe I'm the only one). First of all I will say that I like it. I like the harmonic language. I like the atmosphere it presents and I think the piece is inviting and has great colors with different percussive instruments.

I feel like the piece is an accompaniment to SOMETHING. It feels like it could go alongside a cinematic experience, as music for a contemporary dance ensemble, or as part of an art installation in a museum, for example. It feels like the music doesn't 100% stand on it's own. That doesn't mean it isn't great music. If I think of any great motion picture soundtrack, I would say the same thing. 

I know little about Takemitsu, so pardon me if I'm wrong, but I believe he was essentially self taught as a composer. Knowing that makes his music seem more esoteric and more novel.

I can also see how this piece could be a bridge for traditionalists to get turned onto contemporary music. 

I'm going to listen a few more times, still, and listen for melodic/thematic material that I may be missing.


----------



## 20centrfuge

BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist: are you out there?


----------



## flamencosketches

calvinpv said:


> Here's _From me flows what you call Time_, for anybody that's interested:


Is this the only studio recording? I can't seem to find much else save a BBC Music disc from the Proms w/ Andrew Davis.


----------



## Phil loves classical

Knorf said:


> _Highly_ recommended. Also: the "Clear or Cloudy" box on Deutsche Grammophon.


I bought "Clear or Couldy" at a good bargain. The music was mind-blowing. I thought the sound was great too. It had a clarity and ambience I never heard before in a recording. This makes me wonder, how would that sort of music come across in crappy sound, like in the shellac days? It may really just sound like a jumbled mess. I'm actually going to try that. Pass the recording through a low-fi filter.


----------



## Enthusiast

Knorf said:


> _Highly_ recommended. Also: the "Clear or Cloudy" box on Deutsche Grammophon.


Yes, great box. Ligeti's music varies greatly (while all remaining Ligeti) and I feel a good introduction to it may be the Etudes for Piano and Lontano for orchestra.


----------



## Enthusiast

So, I've listened to the Takemitsu three times now. I enjoyed the first time for its interesting sounds. My second hearing didn't take me much further. But on the third hearing those sounds were now very distinctive and memorable - I was quite simply delighted to be making their acquaintance again (after a day!) - and I have now begun to find the structure and the patterns ... the music in other words. I am very grateful for this choice as it is becoming quite a discovery for me. My previous feeling about his more "impressionistic" works was rather like others here - "nice but goes nowhere" - but I am really enjoying getting in a little deeper with this one. I had no idea there was such magic in his music! I feel on something of a high. Like my world will never be the same again.


----------



## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist

20centrfuge said:


> BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist: are you out there?


Yep, will post later today!


----------



## calvinpv

flamencosketches said:


> Is this the only studio recording? I can't seem to find much else save a BBC Music disc from the Proms w/ Andrew Davis.


I don't know if there are other recordings, but I do know that the Nexus percussion ensemble in the recording I posted also gave the world premiere with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. So Nexus probably knows the ins and outs of this work better than anyone else.


----------



## Art Rock

_Takemitsu: From Me Flows What You Call Time (1990)
_
When I prepared my top30 composers for the TC list end 2019, I was slightly disappointed that I could fit in only one living composer (Gubaidulina, #20). Takemitsu of course passed away in 1996, but he was actually of the same generation as her, and he came in one spot higher. Ever since I bought the Denon CD with the gorgeous double concerto for shakuhachi, biwa and orchestra _November Steps_ (around 1995), he has been a favourite of mine. _From Me Flows What You Call Time_ is to my taste his best work, and I was delighted to see it nominated for this group. Like many of his compositions, the piece comes with a poetic imaginative title. I can understand that seeing it described as a concerto for a percussion group and orchestra, with a playing time of 36 minutes, may scare people away, but it is a brilliant elegant soundscape, never a dull moment (at least not for me), and representative for his style. I just listened to it once more (Pacific Symphony Orchestra, St. Clair, Nexus, Sony) and loved every second of it - including the end, with a whisper rather than a bang, which might have been more obvious for a percussion concerto. One of my favourite compositions of recent decades.

Artrockometer: 6/6 "hors concours", one of about 100 most favourite compositions.


----------



## Allegro Con Brio

Revisited the Takemitsu today and was just as spellbound as I originally was. Enthusiast’s description in post #263 is spot on. When I first heard it it was right on the brink of my personal tolerance for modern music, but now that I’ve become more familiar with the idiom I now find it extremely accessible with even the occasional tonal cadence. The percussion ensemble simply produces some of the most ravishing soundscapes I have ever heard. Some of Takemitsu’s other works do have a sort of “edge” to them (like November Steps, where it takes a while to get used to the unique sounds of the Japanese instruments) but this is sheer beauty. An absolute masterpiece, probably still my favorite piece of contemporary music. Superb choice!


----------



## tortkis

The music keeps hovering and drifting, and sometimes I have a feeling of being lost, but the recurring theme played on steel drums, which is so refreshing and impressive, brings my attention back to the music immediately. Even though there is a wide variety of percussion sound colors and sometimes it becomes meditative, the work holds a sense of consistency. An exquisite composition.


----------



## 20centrfuge

*Manoury: Pluton for Piano and Live Electronics (1988-89) *

_submitted by: calvinpv_

UPCOMING:
5/31 Gann: Long Night (1980-81)
6/7 Berio: Voci "Folk Songs II" (1984)
6/14 MacMillan: Veni, Veni, Emmanuel (1991-1992)
6/21 TBD (flamencosketches)


----------



## calvinpv

Apologies for the length of my introduction. I was reading a lot about Manoury's music today, and the more I read, the more I needed to cram into the intro. So ... yeah. Enjoy this amazing work.

*Philippe Manoury: Pluton for midi-piano and live electronics (1988-1989)*

Now you might be wondering, "Philippe Manoury? Who's that?" Here on TC, I think I've seen his name mentioned maybe a small handful of times, often getting overlooked by other composers of his generation (Abrahamsen, Saariaho, Rihm, Dusapin, Benjamin are about the same age as him). But in the wider contemporary scene, Manoury is just as famous as those others. And more importantly, he is one of the preeminent figures of electroacoustic classical music, having composed about 25 pieces in that genre alone, many of them with the assistance of the IRCAM institute. In fact, Manoury is sort of their poster boy -- more so than, say, Boulez, Saariaho, or Harvey -- and it would be fair to describe his overall aesthetic as "IRCAM-esque" (I'd also call his music a beautiful hybrid between late Boulez, Xenakis and spectralism). _Pluton_, French for "Pluto", is one of his earlier electroacoustic pieces and also one of his more famous, having acquired a similar stature in the solo piano/electronics repertoire as Stockhausen's _Mantra_ and Nono's _… sofferte onde serene …_. Part of a larger cycle of works called _Sonus ex machina_, _Pluton_ (and its predecessor _Jupiter_) broke significant ground in that it's the first piece of any classical or non-classical genre to establish real-time interactions between instrumental performers and synthesizers/machines/computers.

Like every composer, Manoury has a few underlying principles and interests that inform his compositions. But the principle that is perhaps most important to his music is that of a "sound image", in his terms. Manoury is a big fan of the Romantics, particularly Strauss and Wagner. And what he loves about them is the way they multiply and superimpose several versions of an "image", or a chord or motif or some musical pattern, across an entire orchestra and how each successive version, due of its inner structure, can be easily transformed into another and another, like a chord progression that never ends. In short, Manoury is interested in the infinite potential and the logical ramifications a single or small handful of motifs can produce.

There are a couple of things that can be extrapolated from this worldview and which are also present in Manoury. First, the proliferation of "sound images" gives one a sense of mass textures and a sense of chaos, not unlike what we hear in Xenakis. In some pieces like _Tensio_ or _Zeitlauf_, Manoury will saturate a sound field so much that it becomes impossible to discern a single stable element. The fact that each of the images are slight variations of one another also plays into this sense of chaos: no image can establish a proper identity or traditional functional role, so every moment of his music sounds like a passage of transition rather than a proper exposition.

But more generally, Manoury's interest in motif transformation tells us that he is less interested in the substance of sounds themselves and more so in the formal languages and grammars we can construct with them. Sure, as an expert in live electronic processing (which essentially consists of manipulating sound spectra), he could be a proper spectralist if he wanted to. But Manoury doesn't just want to recreate pre-existing or artificial timbres like Grisey or Murail, and you will never hear for its own sake, like you hear in Grisey, direct statements of the harmonic series or suspended tones so that their overtones can be heard. He would rather see how one can algorithmically translate or transform one sound into another, regardless of their "natural" properties. As far as contemporary music is concerned, this places Manoury much closer to the serialist and stochastic camps, and indeed, his very early pieces were inspired by Boulez, Stockhausen, and Xenakis; since the late 70s, Manoury has been using what are called "automated composition procedures". And for _Pluton_ in particular, Manoury is interested in how the "language" of a performance (with all of its interpretive ambiguities) can dictate the real-time production of synthetic sounds (explained towards the end below).

So how does the "sound image" make sense in the electronic sphere? This is where, I think, a lot of people here on TC get hung up on electronic music. They think, "Well, since electronic music _sounds_ different from so-called "traditional" music, it must therefore _be_ different, based on fundamentally different principles". But I think this is the wrong conclusion to draw. In traditional classical music, you can transform a "sound image" or motif in all sorts of ways. You can simply repeat it (giving you the original motif), invert it, transpose it, change its durational values, add/subtract notes (for example, make one note an ostinato figure or add passing tones), etc. But what all these examples share is that they're all algorithmic, methods getting you from point A to point B. And we hear the same thing in _Pluton_, where we can think of the electronics as an orchestral backdrop to the piano. Listen closely, and you can hear traditional techniques like imitation, speeding up/slowing down, adding/subtracting fragments, layering; also, the changing timbres are similar to motifs jumping instruments in a traditional orchestra. The only reason electroacoustic music sounds so different is because we have more techniques at our disposal, nothing more. In addition to traditional contrapuntal techniques, we can fill out overtone spectra, or create difference tones, or use frequency filters and modulations, or create pure white noise, or create macro-level effects like echo, reverb, delay, etc. _Pluton_, like many pieces before it, is simply trying to expand what is artistically possible. There should be nothing mystifying about it or any other electronic piece.

So what makes _Pluton_ so special? Manoury arrived at the IRCAM in 1981, and by 1984, the IRCAM was interested in developing technology that aids in live interaction between musician and synthesizer. They conducted preliminary experiments with flautist Larry Beauregard where a flute with magnetic sensors sent information about pitch directly from the flute to the Sogitec 4X synthesizer. This allowed, for the first time ever, a synthesizer to track a musician all by itself, in contrast to previous live electronic music (such as Boulez's _Répons_ from 1980) where a technician had to sit by the synthesizer, read the score, and press the right buttons at the right cue. Also, because the performer is in the driver's seat, he or she now able to take the music at any tempo, something you can't quite do with, for example, tape music.

Soon after, Barry Vercoe wrote a formal score-following program for the 4X to follow when it receives the pitch information. This allowed the 4X to know precisely which synthesized effects to create based on where it was in the score. And in 1985, Miller Puckette wrote MAX, a programming language that can detect much more complicated musical data than pitch and can neatly package it into something the 4X can process. In other words, MAX allowed 4X to follow a more complicated musical scores as well as develop more sophisticated "virtual scores" for the electronic parts (the virtual scores being algorithms that translate the incoming data into synthesized sound). MAX also had a composer-friendly graphical user interface, allowing it to become extremely popular worldwide. None of this might seem like a big deal today, but it was a very big deal in the eighties. Manoury's _Pluton_ was the first ever work to use MAX to create unbelievably rich real-time electronic processing, so in this regard it should be considered a major milestone (_Pluton_ predecessor _Jupiter_ -- also part of Manoury's _Sonus ex Machina_ cycle -- was I believe the first work to use Vercoe's score-following program).

Manoury describes a number of techniques he programmed into the "virtual scores" and which can be heard in _Pluton_. One that is relevant to the "sound images" discussed above is that of interpolation. Manoury wrote a program that detects and memorizes two rhythmic sequences by the instrumentalist which are then placed at the ends of a totally made-up sequence such that the made-up sequence slowly transforms the first memorized sequence into the second. Another technique is called, in Manoury's terms, "virtual partitions". As detailed as a handwritten score may be, it is never detailed enough: interpretive ambiguities inevitably arise. And that can be a problem for virtual scores because a given interpretation may in some respects be too extreme for it to detect; for example, the score may call for a _fff_ dynamic but is played by the performer as a _ffff_, causing it to be ignored by the machines. To get around this, Manoury writes the "virtual scores" in such a way as to allow a whole range of values to be picked up. As long as the performer stays in that range, all is good. And not only that, how you interpret a marking will rewrite the virtual score in real-time, causing the 4X to constantly adapt to the performance and balance it out with the proper electronic noises. _Pluton_ is a great example of how the boundary between performance and composition can get blurred and is, at its core, a piece of improvisation - though an improvisation anticipated by the virtual score.

There are five movements to _Pluton_ (with timestamps to the video below):
1.	Toccata [0:00], much of the material here is stored by the 4X for the final movement
2.	Antiphonie [3:34], where contemplative sections are contrasted with more active toccata-like sections
3.	Séquences [15:25], where electronic material is completely generated by sequences in the piano
4.	Modulations [20:27], where the "virtual partitions" technique is most in play
5.	Variations [29:36], where the 4X derives material from the first movement material and wraps it around the piano part
The title of the piece is reference to the Roman god Pluto and the underground fires of hell. This is an allusion to those "underground" processes by MAX and the 4X that are hidden from direct sight yet intuited by their indirect influences on other, more audible processes.

But don't take my word for how good _Pluton_ is. Go and listen yourself. This isn't some dry, academic exercise meant to please some nerds in the basement of IRCAM. This is a piece unlike so many other contemporary works, with its evocations of exotic, alien, celestial, beautiful landscapes and its sense of drama and tension between performer and the machine. One of the best pieces of the last 40 years, imo.






If you enjoyed the Manoury, here are some other good works of his on youtube (links provided):

Cryptophonos, for solo piano (1974)
Zeitlauf, for choir, ensemble and tape (1982)
Jupiter, for flute and live electronics (1987)
Sound and Fury, for orchestra of 109 musicians (1998-1999)
Tensio, for string quartet and live electronics (2010)
in situ, for soloists, string orchestra, and large spatialized orchestra (2013)
Le Temps, mode d'emploi, for two pianos and live electronics (2014)

And if you're interested, some other works composed at the IRCAM in the mid to late eighties (it's hard to describe, but there is definitely a common aesthetic between these works and the Manoury):

Benjamin: Antara (1986-1987)
Boulez: Dialogue de l'ombre double (1985)
Nunes: Wandlungen (1986)
Obst: Krystallwelt III (1987)
Risset: Sud (1985)
Saariaho: Io (1986-1987)
Stroppa: Spirali (1987-1988)

Also, Boulez _Sur Incises_, which we heard a few weeks ago, makes for a nice companion piece to _Pluton_, given the remarkably similar piano writing.


----------



## Art Rock

_Manoury: Pluton for Piano and Live Electronics (1988-89)
_
Indeed, I had never heard of this composer. On purpose, I did not read the rest of the undoubtedly informative post by calvinpv - I'll do so later this week.

As I stated before in this and similar threads, the piano is not my favourite instrument in contemporary music - too often used almost like percussion. The toccata is typically the style I do not like in this respect. The antiphonie is far more interesting, the electronics also playing a greater role, and some good use of silence as well. Sequences starts of well but becomes too fragmentary for me. Modulations is off to a really good start with electronics taking the lead, with some very interesting sounds later on, while the piano is not too dominant until the last minute. The variations see the piano take over once more and with over 20 minutes length, I found it far too long.

A first encounter with a new composer and a new work, which is also out of my comfort zone - it is difficult to come to a fair judgement wrt how I feel about it. Normally I would play it again in a few days, but at 50+ minutes, most of which I did not enjoy on the first listen, I don't think I will. The antiphonie and the modulations, I could see work for me as separate compositions that I might like to return to though. There are definitely moments in this composition where I get the feeling that this composer could connect with me (for want of a better term), but not with this particular work. Maybe I'll check whether there are works for other instruments and electronics by him on Youtube.

By the way, shouldn't the time stamp for the start of the Antiphonie be at 3:26?


----------



## Kjetil Heggelund

Wowie! Love this! Great post o'calvinpv! I'm very much into electronic and electroacoustic music these days. The right piece at the right time  You can actually buy software at ircam.fr!


----------



## calvinpv

Art Rock said:


> Maybe I'll check whether there are works for other instruments and electronics by him on Youtube.
> 
> By the way, shouldn't the time stamp for the start of the Antiphonie be at 3:26?


The CD from which this recording is drawn has Antiphonie starting at 3:34. But yeah, it does sound like 3:26 would be a more proper beginning.

As far as checking out other works, I gave a list of further recommendations under the Pluton video. Jupiter, for flute and electronics, is probably a good place to start.


----------



## Art Rock

Thanks, after my post I read through your informative post and earmarked Jupiter and Tensio for further listening. I've sample Jupiter and thought it was interesting, will listen one of these days. Currently listening to the second string quartet Tensio, and quite like it. I bookmarked his third as well for later this week.


----------



## Art Rock

Some feedback.

Jupiter is a really good piece, I really enjoyed listening to it. It scores 4/6 on the Artrockometer.

Both string quartets (#2 'Tensio' and #3 'Melencolia') are even better to my ears, perhaps not surprising as I tend to like string quartets of contemporary composers. Of the two, I have a slight preference for Tensio. Both score 4/6 as well.

I also like Zeitlauf, although I would rank it slightly lower than the other three (a high 3/6).

Given the volatility of YouTube threads, I've downloaded these works (and the two parts of Pluton that agreed with me) to put in my collection. I'll keep an eye out for CD's.

Glad to have discovered this composer via this thread, even though the selected work was not my taste. Thanks for nominating him!

:tiphat:


----------



## 20centrfuge

Manoury: 

First of all, calvinpv, your intro is fantastic and not only helps me with Pluton but helps me view electroacoustic music in a new light.

Pluton, I find enjoyable. I’ve listened three times and I can hear that Manoury isn’t just an electronics guy, he is a bonafide composer. My favorite moments are where the electronics become part of the composition. I don’t feel like I have totally grasped the work (I’m a simple caveman), but I will continue to listen to it and live with it and also check out some of his more recent works.


----------



## calvinpv

I forgot there was another Pluton recording on youtube. This one is live, and Miller Puckette himself is watching over the electronics portion. I've only heard this recording once, so I don't remember it too well, but, again, if the interpretation of the piano part is radically different than that of the previous recording above, then the electronics should be profoundly different as well. I'll have to check this one out again.


----------



## Phil loves classical

Can't say I like the Manoury Pluton. I find it very unimaginative. I looked at the score of a similar work in the toccata (sounds like he reused the material in it), to find out why I felt that way. He doesn't seem to build anything, but it is more of a mood piece. I've heard the chords and intervals he uses countless times, and unless there is stronger form or structure it sounds like a kind of dissonant type of New Age.


----------



## 20centrfuge

I listened to it a few more times, this time taking time to digest each section -- one at a time. My favorite section would have to be the last section - Variations. The piece makes a lot more sense to me now. I really do like it and will be listening to more by Manoury. 

I have been thinking a lot about the performability of this piece. Recently we heard the Ben Johnson String Quartet, which I really like, but I couldn't help but marvel at how that composer could almost never hear his work being performed due its extreme difficulty. I similarly wonder at this work. What would it take for a pianist to perform this? I understand that the computer software is able to follow the score and essentially react to the idiosyncrasies of the performer, but what does it take to get everything set up? Are there only a few people in the world who could set this up? Or is it something that could be carried off by a concert pianist (with a run-of-the-mill sound engineer) and not with the aid of an electro-acoustic superhero?

If it is a work that cannot be reasonably reproduced then it would seem to be something more regarded and treasured as a groundbreaking development than as a work that could enter the repertory.

Thoughts?


----------



## tortkis

Pluton is a fantastic piece of music. I think the piano and electronics are integrated very well. The effects of electronics are sophisticated, imaginative and otherworldly. The piano is used in a percussive manner, and I love music for percussion. I imagine this work can be transcribed for percussion instruments & electronics and it would still sound wonderful.


----------



## Allegro Con Brio

I’m sorry to say that I had to stop listening to this week’s selection fairly quickly. I have serious personal reservations about using electronics in classical music, and I’m sure that this is all due to my own limitations and preferences. I thought the first few minutes sounded like a typical modernist piano piece (which I don’t mind) with totally random waves of sound added on top, with occasional echos of what was played on the piano. I just have a strong negative reaction to the sound of digitally-created noises as they tend to give me a headache (not only when used in music; it’s a weird pet peeve of mine) so I’ll take a pass on this and take calvinpv’s word for it that this is a highly accomplished composition; just not my kind of music.


----------



## Portamento

Allegro Con Brio said:


> I'm sorry to say that I had to stop listening to this week's selection fairly quickly. I have serious personal reservations about using electronics in classical music, and I'm sure that this is all due to my own limitations and preferences. I thought the first few minutes sounded like a typical modernist piano piece (which I don't mind) with totally random waves of sound added on top, with occasional echos of what was played on the piano. I just have a strong negative reaction to the sound of digitally-created noises as they tend to give me a headache (not only when used in music; it's a weird pet peeve of mine) so I'll take a pass on this and take calvinpv's word for it that this is a highly accomplished composition; just not my kind of music.


Sorry to hear that. I would strongly recommend that you withhold any judgement for as long as you can. Give it one full listen-maybe you still hate the piece, but from there it's your call whether you think there are more "secrets" to be found from multiple listens. Opinions change, and they can do so rapidly.


----------



## Enthusiast

I do like this Manoury piece. It isn't hard to listen to - it goes down like cream! - and has many attractive and unexpected moments. The way one note, one phrase, leads to the next seems to make sense, to have meaning. The overall impact seems quite powerful. I am not sure I totally get it yet but I'm enjoying the journey. Ultimately I want to discover and get to know a new great work. I can't say if that is where the journey is taking me yet.


----------



## calvinpv

tortkis said:


> Pluton is a fantastic piece of music. I think the piano and electronics are integrated very well. The effects of electronics are sophisticated, imaginative and otherworldly. The piano is used in a percussive manner, and I love music for percussion. I imagine this work can be transcribed for percussion instruments & electronics and it would still sound wonderful.


Well you're in luck! Manoury's final work of the _Sonus ex machina_ cycle is _Neptune_, for three percussionists and live electronics. It's not on youtube, but a quick google search shows it's on spotify. I haven't heard it myself, but I imagine it's as good as _Pluton_.


----------



## 20centrfuge

*Gann: Long Night (1980-81)*

_submitted by tortkis_

(next week: Berio)


----------



## tortkis

Kyle Gann: Long Night (1980-81)












http://coldbluemusic.com/cb0019/

Long Night is "a variable-length piece for three nonsynchronized pianos at different tempos."

"I wrote Long Night very much under the influence of the philosopher Martin Heidegger, impressed particularly by his phenomenology of moods and his disavowal of personality as a unified, linear consciousness. I wanted a piece that was a series of moods, connected neither linearly nor abruptly, but in overlapping discontinuity; and a unity that was not felt moment to moment, but that would leap out in unpredictable motives and reminiscences. These were the days, you know, when ambient music was still soft and unobtrusive. Each piano part is constructed in repeating loops, whose lengths can usually be altered at will by the pianists, and the relationship between the pianos is unsynchronized and aleatory - which is why, for a recording, only one pianist is necessary. Part of the discontinuity is that the first four sections are in C, the fifth in A, and the last two in C#. I first performed the piece with friends at Northwestern University, and it was later (last, in fact) played at New Music American 1982 in Chicago." (Gann)

This is tonal, notated, and repetitive, but three asynchronous parts create complex texture, which I find interesting even after repeated listening. The piano parts are like sounds in nature, which are independent from each other but also in harmony in a sense.

I don't know of other notated works composed to be played by unsynchronized parts, preceding Long Night. In Reich's phase shift works, one voice drifts from the other at a steady speed. In Riley's In C, each player starts and ends fixed patterns independently, but everything is on the same beats. Cage's indeterminacy pieces might have influenced.

For the album version, Sarah Cahill played all three parts. I just found this recording posted last month, played by three pianists. "[...] a perfect piece to perform while sheltering in place on opposite sides of the country with Joe Kubera, Sarah Cahill, and Adam Tendler."


----------



## Phil loves classical

I like the sonorities in Long Night, the laid back ambience and rhythms between the different parts. But over the course of time I just don't feel the harmony is anything new at all or really that interesting, less so than what I hear from earlier free jazz.


----------



## 20centrfuge

There are seven sections. Do the players decide in advance roughly how long each section will be? OR do they listen for a change in the music to know when to advance OR do they rely on visual cues? 

The score says each section should be three minutes or longer and there are repeats where the performer can repeat as many times as wanted (within the framework). 

The only reason I bring it up is to get a feel for how spontaneous the piece really can be.

My guess is that the three performers would decide in advance roughly how long each section should be and would also familiarize themselves with each other’s music to listen for the beginning of a new section.


----------



## Art Rock

_Gann: Long Night (1980-81)
_
Oh dear, *three *pianos.... Well, I had never heard of this composer before, so let's give it a try. Twenty five minutes later... on the plus side, the pianos are played in a way I can appreciate. Separate lines might have some relationship with new age music like George Winston, but mixing them together yields a soundscape that is a strange blend that takes getting used to, but that ultimately is interesting. Things keep happening to make me continue to listen with attention, even though 25 minutes is a tad long. Would I like to have this on CD? Probably not. Would I mind having it on CD? Also not. Well, that's an Artrockometer score of 3/6: "good to have", OK for my CD collection, no big deal if not.


----------



## Enthusiast

I had never heard of Gann. I found it pleasant but whether I would or not it seemed to sink into the background. I think I may have been listening to it wrongly, looking for developments and events. It might help me if someone could suggest how to approach this music, how to listen to it.


----------



## tortkis

20centrfuge said:


> There are seven sections. Do the players decide in advance roughly how long each section will be? OR do they listen for a change in the music to know when to advance OR do they rely on visual cues?
> 
> The score says each section should be three minutes or longer and there are repeats where the performer can repeat as many times as wanted (within the framework).
> 
> The only reason I bring it up is to get a feel for how spontaneous the piece really can be.
> 
> My guess is that the three performers would decide in advance roughly how long each section should be and would also familiarize themselves with each other's music to listen for the beginning of a new section.


The score specifies the order of each section's entrances. If three pianists play on the same stage or one pianist uses overdub, the player(s) can decide the entrance points and durations spontaneously as long as the order is kept, listening to each other. On the video of Kubera/Cahill/Tendler, apparently the pianists played the three parts at different locations. I don't know how they did it, but there is a cellphone stopwatch app running on Cahill's piano. I guess, in this case, they might have made a plan of rough timeframe for each player/section beforehand (for example, Player 1 starts B between 3:00 and 3:30, Player 2 starts B between 3:30 and 4:00, etc.) then played the piece without hearing other players. In this case, they are completely independent except for the sections order and pre-defined timeframe.


----------



## tortkis

Enthusiast said:


> I had never heard of Gann. I found it pleasant but whether I would or not it seemed to sink into the background. I think I may have been listening to it wrongly, looking for developments and events. It might help me if someone could suggest how to approach this music, how to listen to it.


I think there is nothing wrong with it. Gann said it is a piece from his "early, Brian-Eno-influenced, ambient period."


----------



## Enthusiast

^ Oh well - that's what I heard. I thought there might be more to it.


----------



## 20centrfuge

Sometimes it’s helpful for me to simply verbalize what I hear. The piece reminds me of wind chimes - with a placid sort of randomness, casually meditative. Rhythmically, there isn’t anything flashy about the piece. Dynamics are fairly constant. Although I think an analysis would show quite a bit of dissonance, the piece doesn’t stretch the ear with obvious dissonance.

So here’s the amazing thing for me: I picked two random works by this composer: Hyperchromatica:I “Andromeda Memories” and Etude no. 3 “Nude Rolling Down an Escalator.”

The first piece sounds like microtonal Bill Evans and the second piece sounds like a funky riff on Conlon Nancarrow. So now I’m excited to explore this composer. 

That’s why I love this thread - its an introduction to new composers and new music!


----------



## tortkis

20centrfuge said:


> Sometimes it's helpful for me to simply verbalize what I hear. The piece reminds me of wind chimes - with a placid sort of randomness, casually meditative. Rhythmically, there isn't anything flashy about the piece. Dynamics are fairly constant. Although I think an analysis would show quite a bit of dissonance, the piece doesn't stretch the ear with obvious dissonance.
> 
> So here's the amazing thing for me: I picked two random works by this composer: Hyperchromatica:I "Andromeda Memories" and Etude no. 3 "Nude Rolling Down an Escalator."
> 
> The first piece sounds like microtonal Bill Evans and the second piece sounds like a funky riff on Conlon Nancarrow. So now I'm excited to explore this composer.
> 
> That's why I love this thread - its an introduction to new composers and new music!


That is great. Hyperchromatica is one of the most impressive, grand works I found in recent years. It also uses 3 pianos (Disklaviers) but the purpose is to achieve 33 microtonal pitches in one octave, not to create aleatoric counterpoint like Long Night. What fascinates me about Gann's compositions are the aspects of American experimentalism, adventurous microtonality, and accessibility of postminimalism.


----------



## Allegro Con Brio

Listening to the Gann right now. Certainly it sounds quite a bit like jazz and quite a bit like new age/ambient, but I can still detect originality. It does admittedly tend to sink into the background and become a pleasant backdrop, but focusing on the relationships between the overlapping lines is quite interesting. I do, however, think it is too long. Not a composition I would probably choose to listen to voluntarily; it is obviously trying to achieve a sort of hypnotic effect more than anything else (this is why I haven’t been able to really connect with pure minimalism like Reich; it doesn’t really engage my mind as much as I would like music to) but as mentioned there is still enough interest to maintain my attention here, and as it progresses the harmonies and rhythms become more advanced and the intensity builds - it’s not just repetition for its own sake. This is certainly my favorite piece from the minimalist/postminimalist school that I have heard. Probably a solid 5/10 on my personal ranking.


----------



## calvinpv

tortkis said:


> I don't know of other notated works composed to be played by unsynchronized parts, preceding Long Night. In Reich's phase shift works, one voice drifts from the other at a steady speed. In Riley's In C, each player starts and ends fixed patterns independently, but everything is on the same beats. Cage's indeterminacy pieces might have influenced.


I think one can find some similarities between Gann and Lutoslawski. For both Gann and Lutoslawski, musicians loop passages over and over at different speeds with external cues telling them when to start and stop. Where they differ is in how these are achieved. In Gann, the tempos are strict, even though they're different for each pianist; in Lutoslawski, there are no tempo markings: each player can play however fast/slow they want. And for the external cues, Gann requests at the beginning of the score for each section to be "three minutes or so", which puts restrictions on the number of total repeats per section (I'm guessing each player experiments ahead of time how many and what combination of repeats they can squeeze in); Lutoslawski, however, has the conductor give the cues, with the end cues not always precisely notated in the score, so the players don't really know ahead of time when to stop.


----------



## 20centrfuge

*Berio: Voci "Folk Songs II" (1984)*

_submitted by PeterfromLA_

6/14 Allegro Con Brio - MacMillan: Veni, Veni, Emmanuel (1991-1992)
6/21 flamencosketches - TBD (are you with us?)
6/28 Knorf - Saariaho: Graal théâtre (1994)


----------



## Phil loves classical

The Berio on Youtube is for premium users only, so I found it on Spotify here:






I like the orchestration, but find the material itself kind of thin. It's not a violin concerto, since the violin part is too simplistic.


----------



## Knorf

Viola, not violin.


----------



## 20centrfuge

From the composers own words from the publishers website:

Work introduction
“The act of transcription (like that of translation) may imply three different conditions: the identification of the composer with the original musical text, the turning of the text into a pretext for analytical experimentation and, finally, the overpowering of the text, its deconstruction and its philological “abuse”. I believe that an ideal situation occurs only when the three conditions come to blend and coexist. Only then may transcription become a truly creative, constructive act.

Voci (Folk Songs II), written in 1984 for Aldo Bennici and dedicated to Laura and Paolo Martelli, deals precisely with the problem of converging those three dimensions. I am deeply indebted to Aldo Bennici for providing me with the original musical material for the piece: songs of work and love, lullabies and “street cries” from different parts of Sicily. With Voci I hope to contribute to the enhancement of a more profound interest in the Sicilian folklore which, along with that of Sardinia, is certainly the richest, most complex and incandescent of our Mediterranean culture.”

Luciano Berio


----------



## 20centrfuge

Someone could use this work and Benjamin’s Palimpsests as the basis for a hell of an essay on transcription and the metamorphosis of real or fabricated “found” material. 

But I’m too lazy to be that person.


----------



## Enthusiast

There is clearly a lot to say about what Berio was doing musically. I get the basic drift but I don't hear that much of it in the music - that's not really who I am or how I listen - but what I do hear is very powerful, full of soul and (yes) I do somehow hear Sicily. A great work. A masterpiece. It is not short but it is succinct - it travels a long way and is filled with incident. It helps that I love solo viola music - or at least I do when it is this good, which is sadly not that common.


----------



## Art Rock

Sitting this one out, as I don't spotify.


----------



## 20centrfuge

Art Rock said:


> Sitting this one out, as I don't spotify.


----------



## Art Rock

^ only available for premium members.


----------



## 20centrfuge

I’m personally not bonding with this Berio piece. I’ll give it some more time.


----------



## Enthusiast

I returned to the work today and was once more amazed at the mix of soulful music that is clearly influenced by folk music and the more dramatic music for large orchestra, the two sides are served up together rather than alternating. Berio's music is always rich in atmosphere and I find this music hard to resist and very easy to listen to. I wonder if others have also listened to the recordings of actual folk songs that are included on the same disc? They might help put the music in context.









The other Berio work on the disc - Naturale - is also worth hearing.


----------



## Allegro Con Brio

20centrfuge said:


> I'm personally not bonding with this Berio piece. I'll give it some more time.


Me too. There doesn't seem to be much change of mood and sonic palette throughout its duration, though the occasional moment when the folk song sources come through is interesting. One more try for me.


----------



## Enthusiast

^ Try to listen to the whole disc.


----------



## Art Rock

I've ordered the disc from the library. I will listen to it when it arrives (with a bit of luck next week).


----------



## mmsbls

I've never been too excited by folk music so perhaps it's not unexpected that I found the periods where I assumed the viola was playing a folk tune or something similar to be my least favorite. I enjoyed the orchestration during periods where the orchestra takes a more active role. I found myself longing for those orchestral parts to return whenever the orchestra faded into the background.


----------



## Allegro Con Brio

Listening again right now. I like it more than the first time I heard it, and I have no hesitations about calling it an excellent work, but I just wish the viola would do something different every once in a while than play the same basic pattern with elaborations, and like mmsbls I like what he does with the orchestra and I'm disappointed that it's most relegated to an accompaniment role. The second half and especially the ending does get a lot more interesting for me. It's almost minimalistic in the sense that I think it's trying to draw the listener into an extended state of harmonic/textural stasis, which I think it does a good job at. There are certainly moments here that I find quite beautiful, but as with other works we've done the length is a hindrance. Definitely a more "conservative" type work than Sinfonia, the only other work by Berio I've heard (and loved). 5 out of 10 on my scale.


----------



## Enthusiast

Oh dear. I'm finding things in it that other (almost certainly more careful) listeners are not. Is it just that I love the sound of the viola? I'll have to listen again to try to hear it through others' ears before we move on to the next piece.


----------



## 20centrfuge

Announcement: Please see the selection thread to discuss adding an opera to the schedule


----------



## 20centrfuge

*MacMillan: Veni, Veni, Emmanuel (1992)*

_Submitted by Allegro Con Brio_

Next Week - Saariaho: Graal théâtre (1994)


----------



## Allegro Con Brio

First thing to know here: I really only started exploring contemporary music 3-4 months ago, so I don't feel in any position to give an in-depth explanation of the work I nominated. BUT I will do my best! I chose this work because I'm hoping that it will direct some listeners to the beauty of James MacMillan's music. There are a few living composers that I've heard and enjoyed (Gubaidulina, Saariaho and Kurtag probably being at the top of the list) but at my current very limited stage of knowledge, if you were to ask me who my favorite living composer was, I would probably say MacMillan. I love the traditionalism of his music, but also the intrepid modernist language he often uses to make his points. In many ways he reminds me of Messiaen, my favorite composer of the latter half of the 20th century - he can be very dark, visceral, spasmodic, emotionally raw - but his vivid imagination for colors and sonorities is ultimately what hooks me. It's mainly his sacred choral music that I've been drawn to, and I think any lover of contemporary music, choral music or both would love his _Seven Last Words on the Cross_, _Stabat Mater_, _Magnificat_ and his other short a capella choral pieces. Sometimes these works remind me of the incredibly bleak landscapes of Penderecki's _St. Luke Passion_ (another favorite modern masterpiece of mine) but he also balances this with light and shade in a way that is quite poignant to me.

As you could probably guess, MacMillan's faith is essential to his music, and his percussion concerto _Veni, Veni, Emmanuel_ is, in the best tradition of Messiaen, an instrumental work with religious inspiration. I've loved it since I first layed ears on it. In some ways it reminds me of Takemitsu's _From Me Flows What You Call Time_, which we heard a couple weeks ago - vibrant, dazzling colors and dreamy ideas emerge from the large percussion ensemble as MacMillan takes us through a large range of moods and textures in the form of a rhapsody. Wikipedia offers the following short summary:

_There are five main sections to the work: after the introduction is a 'heartbeat' section (representing, according to the composer, "the human presence of Christ"), followed by a 'hocket' dance; transition sequences lead in and out of the central Gaude, after which the dance reappears. The piece reaches its climax with the unfolding of the plainchant in chorale form, after which the work is closed by a coda in which the heartbeat motif and the percussionist on tubular bells have the last word._

The work takes its name from the classic Christmas hymn "Come, O Come, Emmanuel" which may be a familiar melody to many of you. The way MacMillan treats this chorale melody and develops in his own entirely unique fashion reminds me of what Berg did with the Bach chorale in his violin concerto, and it's downright beautiful. There are also influences from medieval music. But I would encourage you to just listen to the music, even if you mentally strip it of any extramusical connotations, and I have a feeling that you'll love it - dynamic, powerful, pulsing with energy; but also sensitive and ethereal when it wants to be. I will spend some more time listening to the work and report any further thoughts I have, but for now, enjoy!


----------



## Art Rock

_MacMillan: Veni, Veni, Emmanuel (1992)
_
IIRC, I first heard this work on TV as part of a BBC proms concert, by Evelyn Glennie. Very soon thereafter I went out to buy a CD with this piece on the BMG Catalyst label, by Evelyn and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra under Saraste. It was one of the first experiences with what later became a special subject of interest for me, "unusual concertos". It was definitely the first percussion concerto I encountered. I just listened to it gain, 26 minutes of goodness. I still like it. A lot. It scores 5/6 on the Artrockometer, an essential piece of music for my CD collection.

_ETA: MacMillan is definitely one of my favourite living composers. Over the years I've built up a sizable collection of his works (27 CD's), but I still consider this work his masterpiece._


----------



## Phil loves classical

I like the first and last parts of the MacMillan the most. A lot of the parts in the middle were less interesting to me.


----------



## 20centrfuge

I’ve explored MacMillan a little in the past. I basically enjoyed his “Seven Last Words from the Cross” but I have to admit that except for perhaps the section: Gaude, Gaude (and its transitions), I find this piece too conventional and contrived. Different strokes for different folks, right?!


----------



## Allegro Con Brio

Listening again to the MacMillan, I can definitely see why those who are more “hardcore” contemporary music fans could scorn it as too traditional and conventional, but I still like it. It seems to be fairly popular in terms of performances, so audiences clearly find it accessible and interesting. I do agree with 20centrfuge that the “Gaude” section is the best. I also just love that ending - the last 2 1/2 minutes consist of nothing but the chimes and bells gradually fading away into silence. I find MacMillan’s sonic palette to be consistently inventive and delightful. Also, I’m a sucker for percussion so that might make me slightly biased Does anyone else hear clear Messiaen influences here? Parts of it remind me a lot of Turangalila - the shifts between very conventional tonality and harmonic clusters, the exotic sound-colors, the dynamic energy.


----------



## tortkis

I greatly enjoyed MacMillan's Veni, Veni, Emmanuel. This was the first time I listened to MacMillan's work. I first listened to Currie with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by the composer (no video), but the version by Glennie & Edwards / DSO Berlin with video of live performance was much more enjoyable. The strings/brass parts sounded rather mere accompaniment, but Glennie's devoted performance kept my interest from the beginning to the end.

(I couldn't find Berio's Voci on youtube. Berio is an interesting composer and I liked Folk Songs (1964). I will listen to Voci some time later.)


----------



## Enthusiast

20centrfuge said:


> I've explored MacMillan a little in the past. I basically enjoyed his "Seven Last Words from the Cross" but I have to admit that except for perhaps the section: Gaude, Gaude (and its transitions), I find this piece too conventional and contrived. Different strokes for different folks, right?!


I was going to write much the same thing except that I tried quite a lot of MacMillan. It's the sort of music that if it were played in a concert you could follow it and enjoy it on first hearing ... but that disappoints on later hearings. But this may be an opportunity to check again. MacMillan wouldn't be the first composer I disliked at first but came to like.

Edit (4 hours later): Oh no. This is a piece I would never have liked! Not even on first hearing. Sorry but most certainly not for me. It isn't because it is accessible but rather because it is very kitschy. I feel that a composer who has done very well for himself is exploiting his reputation. It is hard for me to accept that it is just a matter of taste - but, of course, it must be.


----------



## Enthusiast

... so I have returned to Voci, finding that I enjoy it even more. Many in our little group didn't like it so much and I wonder how much it helped me that I warmed to hearing a composer's voice I recognised from his Sinfonia and other works? Anyway, I can't really say how it is that many do not hear much variety or thematic development, even to the extent of describing it as almost minimalist, as I find myself constantly engaged. It may be true that there is more of interest in the orchestral contributions but aren't they well integrated with the solo viola music? Don't shoot me but the interplay between the viola and the orchestra is almost like Scheherazade's violin and orchestra interaction! I do get that some do not warm to the more raw side of its use of folk music. I quite like it and its ethno-musical approach ... isn't it a bit like Messiaen's treatment of bird song? Anyway, (as is clear) the work gets a thumbs up from me and I am glad of the opportunity to become properly familiar with a work I had been merely acquainted with.


----------



## Knorf

I've loved Berio's _Voci_ for years, since that Kim Kashkashian recording came out. Incredible and endlessly fascinating music! I was surprised it was not more appreciated here. I should probably write more about why I think so, but I've been wiped out by life, lately.

MacMillan's music makes me want to brush my teeth.


----------



## 20centrfuge

*Saariaho: Graal théâtre (1994)*

_submitted by Knorf _

Here's the schedule through the end of July:

_ 6/28 Enthusiast - Birtwistle: The Cry of Anubis (1994) [15]
7/5 Sciarrino: Luci mie traditrici (1996-1998) [70]
7/12 Portamento - Xenakis: A l'île de Gorée (1986) [15]
7/19 Art Rock - Sallinen: Songs of Life and Death, Op. 69 (1995) [45]
7/26 Trout - Vivier: Lonely Child (1980) [20]_


----------



## Knorf

Oh, hi! I'll post an intro for the Saariaho a bit later today.


----------



## 20centrfuge

Wow, I count five commercial recordings of this work which is a ton considering how recently it was written:

--Gidon Kremer, Esa-Pekka Salonen, BBC Symphony Orchestra
--Koh, Covington, Curtis 20/21 Ensemble 
--Storgårds, Lintu, Avanti Chamber Orchestra (2001)
--Herresthal, Mao-Takacs, Oslo Philharmonic
--Schmidt von Altenstadt, Rundel, musikFabrik


----------



## Phil loves classical

I was really impressed by the Saariaho. I found it very engaging.


----------



## calvinpv

I did listen to the MacMillan a couple times this week but forgot to post until now. I'm surprised at some of the negative reactions. I thought this was a really nice piece, full of vigor and energy as well as very cohesive. I'm honestly having a hard time thinking of a better contemporary percussion concerto other than Chin's Double Concerto (granted, I've only heard a small handful, so no doubt better ones exist). I really liked in particular the "hocket section" (approximately 6:00-10:30 below) where the instruments in the orchestra are constantly trading off the melody, creating a melody rich and ever-shifting in timbre. But it seems like there's a hocket-like dance between the orchestra as a whole and the soloist throughout the entire work.

I don't know which recordings you guys listened to that made you turned off by the music, but I was captivated by the one below. A crisp, clear, precise interpretation, which for me are the best interpretations. Also, MacMillan's own program note on the work can be read here.


----------



## Knorf

I'm giving the MacMillan one more chance, before I move on to Saariaho. I'm not sure I should post detail about why I dislike it, but for me it is contrived and ultimately boring. Sorry, my friends.

If you like it, certainly don't let me stop you!


----------



## Knorf

It's kind of funny that we've had three weeks in a row with compositions that are all but concertos, but with poetic titles. Berio's _Voci_ is more or less a viola concerto, MacMillan's _Veni, veni..._ is more or less a percussion concerto, and _Graal théâtre_, one of Saariaho's greatest, most well-known, and rightly celebrated compositions, is a violin concerto in all but name.

Here's her own program note about the piece:


Kaija Saariaho said:


> Graal théâtre ("Grail Theatre") takes its title from a book of the same name by Jacques Roubaud. While I was working on my violin concerto the book inspired me indirectly in two ways: firstly the title expresses the tension I feel between the efforts of the composer when writing music and the theatrical aspect of a performance, especially in the case of a concerto where the soloist is playing a major role both physically and musically. Roubaud's interpretation of the old legend, with its very personal example, also encouraged me to realise something that I had long found impossible: to bring an idea of the violin concerto, a genre with so many moving and skilful masterpieces, into my musical framework and language.
> 
> When compared with my other music, Graal théâtre is the exception in a long row of pieces in which I combined acoustic instruments with electronic elements. Unlike these earlier works, my starting point here was the delicate violin sound and its interaction with the orchestra.
> 
> The initial source of inspiration for the piece was the playing and musicianship of Gidon Kremer, to whom the work is dedicated.


Note that _Graal théâtre_ exists in two versions, one for full orchestra from 1994, and the second for chamber orchestra from 1997. It is worth hearing and comparing the two versions! Maybe that could be a focal point for discussion.

_Graal théâtre_ is in two movements, and I haven't heard it spelled out explicitly anywhere, but I feel convinced this follows the example of the two-movement form advocated by the great Polish composer Witold Lutosławski. The idea is for a first, "hesitant" movement, where musical ideas and the thrust of the musical affect is more nebulous, uncertain, or conflicted, followed by a "direct" movement where the musical conflict might continue but is brought an arena of greater confidence, and more forthright treatment. In the case of _Graal théâtre_, the conflict is resolved peacefully and beautifully.

I hope you all enjoy this! I know we're usually about mixed opinions, and this piece will probably be similar. But I find Saariaho's music to be extraordinarily rich, expressive, highly imaginative, and always worth a little effort.


----------



## Art Rock

Knorf said:


> I'm giving the MacMillan one more chance, before I move on to Saariaho. I'm not sure I should post detail about why I dislike it, but for me it is contrived and ultimately boring. Sorry, my friends.
> 
> If you like it, certainly don't let me stop you!


I would hope we all give our honest reactions. There's not a single piece of music that will be loved by everyone.


----------



## Art Rock

_Saariaho: Graal théâtre (1994)
_
One of my favourite living composers. As I'm still stuck in composers starting with R in my CD's archiving/listening exercise, I can't say how many CD's I have of her, but certainly more than a dozen. That includes this violin concerto on a BIS CD (Herresthal, Mao-Takacs, Oslo Philharmonic) as well as on a cheap 4CD box from Ondine (Storgårds, Lintu, Avanti Chamber Orchestra). I picked the BIS version to listen again today. It's a beautiful piece, one of my favourite contemporary violin concertos (I should add that I love this genre) - at the moment it's a toss up between her and Dutilleux, both ahead of the two Gubaidulina concertos. It's a work I would not want to be without. Artrockometer score 5/6, "essential".


----------



## Ravn

Saariaho is a composer that I discovered last year due to a list posted on this very forum. I have since heard quite a few of her compositions, where my favorites are Laterna Magica, D’om lenvrai sens and Du Cristal. 

Graal Theatre is for me a new composition of an exquisite character. Saariaho blends the parts of the soloist and the orchestra in a beautiful way, that grabbed my attention from start to finish. I particularily liked how the solo violin part sometimes sounded like Norwegian folk music in the first movement. 

I listened to the orchestral version of the piece, beautifully performed by Clément Mao-Tacaks and Oslo Philharmonic with Peter Herresthal on violin.


----------



## mmsbls

My enthusiasm for Graal Theatre has continuously increased. Today, I heard the youtube version with Gidon Kremer, the BBC symphony orchestra conducted by Esa Pekka Salonen and then on Naxos another orchestra version with Peter Herresthal and the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra. I probably preferred Kremer's version, but both were rather enjoyable. Naxos has a chamber version which I will hear sometime later.

I had listed Graal Theatre in my all too long list of desired works to get before listening recently, but I think I will make an even stronger note to get this work. It's both beautiful and compelling.



Knorf said:


> _Graal théâtre_ is in two movements, and I haven't heard it spelled out explicitly anywhere, but I feel convinced this follows the example of the two-movement form advocated by the great Polish composer Witold Lutosławski.


David Hurwitz in this review also points to a similarity with Lutoslawski.


----------



## Mandryka

Not keen on Graal Theatre. I have a theory about Saariaho, that the music I like is all early, from the 1980s. Here's Im Traume for cello and piano, where you can hear the influence of spectralist music quite clearly - how much more expressive and rich in timbre than Graal Theatre.


----------



## 20centrfuge

Mandryka, would you like to submit a work for listening?


----------



## 20centrfuge

Art Rock said:


> I would hope we all give our honest reactions. There's not a single piece of music that will be loved by everyone.


I like the fact that we have different opinions and personalities here and that we can be honest with each other. The very first week I put the Ades piece up and ArtRock basically said "Nope!" It stung for a moment but then I respected him more for saying what he thinks.


----------



## Mandryka

20centrfuge said:


> Mandryka, would you like to submit a work for listening?


How about Jonathan Harvey, _Nachtlied_.


----------



## 20centrfuge

Saariaho

I really thought I was going to like this one! But here’s my review:

GT is a succession of clouds of music that don’t create any real sense of forward direction. Harmonically it just feels too static. Now “static” isn’t always a bad thing. If I’m stuck on a tropical beach with a refreshing beverage I’m FINE not going anywhere. Or in the musical universe - if I’m experiencing a static piece by, say Gubaidulina (which is pretty common with her) I’m often stuck in a place that is at least interesting — murky, spiritual, beautifully desolate.

But with this Saariaho piece I just feel like I’m stuck in a room with a scratchy violin. Despite multiple listening repetitions my mind wanders so so easily. 

Looks like I’m in the minority with my dislike of this piece.


----------



## Ravn

20centrfuge said:


> Saariaho
> 
> I really thought I was going to like this one! But here's my review:
> 
> GT is a succession of clouds of music that don't create any real sense of forward direction. Harmonically it just feels too static. Now "static" isn't always a bad thing. If I'm stuck on a tropical beach with a refreshing beverage I'm FINE not going anywhere. Or in the musical universe - if I'm experiencing a static piece by, say Gubaidulina (which is pretty common with her) I'm often stuck in a place that is at least interesting - murky, spiritual, beautifully desolate.
> 
> But with this Saariaho piece I just feel like I'm stuck in a room with a scratchy violin. Despite multiple listening repetitions my mind wanders so so easily.
> 
> Looks like I'm in the minority with my dislike of this piece.


Which recordings did you hear? Because «scratchy violin» did not cross my mind at all with this piece.


----------



## 20centrfuge

Don’t read too much into the scratchy violin comment. But I did listen to Kremer and Koh recordings


----------



## Allegro Con Brio

I can’t stop listening to this Saariaho piece. Ravishing, dream-like soundscapes and a brilliant treatment of the interplay between soloist and orchestra. I’m not a big fan of violin concerti but I much tend to prefer what 20th century and contemporary composers do with the genre - this is no exception. It reminds me of the only other Saariaho work I’m familiar with, the clarinet concerto “L’dom le vrai sens” (going off memory for the French name). An excellent choice and one that makes me want to explore the composer further. Any other recommendations for some more acoustic works from Saariaho? (I don’t “do” electronic music).


----------



## calvinpv

Allegro Con Brio said:


> I can't stop listening to this Saariaho piece. Ravishing, dream-like soundscapes and a brilliant treatment of the interplay between soloist and orchestra. I'm not a big fan of violin concerti but I much tend to prefer what 20th century and contemporary composers do with the genre - this is no exception. It reminds me of the only other Saariaho work I'm familiar with, the clarinet concerto "L'dom le vrai sens" (going off memory for the French name). An excellent choice and one that makes me want to explore the composer further. Any other recommendations for some more acoustic works from Saariaho? (I don't "do" electronic music).


Amongst the purely acoustic works, I'd recommend Laterna Magica, Orion, Notes on Light, Oltra mar, Grammaire des rêves, and Solar. Though it should be said that some of her best works use electronics. Her opera L'Amour de loin is probably the single best opera by any composer of the last 20 years, but it does make heavy use of electronics (it's never front and center but you can always hear it in the background). And then there are three magnificent early works: Io, Nymphéa, and Lichtbogen; when Mandryka says above that he prefers the early Saariaho, he's talking about these. Plus there's others like La Passion de Simone, Six Japanese Gardens, Près, NoaNoa, and Lonh. Actually, if you want to overcome your fear of electronics, I'd recommend Lonh as a starting point; despite its simplicity, it's absolutely stunning.


----------



## Mandryka

Allegro Con Brio said:


> I don't "do" electronic music.


Can you hear the electricity in the sound?


----------



## tortkis

Graal théâtre is a work which is hard to grasp for me, but its fine sound texture leaves a refreshing impression. I have Storgårds's recording, which is clear, sensitive and exquisite. Recently I got Koh's recording. It is rich and bold, but for some reason I prefer Storgårds's for this work.


----------



## Ravn

20centrfuge said:


> Don't read too much into the scratchy violin comment. But I did listen to Kremer and Koh recordings


I was just asking out curiosity, didn't really read anything into your comment. Whenever I'm trying to push contemporary CM on my friends, I do often get comments like yours (I'm sure you all have gotten similar responses), and I was genuinly curious why you experienced the violin as «scratchy», since I assume your ears are much more accustomed to contemporary music than my friends (which don't really enjoy contemporary CM, or CM at all for that matter).


----------



## Art Rock

_Voci - Berio
_
A belated listening, as I got the ECM CD yesterday from the library. Berio is one of those composers that are rather hit (Sinfonia, Coro e.g.) or miss (A-Ronne e.g.) with me, but one of his most appealing compositions is Folksongs, so Voci (Folksongs II) promised to be interesting. My first listen gave me some mixed reactions. There are some beautiful viola parts (and also some less appealing ones), but the orchestral parts, where they are more than a backdrop for the soloist, do not quite convince me. I'll give it another try tomorrow.


----------



## Art Rock

A re-listen did not change my mind. It's an OK piece, but not more than that (3/6 on the artrockometer).


----------



## Knorf

Art Rock said:


> A re-listen did not change my mind. It's an OK piece, but not more than that (3/6 on the artrockometer).


I find responses like this problematic. The purpose of art is not to serve you a commodity to be consumed, designed to appeal to either specific or generalized subjective tastes, like at a McDonald's or something. (If you want that, there's plenty of top 40 hits engineered precisely in this way.)

In fact, such an attitude is antithetical to art. Art is meant to engage you in an experience of the ineffable.


----------



## Art Rock

I'm not giving an objective value judgement (which IMO is by definition impossible), but my subjective evaluation.


----------



## 20centrfuge

I forget sometimes that in this modern era of classical music that every piece of music seems to dictate it's own special way of how it needs to be treated. Sometimes expecting horizontal movement (as I have previously done) is inappropriate. Sometimes it's more about color. And of course, sometimes there is a level of complexity that becomes it's own thing (as in Ferneyhough). 

I'm re-listening to the Saariaho piece and trying not to put my own expectations into it. I'm bending myself to it's will rather than the other way around. I appreciate the piece a bit more with this approach. I find it to be more about color and harmonics than about movement. 

The violin isn't "scratchy" :lol:


----------



## Knorf

Well said, 20centrfuge!

There can be great reward in approaching art, not merely from the consumerist first response as to whether it suits one's own tastes or not, but rather considering what one can bring forward in allowing oneself to seek first to learn, understand, and be willing to be changed by the work. 

One still won't like absolutely everything, and that's fine, but the experience will be potentially so much more substantive, whether liked or disliked.


----------



## Enthusiast

I did enjoy the Saariaho. It sounds a fine work to me. I have listened to both the Koh (with a chamber orchestra) and the Kremer but so far have enjoyed the Kremer a lot more, especially in the second movement. It is not a very challenging or "advanced" work but there is lots in it to entice and interest the listener. With some of the works I hear and like through participating in the various listening groups I am less certain about whether they will be calling me back for further hearings in the future but this is one that I feel sure I will be revisiting.


----------



## calvinpv

20centrfuge said:


> The violin isn't "scratchy" :lol:


You actually weren't wrong to think this. There are directions at the beginning of the score (where the notation is explained) that describe a symbol as "add[ing] bow pressure to produce a scratching sound in which the audible pitch is totally replaced by noise". And it's used quite often, typically as a performative flourish at the end of a melodic sequence.

https://saariaho.org/works/graal-theatre-chamber-version/


----------



## 20centrfuge

*Birtwistle: The Cry of Anubis (1994) [15]*

_submitted by Enthusiast_

7/5 (group selection) - Sciarrino: Luci mie traditrici (opera) (1996-1998) [70]
7/12 Portamento - Xenakis: A l'île de Gorée (1986) [15]
7/19 Art Rock - Sallinen: Songs of Life and Death, Op. 69 (1995) [45]
7/26 Trout - Vivier: Lonely Child (1980) [20] 
8/2 Mandryka - Harvey: Nachtlied (1984) [25]


----------



## Knorf

Awesome! A tuba concerto in all but name, and a really terrific piece.


----------



## Enthusiast

The Cry of Anubis is not perhaps a major work of Birtwistle's. Birtwislte has said of it

"The Cry of Anubis, part tuba concerto, part tone poem, grew out of Birtwistle’s fascination with Anubis, the jackal-headed god if the necropolis in Egyptian mythology. The character, and the tuba, played a significant role in the composer’s opera The Second Mrs Kong (1993-94), as an overseer of the world of shadows and, transformed, as Kong’s nemesis, the Death of Kong. In The Cry of Anubis, the god again leads the funeral precession and is personified musically by the solo tuba. The Cry of Anubis is not a suite of excerpts from the opera, but rather takes some of the musical material on a new compositional journey."

I find it a very appealing work and having the tuba represent or invoke Anubis was a brilliant idea. I don't think it is a challenging listen - just turn your critical faculty off and let it into your mind. Once it's in there you can pull it apart critically if you want to!


----------



## 20centrfuge

*Birtwistle: Cry of Anubis.*

Well! This is a FANTASTIC piece! The tuba becomes a powerful, heroic, agile weapon in the hands of Mr. Birtwistle. I love the tuba in this piece! I wouldn't be surprised if other composers hear this piece and think "I had no idea the tuba could be so *cool!*" The piece as a whole is energetic and fun to listen to. It pulls you along with turbulence, energy, and wisps of color. It's basically everything I could want from an energetic modern composition.

The last time I tried to listen to Birtwistle was more than 20 years ago when I hadn't the faintest interest in contemporary composition. I didn't connect to his music back then. Frankly I don't think I would have connected with any contemporary composers back then. I was a traditionalist who considered the Rite of Spring cutting edge. So I feel like this is a proper re-introduction to Mr. Birtwistle. He may very well become a new favorite thanks to this.

Thanks tons, Enthusiast! I'm a Birtwistle convert!


----------



## Allegro Con Brio

I thought this was great - delicate and colorful with an excellent use of the tuba, an instrument usually not taken seriously by composers when used (I think of Vaughan Williams’s Tuba Concerto and Hindemith’s Tuba Sonata, which are really more like humorous little character pieces). This really showed the potential of the instrument. I’ve shied away from Birtwistle because he seems to have picked up a reputation as one of the most “extreme” modernist composers in his unforgiving use of dissonance, but I didn’t hear that at all here (nor in the other pieces on the album I briefly sampled). It seemed more like a mystical, subtle, nocturnal style; like a sultry summer night with shooting stars whizzing through the sky. The duration doesn’t seem too long and overall a great choice.


----------



## Allegro Con Brio

Also, just something on my mind and a general question to throw out there to the contemporary listening community (kinda off topic, but not really) - do you agree with the propensity of contemporary composers to label things with poetic names rather than just leaving the music to speak for itself? The last four weeks we’ve had “Voci” (or Folk Songs II, which spells out the folk influence for the listener), “Veni, Veni, Emmanuel” (which indicates a spiritual inspiration) “Graal Theatre” (betraying influence from a literary source) and “The Cry of Anubis” (inspired by legend), along with many others, all of which tell the listener what to hear programmatically. I know some people think these things should just be called “Tuba Concerto” or “Viola Concerto” or what not because it can appear like the composer is trying to force the listener into a rigid model for how to approach the music. Does it make a difference to you? Do you think this is a bad habit for today's composers?


----------



## Enthusiast

I don't mind being given a hint on what the music is about. But it rarely influences me very much. Veni, Veni sounds a little cheap to me and a spiritual reference doesn't make me like it more. Graal Theatre is a name that has no impact on my at all. Perhaps if I knew the literary reference it might. The use of fold music in the Berio didn't really need signposting. Anubis? Yes, perhaps the title does help to relate to the music in a certain way. But it isn't a conventional concerto so I'm not sure that title would have worked very well. I hear a kind of tone poem with a concertante part for tuba.


----------



## Knorf

One thing, the English translation of _Graal théâtre_ should be "Grail Theater" (or "Theatre.") It always puzzles me why people translate _théâtre_ to theatre but not _graal_ to grail. But I agree that becoming acquainted with the Jacques Roubaud play (which as I understand it is indeed based on the Arthurian mythos) would surely be useful and interesting.

In terms of generic titles vs. poetic titles, there is very definitely an attitude in the new music world that generic titles are passé, and that poetic titles with extra-musical references are more likely to catch audience interest, win awards or grants, etc.

As a composer myself, I have been pressured more than once to change a generic title to a poetic one. For example, I have an Oboe Concerto from 2018 with no external inspirations beyond "great oboe music," but multiple people encouraged me heavily to come up with a "kickass title that grabs interest." I couldn't think of one, and I felt uncomfortable faking one. But that Oboe Concerto, as good as I think it is, has had precisely one professional performance.

I do think many poetic titles are highly pretentious, and have very little or nothing to do with the reference. But that is the current way of things. _O tempora, o mores!_

I will add that I don't think the Saariaho, Berio, and Birtwistle titles come from pretense.


----------



## 20centrfuge

That's very interesting to hear Knorf!

I personally, don't think an imaginative title or programmatic element is a weakness. I've been thinking of Philip Guston, the artist. Early in his career he produced abstract works like this:









Later in his career, he changed to pictures of people and things, stating that he wanted to "tell stories"









So which is the greater work? I don't think it really matters. They are both great. If someone wants the music to be free of extra association, then I am all for that. But if they feel an inspiration or that they want to 'tell a story' then I think that is tremendous as well.

If I am perfectly open and honest, I would say that I have a slight preference to imaginative titles and story-telling, though sometimes, it is a bummer not to be able to say "have you heard that wonderful new SYMPHONY, or SONATA, etc!!!!!?????????? It is nice to be able to compare works from today and from yesterday that are similarly named and weighted. I often wish John Adams had named Harmonielehre - Symphony No. 1 for that very reason.


----------



## 20centrfuge

I imagine some of what feeds this trend of non-generic titles is the desire NOT to be directly compared to Beethoven, Brahms, etc. I think there is a feeling that "WE DON'T WANT THIS TO BE A MUSEUM EXPERIENCE!!"


----------



## Enthusiast

Words like symphony, sonata and even concerto imply at least some adherence to form. Poetic titles have a long history too - particularly for some Romantics and for impressionists onward.


----------



## Knorf

20centrfuge said:


> I imagine some of what feeds this trend of non-generic titles is the desire NOT to be directly compared to Beethoven, Brahms, etc. I think there is a feeling that "WE DON'T WANT THIS TO BE A MUSEUM EXPERIENCE!!"


Personally, I only use poetic titles when the extra-musical reference was very definitely an inspiration.


----------



## calvinpv

I listened to _Cry of Anubis_ about 5 times this week. I thought it was interesting, but I felt a bit out of sorts on what picture or narrative I should be painting for myself. When I focus on the tuba by itself, I hear it moving slowly and solemnly like in a funeral procession. But there were times (e.g. about a third of the way through) when the tuba squawks loudly and with an attitude, as if Anubis came to a decision about admitting a soul to the underworld and is yelling in jubilation. Moreover, when I focus on the orchestral backdrop, I notice it moving more quickly, with little twirling figures and shimmering tremolos that increase/decrease in intensity. Maybe funeral processions in ancient Egyptian culture were exciting spectacles to attend, as opposed to times for mourning that they are today. Or at least, maybe this is what Birtwistle was imagining.

Also for fun, I decided to listen as a companion piece to Grisey's _Anubis-Nout_ (for solo bass saxophone, composed 1983, revised 1990), just to hear different takes on Anubis. But I was more disappointed with the Grisey. He only seemed interested in hitting these low notes so that one can hear all the overtones in the sax. Which I guess is cool, but I failed to see where Anubis played into this, since there are plenty of pieces that do this without resorting to any programmatic content (e.g. Grisey's own _Solo pour deux_). Overall, I preferred the Birtwistle.


----------



## Enthusiast

^ I wonder if you are looking for something more programmatic than either composer intended? Or maybe, like me, you just end up picturing things (but your own personal pictures) when you listen to music? I don't know the Grisey (I'm going to check it out, though) but I think Birtwistle was maybe going for impressions and atmosphere - perhaps invoking Anubis doing whatever Anubis did but I also find myself picturing Egyptian burial chambers - and that the music led rather than any story or specific scene(s). I could be wrong, of course.


----------



## 20centrfuge

*Sciarrino: Luci mie traditrici (1996-1998)*






7/12 Portamento - Xenakis: A l'île de Gorée (1986) [15]
7/19 Mandryka - Harvey: Nachtlied (1984) [25]
7/26 Art Rock - Sallinen: Songs of Life and Death, Op. 69 (1995) [45]
8/2 Trout - Vivier: Lonely Child (1980) [20]
8/9 mmsbls - Murail: Désintégrations (1983) [25]
8/16 Ravn - Rautavaara: Symphony No. 7 "Angel of Light" (1994) [35] 
8/23 Phil loves classical - Ligeti: Piano Concerto (1988) [25]
8/30 Kjetil Heggelund - Saariaho: Du cristal...à la fumée (1989) [40]
9/6 Super Tonic - Corigliano: Symphony No. 1 (1988-1989) [40]
9/13 calvinpv - Rihm: Jagden und Formen (1995-2001, revised 2008) [50] 
9/20 20centrfuge - Maxwell Davies: Concerto for Trumpet (1988) [30]
9/27 Blancrocher - Lutoslawski: Piano Concerto "For Krystian Zimerman" (1988) [25]
10/4 BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist - Messiaen: Éclairs sur l'au-delà... (1991) [60]
10/11 tortkis - Garland: Peter: String Quartet No. 1, "In Praise of Poor Scholars" (1986) [20]
10/18 PeterfromLA - Schnittke: Symphony No. 5 "Concerto Grosso No. 4" (1988) [35]
10/25 Knorf - TBD
11/1 Allegro Con Brio TBD
11/8 _the zombie apocalypse_


----------



## Kjetil Heggelund

Just to let you know that the video is unavailable...Is it really opera??


----------



## 20centrfuge

EDIT: I think the link above will work now.


----------



## 20centrfuge

There is a good article about the opera here:

http://www.beyondcriticism.com/12317/sciarrino-luci-mie-traditrici


----------



## calvinpv

Besides 20centrfuge's link to a video performance -- which is what you should hear first -- here are youtube playlists to two commercial recordings:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_mLN4VXq05cUDEexRDqu68YQOodrvsFLiY

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_l-cCK_2lXjKPkeum_G9H5RIKuIvAXyCIg

Plus the liner notes, including libretto, to the second recording (after clicking the link below, click on "download booklet"):

https://www.kairos-music.com/cds/0012222kai


----------



## 20centrfuge

Well, I watched the YouTube link of the opera. I actually liked it quite a bit. The techniques and sounds that Sciarrino utilizes in the orchestra are fascinating: lots of string harmonics, the flutist blowing air through the instrument, the sound of key pads audibly being slapped against the woodwind instruments, guttural noises from the lower woodwinds. It gives the listener a sensation of shivering, of tension, uneasiness, anticipation, even the feeling of something foreboding and threatening.

In terms of the vocal lines - they seem to mimic speech a lot. This is definitely not the old fashioned opera with arias in it. But it works, I feel. It isn't off-putting at all. It's a very listenable opera. 

This next comment isn't so much about the music but about the drama of what was on stage. I felt like the first half really worked. The second half not so much. In the second half, the male lead is essentially letting his wife know he is going to kill her. She exhibits this Mona-Lisa-like smile and basically says "I am totally good with you killing me" -- it is just plain weird. There is no fear from her. No pleading. The dialogue and feel during this part feels too artificial. Anyhoo, I know that's not the MUSIC but I still thought I would give that observation.

I'm glad we did an opera as a listening group. I know operas aren't everyone's THING, but they are a critical part of the repertoire and it would seem incomplete if we didn't at least give a nod to this genre.


----------



## Mandryka

20centrfuge said:


> Well, I watched the YouTube link of the opera. I actually liked it quite a bit. The techniques and sounds that Sciarrino utilizes in the orchestra are fascinating: lots of string harmonics, the flutist blowing air through the instrument, the sound of key pads audibly being slapped against the woodwind instruments, guttural noises from the lower woodwinds. It gives the listener a sensation of shivering, of tension, uneasiness, anticipation, even the feeling of something foreboding and threatening.
> 
> In terms of the vocal lines - they seem to mimic speech a lot. This is definitely not the old fashioned opera with arias in it. But it works, I feel. It isn't off-putting at all. It's a very listenable opera.
> 
> This next comment isn't so much about the music but about the drama of what was on stage. I felt like the first half really worked. The second half not so much. In the second half, the male lead is essentially letting his wife know he is going to kill her. She exhibits this Mona-Lisa-like smile and basically says "I am totally good with you killing me" -- it is just plain weird. There is no fear from her. No pleading. The dialogue and feel during this part feels too artificial. Anyhoo, I know that's not the MUSIC but I still thought I would give that observation.
> 
> I'm glad we did an opera as a listening group. I know operas aren't everyone's THING, but they are a critical part of the repertoire and it would seem incomplete if we didn't at least give a nod to this genre.


I haven't heard this opera, but I can recognise what you say about Sciarrino, in particular, he seems really in his element with flute. A great composer IMO.


----------



## Allegro Con Brio

Well, I'm trying (not watching the video but trying the Ensemble Algoritmo recording on streaming). Obviously this doesn't bear much relationship to "traditional" opera in many senses, and it's taking a while for me to adjust my ears. The orchestral effects are certainly very brilliant and colorful. I find the overall effect to be that of an extended dream-like state, almost like Debussy's _Pelleas et Melisande_ in that it is one continuous structure with a very similar mood throughout. That being said I'm having a tough time finding any sort of aesthetic enjoyment from this so far. Quite interesting to hear and get to know a bit though.


----------



## Kjetil Heggelund

I watched ca. 10 minutes and got a feeling of madness  "I love you forever and ever and I love you forever more" for a long time with "wild" vocal technique almost sent me into a psychosis. I'm glad I turned it off. I usually love hearing new things but obviously not tonight. Maybe I will try again tomorrow.


----------



## 20centrfuge

Kjetil Heggelund said:


> I watched ca. 10 minutes and got a feeling of madness  "I love you forever and ever and I love you forever more" for a long time with "wild" vocal technique almost sent me into a psychosis. I'm glad I turned it off. I usually love hearing new things but obviously not tonight. Maybe I will try again tomorrow.


You weren't digging the love vows?! :lol:


----------



## Enthusiast

I've listened to it three times this week from this old CD. I like what I hear quite a lot but I have no idea why. I do find it very hard to link what I am hearing with what I understand the opera to be about, though, so I need to watch it at some point.


----------



## Mandryka

Well I've still not heard it, but this week I've been listening to what I think is a real vocal masterpieces by Sciarrino, this


----------



## Enthusiast

I do find his setting of Italian (language) really fascinating. I doubt very much the work could be included in an Opera in English series! I have watched the opera on that YouTube clip (the regular ads were very irritating!) and have found it haunting. I was interested while watching that so much of the music was memorable from my three hearings of the rather different performance that I have on CD. I do like this piece but remain mystified what I like about it.


----------



## Mandryka

For me the attractiveness of Sciarrino is partly to do with a sort of clascissism. Yes, it uses non standard instrumental techniques, yes it can be violent. But somehow it seems so well balanced, restrained often.

I've not given the opera the attention it deserves, but superficial listening suggests a really striking contrast between the (formal) first part and the violent second.


----------



## 20centrfuge

*7/12 Xenakis: A l'île de Gorée (1986) [15]*

_Submitted by Portamento_

7/19 Mandryka - Harvey: Nachtlied (1984) [25]
7/26 Art Rock - Sallinen: Songs of Life and Death, Op. 69 (1995) [45]
8/2 Trout - Vivier: Lonely Child (1980) [20]
8/9 mmsbls - Murail: Désintégrations (1983) [25]
8/16 Ravn - Rautavaara: Symphony No. 7 "Angel of Light" (1994) [35] 
8/23 Phil loves classical - Ligeti: Piano Concerto (1988) [25]
8/30 Kjetil Heggelund - Saariaho: Du cristal...à la fumée (1989) [40]
9/6 Super Tonic - Corigliano: Symphony No. 1 (1988-1989) [40]
9/13 calvinpv - Rihm: Jagden und Formen (1995-2001, revised 2008) [50] 
9/20 20centrfuge - Maxwell Davies: Concerto for Trumpet (1988) [30]
9/27 Blancrocher - Lutoslawski: Piano Concerto "For Krystian Zimerman" (1988) [25]
10/4 BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist - Messiaen: Éclairs sur l'au-delà... (1991) [60]
10/11 tortkis - Garland: Peter: String Quartet No. 1, "In Praise of Poor Scholars" (1986) [20]
10/18 PeterfromLA - Schnittke: Symphony No. 5 "Concerto Grosso No. 4" (1988) [35]
10/25 Knorf - TBD
11/1 Allegro Con Brio TBD


----------



## calvinpv

20centrfuge said:


> Well, I watched the YouTube link of the opera. I actually liked it quite a bit. The techniques and sounds that Sciarrino utilizes in the orchestra are fascinating: lots of string harmonics, the flutist blowing air through the instrument, the sound of key pads audibly being slapped against the woodwind instruments, guttural noises from the lower woodwinds. It gives the listener a sensation of shivering, of tension, uneasiness, anticipation, even the feeling of something foreboding and threatening.
> 
> In terms of the vocal lines - they seem to mimic speech a lot. This is definitely not the old fashioned opera with arias in it. But it works, I feel. It isn't off-putting at all. It's a very listenable opera.
> 
> This next comment isn't so much about the music but about the drama of what was on stage. I felt like the first half really worked. The second half not so much. In the second half, the male lead is essentially letting his wife know he is going to kill her. She exhibits this Mona-Lisa-like smile and basically says "I am totally good with you killing me" -- it is just plain weird. There is no fear from her. No pleading. The dialogue and feel during this part feels too artificial. Anyhoo, I know that's not the MUSIC but I still thought I would give that observation.
> 
> I'm glad we did an opera as a listening group. I know operas aren't everyone's THING, but they are a critical part of the repertoire and it would seem incomplete if we didn't at least give a nod to this genre.


Apologies for being late on the Sciarrino. My sentiments are exactly the same as 20centrfuge's, though when it comes to the second half, it was only the final scene that let me down. I thought the scene when they test each other's faith was brilliant, probably the best scene in the opera. The duchess asks with what assurance will the duke be faithful and he responds "with my hand", which forshadows the duke killing her by his own hand with a sword. They then repeat back and forth over and over

Duke: "A great sorceress is beauty"
Duchess: "A great sorcerer is love"

In other words, the duke was deceived by the beautiful appearances of the duchess and is now in a state of torment while the duchess was deceived by the false promises of love and is now prisoner to the madness of the duke and her imminent death (which she can foresee). And the music in this scene (and I guess the whole opera) was basically serving as a commentary on the emotional states and the inner thoughts of the two as well as supply additional meaning to the words uttered.

But yeah, in the final scene, the duchess seemed all too happy to be killed, in contrast to the feelings of dread beforehand.


----------



## calvinpv

Allegro Con Brio said:


> Well, I'm trying (not watching the video but trying the Ensemble Algoritmo recording on streaming). Obviously this doesn't bear much relationship to "traditional" opera in many senses, and it's taking a while for me to adjust my ears. The orchestral effects are certainly very brilliant and colorful. I find the overall effect to be that of an extended dream-like state, almost like Debussy's _Pelleas et Melisande_ in that it is one continuous structure with a very similar mood throughout. That being said I'm having a tough time finding any sort of aesthetic enjoyment from this so far. Quite interesting to hear and get to know a bit though.


You ought to watch the video -- it's a haunting performance, and Sciarrino himself considers it definitive.


----------



## 20centrfuge

calvinpv said:


> Duke: "A great sorceress is beauty"
> Duchess: "A great sorcerer is love"
> 
> In other words, the duke was deceived by the beautiful appearances of the duchess and is now in a state of torment while the duchess was deceived by the false promises of love and is now prisoner to the madness of the duke and her imminent death (which she can foresee). And the music in this scene (and I guess the whole opera) was basically serving as a commentary on the emotional states and the inner thoughts of the two as well as supply additional meaning to the words uttered.


Brilliant!

etetetea;sdlfkja;sdlfkj


----------



## 20centrfuge

this is a double post


----------



## 20centrfuge

All I can say right now is that I love this piece by Xenakis. Harpsichord in contemporary music is music to my ears. I love the bright timbre of the instrument. I am glad it is being utilized nowadays and hasn't become a museum instrument.

The opening chorale (?) comes back at about minute 12 (in the recording I listened to) echoed in the brass. This is probably my favorite moment in the work. 

I am not very versed in Xenakis, but I gather this work is different than most of his works that rely more on power. Comments to that effect are welcome. How does this work compare to the rest of Xenakis output?

Xenakis is an uncompromising composer who is not trying to lull your ears, and I will admit that I haven't loved everything I've heard by him, but I really really like this piece. I'll put it alongside Jonchiaes as my favorite works by Xenakis.


----------



## Enthusiast

I'm not sure what intention Xenakis had in writing A l'île de Gorée. The name refers to a Senegalese island that had probably been a slave trading post. The music is busy but not difficult. IMO the sounds Xenakis goes for are not especially subtle - his music tends to be rather "in your face" and "hot" and I think this is the case with this piece even though it is not as noisy as much of him music. Goree is an effective work and packs quite a lot into its 14 minutes. I would like to know more about what Xenakis was trying to do with this piece. I don't normally concern myself with composers' programmes for their music but in this case I am left wondering.


----------



## Mandryka

Something really magical happens at the start and at about 11 minutes in on the above performance, and most especially in the solo in the last minute, contrasting with all inhuman motoric music comes a moment of reflection, melancholic reflection.


----------



## Allegro Con Brio

I’ve shied away from Xenakis because of his reputation as an unforgiving “noise artist.” I can definitely hear some of that in this piece, but I can’t deny that it’s impressive - the way he builds tension through the use of rhythm and melodic fragments, building up to a brutal barbaric climax in the first 5 minutes. It certainly does sound like computers or machinery, but maybe that’s the point! However, it really is tiresome on my ears and I’m not particularly affected by the music. Like Mandryka says, there are occasional more reflective and accessible moments but I think it is a piece I would have to spend more time with to really understand. I’m sure it’s a great introduction to the composer, though.


----------



## tortkis

Xenakis: A l'île de Gorée
The beginning is very nice, and the music goes through various moods but the transitions are smooth. The complex and groovy rhythmic parts and the abstract passages of harpsichord create otherworldly atmosphere. I listened to this piece many times these days and greatly enjoyed it every time.


----------



## Knorf

I quite enjoyed Xenakis's _À l'île de Gorée_. I've sometimes struggled with his "later" works (I'm a fan definitely of the power and directness of his earlier music), but I must give him credit for continually challenging his own esthetic, and not just sticking resolutely with what brought him the earliest and greatest success. Some of his later music strikes me as a bit banal, and some of this piece did, too, but I got over my initial impressions and was frankly swept along. And there are always brilliant and astonishingly imaginative moments in Xenakis, this piece being no exception.

I noted that the title is misspelled all over the place, including Wikipedia. It is _À l'île de Gorée_.


----------



## joen_cph

Enthusiast said:


> I'm not sure what intention Xenakis had in writing A l'île de Gorée. The name refers to a Senegalese island that had probably been a slave trading post (...) I would like to know more about what Xenakis was trying to do with this piece. I don't normally concern myself with composers' programmes for their music but in this case I am left wondering.


Ian Pace in https://openaccess.city.ac.uk/id/ep...-_The_Harpsichord_Works_of_Iannis_Xenakis.pdf says

"... very definitely builds on the achievements of ((the harpsichord work)) Naama. The charged nature of this work is implied by the composer's note:
_The Isle of Gorée, off the coast of Dakar, in Senegal, was once a world slave market ... This piece is a tribute to the black Africans who, torn by force from their homes on the way to appalling slavery, yet managed to win, in certain civilized countries to which they were transported, positions of the first rank. It is also a tribute to the heroes and black victims of apartheid in South Africa, last bastion of hysterical racism_."

and later:

"It is probably unduly naive to suggest programmatical connotations in this work, but the various polarities, in particular that between the incessant pair of chords and more varied types of writing, might be said to represent the dichotomy between authority and individual freedom. On the other hand, one might equally well think of it in terms of the strength of the mass against the embattled few. Different listeners (and those who positivise either fragmentation or mass solidarity) will draw their own responses; what is undeniable is the dialectic."


----------



## Enthusiast

^ Thanks, joen - that makes sense.


----------



## 20centrfuge

*7/19 Harvey: Nachtlied (1984)*

_Submitted by Mandryka_

7/26 Art Rock - Sallinen: Songs of Life and Death, Op. 69 (1995) [45]
8/2 Trout - Vivier: Lonely Child (1980) [20]
8/9 mmsbls - Murail: Désintégrations (1983) [25]
8/16 Ravn - Rautavaara: Symphony No. 7 "Angel of Light" (1994) [35] 
8/23 Phil loves classical - Ligeti: Piano Concerto (1988) [25]
8/30 Kjetil Heggelund - Saariaho: Du cristal...à la fumée (1989) [40]
9/6 Super Tonic - Corigliano: Symphony No. 1 (1988-1989) [40]
9/13 calvinpv - Rihm: Jagden und Formen (1995-2001, revised 2008) [50] 
9/20 20centrfuge - Maxwell Davies: Concerto for Trumpet (1988) [30]
9/27 Blancrocher - Lutoslawski: Piano Concerto "For Krystian Zimerman" (1988) [25]
10/4 BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist - Messiaen: Éclairs sur l'au-delà... (1991) [60]
10/11 tortkis - Garland: Peter: String Quartet No. 1, "In Praise of Poor Scholars" (1986) [20]
10/18 PeterfromLA - Schnittke: Symphony No. 5 "Concerto Grosso No. 4" (1988) [35]
10/25 Knorf - TBD
_ 11/1 Allegro Con Brio TBD (do you want this turn?)_


----------



## 20centrfuge

_Are there any lurkers out there who have not had a turn nominating a work who would like one?_

_…..ayyy lurkers, they be like the warm silent wind...……._


----------



## Allegro Con Brio

20centrfuge said:


> _11/1 Allegro Con Brio TBD (do you want this turn?)_


I'll take it! If it's OK with you I'll wait a month or so before submitting a nomination, as there's quite a bit of contemporary music I'd like to explore on my own time first before I come to a decision.


----------



## Mandryka

20centrfuge said:


> *7/19 Harvey: Nachtlied (1984)*
> 
> _Submitted by Mandryka_







I like this because of the way he uses simple electronic effects to suggest the mystical, other worldly. And I like the sense of something resembling a home key which seems to me to pervade the work -- which is, after all, about a journey and a return.

The composer's note



> The Goethe poem _Wanderers Nachtlied_ is familiar to musicians in Schubert's sublime 1822 setting. Goethe wrote it sitting under an oak or, in another account, in a hut on a hill outside Weimar which was subsequently to become the site of Buchenwald. The designers of the concentration camp reverently preserved the site. It Is one of the most eerie places I have ever visited. From many years before that visit I could not disassociate the Schubert evocation of peace - written at the beginning of the nineteenth century - with a meditation on death. Only the visit seemed to explain what had unaccountably haunted my mind for so many years. The mystical poems of Steiner are answers to the fear and negativity of death, touching as they do on the light-filled colours of the 'next' world. According to Steiner we visit the luminous life-giving region nightly in deep sleep. The first meditation picks up the theme of rest from the Goethe poem and describes the soul's night-journey to a light-filled cosmic ocean. The second meditation describes the journey back at dawn.


And the texts


----------



## Enthusiast

I've listened to Nachtlied and enjoyed it a lot. But, excuse my ignorance of these things, what parts of it are performed live and what parts of it are on tape?


----------



## Mandryka

Enthusiast said:


> I've listened to Nachtlied and enjoyed it a lot. But, excuse my ignorance of these things, what parts of it are performed live and what parts of it are on tape?


I don't think it's a tape. I think the electronics is live.

Listen, for example, to the music which is a bridge between the end of the Goethe and the start of the Steiner, where the tape joins the singer contapuntally, it starts from about from about 5'20 on that youtube. As I'm typing I'm listening to it and there's some striking electronic effects from about 18.05.


----------



## Mandryka

Here's a comment that Harvey made about melody, which may give an indication of what he was exploring in _Nachtlied_



> The first large section of the piece is concerned very much with thematic working. To say this immediately labels one as a reactionary, of course. Starting with Schoenberg's Erwartung or Farben or Webern's Symphony working with memorable themes has come under serious attack. The Darmstadt generation, John Cage, the minimalist school, the new maximalists - all have rejected it as sham rhetoric belonging to a world in which such a pretence at certainty is highly suspect.
> 
> I agreed, until recently. I changed because I found structural depth was not perceptible without memorability. Having for years created an infra-structure of considerable (often serial) density, I noticed that works did not necessari ly get 'deeper' the more"I heard them - my attention was struck by other things about the sound, rather than the too unmemorable low-level intervallic working, which was intended to provide a rich labyrinth for extended exploring, but which failed.
> 
> To achieve structural depth, I concluded, the building bricks must be remarkable and memorable, then you notice how deep they go, structurally speaking.
> 
> Yet the method chosen differed significantly from the traditions stretching from Haydn to Britten. The themes are not prepared for like heroes, they do not make a grand entrance in full spotlight, they are not quitted on bended knee with bridge passages and cadential formulae. . . .


----------



## Enthusiast

Mandryka said:


> I don't think it's *a tape*. I think the electronics is live.
> 
> Listen, for example, to the music which is a bridge between the end of the Goethe and the start of the Steiner, where the *tape *joins the singer contapuntally, it starts from about from about 5'20 on that youtube. As I'm typing I'm listening to it and there's some striking electronic effects from about 18.05.


Thanks. Whether I am being dense or just ignorant I'm not sure but your two mentions of the word tape seem like a contradiction? I know very little about electronic music or music with electronic elements.


----------



## Mandryka

My mistake, it is live electronics, I should have said, where the electronics joins the singers. I blame you . . .

I think live electronics was invented by Stockhausen (mikrophonie), Harvey was a good mate of Stockhausen.


----------



## Enthusiast

Mandryka said:


> I blame you . . .


I'm so sorry. But thanks.


----------



## calvinpv

I just listened while reading the score, and the whole electronic part is tape (specifically stereo, 1/4 inch, 15ips). The reason it may sound "live" is because Harvey often has instructions for the piano part to "blend with tape", giving the (false) impression that the electronics is actually live processing the overtone spectrum of the piano. The tape also has fragments of recorded voice, lending to more confusion. The voice parts of the tape actually reminded me a lot of Nono's tape works from the sixties.

You can view the score here.


----------



## Mandryka

calvinpv said:


> I just listened while reading the score, and the whole electronic part is tape (specifically stereo, 1/4 inch, 15ips). The reason it may sound "live" is because Harvey often has instructions for the piano part to "blend with tape", giving the (false) impression that the electronics is actually live processing the overtone spectrum of the piano. The tape also has fragments of recorded voice, lending to more confusion. The voice parts of the tape actually reminded me a lot of Nono's tape works from the sixties.
> 
> You can view the score here.


That's interesting


----------



## tortkis

I liked the beginning part, subtly reminding a Noh song, then it gets more expressive and operatic. Hervey's treatment of electrical sound is elegant.


----------



## 20centrfuge

I've listened a few times and intend to listen at least one more time. At this point I am particularly interested in the text and how Harvey interprets the text musically. Which then makes me ask myself, "what does the poem even mean?" Interpreting poetry is always tough for me.

Anyhoo, I quite like Harvey. He is a composer after my own heart and one that I intend to thoroughly explore at some point.


----------



## Mandryka

tortkis said:


> expressive and operatic.


For me that's a problem. It's as if some of his music has a simple underlying narrative, it is very lyrical, and is expressively demonstrative. This, IMO, makes it verge on kitsch. I can just about bear it in Nachtlied -- but it's at the limit of what I can bear!


----------



## Allegro Con Brio

Certainly an interesting listen. I listened to the Schubert setting of Goethe’s poem before I heard Harvey, and it’s fascinating how Harvey starts out in a vein that takes clear inspiration from the art song genre, then brings in the electronics and spends the remainder of the piece subtly shifting his usage of them. I can’t deny that the soundscapes produced are colorful and stimulating, and Harvey certainly conjures up dreamy, hallucinatory effects. But I simply cannot listen to electronic sounds in music without getting a headache. It’s always been a limitation of mine, in classical and popular music alike. Thus, while the craftsmanship is apparent I have a tough time deriving personal aesthetic enjoyment from it.


----------



## calvinpv

I just listened to Nachtlied again. The first time around, I was about where Mandryka is now: I could _almost_ enjoy the piece, but I found it a bit kitsch. But I found it a lot better after a second listen. There are a lot of recurring motifs that are made up of clusters of pitches (e.g. the opening motif -- which can be found in many other places -- has a core cluster of G, Ab, A, Bb, B with other notes occasionally thrown in; mind you, that cluster is not presented in that order), and this makes me wonder if all these motifs can be derived from one another. Also a lot of recurring textures, such as the use of octaves played simultaneously by singer, piano, and tape or the use of repeated notes and trills. On the whole, this piece is more integrated and cohesive than I originally thought.

And I do love the Nono-esque use of the voice in the tape (I couldn't tell you what that means). It almost makes me want to revisit Contrappunto dialettico alla mente; in fact, I shall do so now.


----------



## 20centrfuge

*Sallinen: Songs of Life and Death, Op. 69 (1995)
*
_Submitted by Art Rock_

8/2 Trout - Vivier: Lonely Child (1980) [20]
8/9 mmsbls - Murail: Désintégrations (1983) [25]
8/16 Ravn - Rautavaara: Symphony No. 7 "Angel of Light" (1994) [35] 
8/23 Phil loves classical - Ligeti: Piano Concerto (1988) [25]
8/30 Kjetil Heggelund - Saariaho: Du cristal...à la fumée (1989) [40]
9/6 Super Tonic - Corigliano: Symphony No. 1 (1988-1989) [40]
9/13 calvinpv - Rihm: Jagden und Formen (1995-2001, revised 2008) [50] 
9/20 20centrfuge - Maxwell Davies: Concerto for Trumpet (1988) [30]
9/27 Blancrocher - Lutoslawski: Piano Concerto "For Krystian Zimerman" (1988) [25]
10/4 BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist - Messiaen: Éclairs sur l'au-delà... (1991) [60]
10/11 tortkis - Garland: Peter: String Quartet No. 1, "In Praise of Poor Scholars" (1986) [20]
10/18 PeterfromLA - Schnittke: Symphony No. 5 "Concerto Grosso No. 4" (1988) [35]
10/25 Knorf - TBD
11/1 Allegro Con Brio TBD


----------



## 20centrfuge

Here's the link for easy access


----------



## 20centrfuge

Listening for the second time to the Sallinen piece. It is music that seems to be in the world of Britten, Vaughan Williams, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Hindemith — music from roughly the 1940’s-50’s. I like it well enough and I have still yet to even read the text or find out about the other elements of the piece.


----------



## Allegro Con Brio

Listening to the Sallinen now. It’s nice to hear a more “traditional” sounding composition but I almost feel as if the influences are too obvious...my immediate impression is that it sounds like a cross between a Vaughan Williams piece and Shostakovich’s “Babi-Yar.” But there is great emotional poignancy here through use of the mostly traditional harmonies and choral writing, and the idea of writing an original Requiem in the Finnish language is pretty neat. Can’t say it will become a favorite but it’s good to hear.


----------



## 20centrfuge

The participation in this group is overwhelming. Hahahahahahaha.


----------



## Phil loves classical

Catching up on my listening. I find myself more interested in the electronics in the Harvey piece than the actual music. Not really a fan of atonal vocal music.

The Sallinen is pleasant-sounding enough, but I don't find anything particularly engaging.


----------



## Enthusiast

I'm afraid I found the Salinen piece boring but it was interesting to hear something of his as I had often wondered what his music is like.


----------



## Enthusiast

20centrfuge said:


> The participation in this group is overwhelming. Hahahahahahaha.


Participation might be posting articulate comments and analyses. Or it might just be getting to know music that is new to us. Some of these pieces (and some of the composers) may stay with us as we listen to it again outside of the week we focus on it. Sometimes it is hard to say much that is meaningful and worthwhile about something very new but that doesn't mean the we are not engaging with the music. I do find the thread useful and enjoyable but have tended of late to say little about each piece.


----------



## 20centrfuge

Thank you Enthusiast. I was just feeling a little existential angst


----------



## Mandryka

Well it says on wikipedia that Sallinen "has revived standard forms and harmonies, but he puts them together in contemporary ways." I can't hear any contemporary ways in the _Songs of Life and Death_, maybe I've missed them. The Gramophone review says something which I'm having a bit of trouble understanding (my bold)



> And while Sallinen's songs are also very much songs of life, death is not here perceived as a grim or tragic end, *and this imparts to the whole a peculiarly late twentieth-century aspect*.


----------



## calvinpv

Here are the liner notes and libretto to the recording posted by 20centrfuge.

https://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/linerNotes.jsp?album=30875


----------



## vincula

Deleted. Wrong thread. Realised now. Sorry


----------



## calvinpv

I will give the Sallinen a second hearing tomorrow, but after hearing it once, I feel like there is a mismatch between text and music. The text is pretty moving (see my link above); its basic message is to live life to the fullest and cherish what's in front of you because death is always creeping upon us; it also asks us to grant peace onto those departed. But the more calm sections of the text are accompanied by the emotional rises and falls of Sallinen's romantic idiom. Personally, I would have liked something a bit more minimalist in these sections. But then in songs 4 and 6 -- which are about mankind's insatiable lust for knowledge and power, which leads to death and destruction -- I expected the music to be _more_ emotionally charged than it actually was. The music on its own was good enough, I guess (it reminded me of Rautavaara), but again, not that appropriate for this particular work.


----------



## 20centrfuge

*Vivier: Lonely Child (1980)*

_submitted by Trout_

8/9 mmsbls - Murail: Désintégrations (1983) [25]
8/16 Ravn - Rautavaara: Symphony No. 7 "Angel of Light" (1994) [35] 
8/23 Phil loves classical - Ligeti: Piano Concerto (1988) [25]
8/30 Kjetil Heggelund - Saariaho: Du cristal...à la fumée (1989) [40]
9/6 Super Tonic - Corigliano: Symphony No. 1 (1988-1989) [40]
9/13 calvinpv - Rihm: Jagden und Formen (1995-2001, revised 2008) [50] 
9/20 20centrfuge - Maxwell Davies: Concerto for Trumpet (1988) [30]
9/27 Blancrocher - Lutoslawski: Piano Concerto "For Krystian Zimerman" (1988) [25]
10/4 BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist - Messiaen: Éclairs sur l'au-delà... (1991) [60]
10/11 tortkis - Garland: Peter: String Quartet No. 1, "In Praise of Poor Scholars" (1986) [20]
10/18 PeterfromLA - Schnittke: Symphony No. 5 "Concerto Grosso No. 4" (1988) [35]
10/25 Knorf - TBD
11/1 Allegro Con Brio TBD


----------



## Phil loves classical

I don't believe I've heard any of his music before, although his name sounds familiar. Nice to see a Canadian composer, but he had a pretty tragic life from what I've read. The music was quite moody, even though interest started flagging before the middle.


----------



## calvinpv

calvinpv said:


> I will give the Sallinen a second hearing tomorrow, but after hearing it once, I feel like there is a mismatch between text and music. The text is pretty moving (see my link above); its basic message is to live life to the fullest and cherish what's in front of you because death is always creeping upon us; it also asks us to grant peace onto those departed. But the more calm sections of the text are accompanied by the emotional rises and falls of Sallinen's romantic idiom. Personally, I would have liked something a bit more minimalist in these sections. But then in songs 4 and 6 -- which are about mankind's insatiable lust for knowledge and power, which leads to death and destruction -- I expected the music to be _more_ emotionally charged than it actually was. The music on its own was good enough, I guess (it reminded me of Rautavaara), but again, not that appropriate for this particular work.


So I listened to the Sallinen again. Honestly, I'm having a hard time even remembering the piece, and I just finished listening a half hour ago. It's pleasant music in the moment but thinking back on it, there's nothing about it that stands out other than a nice chord here and there. And this is supposed to be one of Sallinen's better known works. Oh well.

But I did listen to _The Iron Age Suite_, which is on the same disc as _Songs of Life and Death_, and it's a much better work (playlist here). It's basically Sallinen's version of a "Lemminkäinen Suite", and every movement has a unique personality.


----------



## Mandryka

Phil loves classical said:


> I don't believe I've heard any of his music before, although his name sounds familiar. Nice to see a Canadian composer, but he had a pretty tragic life from what I've read. The music was quite moody, even though interest started flagging before the middle.


Text here

http://members.tripod.com/chantal_pitcher/Claude_Vivier/lonely.html

The are at least two commercially released recordings, one with Reinbert de Leeuw and one, more expansive, with Montreal Postmoderne.

(Vivier from the 1980s always makes me think of Rimbaud, here slightly and even more so in _Prologue pour un Marco Polo_ and _Wo bist das licht_ - the Rimbaud of _Une Saison en Enfer. _ A camp lush effusion.)


----------



## calvinpv

So last night I was reading this fascinating article I found on google discussing how _Lonely Child_ is constructed (see here). The work (and apparently all of Vivier's music thereafter until his death) basically uses a single technique made popular by spectralist composers such as Murail in his work _Ethers_ whereby an interval -- a perfect fifth, major second, minor sixth, etc. -- is used to generate what are called "sum and difference tones" above and below the interval which are all then played simultaneously to create a rich timbre of sound. In this work, Vivier only works with sum tones; he also doesn't use it all the time: it doesn't make its first appearance until the soprano first appears (about 1:45 in the video posted above), and there are a few interludes throughout.

So what are sum and difference tones? It's a psychoacoustic phenomenon where, if two or more pitches are played simultaneously, the brain artificially perceives faint tones above the higher of the two pitches and below the lower of the two pitches.* These additional perceived notes can be calculated by adding and subtracting the frequencies of the two original pitches. For example, if I hear an A at 440Hz and an E at 660Hz, the sum tone will be 440 + 660 = 1100Hz and the difference tone 660 - 440 = 220Hz. And this phenomenon is recursive: so if I have 1100Hz, I also have 1100 + 440 = 2(440) + 660 = 1540Hz; also 1100 + 660 = 440 + 2(660) = 1760Hz; also 3(440) + 660 = 1980Hz, 440 + 3(660) = 2420Hz, 3(440) + 2(660), 2(440) + 3(660), etc. Same with difference tones (though I'm not sure if negative frequencies are allowed). Of course, these higher-order sums and differences will be even fainter than the original sum and difference, and chances are you can't identify them. The original difference tone is usually the most audible (in my example, 660 - 440 = 220Hz), and a good example of it is whenever you hear two notes played high up on an organ, you usually hear a low rumbling or a lower note in the back of your mind; in general, organs seem to be good instruments for this phenomenon.

But what's even more important is that there's a special relationship between the original notes and their sums/differences. I won't get into the ins and outs of how harmonic series work (read here for how it works; if you're into understanding contemporary music, especially spectral music, it might be a good thing to know), but basically the original notes combined with their sums and differences make up their own harmonic series. So in my example, 660 - 440 = 220Hz is the fundamental, thereby making A 440Hz the first overtone, E 660Hz the second overtone, 440 + 660 = 1100Hz the fourth overtone, 2(440) + 660 = 1540Hz the sixth overtone, etc.

And when all of these notes in the harmonic series are played together, they resonate with one another and "meld" together, so to speak, into a single unified note with a rich color and timbre (at least theoretically; it's harder in practice). So in _Lonely Child_, the notes of the soprano and the lower strings (cello and double bass play the same notes) together form the interval that generates the sum and difference tones for the other instruments to play.** And the soprano and lower strings are for the most part in rhythmic unison so that whenever their notes change, the resulting sum and difference tones change which means the other instruments have to change their notes too. Except for some interesting use of suspensions and anticipations in the second half, there is actually very little counterpoint; every instrument plays in unison to form a sequence of "chords".

But again, since members of a harmonic series played simultaneously results in a "melding" effect, it's kind of inappropriate to use the word "chord". Instead, we ideally should be hearing a single note with rich depth and shading. It's not as noticeable in the woodwinds and brass, but it's really noticeable in the strings: I'm actually having a difficult time picking out individual violins, violas, cellos, and double basses, and they all seem to be shading the soprano (Haas achieves this shading effect in a different way in _limited approximations_). So this piece, like a lot of other spectral pieces, raises an interesting question: what counts as a "chord"? Are the symbols on the page sufficient for chord formation, or do I also need to hear in the flesh the individual members of the chord? If I can't, do I really have a chord? I don't know the answer, but _Lonely Child_ is certainly provoking us to think.

* Technically, these additional pitches already exist naturally at inaudible levels. And that's because every pitch is made up of millions of frequencies: the frequency we hear the most (and the one we identify the pitch with) plus all of its overtones and undertones; together, these make up the harmonic series. So when the sum-and-difference tone phenomenon comes into play, it's that our brain perceives these additional tones as louder than they really were.

** Technically, Vivier is _simulating_ the sum-and-difference tone phenomenon. You only need two notes for the phenomenon to exist and the brain does the rest. But Vivier is helping us along by playing all of those sum and difference tones across the orchestra. If anything, because the orchestra is louder than the notes our brain would produce on its own, the phenomenon and its resulting resonance should be stronger.


----------



## Phil loves classical

Interestingly, the major third is derived (at an octave higher) from the sum of the frequencies of the perfect fifth, and the perfect fifth itself is derived from the sum of the octave.


----------



## 20centrfuge

I’m very much enjoying this work by Vivier. A meditation that is beautiful and accessible with a feeling of profundity. The female voice anchors the work. It’s a piece I could hear over and over. Good thinking music. 

I’m new to this composer. What other works do people recommend?


----------



## Enthusiast

On my first hearing, anyway, I very much enjoyed all of the de Leeuw disc.


----------



## calvinpv

20centrfuge said:


> I'm very much enjoying this work by Vivier. A meditation that is beautiful and accessible with a feeling of profundity. The female voice anchors the work. It's a piece I could hear over and over. Good thinking music.
> 
> I'm new to this composer. What other works do people recommend?





Enthusiast said:


> On my first hearing, anyway, I very much enjoyed all of the de Leeuw disc.


I second this recommendation. I'm not blown away by the four works on the disc -- there are other spectral composers I prefer more -- but they're all good for a few listens each. The four works (_Lonely Child_, _Zipangu_, _Prologue pour un Marco Polo_, _Bouchara_) are all late Vivier, when he was using the technique I described above. I haven't heard any earlier stuff, but apparently it's inspired by Stockhausen, especially _Mantra_. I could be wrong though.

EDIT: I just remembered that Stockhausen's _Stimmung_ left a big impression on Vivier when he attended Darmstadt in the early seventies. You can definitely hear traces of that influence in _Lonely Child_, and I'm guessing the earlier works also manifest that influence.


----------



## Mandryka

Sorry, you're all wrong and I'm right, as usual. It's an over the top camp effusion. Self indulgent nauseating fudge.


----------



## 20centrfuge

fudge with nuts or without?


----------



## Allegro Con Brio

Mandryka said:


> Sorry, you're all wrong and I'm right, as usual. It's an over the top camp effusion. Self indulgent nauseating fudge.


If I like fudge, will I like this piece?


----------



## Enthusiast

20centrfuge said:


> fudge with nuts or without?


No nuts but lots of cherries.


----------



## Allegro Con Brio

Well, if this is musical "fudge," it is luxury gourmet fudge that is concocted by one of the finest fudge-cooks in the world (or that should be "fudgers?") Sorry, I guess I just really like saying the word "fudge." Plus, I find it amusing how Mandryka described this piece, when my impressions are really the exact opposite!

Besides the Boulez _Sur Incises_, which made a large chunk of contemporary music click for me in a big way, I think this is my favorite piece we have done in this group so far. It is haunting, dream-like, magnetic, accessible, and brilliantly constructed. Reading the English translation of Vivier's own text, I got the impression that it is highly inspired by the Symbolist poets in its esoteric, modernist imagery. And the music that he sets to this text is like walking through a colorful dreamscape. Once I started listening I knew I wouldn't be able to draw my attention away from it for a moment. At first I was getting some "Holy Minimalist" type vibes - some Górecki and Pärt - but it started to sound less like that as the piece continued. I can also detect some influence from Debussy/Ravel's lush harmonies though this may be negligible. The subtle layers of orchestration and changes of harmony and texture, the hallucinatory blend of consonance and dissonance, the hovering vocal lines, all within a 16-minute package...just so beautiful. I also found the recurring bass drum blows followed by bells to be disturbing like a "fate" motif, like those drum blows in Mahler's 10th. Then the change to major tonality toward the end is very effective and poignant. I can't say I'm particularly interested in the spectralist process or the complex theory behind the music, not to mention the very ambiguous and multifaceted interpretation of the text, but all I can say is that this piece affected me greatly and that I want to listen to it again soon to see if I can uncover more detail. I think that this represents the possibilities and soundscapes of contemporary music at its finest. And like a good block of fudge, it's meant to be savored


----------



## Ravn

I loved the Vivier piece! Was kind of sceptical in the beginning, but it had me blown away after the first few minutes. I did also enjoy the Sallinen piece, but that one will need some more time to mature on me. The Xenakis piece was a laugh!:lol:


----------



## tortkis

Vivier: Lonely Child - The first impression was dark and monotonous but the music left a fulfilling feeling. I think that the gong is used very effectively. It sticks out or blends well with the harmonies, sounding like sober annotations or bell for repose of souls ceremony.


----------



## Enthusiast

I can sort of hear the fudge in some of it - I found myself picturing a rather gaudy picture of a mermaid during one relaxed hearing! - but for the most part find it a very pleasant and enjoyable piece. I think I preferred some of the other pieces on the disc. Anyway, I am glad to be introduced to an interesting composer who I didn't know and a little controversy about his work!


----------



## Mandryka

Enthusiast said:


> I think I preferred some of the other pieces on the disc.


I agree with you about this.


----------



## Mandryka

Enthusiast said:


> I found myself picturing a rather gaudy picture of a mermaid during one relaxed hearing! -


Ginger Minj maybe


----------



## 20centrfuge

https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/b/ugly-mermaid-creative-draw-mermail-74031497.jpg


----------



## 20centrfuge

*Murail: Désintégrations (1983)*

_
submitted by mmsbls_

8/16 Ravn - Rautavaara: Symphony No. 7 "Angel of Light" (1994) [35] 
8/23 Phil loves classical - Ligeti: Piano Concerto (1988) [25]
8/30 Kjetil Heggelund - Saariaho: Du cristal...à la fumée (1989) [40]
9/6 Super Tonic - Corigliano: Symphony No. 1 (1988-1989) [40]
9/13 calvinpv - Rihm: Jagden und Formen (1995-2001, revised 2008) [50] 
9/20 20centrfuge - Maxwell Davies: Concerto for Trumpet (1988) [30]
9/27 Blancrocher - Lutoslawski: Piano Concerto "For Krystian Zimerman" (1988) [25]
10/4 BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist - Messiaen: Éclairs sur l'au-delà... (1991) [60]
10/11 tortkis - Garland: Peter: String Quartet No. 1, "In Praise of Poor Scholars" (1986) [20]
10/18 PeterfromLA - Schnittke: Symphony No. 5 "Concerto Grosso No. 4" (1988) [35]
10/25 Knorf - TBD
11/1 Allegro Con Brio TBD


----------



## calvinpv

I found a couple of program notes, the first by Murail, the second by Julian Anderson:



> _Désintégrations_ was composed after extensive work on the notion of "spectrum". All the material used in this piece (that on tape as well as in the score), its microforms, its systems of evolutions, have as their origin analyses, decompositions or artificial reconstructions of harmonic or inharmonic spectra.
> 
> Most of the spectra are of instrumental origin. Those particularly employed are low piano sounds, brass and cello sounds.
> 
> For all that, the tape does not seek to reconstruct instrumental sounds. These only serve as a model for the construction of timbres or harmonies (in any case I make little distinction between these two notions), and even for the construction of musical form.
> 
> Several types of spectrum treatment are used in this piece:
> 1. Fractioning: one region only of a spectrum is used (e.g. bells sounds as at the beginning, obtained by fractioning piano sounds)
> 2. Filterings: certain component elements are exaggerated or toned down
> 3. Spectral exploration: movements within a sound; the component elements are heard one after the other, the timbre becoming melody (e.g. 3rd section - sounds of small bells arising from the disintegration of clarinet and flute timbres)
> 4. Creation of inharmonic spectra: Those that are linear are made by adding or subtracting frequencies (by analogy with ring or frequency modulation); the "non-linear" are made by twisting a spectrum by describing a frequency curve (e.g. penultimate section - the gradual twisting of a low trombone sound).
> 
> The tape was calculated by "additive synthesis", in which all dimensions of every sound component are described. This seemed to me necessary in order to be able to play on the spectra in the particular way I wanted, research that had begun long before this piece was started, in instrumental or orchestral works. Moreover, the same compositional procedures were used on the tape (which has been really "written") and in the orchestra.
> 
> Since the classic synthesis programs were too heavy and too slow, we used, for the first time in this application, the new 4X machine of IRCAM, which permits real time synthesis. Nonetheless, as hundred of parameters have to be defined for each sound, I wrote an aid program, "Syntad", which ran on the central computer and which calculated all the necessary parameters in terms of data formulated in a more musical way.
> 
> The orchestral writing has also taken advantage of the power of the computer for the definition of the pitches and durations. Certain micro-forms have also been designed directly by "Syntad".
> 
> There is therefore one origin for both tape and instruments, their relationship being one of complementarity. Often the tape exaggerates the character of the instruments, diffracts or disintegrates their timbre, or amplifies the orchestral effects. It should be in perfect synchronization, hence the necessity of the synchronizing "clicks" that the conductor must follow.
> 
> Eleven moments can be distinguished, eleven "stages" in the piece". The passage from one to the next is made by transition-transformation or by the unleashing of a "threshold effect". Each moment emphasizes a different kind of spectrum treatment, each stage makes it evolve from the harmonic to the inharmonic or vice versa. This creates movements of shade and light, accompanied by movements of increasing or decreasing agitation, of rhythmic ordering or disordering.
> 
> the synthesis on the computer was realized with the help of Andrew Gerszo, and the final realization on tape with that of Didier Arditti.
> 
> _Désintégrations_ was commissioned by IRCAM and was first performed at IRCAM on February 15th 1983 by the Ensemble InterContemporain, conducted by Peter Eötvös.





> This piece constitutes perhaps the most thorough and exhaustive work Murail has done to date on the examination of purely instrumental spectra. All the computer-generated spectra are directly modelled on real instrumental sounds. The computer does not however, attempt any direct simulation of the instruments concerned. Rather, it is a question of using certain spectra as structural analogies for the entire pitch content of the work (whether on instruments or tape) and likewise to generate its large-scale forms. This ensures that the computer sounds and those on tape have a common unity which ensures that they maintain an audible organic unity the one with the other - indeed, the extent to witch taped and instrumental sounds fuse and blend throughout the work is unusually consistent, not least given the technology of the time.
> 
> The title refers to the technical processes involved - to the desintegration of a timbre into its individual components - sounds melt before us, revealing their interiors before our ears. But it could equally be an allusion (perhaps unconscious) to the constant flux of the music between moments of order and consonance to moments of disorder and noise as the primarily harmonic spectra are disintegrated and deformed into irregular and inharmonic ones. Désintégrations has a clearly evolving, direct form which falls into eleven distinct sections:
> 
> I - this section is based upon spectra from two low piano notes (the lowest B-flat and D-flat on the instrument) - spectra culled from these twin spectra alternate irregularly and gradually fuse, producing a large non-harmonic spectrum which pushes the music towards non-harmonic sounds.
> II - a succession of waves on tape and ensemble (the basic spectra are derived from string sounds), going from non-harmonic to harmonic, with certain partials highlighted one alter the other by tape and single instruments in the mêlée. The density of the spectra is gradually reduced as the music accelerates, revealing the uppermost partials of various spectra climbing to a high G.
> III - dense clouds of high bell-like sonorities, derived from the disintegration of flute and clarinet spectra, descend to reveal their instrumental origin - a harmonic spectrum upon F (with the fundamental missing) evolves through flowing melodic figures on the English horn, highlighting successive components of the spectra - the music drifts towards inharmony.
> IV - a violent rupture, with prominent noisy, grainy spectra which are gradually disintegrated into individual impulses through a carefully notated and dramatic ritardando.
> V - the music "cadences" into a brassderived harmonic spectrum on C, reiterated again and again by tape and ensemble - with each recurrence, the spectrum is more and more deformed until it desintegrates back into grainy noise.
> VI - a restless and discursive section - offering a release of the tension thus far generated, but only a partial one - various figures and textures drift uncertainly across the musical landscape, most prominently a burgeoning trombone arpeggio which suddenly explodes into.
> VIl - a toccata for the whole ensemble in regular semiquavers - this is pulled about by sudden accelerandi and ritardandi (as if the music were being stretched and compressed like an elastic band) before a final accelerando catapults the music into the briefest section in the work.
> VIII - seven spectra, from harmonic to inharmonic, with extremely irregular durations (like a randomly re-ordered accelerando).
> IX - chaotic and irregular ring-modulation spectra descend through the ensemble, eventually settling onto a low harmonic spectrum derived from a trombone E.
> X - the same trombone E is subjected to progressive spectral distortion into a bell like inharmonic spectrum, resulting in a slow, steady increase in tension over about two minutes
> XI - a long sequence of bell-like spectra of gradually longer durations, apparently non-harmonic but in fact largely derived from the upper harmonics of very low, unheard fundamentals - this is even true of the last sound into which the ensemble is dissolved, a tam-tam-like spectrum on the tape which is actually a purely harmonic spectrum on a low G well below the range of audibility. As often with Murail's endings, there is a suggestion that there could be more music - the processes remain unresolved and seem to suggest quasi-infinite possible extensions.


----------



## calvinpv

I always thought there was one, but apparently there are two commercial recordings:

Ensemble InterContemporain, David Robertson (conductor):






Ensemble de l'Itinéraire, Yves Prin (conductor):


----------



## Phil loves classical

^ I love it for some reason. The unpredictability is a big factor. I prefer the 2nd version, which seems to have more swagger to me.


----------



## Mandryka

This is music with no themes and no functional harmony. Right? 

And yet there is tension, release, climaxes.


----------



## Enthusiast

Mandryka said:


> Ginger Minj maybe
> 
> View attachment 141025


I think if that was the image that came to me my "relaxed listening" would quickly become a lot less relaxed.


----------



## 20centrfuge

Well I gave it a good listen last night. It strikes me as electronic type music that is adapted and performed primarily by acoustic instruments. I know that's a very basic take on it, but....

I found it interesting and basically enjoyable.

I'm afraid I don't have anything better to offer in terms of comments.


----------



## Knorf

I have the Ensemble de l'Itinéraire, Yves Prin recording. Definitely recommendable!


----------



## Mandryka

Two sorts of music, slow solemn stuff, smooth. And fast rhythmic music where the note attacks are prominent. Just juxtaposed -- ABABAB. That's about it really. I wonder what he was trying to do.


----------



## tortkis

The rushing repeated climaxes like restless waves are getting a bit tiring as the music goes, though I like and enjoy similar tide-like style by other composers. Désintégrations has many interesting moments, sounding like various events happening in nature, wind blowing through a cave, rattling wind-bell, and so on, which I wish to hear in a more relaxed manner.


----------



## Mandryka

Deleted, je c,dm cheveux,jndv,m de vr


----------



## calvinpv

Judging from some of the comments above, it seems that this is the first time a lot of you are hearing this work. That's quite surprising to me, considering this is probably *the* most important and *the* most famous work in the spectralist camp of music other than Grisey's _Les Espaces acoustiques_. This piece is really impressive for a couple of reasons:

1. All the otherworldly electronic-sounding effects are based on the sound spectra of notes played on musical instruments such as a low E on a trombone or a low Bb on a piano. That in itself isn't anything new since Grisey does the same thing in pieces like _Les Chant de l'amour_ and _Le Temps et l'écume_. But what is new is that, whereas Grisey will try and replicate or simulate those sound spectra across the orchestra and try to recreate the sound of an instrument (called "instrumental synthesis"), Murail is more interested in distorting those spectra to create totally new timbres and colors and using the inner logic of these spectra to create brand new musical forms with their own patterns of rises/falls and tensions/releases. Hence the name of the piece. This, to me, makes Murail the only spectral composer who is deserving of the label "spectralist" because he has a broader view of the nature of sound, because he's interested in not only traditional musical sounds but also new and synthetic ones.

2. The fact that he achieves this with tape and not with live electronics. Tape is difficult in the sense that it sets a strict tempo to be followed and forbids free interpretation in the instrumental playing if one wants the tape and instruments to blend organically. Sure, you can play around with the tape in real-time, but that just introduces a lot of human error (for example, you accidentally speed up the tape too much).

I just listened again to the Ensemble de l'Itinéraire recording while following along with the program note, and I think I was able to pick out the 11 sections. Here are the timestamps for that recording:

Section 1 [0:00]
Section 2 [1:58] (not sure about this one)
Section 3 [6:54]
Section 4 [10:12]
Section 5 [10:59]
Section 6 [12:02]
Section 7 [15:00]
Section 8 [16:14]
Section 9 [16:38]
Section 10 [17:50]
Section 11 [19:48]


----------



## Enthusiast

That's very helpful. calvinpv. It is a work I know fairly well. I have the same CD that you posted a YouTube link to and have listened to it quite a lot. I have come to realise through these listening groups that I listen to music in a far less analytical way than most people do and even with music I know very well (well enough to hum all the way through it if it is hum-able) I would be hard pressed to describe what happens when - even how many variations there are in a theme and variations! I can, of course, concentrate on counting them but feel I would probably miss the music if I did (I an *not* suggesting that others who do listen more analytically are missing the music - that is just what would happen to me).

I do know when music is talking to me and is making some sort of sense to some part of my brain. Sometimes that happens very quickly - and that has been the case with the works on this CD - and sometimes it takes time and then, zap, I am getting it. Often my experiencing music in this way is accompanied by imagined visual images! The trouble is that I am not sure I am left with much to say about a work that will be meaningful to others.


----------



## Allegro Con Brio

tortkis said:


> The rushing repeated climaxes like restless waves are getting a bit tiring as the music goes, though I like and enjoy similar tide-like style by other composers. Désintégrations has many interesting moments, sounding like various events happening in nature, wind blowing through a cave, rattling wind-bell, and so on, which I wish to hear in a more relaxed manner.


Very similar if not identical impressions for me. There are certainly lots of interesting sounds, timbres, and tone-colors going on but this is not the kind of music that has been able to connect with me yet. The electronic/tape elements give me a headache (ugh, those high screechy sections that sound like feedback from a microphone...) but no doubt there's lots of fascinating stuff going on here. Just over my head, and my current level of tolerance for electronic stuff, for now.


----------



## Kjetil Heggelund

I like it a lot! My goodnight music now <3 I'm not sure if I have heard many spectral works (mostly Grisey). From Murail I've heard his electric guitar piece "Vampyr!" several times and dig it! I have a feeling that spectral music was inspired by the experimental electronic music from the 50s to 70s and tweaking. Love that word  So it's finished now. One thought was that the recording was a bit dry...


----------



## calvinpv

Kjetil Heggelund said:


> I like it a lot! My goodnight music now <3 I'm not sure if I have heard many spectral works (mostly Grisey). From Murail I've heard his electric guitar piece "Vampyr!" several times and dig it! *I have a feeling that spectral music was inspired by the experimental electronic music from the 50s to 70s and tweaking. *Love that word  So it's finished now. One thought was that the recording was a bit dry...


I suspect this too. Maybe not from a theoretical perspective, but from a more primitive feeling of "This is my kind of jam!" Whenever I listen to _Kontakte_, if I didn't know it was by Stockhausen or that is was a serialist piece, I'd be tempted to say Murail wrote it. It actually reminds me of _Désintégrations_ a bit.


----------



## Phil loves classical

calvinpv said:


> I suspect this too. Maybe not from a theoretical perspective, but from a more primitive feeling of "This is my kind of jam!" Whenever I listen to _Kontakte_, if I didn't know it was by Stockhausen or that is was a serialist piece, I'd be tempted to say Murail wrote it. It actually reminds me of _Désintégrations_ a bit.


I feel Murail has a more 'ambient' quality. Stockhausen music seems to be more jarring.


----------



## 20centrfuge

*Rautavaara: Symphony No. 7 "Angel of Light" (1994) [35] *

_submitted by Ravn_

8/23 Phil loves classical - Ligeti: Piano Concerto (1988) [25]
8/30 Kjetil Heggelund - Saariaho: Du cristal...à la fumée (1989) [40]
9/6 Super Tonic - Corigliano: Symphony No. 1 (1988-1989) [40]
9/13 calvinpv - Rihm: Jagden und Formen (1995-2001, revised 2008) [50] 
9/20 20centrfuge - Maxwell Davies: Concerto for Trumpet (1988) [30]
9/27 Blancrocher - Lutoslawski: Piano Concerto "For Krystian Zimerman" (1988) [25]
10/4 BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist - Messiaen: Éclairs sur l'au-delà... (1991) [60]
10/11 tortkis - Garland: Peter: String Quartet No. 1, "In Praise of Poor Scholars" (1986) [20]
10/18 PeterfromLA - Schnittke: Symphony No. 5 "Concerto Grosso No. 4" (1988) [35]
10/25 Knorf - TBD
11/1 Allegro Con Brio TBD


----------



## Mandryka

20centrfuge said:


> *Rautavaara: Symphony No. 7 "Angel of Light" (1994) [35] *
> 
> _submitted by Ravn_
> 
> 8/23 Phil loves classical - Ligeti: Piano Concerto (1988) [25]
> 8/30 Kjetil Heggelund - Saariaho: Du cristal...à la fumée (1989) [40]
> 9/6 Super Tonic - Corigliano: Symphony No. 1 (1988-1989) [40]
> 9/13 calvinpv - Rihm: Jagden und Formen (1995-2001, revised 2008) [50]
> 9/20 20centrfuge - Maxwell Davies: Concerto for Trumpet (1988) [30]
> 9/27 Blancrocher - Lutoslawski: Piano Concerto "For Krystian Zimerman" (1988) [25]
> 10/4 BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist - Messiaen: Éclairs sur l'au-delà... (1991) [60]
> 10/11 tortkis - Garland: Peter: String Quartet No. 1, "In Praise of Poor Scholars" (1986) [20]
> 10/18 PeterfromLA - Schnittke: Symphony No. 5 "Concerto Grosso No. 4" (1988) [35]
> 10/25 Knorf - TBD
> 11/1 Allegro Con Brio TBD


Sibelius and Vaughan Williams or maybe Elgar ripped off and twisted into Hollywood drivel. The first movement makes me think of the flying bike in ET









He has the best first name in music - Einojuhani.


----------



## Phil loves classical

Here it is on Youtube with score. I used to like it since had a nice sound and flow. But on subsequent listens I felt the material was kind of thin for a symphony compared to many others.


----------



## Ravn

Rautavaara's _Angel of Light_ is among my all time favorites, and probably the work I like second most that I have discovered by reading posts on this forum (#1 is Crumb' _Black Angels_). This thread has already shown some great examples of modern classical music in all forms, but I chose to stick to my guns and focus on beauty in a more "classical" sense than many other pieces that we've listened to over the last months (of which I find several of them much more interesting than my own choices). I admit, choosing this symphony for a listening group of this kind is a boring choice, assuming that many of you have heard it before. But it was a thread like this that made me discover this symphony, so hopefully it may serve as an introduction to Rautavaara for people that aren't familier with his music.

The work itself is tonal and Wikipedia has this to say

_Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara wrote his Symphony No. 7, subtitled Angel of Light, in 1994. It was originally known as The Bloomington Symphony, as it was commissioned to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the founding of the Bloomington Symphony Orchestra. Belonging to his Angel Series, inspired by childhood dreams and revelations, the symphony has won wide popularity for its deep spirituality. The premier performance was by the Bloomington Symphony Orchestra in 1994. In 1997 the premiere recording, by Segerstam, was nominated for the Grammy Award for "Best Classical Contemporary Composition"._

As far as I know, Angel of Light has only been recorded three times, - by Segerstam & Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, Vänska & Lahti Symphony Orchestra and Koivula & Royal Scottish National Orchestra. My preferred recording is by Vänska & Lahti, and on this CD you do also get a great recording of Rautavaara's wonderful "Cantus Arcticus".


----------



## Kjetil Heggelund

I might have heard it before and might say the same the next time I hear it...I've been busy while listening and thought the music was nice and it was in the background. I wasn't paying so much attention. I think it is a bit like Gorecki, sacred minimalism comes to mind. That's a kind of minimalism I like since it doesn't sound like pop music. Sorry, I really have to get used to minimalism and not say stupid things...Actually I thought Rautavaara was more modernistic after hearing the guitar piece "Serenades of the Unicorn" a long time ago. Maybe I forgot to listen to more of his music, you know there is a trillion other things...


----------



## Ravn

Kjetil Heggelund said:


> I might have heard it before and might say the same the next time I hear it...I've been busy while listening and thought the music was nice and it was in the background. I wasn't paying so much attention. I think it is a bit like Gorecki, sacred minimalism comes to mind. That's a kind of minimalism I like since it doesn't sound like pop music. Sorry, I really have to get used to minimalism and not say stupid things...Actually I thought Rautavaara was more modernistic after hearing the guitar piece "Serenades of the Unicorn" a long time ago. Maybe I forgot to listen to more of his music, you know there is a trillion other things...


Give Rautavaara's «Cantus Arcticus» a listen and tell us what you think! IMO this is as good as it gets when it comes to «tonal» modern CM*.

*Always looking for recommendations, if you prefer something else please present it.


----------



## Ravn

Mandryka said:


> Sibelius and Vaughan Williams or maybe Elgar ripped off and twisted into Hollywood drivel. The first movement makes me think of the flying bike in ET
> 
> View attachment 141470
> 
> 
> He has the best first name in music - Einojuhani.


Interesting that we have such diametrically opposing views on the work. I do of course love the work. Do you feel the same way of the rest of his output, or do you think I chose a bad piece for our group?


----------



## Enthusiast

Mandryka said:


> Sibelius and Vaughan Williams or maybe Elgar ripped off and twisted into Hollywood drivel. The first movement makes me think of the flying bike in ET
> 
> View attachment 141470
> 
> 
> He has the best first name in music - Einojuhani.


Perhaps a little unfair! I don't greatly like the 2nd movement (molto allegro) but the rest is attractive enough if perhaps a little thin. It certainly doesn't really sound like something from the end of the 20th century and is not at all a highbrow work. But I don't really find it cheap or a piece of kitsch.


----------



## Allegro Con Brio

I’m finding this symphony to be attractive, enjoyable, but somewhat diffuse music in the Vänskä/Lahti recording. I certainly would never guess that it came from the latter half of the 20th century as it sounds very late-Romantic. Many of the textures are very rich and beautiful and it is certainly “easy on the ear,” but I thought it was very “static” sounding with not much shifting of harmonies or ideas. I doubt I will remember anything specific about it once I’m finished, but it’s a nice piece of music to hear. BTW I am a fan of two other works I’ve heard from Rautavaara - the double bass concerto “Angel of Dusk” and the 1st piano concerto.


----------



## tortkis

Although it sometimes becomes too dramatic and bombastic which put me off, most of harmonies and melodies in quiet parts are enchanting, flowing organically, occasionally reminding me of Mahler. This is the first time I heard Rautavaara. I will check his other works.


----------



## Knorf

Outside of one or two works (I like _Cantus arcticus_,) Ruatavaara just doesn't do it for me. I don't think I'll say any more.


----------



## 20centrfuge

It’s been a busy week for me and I haven’t quite listened to all of it. Rautavaara is a composer I don’t know really well. I have heard and liked his violin concerto. I find this piece to have somewhat of a Hollywood sound. That’s not necessarily a negative. It is optimistic accessible music and these qualities aren’t something we often hear in contemporary music. I look forward to living with R’s music more sometime.


----------



## 20centrfuge

*Ligeti: Piano Concerto (1988)*

Submitted by Phil loves classical

8/30 Kjetil Heggelund - Saariaho: Du cristal...à la fumée (1989) [40]
9/6 Super Tonic - Corigliano: Symphony No. 1 (1988-1989) [40]
9/13 calvinpv - Rihm: Jagden und Formen (1995-2001, revised 2008) [50] 
9/20 20centrfuge - Maxwell Davies: Concerto for Trumpet (1988) [30]
9/27 Blancrocher - Lutoslawski: Piano Concerto "For Krystian Zimerman" (1988) [25]
10/4 BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist - Messiaen: Éclairs sur l'au-delà... (1991) [60]
10/11 tortkis - Garland: Peter: String Quartet No. 1, "In Praise of Poor Scholars" (1986) [20]
10/18 PeterfromLA - Schnittke: Symphony No. 5 "Concerto Grosso No. 4" (1988) [35]
10/25 Knorf - TBD
11/1 Allegro Con Brio TBD


----------



## Knorf

Now, THIS is a selection I can get behind, with enthusiasm! I remember when the premiere recording of the Ligeti Piano Concerto was released, Ueli Wiget, Peter Eötvös, and the Ensemble InterContemporain, and it totally blew me away. Fun fact: I had just gotten to meet Ligeti in person earlier that year (if I recall correctly, it might have been slightly later.) Anyway, a huge masterpiece even by Ligeti's standards.


----------



## Phil loves classical

Whoops. Forgot I was up. Here is a video with score. What can I say? It's nuts, but brilliant. There is more than one time signature used simultaneously for a certain "wind-chime effect" as i see it, that is what stands out to me. For more info:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano_Concerto_(Ligeti)


----------



## 20centrfuge

Initial reaction - fun, syncopation, funky melodies. I like that the music is transparent- meaning you can hear EVERYTHING that is going on. It doesn’t feel muddied. For some reason I’m hearing some slight similarities between this and some of Thomas Ades music. Maybe he was influenced by Ligeti. 

I know Chin was taught and heavily influenced by him, which reminds me that we have no works by her on our list.


----------



## Mandryka

> I present my artistic credo in the Piano Concerto: I demonstrate my independence from criteria of the traditional avantgarde, as well as the fashionable postmodernism. Musical illusions which I consider to be also so important are not a goal in itself for me, but a foundation for my aesthetical attitude. I prefer musical forms which have a more object-like than processual character. Music as "frozen" time, as an object in imaginary space evoked by music in our imagination, as a creation which really develops in time, but in imagination it exists simultaneously in all its moments. The spell of time, the enduring its passing by, closing it in a moment of the present is my main intention as a composer.


Would someone care to explain all that stuff about time and objects to me?


----------



## 20centrfuge

It's all about the vast existential process of being and non-being, recycled through the cosmos of time as presented in the diorama of pandora's box unopened, ever-present, under the lens of the avant garde. :tiphat:


----------



## Mandryka

Agreed. And it's clearly a magnificent bit of music.


----------



## calvinpv

Mandryka said:


> Would someone care to explain all that stuff about time and objects to me?


That Ligeti is more into Plato than Heraclitus? Beats me.

What I want to know is why do so many composers today and the recent past begin a program note with something along the lines of "My music attempts to transcend both the avantgarde and the current fads of postmodernism". In my head, I always tell myself: "Well, one of two things must be true. Either the terms 'avantgarde' and 'postmodern' point to no living composers, in which case they have truly been transcended and there is nothing to fret over. Or, they do point so someone, which means one of these program notes is lying for purposes of self-promotion."

Also, "traditional avantgarde" is an oxymoron.

With that said, the piano concerto is a fine piece of music.


----------



## Mandryka

Well one thing that he maybe means is that the concerto isn't constrained by a compositional system (= process) , but is rather something which evolves intuitively out of the sounds (=objects) But obviously not in a spectral way - it evolves just through his intuitions about what would be effective next, given what has gone before. The concerto is an example of Adorno's _Musique Informelle._

I like this idea even though I don't understand it



> as an object in imaginary space evoked by music in our imagination, as a creation which really develops in time, but in imagination it exists simultaneously in all its moments. The spell of time, the enduring its passing by, closing it in a moment of the present is my main intention as a composer.


I like the idea that the job of a composer is to capture the imagination of the listeners and/or performers. This maybe isn't something that the traditional avant garde (which I guess means Darmstadt type folk, or Cage's random forms) were overly concerned about - they were more about exploring a method. Maybe, not sure about any of this.

(We all like the music!)


----------



## Phil loves classical

Mandryka said:


> Would someone care to explain all that stuff about time and objects to me?


My impression is that by object-like rather than processual, he means something with an abstract shape or form. I feel Schnittke and early Penderecki is more of what he refers to as the traditional avant-garde, as well as most contemporary (what he refers to the fashionable postmodernism) is the processual character. Schnittke especially, it's an experience rather than something more tangible as i recall feeling with some of his stuff. I think the music of Bach, Bartok, and others are more object-like. I think this work is what struck me as different than a lot of avant garde, that it is not the breaking out of a straitjacket, but an alternative to the old. To me that is really no different than what I view as Modernism.


----------



## Kjetil Heggelund

I haven't listened to many pieces by Ligeti, even though he is among the most famous and I always like it when I hear one...Starts off with some fun, chaotic sounds! In the 2nd mvt. I remember hearing similar sounds in another concerto. Is it a recorder mouth piece?? It makes it a bit comic to me  I like very many pieces from the 80s. It seems to me that the veterans of experimental music then got a bit more laid back and had the experience of all their earlier searching for original ideas. I'm glad I heard this one


----------



## Mandryka

Phil loves classical said:


> My impression is that by object-like rather than processual, he means something with an abstract shape or form. I feel Schnittke and early Penderecki is more of what he refers to as the traditional avant-garde, as well as most contemporary (what he refers to the fashionable postmodernism) is the processual character. Schnittke especially, it's an experience rather than something more tangible as i recall feeling with some of his stuff. I think the music of Bach, Bartok, and others are more object-like. I think this work is what struck me as different than a lot of avant garde, that it is not the breaking out of a straitjacket, but an alternative to the old. To me that is really no different than what I view as Modernism.


Have you thought about what the abstract form of this concerto is? I'm afraid I'm not familiar enough with Schnittke to discuss the music with you. Did he use open forms like in the Penderecki quartet? And yes, I suppose Ligeti isn't wanting to introduce that sort of interpreter discretion into his music.

Who were the postmodernists at the time of the concerto? Feldman? Lachenmann? Boulez, Carter, Rihm, Reich, Cage, Pousseur , , , they were all active I think . . . I'm probably missing the most obvious ones!


----------



## calvinpv

Mandryka said:


> Well one thing that he maybe means is that the concerto isn't constrained by a compositional system (= process) , but is rather something which evolves intuitively out of the sounds (=objects) But obviously not in a spectral way - it evolves just through his intuitions about what would be effective next, given what has gone before. The concerto is an example of Adorno's _Musique Informelle._
> 
> I like this idea even though I don't understand it
> 
> I like the idea that the job of a composer is to capture the imagination of the listeners and/or performers. This maybe isn't something that the traditional avant garde (which I guess means Darmstadt type folk, or Cage's random forms) were overly concerned about - they were more about exploring a method. Maybe, not sure about any of this.
> 
> (We all like the music!)


This is actually what I hear in the music, and I'd be inclined to agree this is what Ligeti is going after. But to me, the program note says the exact opposite. The part you don't understand: to me, he sounds like a stereotypical Platonist. That there is the idea (or "Form" in Plato's terms, "imagination" in Ligeti's note) of the piece that exists beyond space-time and expresses all possibilities simultaneously. And then its manifestation in time, one of them being the piano concerto. And that his "intention as a composer" is to have the concerto evoke the full Form in the minds of the audience. I see no notion of "intuition" in the note, even though, again, I do hear it in the music.

About "objects" and "processes": I've noticed that different composers will use these terms in different, often conflicting, ways. For example, I've been reading about Rihm the last couple of days, especially about his _fleuve_ and _Formen_ cycles. And he understands "object" the same way Varèse and Schaeffer understand "sound object"; however, he understand "process" in the way you used "object" above, where musical form is not predetermined but comes into being when the music unfolds in time. And then you have a spectral composer like Grisey who uses "object" and "process" almost interchangeably, since for him, the spectral sound object already harbors the unfolding of the piece within itself. Maybe Ligeti is using these terms in yet another way.


----------



## Allegro Con Brio

I'm enjoying this weird, colorful music quite a bit. My reactions to Ligeti in the past have been a bit mixed - some of his stuff, to be frank, just sounds to me like, well, _noise_ - the Requiem and Lux Aeterna for example. But I like the challenging sonic creativity and eclectic blend of styles to be found in his piano music and violin concerto. This concerto is very rhythmically complex and brilliantly orchestrated, with a solo part that sounds murderously difficult. It sounds like a festive carnival of flavorful sounds and I bet it would be a blast to see live. My only gripe is that I find the second movement to be a bit annoying. Otherwise a great selection!


----------



## Mandryka

calvinpv said:


> This is actually what I hear in the music, and I'd be inclined to agree this is what Ligeti is going after. But to me, the program note says the exact opposite. The part you don't understand: to me, he sounds like a stereotypical Platonist. That there is the idea (or "Form" in Plato's terms, "imagination" in Ligeti's note) of the piece that exists beyond space-time and expresses all possibilities simultaneously. And then its manifestation in time, one of them being the piano concerto. And that his "intention as a composer" is to have the concerto evoke the full Form in the minds of the audience. I see no notion of "intuition" in the note, even though, again, I do hear it in the music.
> 
> About "objects" and "processes": I've noticed that different composers will use these terms in different, often conflicting, ways. For example, I've been reading about Rihm the last couple of days, especially about his _fleuve_ and _Formen_ cycles. And he understands "object" the same way Varèse and Schaeffer understand "sound object"; however, he understand "process" in the way you used "object" above, where musical form is not predetermined but comes into being when the music unfolds in time. And then you have a spectral composer like Grisey who uses "object" and "process" almost interchangeably, since for him, the spectral sound object already harbors the unfolding of the piece within itself. Maybe Ligeti is using these terms in yet another way.


I wonder how you think this Platonism is presented in the piano concerto, but not in the music of the postmodern composers, or the process composers, whoever they are.

These cycles of Rihm are interesting, but so little is available on record. For Fleuve for example, I've only managed to find symphony III. Is there more to the Formen cycle than Ciffre and Jagden Und Formen?

I'd love to be able to read some of Rihm's writings, but they're just not available in a language I understand (i.e. English or French) In fact today I've been exploring the 11th Quartet and the 6th Klavierstück.


----------



## Knorf

Kjetil Heggelund said:


> In the 2nd mvt. I remember hearing similar sounds in another concerto. Is it a recorder mouth piece??


You're hearing an ocarina. There is also a slide whistle, a chromatic harmonica, and other fun things.


----------



## Mandryka

Movements I, II, III of this piece seems to me very _knowable_. That's a new technical term which I just invented, and which I can't properly explain. It has to do with how you really rapidly assimilate it, so that after hearing it a couple of times it holds no surprises, no jolts. Mahler symphonies are like this: obviously I can't hum them, but when I listen to them I feel as though I remember well what's coming next.

Maybe this is what he meant by



> as a creation which really develops in time, but in imagination it exists simultaneously in all its moments


I think II is a good exercise in suspended time à la Prokofiev sonata VIII; that being said the movements which I think are most interesting are IV and V, especially IV.


----------



## Enthusiast

^ Which were added later.


----------



## Mandryka

Enthusiast said:


> ^ Which were added later.


Never knew that.


----------



## Enthusiast

I'm not sure where I heard it but I have a bit of a thing for works that represent come from two different times in a composer's life (Stravinsky's Symphony in C is an extreme example). But I did find this on Wikipedia:



> The first three movements were premiered in Graz, Austria on October 23, 1986 by pianist Anthony di Bonaventura and the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Mario di Bonaventura.[3] The following year, Ligeti added another two movements, the fourth and fifth, and the final autograph of the last movement was ready in January 1988. Ligeti wrote that "[a]fter hearing the work twice [in 1986], I came to the conclusion that the third movement is not an adequate finale; my feeling of form demanded continuation, a supplement."[1] The five-movement concerto was premiered on February 29, 1988 with Anthony di Bonaventura and the Austrian Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Mario di Bonaventura[3] in the Vienna Konzerthaus.


----------



## tortkis

Not only the piano and several percussion instruments, the whole ensemble is very percussive. Each movement is unique and distinctive, but I particularly like the 1st movement (the repeated ascending passages reminded of his etude no. 13) and the fourth (interesting pauses.)


----------



## 20centrfuge

*Saariaho: Du cristal...à la fumée (1989)*

Submitted by Kjetil Heggelund

9/6 Super Tonic - Corigliano: Symphony No. 1 (1988-1989) [40]
9/13 calvinpv - Rihm: Jagden und Formen (1995-2001, revised 2008) [50] 
9/20 20centrfuge - Maxwell Davies: Concerto for Trumpet (1988) [30]
9/27 Blancrocher - Lutoslawski: Piano Concerto "For Krystian Zimerman" (1988) [25]
10/4 BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist - Messiaen: Éclairs sur l'au-delà... (1991) [60]
10/11 tortkis - Garland: Peter: String Quartet No. 1, "In Praise of Poor Scholars" (1986) [20]
10/18 PeterfromLA - Schnittke: Symphony No. 5 "Concerto Grosso No. 4" (1988) [35]
10/25 Knorf - TBD
11/1 Allegro Con Brio TBD


----------



## 20centrfuge

I don't know why Saariaho doesn't appeal to me. 

This piece doesn't feel harmony driven or melody driven, which isn't the end of the world if the music still has something meaningful to say, but in her case, it just doesn't. It feels like Saariaho will sit on a chord and riff on it in the orchestra until she gets bored and then she goes to a new chord and sits on it and riffs in the orchestra, over and over. Creative orchestration, and there is some manipulation of energy. I think I would be more ok with it if the underlying chords were more interesting but the underlying chords just seem to be *nothing special.* Different strokes for different folks I guess, but on the whole I would say, for me, Saariaho is over-rated.


----------



## Mandryka

It’s interesting how successfully she creates a sense of tension and relief in Du cristal, despite the fact that there’s no tonal harmony and there’s not much by way of melody. There is rhythm and there is dynamic change of course.

What do the two pieces have in common? I mean, why are they linked? They seem to me to be totally different.


----------



## Knorf

I'm excited to revisit the Saariaho! Nice choice. I first got to know her work in the early 1990s, from that very piece. And it's been awhile. Looking forward to it!


----------



## Ravn

Mandryka said:


> What do the two pieces have in common? I mean, why are they linked? They seem to me to be totally different.


From Saariaho's website:


Saariaho.org said:


> In 1989 Kaija Saariaho found herself in the unusual position of receiving two commissions for large orchestral pieces to fulfil within as many years, without having written a large-scale orchestral work before (her Verblendungen of 1982 had been scored for large chamber orchestra). Not daunted by such a task, she decided to link the two works together so that they would form an orchestral diptych totalling some thirty-eight minutes of music entitled Du Cristal … à la fumée ('From Crystal … into smoke'). Thus the last sound of Du Cristal - a cello trill played sul ponticello - becomes retrospectively the first sound of its successor, … à la fumée, which features solo parts for cello and amplified alto flute in addition to large orchestra. Saariaho has commented that 'to my way of thinking, Du Cristal … à la fumée is a single work, two facets of the same image, but both fully drawn in, living and independent'; so the pieces may either be played together or on their own.


----------



## Kjetil Heggelund

Some years ago I listened to this piece many times, but only the first part and found it captivating. Now I have to find time to hear the other part, but have to focus on medieval music for now. I'm glad the background thoughts have been brought to light here.


----------



## Enthusiast

I guess it is tough to follow the Ligeti. I listened to the Saariaho piece(s) and found much to enjoy but, on this hearing, found the work(s) too long for their inspiration ... a fault that you could never accuse the Ligeti of. Maybe I'll find a purpose in the length on my next hearing.


----------



## Kjetil Heggelund

Hello there, it's me again...Du Cristal makes me think of some of the electronic music I've been getting used to lately, even ambient! This is a sound sculpture that I like and that gives me a sense of peace (not so hard on me). Maybe I'm inside the sculpture and experiencing its movement in time or I am the crystal transforming into...smoke  It would be grand to hear it live!
I think I like the Saariaho better than the Ligeti, which was a bit comical...


----------



## Phil loves classical

20centrfuge said:


> I don't know why Saariaho doesn't appeal to me.
> 
> This piece doesn't feel harmony driven or melody driven, which isn't the end of the world if the music still has something meaningful to say, but in her case, it just doesn't. It feels like Saariaho will sit on a chord and riff on it in the orchestra until she gets bored and then she goes to a new chord and sits on it and riffs in the orchestra, over and over. Creative orchestration, and there is some manipulation of energy. I think I would be more ok with it if the underlying chords were more interesting but the underlying chords just seem to be *nothing special.* Different strokes for different folks I guess, but on the whole I would say, for me, Saariaho is over-rated.


I'm also not really into Saariaho. I just feel there isn't anything in her music to focus on and to remember. They are just soundscapes. I found the violin concerto more interesting, at least the violin part was central. She was influenced earlier in her career by the spectralists, and it seems she's never moved completely away from them, especially in the area of form. Here is an article which gives some general idea of her music. I never thought a composer like her could be ranked #17 of all time by composers. Her music has a nice ring to it and is detailed, but just seems hallow to me. I liked the Murail Desintegrations earlier much more, since it seemed to have more guts.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/31/the-oceanic-music-of-kaija-saariaho


----------



## calvinpv

What's most interesting to me is that you can hear a change in her style between the two works. _Du cristal_ is reminiscent of her music from the eighties and is very much in the shadow of Grisey and Murail: a single block of sound (typically with a rich sound spectra) serves as the "DNA" of the entire form of the piece, offering the pitch content, dynamic range, durations, etc. But in _... à la fumée_, Saariaho seems to be transitioning to the more concertante style that her later music is known for. The flute and cello seems to draw on the same basic material that you hear in _Du cristal_, but the part writing is too fast, too spontaneous, and too ornamental for it to be part of some larger organic process. It's like you can see Saariaho's mind churning in this piece, like she's starting to get bored of spectral music proper and wants to do something a bit different.

Now personally, I wished she stayed under Grisey and Murail's shadow and continued to write the music she wrote in the eighties, because I think she surpassed the two of them in what they were trying to accomplish. Both were interested in "instrumental synthesis", meaning using the full possibilities of the orchestra to recreate/imitate a particular sonority, analyze that sonority's component parts, and derive new sonorities from old ones. Where she surpasses Grisey, in my view, is adding a complexity and level of detail that is lacking in his music (though his music is already complex enough). Meaning, her music sounds so much more filled out and more faithful to the sonority she's trying to imitate. And where she surpasses Murail is in bringing out the inner "melodies" that are hidden underneath the rest of the sound. Murail is very adept at transforming one sound into another, but sometimes I wonder what the hell he's trying to accomplish; Saariaho, on the other hand, has a bit more laser focus in this regard, she's very good in particular at teasing out component of these blocks of sound and turning them into melodic fragments.

I love some of the stuff she wrote later on. _L'Amour de loin_, for example, is one of the best contemporary pieces I've ever heard; _Graal théâtre_ is another good one. But for the most part, I get kind of bored with it after a while. The textures are just too thin for me and she's lost all of that richness from her earlier period.

So I have to partly agree, partly disagree with 20centrfuge and Phil loves classical. I also think Saariaho is overrated, but for me, it's her later stuff that overrated -- especially her post-_L'Amour de loin_ music. If I had to guess, both of you would probably prefer the later pieces like _Graal théâtre_, _Orion_, or _D'om le vrai sens_ over _Du cristal ... à la fumée_?


----------



## calvinpv

20centrfuge said:


> I don't know why Saariaho doesn't appeal to me.
> 
> This piece doesn't feel harmony driven or melody driven, which isn't the end of the world if the music still has something meaningful to say, but in her case, it just doesn't. It feels like Saariaho will *sit on a chord and riff on it in the orchestra* until she gets bored and then she goes to a new chord and sits on it and riffs in the orchestra, over and over. Creative orchestration, and there is some manipulation of energy. I think I would be more ok with it if the underlying chords were more interesting but the underlying chords just seem to be *nothing special.* Different strokes for different folks I guess, but on the whole I would say, for me, Saariaho is over-rated.


The part I bolded in your post is exactly what she's trying to accomplish in _Du cristal_ (it's a bit different in _... à la fumée_). The entire piece is generated from that opening bell-like chord, and technically, only one chord is played the entire time -- before the composition process, that chord was most likely analyzed with a computer and broken down into its physical components (most of those components being inaudible to us). There is a form to the piece, but the form is not based on some classical notions of exposition, development, recapitulation, etc. but is based on notions of growth, decay, periodicity, tension, release, etc. And these are determined by the natural properties of that opening chord.

Listen to the first seven minutes or so of _Du cristal_. You first hear the opening chord, and then everything afterwards is Saariaho teasing out the different components of that chord (what you think are different chords altogether). You should have some sense of deja vu, even though there is no outright repetition of the opening chord. The second half of the piece, she does things that is beyond my understanding, but the first seven minutes is just a single chord disintegrating. To me, it's absolutely stunning that she can sustain a single chord like that for several minutes, but to appreciate it, it requires a totally differently way of listening.


----------



## Mandryka

Phil loves classical said:


> it seems she's never moved completely away from them [spectralists] especially in the area of form.


Can you say a bit more about this?


----------



## 20centrfuge

calvinpv said:


> ...to appreciate it, it requires a totally differently way of listening.


I can accept that the problem is mine and that I'm expecting the work to fit into the mold of other works ....in effect comparing apples to oranges. I may give it another attempt at some point.

I've been listening to a bit of Peter Maxwell Davies, recently. His Symphony no5 is structurally rather amorphous and has few clear delineations and boundaries, but it is music that always to seems to be rooted in some harmonic and subtle melodic development. In short, it always feels like it is moving. Saariaho seems more content for the music to NOT be actively moving. I keep expecting Saariaho to do what Maxwell and others do, but it just isn't her thing. As a result, I feel frustrated by the experience. I don't doubt that, for others, her music is sublime. On the other hand, I don't, at the moment, feel that repeated listenings would unlock the mystery for me. I really banged my head against the wall trying to come to terms with Graal Theatre and ultimately had to give up.


----------



## 20centrfuge

If we compare it to literature, it's like being used to hearing stories and then suddenly you are exposed to a work of literature in which there is no story. You are just asked to exist in the moment or series of moments. There is no plot in the traditional sense.

Perhaps that's an unfair comparison. I'm not sure.


----------



## Enthusiast

^ Could you give an example of such a novel?


----------



## Mandryka

Enthusiast said:


> ^ Could you give an example of such a novel?


_La vie, mode d'emploi_ by Georges Perec. 
_Le Jardin des plantes_ by Claude Simon
_Petits traités_ by Pascal Quignard


----------



## Phil loves classical

Mandryka said:


> Can you say a bit more about this?


I kind of drew that connection from the article, and just from my impression by listening.

"She had come in contact with the Spectralist school of composers, the likes of Gérard Grisey and Tristan Murail, who were analyzing the acoustic properties of sound and *deriving musical structures from them*. Saariaho's work, like theirs, moves between extremes of pure tone and noise, often finding a cryptic beauty in the middle zone."


----------



## Phil loves classical

20centrfuge said:


> If we compare it to literature, it's like being used to hearing stories and then suddenly you are exposed to a work of literature in which there is no story. You are just asked to exist in the moment or series of moments. There is no plot in the traditional sense.
> 
> Perhaps that's an unfair comparison. I'm not sure.


It's a fair comparison to me. But that's just me.


----------



## calvinpv

20centrfuge said:


> I can accept that the problem is mine and that I'm expecting the work to fit into the mold of other works ....in effect comparing apples to oranges. I may give it another attempt at some point.


I was going to elaborate in that post on what I meant by "different way of listening", but it was getting late, and I decided to go to bed instead.

But what I was going to say is that, to appreciate Saariaho and spectral movement more generally, you have to have a more expanded understanding of what constitutes a "chord" or even a single "note". Whenever we hear, for example, a C major triad (assume for the moment there are no octave doublings) we hear three "notes": C, E and G. We then proceed to conclude that therefore, only three frequencies exist as well, one frequency present for each of the "notes". Of course, we don't explicitly jump to this conclusion in our thinking, it sort of happens in the back of our mind, and we probably wouldn't even use the term "frequency" either. Another way to frame this thinking is "Everything that exists in this chord is everything that I hear in this chord".

But ever since the development of acoustics as a discipline, we know this a blatantly false statement to make. There aren't just three frequencies in this chord, but millions of them; in fact, there are millions for each note (from a theoretical standpoint, there are an infinite number, but realistically there's probably an energy threshold below which a wave form can't sustain itself; someone knowledgable in physics can correct me if I'm wrong). Every note that we play on an instrument is made up of an entire spectrum of frequencies; the only reason we hear one per note is because that one is the loudest, the rest are too inaudible to enter into our attention span, even though they are indeed getting picked up by our ears. And that spectrum will change depending on the instrument: a C major chord on a piano has a different spectrum than a C major chord on a violin, for example. A single spectrum will also fluctuate throughout time so that groups of frequencies are more present at some times and less present at other times.

All Saariaho and the spectralists are doing is recognizing this discovery and turning it into an art form. Why restrict yourself with three frequencies when you can play around with millions? Or, if not millions (since that would be too cumbersome), then at least the 50 or so loudest frequencies in the chord, with every instrument in an ensemble getting one of those frequencies to play at a given moment. And if you choose your instruments correctly, the ensemble can collectively produce a sound that comes reasonably close to the original chord.


----------



## Phil loves classical

calvinpv said:


> What's most interesting to me is that you can hear a change in her style between the two works. _Du cristal_ is reminiscent of her music from the eighties and is very much in the shadow of Grisey and Murail: a single block of sound (typically with a rich sound spectra) serves as the "DNA" of the entire form of the piece, offering the pitch content, dynamic range, durations, etc. But in _... à la fumée_, Saariaho seems to be transitioning to the more concertante style that her later music is known for. The flute and cello seems to draw on the same basic material that you hear in _Du cristal_, but the part writing is too fast, too spontaneous, and too ornamental for it to be part of some larger organic process. It's like you can see Saariaho's mind churning in this piece, like she's starting to get bored of spectral music proper and wants to do something a bit different.
> 
> Now personally, I wished she stayed under Grisey and Murail's shadow and continued to write the music she wrote in the eighties, because I think she surpassed the two of them in what they were trying to accomplish. Both were interested in "instrumental synthesis", meaning using the full possibilities of the orchestra to recreate/imitate a particular sonority, analyze that sonority's component parts, and derive new sonorities from old ones. Where she surpasses Grisey, in my view, is adding a complexity and level of detail that is lacking in his music (though his music is already complex enough). Meaning, her music sounds so much more filled out and more faithful to the sonority she's trying to imitate. And where she surpasses Murail is in bringing out the inner "melodies" that are hidden underneath the rest of the sound. Murail is very adept at transforming one sound into another, but sometimes I wonder what the hell he's trying to accomplish; Saariaho, on the other hand, has a bit more laser focus in this regard, she's very good in particular at teasing out component of these blocks of sound and turning them into melodic fragments.
> 
> I love some of the stuff she wrote later on. _L'Amour de loin_, for example, is one of the best contemporary pieces I've ever heard; _Graal théâtre_ is another good one. But for the most part, I get kind of bored with it after a while. The textures are just too thin for me and she's lost all of that richness from her earlier period.
> 
> So I have to partly agree, partly disagree with 20centrfuge and Phil loves classical. I also think Saariaho is overrated, but for me, it's her later stuff that overrated -- especially her post-_L'Amour de loin_ music. If I had to guess, both of you would probably prefer the later pieces like _Graal théâtre_, _Orion_, or _D'om le vrai sens_ over _Du cristal ... à la fumée_?


I never listened to D'om le vrai sens before your post, but did listen to Orion which was the first work by Saariaho I've heard. I feel the same with all her music. The Graal was easiest for me to focus on, since it had a central violin part.

"D'om le vrai sens" reminds me A WHOLE LOT of Ligeti's Atmospheres, which I feel if it was inserted randomly into it, I wouldn't notice or hardly (pretty surprising to me, considering it came 50 years earlier). Of Atmospheres, there is suggested a sense of timelessness, the static, and lack of development as detailed more in this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphères

Since I listened to Atmospheres before, I don't feel a desperate need to listen to Saariaho, whom I feel doesn't really add much.


----------



## calvinpv

20centrfuge said:


> If we compare it to literature, it's like being used to hearing stories and then suddenly you are exposed to a work of literature in which there is no story. You are just asked to exist in the moment or series of moments. There is no plot in the traditional sense.
> 
> Perhaps that's an unfair comparison. I'm not sure.


You're kinda right, but I think it would be more akin to a novel that takes place over a single day or a single afternoon. There is a plot, and there is continuity, but it's about some totally mundane, ordinary event. Or at least, mundane from our perspective, but the author is trying to tell us "On the contrary, there is as much tension, drama, and conflict in a single afternoon as there is in a so-called 'normal plot'". The author would then prove this to us over the course of a 1000 pages, effectively putting a single event under a microscope.

I don't know of any novels that do this, but I'm sure they exist.


----------



## Allegro Con Brio

Well, I guess what appeals to me about Saariaho’s music is just what some people don’t like about it - the fact that it’s just an immense, relatively static soundscape of colors. I learned to appreciate contemporary music by listening to it as momentary flashes of colors, timbres, textures, harmonies, and rhythms rather than focusing on how it all adds up to a whole. I definitely get the complaints though. I don’t think I’ll end up listening through this whole work as it doesn’t seem to be grabbing me like her clarinet and violin concerti.


----------



## calvinpv

Phil loves classical said:


> I never listened to D'om le vrai sens before your post, but did listen to Orion which was the first work by Saariaho I've heard. I feel the same with all her music. The Graal was easiest for me to focus on, since it had a central violin part.
> 
> "D'om le vrai sens" reminds me A WHOLE LOT of Ligeti's Atmospheres, which I feel if it was inserted randomly into it, I wouldn't notice or hardly (pretty surprising to me, considering it came 50 years earlier). Of Atmospheres, there is suggested a sense of timelessness, the static, and lack of development as detailed more in this.
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphères
> 
> Since I listened to Atmospheres before, I don't feel a desperate need to listen to Saariaho, whom I feel doesn't really add much.


But from what I've been reading, Saariaho and the spectralists are trying to achieve the opposite effect. "Timelessness" means that there is no beginning or end and therefore no change. But Saariaho is saying "On the contrary, there is a lot of change happening 'under the hood', in fact more change than you can possibly imagine, and I'm asking you, dear listener, to pick up on those changes". In fact, she's accusing _us_, the listeners, of bringing in a notion of timelessness that is inappropriate. Because as traditional listeners, whenever we hear a chord or single note of a given duration, we automatically assume that from the beginning to the end of that duration, everything about that chord stays the same. Now, that's a safe assumption to make for a lot traditional classical music, since those earlier composers were also using that assumption in composing their music. But it's false from an acoustical standpoint: for example, the longer you hold a chord, the more it decays in volume, the more you can hear its overtones that were previously obscured, etc. Saariaho is just putting a microscope onto all of this and showing that, yes, there is a ton of drama and conflict.


----------



## Phil loves classical

calvinpv said:


> But from what I've been reading, Saariaho and the spectralists are trying to achieve the opposite effect. "Timelessness" means that there is no beginning or end and therefore no change. But Saariaho is saying "On the contrary, there is a lot of change happening 'under the hood', in fact more change than you can possibly imagine, and I'm asking you, dear listener, to pick up on those changes". In fact, she's accusing _us_, the listeners, of bringing in a notion of timelessness that is inappropriate. Because as traditional listeners, whenever we hear a chord or single note of a given duration, we automatically assume that from the beginning to the end of that duration, everything about that chord stays the same. Now, that's a safe assumption to make for a lot traditional classical music, since those earlier composers were also using that assumption in composing their music. But it's false from an acoustical standpoint: for example, the longer you hold a chord, the more it decays in volume, the more you can hear its overtones that were previously obscured, etc. Saariaho is just putting a microscope onto all of this and showing that, yes, there is a ton of drama and conflict.


Ligeti suggested something similar here:

Ligeti noted that Atmosphères had a polyphonic structure, but one organized by his own rules. The polyphonic structure, he stated, cannot be heard by the listener, but remains "underwater", hidden from the listener.[24] Ligeti coined the term "micropolyphony" to describe this texture.

Program notes also stated: Large portions of the piece consist of extremely dense counterpoint, with up to 56 voices (each string instrument has his or her own individual part to play). But the imitative entrances are so close to one another that it is impossible to perceive them separately, with apparent immobility as the result.[16]

Saariaho does include these solos for individual instruments in D'om le vrai sens, but I don't hear the overall effect being much different than the ebb and flow of Atmospheres. Ligeti could have told us to appreciate the conflict in the 56 separate voices of Atmospheres, but he seemed to appreciate the Listener's view better than Saariaho. A lot of articles mention motionlessness in her music, which must frustrate her if she expects differently.


----------



## Knorf

Once again, I am baffled as to the pervasive negative reaction towards Saariaho by this forum.

I will say that I really love _Du cristal_. Simply stated, I find it extraordinarily captivating, even beautiful, and certainly interesting to listen to. I evaluate it based on "what it says on the tin." This is a work whose harmony is frozen, like a crystal, but when examined more closely a wealth of detail, ever shifting with slight changes of perspective, is revealed. For me it is mesmerizing.

But also I will confess I find _...à la fumée_ a tad less satisfying. The solo parts don't for me have the dimension in themselves of conveying an additional interest in formal and harmonic mutability I had expected, given the title and literary inspiration. I always sort of hope for a rich experience of what had been frozen harmony now shifting, altering, and floating away to merely disappear, in constantly familiar but nevertheless fundamentally unpredictable forms. But that's not really what happens. Maybe my expectations are out of whack.

For those curious about the literary source for this, Henri Atlan's book _Entre le cristal et la fumée: Essai sur l'organisation du vivant_ is readily available, but as far as I can tell, only in French. Ich kann kein Französisch. I'm not sure to what degree the composition is really concretely linked to this other than in the abstract.

From the LA Philharmonic's website:


> The two titles suggest opposite states of being: crystal is ordered, organized, geometric and symmetrical, while smoke is formless and drifting. The titles were derived from biophysicist Henri Atlan's 1979 book Entre le cristal et la fumée: Essai sur l'organisation du vivant ("Between crystal and smoke: essay on the organisation of life"). Cells, DNA, and other building blocks of life, exist in a state somewhere between crystal's tightly organized rigidity and smoke's chaos, which is to say that somewhere between crystal and smoke is us.


I guess I feel that _à la fumée_ isn't different enough, simply not chaotic enough, for my taste and expectations. But I do think it's a very neat idea for a composition.

Oddly enough, there's also a play by Jacques Attali with the same title, _Du cristal à la fumée_, again taken from Atlan. Here's a synopsis I found:


> On Saturday, November 12, 1938, two days after the _Kristallnacht_ bloodbath, the most prominent Nazi leaders held a secret meeting in Berlin chaired by Goering. Himmler, Heydrich, Funk, and Daluege, among others, were present. Hitler, who had remained in Munich, followed every minute of the meeting. It was during this meeting that the Nazi leaders decided to eradicate the Jews. This was long before the meeting in a villa on the Wannsee lakeside on January 20, 1942. Jacques Attali represents here, in minute detail, with the help of recently discovered German archives, the surreal dialogue of this high-level meeting, during which the worst decision ever taken by a group of men was conceived: the extermination of a people.


That would have made for a very different piece! I wonder whether she's aware of this play?


----------



## Mandryka

I’ve been spending a bit of time listening to Richard Barrett recently, and that has made me very conscious of polyphony. And Du cristal is a polyphonic piece of music. I have found that perspective is a satisfactory way of listening to it - to just be conscious of the different simultaneous textures and experience their interaction. This is not a simple piece of music. 

I think it is exceptional. Not as exceptional as Richard Barrett, but that’s probably not a helpful thing to say. 

I haven’t spent any time with . . . à la fumée - somehow the word “concerto” makes me think of virtuosos in dicky bows playing music in metropolitan concert halls to bourgeois audiences, yuck! I won’t have that sort of thing in the house.


----------



## 20centrfuge

*Corigliano: Symphony No. 1 (1988-1989) [40]*

submitted by Super Tonic

9/13 calvinpv - Rihm: Jagden und Formen (1995-2001, revised 2008) [50] 
9/20 20centrfuge - Maxwell Davies: Concerto for Trumpet (1988) [30]
9/27 Blancrocher - Lutoslawski: Piano Concerto "For Krystian Zimerman" (1988) [25]
10/4 BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist - Messiaen: Éclairs sur l'au-delà... (1991) [60]
10/11 tortkis - Garland: Peter: String Quartet No. 1, "In Praise of Poor Scholars" (1986) [20]
10/18 PeterfromLA - Schnittke: Symphony No. 5 "Concerto Grosso No. 4" (1988) [35]
10/25 Knorf - TBD
11/1 Allegro Con Brio TBD


----------



## SuperTonic

Corigliano's Symphony No. 1 was written to memorialize several friends that the composer lost to the AIDS epidemic. When I first heard the work back on the 90's it made quite an impression on me. This was the work that really kicked off my interest in contemporary classical music, and that is why I chose to nominate it for this project.
The program notes linked below gives a good description of the work, including an in depth description by the composer himself.
https://nyphil.org/~/media/pdfs/program-notes/1819/John-Corigliano-Symphony-No-1.pdf

The 1st Symphony was premiered by the Chicago Symphony under Daniel Barenboim in 1990. It won the 1991 Grawemeyer Award, and the 1991 Grammy for Best Contemporary Composition, and the recording by the CSO won the 1991 Grammy for Best Orchestral Performance. 
It was the CSO recording that was my initial exposure to the work, and it is still my preferred interpretation. Unfortunately, the full work no longer appears to be available on Youtube. The 1st, 2nd, and 4th movements from the original CSO recording are linked here:
I. Apologue: Of Rage and Remembrance\I
II. Tarantella
IV. Epilogue

And this recording (I assume it is the National Symphony Orchestra under Slatkin, though the orchestra is not credited) is missing the Epilogue movement, but does include the 3rd movement, so between the two you can hear the whole work.


----------



## Mandryka

> Official art describes the glory of what exists. It's an art of victory. I think that is the most important point. An official art with an ideological determination is an art not of weakness but of strength. A militant art is the subjective expression, not of what exists, but of what becomes. It's an art of the choice and not an art of victory. An official art is an art of affirmative certainty. A militant art is an art of contradiction, an art of the contradiction between the affirmative nature of principles and the dubious result of struggles. . . . In official art we have always the affirmative glorification of the result, but in a militant art we have something which is much closer to the process, closer to something that does not exist, near something that is a real witness and so something uncertain. And so, that sort of hesitation, which is inside the process, is also a formal necessity. This is why in militant art we cannot have the glorification of the form. We must have the form itself. It is a translation of the uncertainty of the process.


I've been thinking about the above quote from Alain Badiou's lecture "Does the notion of activist art still have meaning?" which is here






I'll be listening to the symphony trying to decide whether it is militant or official.


----------



## Phil loves classical

^ Funny you mention it kick-started your interest in contemporary music. I also feel it forms a bridge between modern and contemporary music. I hear it as contemporary music in an older setting. It definitely provoking. Some of those provocations I can take (and like), some I feel can't. Makes an interesting, but uneasy listen.


----------



## calvinpv

Phil loves classical said:


> Ligeti suggested something similar here:
> 
> Ligeti noted that Atmosphères had a polyphonic structure, but one organized by his own rules. The polyphonic structure, he stated, cannot be heard by the listener, but remains "underwater", hidden from the listener.[24] Ligeti coined the term "micropolyphony" to describe this texture.
> 
> Program notes also stated: Large portions of the piece consist of extremely dense counterpoint, with up to 56 voices (each string instrument has his or her own individual part to play). But the imitative entrances are so close to one another that it is impossible to perceive them separately, with apparent immobility as the result.[16]
> 
> Saariaho does include these solos for individual instruments in D'om le vrai sens, but I don't hear the overall effect being much different than the ebb and flow of Atmospheres. Ligeti could have told us to appreciate the conflict in the 56 separate voices of Atmospheres, but he seemed to appreciate the Listener's view better than Saariaho. A lot of articles mention motionlessness in her music, which must frustrate her if she expects differently.


Fair enough. I guess we'll agree to disagree, because, personally, I have a hard time hearing motionlessness in Ligeti. I do hear (enough of) the different voices in his micropolyphonic textures to sense some sort of movement and direction in the music, even if the movement is at a glacier pace and even if the end destination isn't known in advance. For me, "motionlessness" as a concept doesn't make much sense in music because music, like everything else, evolves in one direction of time. Once a sound is created, it can't be undone, you have to live with the consequences. Ligeti stacking many voices in a canon-like effect may serve as damage control because you're hearing one and the same voice start at different times, giving you a brief illusion that you're not moving. But at some point, all of these different voices have to come to an end, and when that happens, the illusion shatters and you're left at a different place than where you started at.

The only type of music that I would consider even coming close to a sense of stasis is music that evokes a strong sense of deja vu or that uses a lot of repetition. So a lot of music by Reich and Glass would be obvious examples for me. Bernhard Lang's music would be a less clear cut example. Or perhaps music whose form is a palindrome because you're given the feeling of processes getting reversed. John Luther Adam's _Become Ocean_ is an example of this. But of course, even in these pieces, I still hear motion, so the illusion of stasis isn't perfect. In _Become Ocean_, for example, if I consider the piece as a whole, then I do get a feeling of stasis, but if I narrow my window to, say, a few seconds, then, no, I hear an incredible amount of motion.

EDIT: Apologies that I'm continuing last week's discussion. I didn't check your response until just now.


----------



## Phil loves classical

calvinpv said:


> Fair enough. I guess we'll agree to disagree, because, personally, I have a hard time hearing motionlessness in Ligeti. I do hear (enough of) the different voices in his micropolyphonic textures to sense some sort of movement and direction in the music, even if the movement is at a glacier pace and even if the end destination isn't known in advance. For me, "motionlessness" as a concept doesn't make much sense in music because music, like everything else, evolves in one direction of time. Once a sound is created, it can't be undone, you have to live with the consequences. Ligeti stacking many voices in a canon-like effect may serve as damage control because you're hearing one and the same voice start at different times, giving you a brief illusion that you're not moving. But at some point, all of these different voices have to come to an end, and when that happens, the illusion shatters and you're left at a different place than where you started at.
> 
> The only type of music that I would consider even coming close to a sense of stasis is music that evokes a strong sense of deja vu or that uses a lot of repetition. So a lot of music by Reich and Glass would be obvious examples for me. Bernhard Lang's music would be a less clear cut example. Or perhaps music whose form is a palindrome because you're given the feeling of processes getting reversed. John Luther Adam's _Become Ocean_ is an example of this. But of course, even in these pieces, I still hear motion, so the illusion of stasis isn't perfect. In _Become Ocean_, for example, if I consider the piece as a whole, then I do get a feeling of stasis, but if I narrow my window to, say, a few seconds, then, no, I hear an incredible amount of motion.
> 
> EDIT: Apologies that I'm continuing last week's discussion.


I agree with you. I was just stating the opposite views from Ligeti and Saariaho. They are both not motionless to a similar degree, but people write about it from the sense they get from the music. Ligeti didn't seem to mind, as I think he may have wanted that effect, but Saariaho DOES seem to mind from what you had quoted. I'm curious where you got that quote from; got a link?

I also agree with you on minimalism, that it does evoke a sense of stasis.


----------



## Enthusiast

Phil loves classical said:


> ^ Funny you mention it kick-started your interest in contemporary music. I also feel it forms a bridge between modern and contemporary music. I hear it as contemporary music in an older setting. It definitely provoking. Some of those provocations I can take (and like), some I feel can't. Makes an interesting, but uneasy listen.


I like it and find it an impressive work. But I don't hear anything contemporary sounding in it. It could have been written in the 50s. Lutoslawski - who was a relative conservative - sounds much more contemporary to me than anything in this work. But, as I say, I do like it.


----------



## flamencosketches

Enthusiast said:


> I like it and find it an impressive work. But I don't hear anything contemporary sounding in it. It could have been written in the 50s. Lutoslawski - who was a relative conservative - sounds much more contemporary to me than anything in this work. But, as I say, I do like it.


"Contemporary" is a temporal modifier, not a stylistic one.


----------



## Enthusiast

^ Not the way we generally use it. It is generally taken to be the art that came after "the modern". I agree that our terminology here (modern and contemporary) is in an unfortunate contradiction with the actual meaning of the words but though we try to escape them we do not seem to have landed on terms that are widely recognised. You will find the terms are being used in relation to this symphony in the way I describe.


----------



## Phil loves classical

Enthusiast said:


> I like it and find it an impressive work. But I don't hear anything contemporary sounding in it. It could have been written in the 50s. Lutoslawski - who was a relative conservative - sounds much more contemporary to me than anything in this work. But, as I say, I do like it.


Corigliano is more free in rhythms and has more contemporary instrumental techniques than Lutoslawski. Lutoslawski's rhythms are more stable (at least in his Symphonies 3 and 4, which are the ones I paid attention to). But Corigliano threw in large chunks of more traditional stuff.

https://issuu.com/scoresondemand/docs/symphony_no1_27006


----------



## calvinpv

Phil loves classical said:


> I agree with you. I was just stating the opposite views from Ligeti and Saariaho. They are both not motionless to a similar degree, but people write about it from the sense they get from the music. Ligeti didn't seem to mind, as I think he may have wanted that effect, but Saariaho DOES seem to mind from what you had quoted. I'm curious where you got that quote from; got a link?
> 
> I also agree with you on minimalism, that it does evoke a sense of stasis.


The quote was mine. I was pretending to speak as her.

Program notes can be found on her website here (some of them are not written by her).

Also, though I can't find this article for free online, she wrote an article from 1987 called "Timbre and Harmony: Interpolations of Timbral Structures" basically summarizing her music up to that point. It's been a while since I read it, so there may be some passages emphasizing the importance of stasis in her music that I'm not remembering. But just to summarize the first few pages (having reread them just now):

What fascinates Saariaho most about traditional tonal music is its ability organize complex pitch relationships in such way as to drive the music forward and control the rate at which it does this (using controlled oppositions between faster and slower harmonic developments). Saariaho wants to replicate this sense of momentum with contemporary techniques and theories, and her earliest pieces try to control timbre in an analogous way to controlling pitch. At first, she understood timbre on a very simple sound/noise axis, with rough textures (using extended techniques) being correlated with dissonance at the level of pitch while smoother textures (normal techniques) being used for more consonant passages.

In these pieces (she doesn't list them), harmony is still the driving force of the music with timbre playing a complementary role. But at some point, harmony enters onto an equal playing field with other parameters, including timbre but also rhythm, dynamics, pitch, pitch range, and electronically produced "color". And her music was about controlling the changes in each of these parameters, with changes criss-crossing one another in different combinations. _Sah den Vögeln_ and _Im Traume_ are two examples she lists. It should be noted that there is stasis in her music -- and she even uses the word "stasis" in the article in relation to her music -- but it's a stasis relative to changes happening around it. For example, while pitch changes, texture and rhythm stay the same. A sense of stasis where every parameter is frozen does not happen in her music (at least, she doesn't list an example).

Saariaho is also fascinated by the concept of transition, or those in-between spaces where movement takes us from one place of stasis to another. Passages of key modulation are the obvious example in tonal music, but Saariaho uses the example of minute differences in our speech between a vowel and a consonant, and she becomes interested in using technology to slow down such phenomena so that you have nothing but transition. _Vers le Blanc_, for tape, stretches out a single set of glissandi from one chord to a second chord for 15 minutes. I'll just end here with what she says on the piece, because she uses language that sounds like a fusion of both of our points, and I think a lot of her points here could be applied to her later music:



> My first composition realized with a computer, _Vers le Blanc_ (1982), is an extreme example of the use of slowness. In this work I tried to make a tightly-knit whole by relating form and content in a radical manner. The fundamental idea of this piece is the very slow transition from one chord to another through glissandi, which are so slow that changes in pitch become imperceptible to the ear. The computer had inspired me with this idea, and it was only by this means that I could realize it. The glissandi last as long as the work itself (15c). Whilst spreading in different directions they produce a harmonic structure which is continuously evolving (Fig. 6). Here the harmony is impossible to perceive as a series of different chords since it is presented as a continuum, as an uninterrupted chord which is continuously modified. Only intermittently does the listener become aware that the harmony must have changed. This tends to happen when the glissandi unite to form frequency relationships or chords whose intervals are recognizable. The way in which the listener perceives the form of the work is conditioned by such moments of recognition. In memory, a form is not perceived as a continuum; rather our comprehension reduces the whole into simpler structures based on different, strongly-defined details.
> 
> Form and content are thus organically contained within the idea as a whole and become inseparable. One can, as a result, open up an entirely new path towards a primarily global musical idea by approaching form and content through the same computer technologies, which serve to realize the totality of the work.
> 
> In Vers le Blanc I achieved timbral transformation through two technical means: first by controlling the central frequencies of formant regions (regions of resonance) with functions of time, and secondly by creating variations of different phonemes with the help of interpolation systems.
> 
> As far as timbre is concerned, my aim in this work was to create the illusion of an endless human voice, sustained and "non-breathing," which at times departs from its physical model. This effect of differentiation is apparent when the voice is masked, reduced and distorted. This is achieved by progressively modifying the values of parameters such as the extent of aleatoric modulation on the central frequencies of formants, as well as the bandwidth of formants, the coefficients of central frequencies and the amplitude of the formants. These last two parameters modify the relationship of frequency and amplitude: thus the structure of normal formants in the human voice is altered.
> 
> With this method, the parameters just cited are controlled by time functions, which very slowly move away from ordinary values in order to return to them, equally slowly. Such symmetrical and wedge-shaped functions take turns in creating a continual variation of texture.
> 
> Working with the computer has given me ideas which are equally applicable to instrumental music. For example, the necessity of keeping all the parameters under constant control enlarged my vision of instrumental music, as did even the simple fact of noting how much one can vitalize a sound by adopting a constant micro-variation to complete its construction. In addition, the realization of transitions and interpolations through instrumental means awoke my interest.
> 
> I wanted to understand how composition could be influenced by an idea based on the notion of transition and the multi-dimensional system that I described above. Is a certain form given more emphasis in this way? Do certain things become completely impossible in such a framework? And what are the differences as compared with the possibilities offered by a developed hierarchical system?
> 
> In my opinion, the system I use offers the possibility of constructing forms of tension as well as structures of several levels. It is partly to prove this that I wanted to write a work making maximum use of the multi-dimensional network to create the form. This was the point of departure for Verblendungen (1982-84 for orchestra and tape)


.


----------



## Phil loves classical

^ I listened to Verblendungen, and to Du Cristal again, and read the program notes, but the more I listen and read up on the music, the more I'm sure her music is not for me. The notes in Du Cristal did mention Ligeti Atmospheres as an influence. Rereading on Atmospheres, it's sort of the similar to some of the notes and what I hear in Saariaho's music: "static masses of orchestral sound that give the simultaneous sense of immobility and motion". The graphic synopsis (not sure who produced it) also gave the idea of a large tone cluster slowly converging into a simple chord as in around 5:00 to 5:20, similar to the idea of Vers le Blanc.

It just ended up making me appreciate Ligeti more, since the idea was 20 years before Vers le Blanc. Ok there is a big difference, it's not a chord changing, but an increasing number of instruments switching to play the final chord.


----------



## 20centrfuge

*Corigliano:*

The *Tarantella* (dance of death) movement is so fascinating to me in how it mimics the physiology of dying especially the heart's natural rhythm (lub-dub, or long-short). You can literally feel the moments when the heart is racing, when the mind becomes delirious (Pitch bends), or even nauseated, and you can hear the music suddenly slow down (with hemiola) as if taking life-saving deep breathes or perhaps even of being shocked with a defibrillator.

I also think the work, as a whole, is fascinating when viewed through the psychology of the 5 stages of grief:

denial
anger
bargaining
depression
acceptance

The work is a musical journey of accepting a loved-one's death. There certainly is a lot of anger in the piece but I think you can hear moments that associate with the other stages as well.

In summary, I think this work is amazing. I would personally put it in the category of the one of the enduring masterpieces of the last half of the 20th century. The stuff of standard repertoire.


----------



## Enthusiast

^ I can follow those associations but would never have thought of them had you not written that. I heard different things in the music ...


----------



## flamencosketches

Enthusiast said:


> ^ Not the way we generally use it. It is generally taken to be the art that came after "the modern". I agree that our terminology here (modern and contemporary) is in an unfortunate contradiction with the actual meaning of the words but though we try to escape them we do not seem to have landed on terms that are widely recognised. You will find the terms are being used in relation to this symphony in the way I describe.


How would you describe the "Contemporary style", in your words?


----------



## Enthusiast

^ Easier said than done ... but I hear most composers up to and including Britten and Shostakovich as modern but composers like Boulez, Nono, Carter, Ligeti, Feldman, Cage etc. (even if they are no longer with us) as what most people seem to refer to as contemporary (or if not that then what?). Composers like Lutoslawski and Dutileux seem to me to be somewhere between the two. I am not sure music can be thought of as "contemporary" if it is tonal. 

Please note that I am just recording the way that the terms seem most commonly to be used. Terms that start with the suffix "post-" (post-romantic, postmodern) and/or "neo-" might work better but the resulting terms are not widely used in a common way so they cause chaos with everyone meaning different things with them!


----------



## flamencosketches

Enthusiast said:


> ^ Easier said than done ... but I hear most composers up to and including Britten and Shostakovich as modern but composers like Boulez, Nono, Carter, Ligeti, Feldman, Cage etc. (even if they are no longer with us) as what most people seem to refer to as contemporary (or if not that then what?). Composers like Lutoslawski and Dutileux seem to me to be somewhere between the two. I am not sure music can be thought of as "contemporary" if it is tonal.
> 
> Please note that I am just recording the way that the terms seem most commonly to be used. Terms that start with the suffix "post-" (post-romantic, postmodern) and/or "neo-" might work better but the resulting terms are not widely used in a common way so they cause chaos with everyone meaning different things with them!


Ah, OK. It seems we have a very different conception of what these terms mean. I won't waste any more of our time splitting hairs about it further.


----------



## Enthusiast

^ Fair enough and I might have it wrong but I think I have described the way the two terms are most commonly used here. Modern is more or less agreed. Using the term post-modern always seems to cause a debate about what the term means so I avoid it. That only leaves contemporary. If you have a system that might work, do tell - I'd use it if it worked for me!


----------



## Mandryka

Enthusiast said:


> ^ Easier said than done ... but I hear most composers up to and including Britten and Shostakovich as modern but composers like Boulez, Nono, Carter, Ligeti, Feldman, Cage etc. (even if they are no longer with us) as what most people seem to refer to as contemporary (or if not that then what?). Composers like Lutoslawski and Dutileux seem to me to be somewhere between the two. I am not sure music can be thought of as "contemporary" if it is tonal.
> 
> Please note that I am just recording the way that the terms seem most commonly to be used. Terms that start with the suffix "post-" (post-romantic, postmodern) and/or "neo-" might work better but the resulting terms are not widely used in a common way so they cause chaos with everyone meaning different things with them!


This is why I think the terms from Badieu, official art and militant art, are more useful. Britten and Shostakovich work with an established powerful paradigm of musical composition to celebrate it, Nono etc are using their music to try and overturn that powerful paradigm by showing the possibilities of alternatives.

In older times, Rameau was official, Berlioz militant; Busoni official, Webern militant; Rihm is now official, Lachenmann is (was?) militant; Wagner militant, Rossini official; Machaut militant, de Vitry official . . .


----------



## Mandryka

What about this symphony from Cogliano? I’ve only heard the first movement and it seems decidedly official - the striking opening, which seems to say loud and proud “I am not a conventional symphony orchestra bit of music in the style of Rachmaninov” is completely overwhelmed by the kitschy third pressing Shostakovich type stuff which follows. The movement is a celebration of the power of conservative conservatory values to keep change at bay.


----------



## flamencosketches

The Naxos American Classics for this symphony uses a quilt as the cover image; could it be that the music is inspired by some kind of patchwork idea? I definitely hear very different ideas coming into play here (like Mandryka, speaking only for the first movement). He seems to have been inspired by Lutoslawski (early-mid period) and Shostakovich, at least, among other things.

Don't know if it has been posted yet...






As for me, I like it! Not what I was expecting. I'll have to listen to the rest of it later.


----------



## Knorf

Mandryka said:


> What about this symphony from Cogliano? I've only heard the first movement and it seems decidedly official - the striking opening, which seems to say loud and proud "I am not a conventional symphony orchestra bit of music in the style of Rachmaninov" is completely overwhelmed by the kitschy third pressing Shostakovich type stuff which follows. The movement is a celebration of the power of conservative conservatory values to keep change at bay.


I agree with you. It's a really bad piece, in my opinion, easily the worst piece ever to win the Pulitzer Prize, which is really saying something. It's hyperinflated dreck with only fleeting good bits. And I feel bad about that, becuase the anguish that inspired it is clearly sincere, and I can't even imagine what it must have felt like to see so many people you know and love dying of a terrifying disease, no less one being ridiculed by the President and far too many in the mainstream media. How I wanted to like this symphony! But I don't think the composer had nearly the sufficient imagination or skill to make it work, however deep his feelings about this tragedy are.

YMMV


----------



## 20centrfuge

I will say that it is a work that hearkens to romantic sounds and ideals and as such looks backward rather than forward. It's the age old debate for contemporary music about embracing the new vs the old - the same reason why Rachmaninoff's peers weren't fans of his work. 

The work is also 100% emotion. It is not a work I'd want to listen to every day, but I think it is highly effective at evoking the sentimentality of losing a friend, the rage at the denial of society to recognize the disease (back then), etc.

Calling it the worst Pullitzer prize winner is harsh. Last I recall looking at that list, there are some real stinkers.


----------



## Knorf

20centrfuge said:


> Calling it the worst Pullitzer prize winner is harsh. Last I recall looking at that list, there are some real stinkers.


Indeed there are. I know that list very well*. Yet, I stand by what I wrote. But because I know some people here like this piece, I won't defend my comment or say anything further about it.

*ETA: welllllllll, apparently not as well as I thought. See below


----------



## 20centrfuge

I can swallow my pride and listen to what you have to say about the piece. Be specific. What's so bad about it? 

Kitsch? well Corigliano purposely recalls an old piano melody that reminds him of his lost friend. So kitsch? maybe, but it does serve a purpose.


----------



## Phil loves classical

^ I'm curious to what Knorf says as well. Some call Corigliano's work polystylistic, but he doesn't like the term. In an interview he prefers to say he uses multiple techniques: 12-tone, tonal, etc. I feel the material doesn't quite gel that well together sometimes. Maybe he is showing his anger in the music, with these contrasts, and bursts/eruptions. But I feel it's not always blended in that well, or it sounds he isn't in control, which I feel a composer should always be, even if it sounds like he's loosening up or losing it.


----------



## Knorf

I'm just really not that into bashing things other people like. My original intention was just to avoid this thread this week...



20centrfuge said:


> I Kitsch? well Corigliano purposely recalls an old piano melody that reminds him of his lost friend. So kitsch? maybe, but it does serve a purpose.


Actually, that's one of the bits I thought rather good, the Albéniz quotation. Kitsch is usually pretty serviceable. Just ask Mahler. But remember, this isn't Corigliano's invention, and in the end I don't find what he does with it to be especially interesting enough to redeem the rest. Or did you mean the chaconne 3rd movement quotes and references? Also one of the fleeting good bits in my opinion, overall, but...



Phil loves classical said:


> I feel the material doesn't quite gel that well together sometimes. Maybe he is showing his anger in the music, with these contrasts, and bursts/eruptions. But I feel it's not always blended in that well, or it sounds he isn't in control, which I feel a composer should always be, even if it sounds like he's loosening up or losing it.


This is more or less what I think as well. Also, the loud, bombastic bits strike me as very poor in inspiration and quality, for sure most of the 1st movement, but especially the 2nd movement, which recycles one of Corigliano's _Gazebo Dances_ in a non-compelling way, in my opinion. It's trying to be like Mahler Symphony 9's "Burleske," but for me flops on its face.

Composing in response to a terrible tragedy is a very difficult thing. Most composers aren't up for it; most lack the light touch that is absolutely essential. Have any of you read Italo Calvino's _Six Memos for the Next Millennium_? Highly recommended. The first "memo" especially gets at what I'm talking about. Anyway, it's why most of the pieces written in response to 9/11, for example, are very, very bad and have not aged well at all. Corigliano comes closest to success arguably in the third movement.

Anyway, I also totally brainfarted. This piece, Symphony No. 1, won the _Grawemayer_ Award. John won the Pulitzer actually for his Symphony No. 2, which is better but I'm still not in love with it.

Some will say, but wait! This is a _Really Important_ piece for its time and place! Yep. It definitely is, beyond any doubt.

But is it more than that? I suspect not.

Again, I had really wanted to like it. I still want to. But I don't.


----------



## Enthusiast

Mandryka said:


> This is why I think the terms from Badieu, official art and militant art, are more useful. Britten and Shostakovich work with an established powerful paradigm of musical composition to celebrate it, Nono etc are using their music to try and overturn that powerful paradigm by showing the possibilities of alternatives.
> 
> In older times, Rameau was official, Berlioz militant; Busoni official, Webern militant; Rihm is now official, Lachenmann is (was?) militant; Wagner militant, Rossini official; Machaut militant, de Vitry official . . .


It is an interesting idea but probably wouldn't allow me to talk about large groupings of music in all the ways I might want to ... even if enough people adopted the scheme. I can't really imagine a heated Talk Classical thread debating whether Purcell was an official or a militant composer.


----------



## Mandryka

Enthusiast said:


> It is an interesting idea but probably wouldn't allow me to talk about large groupings of music in all the ways I might want to ... even if enough people adopted the scheme. I can't really imagine a heated Talk Classical thread debating whether Purcell was an official or a militant composer.


Well that's too bad, anyway the less it gets heated, the better!


----------



## calvinpv

So I've been reading a bit about Rihm the past week in anticipation for the piece I'm presenting next week (I know, seems a little weird to prepare that far in advance, but I like reading about this stuff for fun), and the question of "kitsch" was brought up in relation to Rihm's music (the word "kitsch" wasn't used, but it was implied). Rihm is certainly not kitsch, but I did come away with a good understanding of what kitsch art consists of, and it may be helpful to the debates above this post.

Yes, kitsch art uses past forms and material. But it's in a very specific way. It's when the art smooths over any contradictions and tensions in those past forms and revels in what is "familiar", comforting, about that style. Kitsch art is afraid to confront what was subversive and groundbreaking in the past and instead sanitizes it to pretend that it was homogenous, unified, and therefore idyllic. And the reasons some artists resort to this is as a reaction to what they feel is a rapidly changing modern world which they don't feel a part of (though I think most kitsch artists aren't consciously aware of that reaction they have).

In relation to the Corigliano, I'll have to go back and listen, but working off memory, the only parts I felt were kinda kitschy were some of the slower sections of the second movement when the rhythms get to proper speed for dancing. But I'm not going to designate an entire work as kitsch based on a couple moments.

Okay, gotta go...


----------



## Enthusiast

Mandryka said:


> Well that's too bad, anyway the less it gets heated, the better!


I am slowly compiling a list of composers who I can't easily place in either category for your advice. Meanwhile, do you decide which group a composer belongs to on the basis of the music or their biography?


----------



## Mandryka

Enthusiast said:


> I am slowly compiling a list of composers who I can't easily place in either category for your advice. Meanwhile, do you decide which group a composer belongs to on the basis of the music or their biography?


Both, you decide on the basis of their music in the context of their times. If someone were to write in the style of Beethoven now, it would not be militant because the powers have subsumed his style.


----------



## Enthusiast

On the use of the word kitsch - is it fair to say that some composers in some works take the risk of seeming kitsch and get away with it to such an extent that the kitsch-ness seems inspired while for others it just seems like their music actually is no more than kitsch? My go-to kitsch composer - one who is routinely kitsch - is probably Villa Lobos but for me he usually gets away with it (and more).


----------



## Mandryka

calvinpv said:


> So I've been reading a bit about Rihm the past week in anticipation for the piece I'm presenting next week (I know, seems a little weird to prepare that far in advance, but I like reading about this stuff for fun), and the question of "kitsch" was brought up in relation to Rihm's music (the word "kitsch" wasn't used, but it was implied). Rihm is certainly not kitsch, but I did come away with a good understanding of what kitsch art consists of, and it may be helpful to the debates above this post.
> 
> Yes, kitsch art uses past forms and material. But it's in a very specific way. It's when the art smooths over any contradictions and tensions in those past forms and revels in what is "familiar", comforting, about that style. Kitsch art is afraid to confront what was subversive and groundbreaking in the past and instead sanitizes it to pretend that it was homogenous, unified, and therefore idyllic. And the reasons some artists resort to this is as a reaction to what they feel is a rapidly changing modern world which they don't feel a part of (though I think most kitsch artists aren't consciously aware of that reaction they have).
> 
> In relation to the Corigliano, I'll have to go back and listen, but working off memory, the only parts I felt were kinda kitschy were some of the slower sections of the second movement when the rhythms get to proper speed for dancing. But I'm not going to designate an entire work as kitsch based on a couple moments.
> 
> Okay, gotta go...


Rihm is an interesting case, and the Corigliano made me think a little about him and indeed Michael Finnissy, who also uses existing musics. However by coincidence I was listening a couple of weeks ago to some things by Rihm and I thought to myself that these do indeed skirt kitsch - they were Sotto Voce Notturno, and (though I couldn't finish it) Deus Passus. I am perfectly prepared to believe that I was wrong to think that - I hardly know the music in fact, it was just a first reaction.

Both Rihm and Finnissy are permanently experimenting, impossible to pin down their styles!


----------



## Knorf

One interesting sub-category of the "official" vs. "militant" dichotomy, is those composers whose work seemed official, but could be subversive and secretly, or privately, militant. Obviously Shostakovich is the clichéd archetype for this, but, I mean, we can all clearly hear now that he was.

And there are those composers who work poses as militant but is actually official, even banally so. I'm afraid Corigliano is typically one of those for me. 

An interesting exercise, but like any artificial dichotomy, this "militant" vs. "official" categorizing is going to let you down in terms of the ultimate utility of its capability to illuminate. Music so often resists being pinned down onto anything certain or permanent.


----------



## Phil loves classical

Knorf said:


> One interesting sub-category of the "official" vs. "militant" dichotomy, is those composers whose work seemed official, but could be subversive and secretly, or privately, militant. Obviously Shostakovich is the clichéd archetype for this, but, I mean, we can all clearly hear now that he was.
> 
> And there are those composers who work poses as militant but is actually official, even banally so. I'm afraid Corigliano is typically one of those for me.
> 
> An interesting exercise, but like any artificial dichotomy, this "militant" vs. "official" categorizing is going to let you down in terms of the ultimate utility of its capability to illuminate. Music so often resists being pinned down onto anything certain or permanent.


Do you think you can see it in the score itself, or it has to be heard in performance, or it even depends on performance?


----------



## Mandryka

Phil loves classical said:


> Do you think you can see it in the score itself, or it has to be heard in performance, or it even depends on performance?


My feeling is that you can say this: militant art is more likely to use new forms, official art less likely.

Interesting that the Corigliano is a memorial piece. Contrast with something like Feldman's _For John Cage_. Both the Cogliano and the Feldman were written at much the same time to commemorate friends, they're both coming from the same place. But the Corigliano does so by celebrating existing practices, the Feldman by experimenting with new ideas.

The kitsch that Knorf senses in the Corigliano may come from its confidence, I mean from the absence of any sense of moving on to uncharted territory, where who knows what monsters may lie waiting. Something like _For John Cage_, on the other hand, seems much more hesitant because it's moving into unexplored areas.


----------



## Kjetil Heggelund

I believe I heard this live around 1995 in San Francisco. Tango by Albeniz from the back-room, yes! I was into Bartok, Stravinsky, Messiaen, Denisov, Schnittke and Davies, so I thought this was a bit easy after the promising beginning. I understand there is a very serious story to the music, but I don't know if I ever really liked American composers and maybe it's Corigliano's fault...haha. They are either too nice and soft or just too hardcore


----------



## Allegro Con Brio

This symphony isn’t really grabbing me either. Too much bombast, too many repetitive gestures, too much wallowing in obvious emotional devices to elicit a reaction from listeners. I’m sure it’s very sincere music straight from the composer’s heart, but it’s not going to my heart. OK, this last movement epilogue is quite moving with the Albeniz quotation.


----------



## Mandryka

Allegro Con Brio said:


> Too much bombast, too many repetitive gestures, too much wallowing in obvious emotional devices to elicit a reaction from listeners.


Mahler.

;scjsklcskcbhszkvcbhszkbvc


----------



## 20centrfuge

I think I love this ^ post a bit too much LOL


----------



## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist

Mandryka said:


> Mahler.
> 
> ;scjsklcskcbhszkvcbhszkbvc


The Mahler of the Titan or Resurrection maybe, but not the Mahler of the 9th or DLvDE. By then he had become so immersed (and skilled) in his craft that the "obvious emotional devices" are more like cells or even leitmotifs than fully formed thematic material, and it's the way that they combine and communicate with each other that becomes the essence of the music, and it's really a beautiful thing (and not at all bombastic or wallowing). Reminds me of this quote I found in a review of the Casablanca (though Mahler is of course much deeper and more nuanced than the movie):

"Two clichés make us laugh. A hundred cliches move us. For we sense dimly that the clichés are talking among themselves, and celebrating a reunion."

I guess the same can apply to Shostakovich, Prokofiev, even some Mozart and Beethoven. You could even argue that all of aesthetics boils down to cliches in a sense. Not sure I'd agree but a strong case can be made.

Anyway I'm sorry to derail the thread.


----------



## Knorf

You didn't derail the thread. Mahler is a great composer to use as an example that kitsch and clichés don't _a priori_ invalidate the worth and vitality of a composition. Arnold Schoenberg wrote a great article about Mahler in his seminal collection of essays _Style and Idea_, exploring this very idea. Schoenberg and indeed Berg and Webern were huge advocates for Mahler's music, long before almost anyone else of note was.

But I think most would agree it's totally daft to suggest Corigliano is in any regard on par with Mahler, not even First Symphony v. First Symphony.


----------



## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist

Knorf said:


> You didn't derail the thread. Mahler is a great composer to use an example that kitsch and clichés don't _a priori_ invalidate the worth and vitality of a composition. Arnold Schoenberg wrote a great article about Mahler in his seminal collection of essays _Style and Idea_, exploring this very idea. Schoenberg and indeed Berg and Webern were huge advocates for Mahler's music, long before almost anyone else of note was.
> 
> But I think most would agree it's totally daft to suggest Corigliano is in any regard on par with Mahler, not even First Symphony v. First Symphony.


Yeah I got about 5 minutes into this work before giving up ...


----------



## flamencosketches

I must admit this whole exercise has left a bad taste in my mouth about Corigliano. I think groupthink is influencing my opinion of the work too much. I enjoyed it well enough on first listen, but now a lot of the criticisms I've read here are coming to light in subsequent listens. I'll have to check it out again in 5 years.


----------



## Knorf

I apologize. I hate to contribute in influencing someone to turn like into dislike, at least where taste is concerned.


----------



## Phil loves classical

^ Haha. I sympathize with you. I remember the first time I listened to this symphony I thought it was great! I wasn't listening too intently. It seemed to have the right mix of everything.


----------



## Enthusiast

flamencosketches said:


> I must admit this whole exercise has left a bad taste in my mouth about Corigliano. I think groupthink is influencing my opinion of the work too much. I enjoyed it well enough on first listen, but now a lot of the criticisms I've read here are coming to light in subsequent listens. I'll have to check it out again in 5 years.


I also enjoyed it first time around - even though it sounded like music from the 1940s or 50s - but am listening again (the Barenboim Chicago recording) now ... and I still like it! Perhaps more than the first time. Maybe I am reacting against the groupthink? I have form in doing that!

Yes, its a noisy piece in some places and, yes, it is not at all sophisticated. But there are plenty of good ideas in it and I find it consistently honest and likable.


----------



## Knorf

Enthusiast said:


> Yes, its a noisy piece in some places and, yes, it is not at all sophisticated. But there are plenty of good ideas in it and I find it consistently honest and likable.


Nothing wrong with that!


----------



## 20centrfuge

*Rihm: Jagden und Formen (1995-2001, revised 2008) [50] *

Submitted by calvinpv

9/20 20centrfuge - Maxwell Davies: Concerto for Trumpet (1988) [30]
9/27 Blancrocher - Lutoslawski: Piano Concerto "For Krystian Zimerman" (1988) [25]
10/4 BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist - Messiaen: Éclairs sur l'au-delà... (1991) [60]
10/11 tortkis - Garland: Peter: String Quartet No. 1, "In Praise of Poor Scholars" (1986) [20]
10/18 PeterfromLA - Schnittke: Symphony No. 5 "Concerto Grosso No. 4" (1988) [35]
10/25 Knorf - TBD
11/1 Allegro Con Brio TBD


----------



## calvinpv

Youtube playlist here

It should be said that listening to this playlist, where it takes a couple of seconds to load from one video to the next, might ruin the immersion -- and this is not a piece you want to lose the immersion to. It's better to listen on CD or a streaming service, if you have the chance. My apologies. If you're willing to withstand the pauses, then by all means go for it, because the performance is incredible.

There is also another performance on youtube (all in one video, see here), but the sound quality isn't that good.


----------



## calvinpv

Rihm:* Jagden und Formen*, for orchestra (1995-2001)

I don't know what it is about _Jagden und Formen_ (Hunts and Forms), but I get goosebumps every time I hear it, having known the piece for about a year now. It may be the voluptuous and polychromatic, yet thunderous, chord strikes by the whole orchestra that do it for me. It may be that vivacious, energetic rhythm that is relentlessly determined to put you in a ritualistic trance -- yet can only keep you on your toes due to its irregular construction - that does it for me. It may be the wickedly difficult solos that every instrument has to navigate, almost as a rite of passage, that do it for me; even the woodblocks suffer this fate! Or, it may simply be the flawless execution of the one commercial recording in existence, by Dominique My and Ensemble Modern, that does it for me. Whatever the reason, _Jagden und Formen_ has become my single favorite piece from the last 40 years or so of contemporary music and one of my favorites of any era.

As with a lot Rihm's music, _Jagden und Formen_ is built up from a complex network of interrelated techniques, philosophies, and aesthetic ideals. As someone who studied philosophy in college, I find this aspect to be most stimulating part of his music, and it's challenging me to reconsider music as a set of ideas put to sound. But this aspect is also the most important in understanding Rihm because, unlike with other composers, these ideas are front and center. Even if you're aren't well-versed in music theory or performance - I'm certainly not - it might, nevertheless, be good to know some of the underlying philosophical positions Rihm holds. Because otherwise, what will happen is either you won't understand the purpose of the work (or its title "Hunts and Forms") or you will have a pseudo-understanding and pigeonhole him into a bucket that does him no justice. So I've been reading around and have condensed what I learned into 5 main takeaway ideas (the words in bold below), with many examples. Hopefully all of this makes sense -- I apologize if this gets a little too deep into issues of epistemology and the philosophy of language. Of course, if you want to first listen to the piece with a blank slate, then do so. I also recommend listening to the rest of _Formen_ cycle after hearing _Jagden und Formen_ a couple of times, for reasons that will be clear below.

If I have time, I will also try and make a listening guide within the next couple of days and post it here. One of the sources I've been reading (a book titled "Music in Germany since 1968") has a fabulous chart showing how this piece is put together. I know, a lot of work. But this piece is just too good.

*Semiotics:* Though the post-structuralist philosophies of Derrida, Lacan, Foucault, Barthes, etc. were effectively labelled as neoconservative in Germany and failed to take root there for some time, Rihm was still reading these philosophers from afar and drawing some basic lessons from them. Chief among them:

1. The instability of meanings of signs and symbols. A "sign" is composed of two components: a physical object, or a written/spoken gesture, as well as the meaning that physical element points to. For example, a stop sign is composed of two parts: the physical octagon-shaped metal on the side of the road and the meaning, which is that you need to stop. So when a sign's meaning is destabilized, it's when the meaning is ambiguous or constantly shifting. Post-structuralist philosophers contend that _all_ signs have this problem, if you were to tease out their meanings enough.
2. How these signs have to be in a proper setting and context for them to even make sense. Continuing my stop sign example, the only reason the sign means "Stop" to drivers is because there was a governing body legislating a metal sign of that shape and color to mean "Stop", because there was a citizenry that agreed to that decision, because the signs are placed next to roads (over which the governing legislation has jurisdiction), because the signs are placed next to other signs that have analogous meanings ("Yield", "Go"), etc. If a stop sign were placed in the middle of a desert far away from any road, it would lose the meaning we normally associate it with because it's out of context. I know this is a weird non-musical example, but I'm trying to drive the point home.
3. The inability to incorporate the irrational elements of our world into our systems of meanings.
4. The way history and tradition shape our present identities, expectations, and our roles in society.
5. The struggle to free ourselves from the shadows of such identities, especially when they may be partly responsible for the 20th century catastrophes in Germany.
6. The need to show that such identities are even in tension with themselves.

Rihm uses his music as a medium to convey these ideas - often in very creative ways - and sometimes, one gets the sense that his music is secondary to the message.

Examples for the first three points, which are probably the most important for _Jagden und Formen_:
•	In the third song of the _Neue Alexanderlieder_, traditional tonality -- and all the ways it assigns meanings and functions to chords - is in play until the final two chords for the piano, where first we have a major seventh chord on the tonic, a rarity in traditional tonality, followed by a minor triad on the dominant, another rarity especially since the key is major (specifically Ab). Moreover, these two chords are repeated for an awkwardly long time at fortississimo, suggesting the chords have lost their tonal functions and have become a physical bludgeon. Also, the misanthropic text cuts against the triumphant feeling of the music.
•	In _Sub-Kontur_, a musical fragment reminiscent of Mahler - labelled "adagio" in the score, almost as a nod to Mahler's 9th - claws its way to the surface of a music that is elemental and chaotic (the dearth of treble instruments also lends the music a murky color). Only twice does the fragment fully succeed, about halfway through the piece and again towards the end; other times it partly succeeds, and the rest of the time, the downward sloping melodic contour of the fragment is diffused throughout the chaos, unable to coalesce into something more refined and dignified. Thus, the fragment is always suggested but is never recognizable unless we hear it in a familiar form or context.
•	In the opera _Die Eroberung von Mexico_, the Aztec king Montezuma lived and acted according to what the chronicles and omens prophesized, as opposed to any sort of utilitarian thinking. The upside: such a system breeds a sense of familiarity and comfort with the world around you because the same signs will yield the same meanings (e.g. if it's prophesized to rain tomorrow for such and such reasons, it's because the chronicles list past rain showers happening for the same such and such reasons). The downside: omens are completely useless for an unprecedented event. So the arrival and destruction of Cortez was a complete shock to Montezuma, since it was an event with no precedent in the chronicles. In the music, Montezuma's lines are mirrored across two background vocalists and the orchestra and they are very non-distinct: he is at one with the musical "world". Cortez, however, is set to music and background vocalists at odds with his lines; his lines are also very rigid and militaristic sounding.

*Atavism:* Though I believe Rihm doesn't use this term himself, it's a fitting description for that physical and violent aspect of his music that pokes its ugly head up from time to time. You can hear it in the sudden transitions and dynamic outbursts, in the use of extremely high and low registers simultaneously, in the trance-inducing yet irregular rhythms, in the mechanical repetition of a sound object that pulverizes its attributed meanings into oblivion (my _Neue Alexanderlieder_ example above), in the guttural noises and screams in his theater music, or in those passages that have no function whatsoever except to disrupt the flow of what came before. There is a reason for all this, and it stems from his positions on semiotics in two ways.

First, through these physical gestures, Rihm is making a statement on the ultimate fate of all signs. As meanings destabilize and new ones are acquired, old ones get discarded and recede into the distance of time; the older they are, the more alien and incomprehensible they appear until there comes a point where they are representative (in our minds, at least) of a primordial past beyond known history and hence come off as violent intrusions to our current systems. An obvious example: in much of Medieval and Renaissance music, the rhythms, church modes, melodic phrasings, sacred texts, etc. had highly nuanced meanings and functions that are now lost on our modern ears; unless you are a specialist music historian who studies this stuff all day, the music will sound totally alien and the sense of beauty you feel borders on the mystical. And hundreds of years from now, it will be alien even to the specialists. To me, this is one of more interesting things I gleamed from reading about Rihm, and it's a cool way to interpret the raw and austere gestures in his music.

Second, though Rihm seems to possess a 19th century Romantic view of the artist, he also complicates the picture. The Romantic view believes that an artist is one of those rare individuals who can, through their work, reveal the sublime depths of our inner spiritual self in all of its completeness and profundity, or perhaps even the inner depths of the Spirit of Nature. Rihm may believe in the profundity of the inner self, but that profundity must include the body as well as the spirit, the body with all of those grotesque fluids, rhythms and gestures - gestures that are irrational to the inner spirit, yet nevertheless make their way into the music alongside the spirit. So instead of feeling fulfillment, we feel estrangement, wondering what part of ourselves did we manifest in the music, what taboo did we unlock. Rihm thinks Schumann (and reading between the lines, Janáček as well) is a composer who was gifted in tapping into this physical side, and his _Fremde Szenen_ take Schumann's Op. 110 piano trios as sources of inspiration, where he takes Schumann-sounding gestures and exaggerates them until he squeezes out their physical underside. In _Jagden und Formen_, the long solo for English horn that seems to exist solely to provide rhythm is another example.

*Chiffre (cipher):* This term really makes its way into Rihm's lexicon in the 80s and could be considered a consequence of the previous two. If a sign is unable retain a stable meaning or have a stable referent, then maybe there is something inadequate about the sign itself, that maybe it doesn't fully encapsulate the referent it's pointing to. And the solution is perhaps for sign and referent to be identical, for the referent to be directly experienced in the sign as a physical presence. This is what Rihm calls a "chiffre" and they manifest in his music as free-standing sound objects (they're free-standing because, again, the referent is fully present and in no need of an external crutch). These sound objects, instead of leaving some faint impression in the mind of a historical music, deliver hard physical blows to the eardrums (if not literally, then at least figuratively speaking). Being free-standing, they will also create their own reality and, through the composer, can be molded and played around with at will without losing their unique identity. And their identities -- the ways in which they are constructed - _are_ unique, if they are to be differentiated from one another. This is similar to Varèse's sculptor-like approach to sound, but there is also a connection to Stockhausen's "moment form", where hermetically sealed "moments" can be placed in any order because they lack any premeditated connections to other moments.

This concept is very clear in the _Chiffre_ cycle. In _Chiffre I_, for example, the thin filigree texture of the piano often gets resonated by the other instruments with chords of the same pitch material; sometimes, these instruments will adopt the piano texture for themselves and will even play in rhythmic unison with it. In listening to the piece, one should get the sense of a single multifaceted sonority that lasts the whole 8 minutes. In _Chiffre II_, same thing except there are some long silences in between sections. In _Jagden und Formen_, the chiffre concept presents itself differently. Instead of a single multifaceted block of sound, we hear multiple superimposed blocks that don't seem to interact with one another. When I first heard the piece but before I knew anything about his music, I suspected this work to be a collage piece. Turns out I was right, and hopefully you guys have the same intuition, even if it's hard to describe. There is no question-and-answer type of exchange between blocks and no development of more fundamental cells (except in a couple of places, such as at the very beginning, where the pitch material of the strings is that of the woodwinds). The form of the piece is based almost entirely on the arrangement of blocks and less on any internal development within or between blocks. If such development can be discerned, it's entirely by accident, though Rihm probably wouldn't mind finding out about such things.

*Übermalung (overpainting):* Though the concept of chiffre doesn't necessitate the superimposition of sound blocks, since they're allowed to be heard in isolation like in the _Chiffre_ cycle, layering music does, admittedly, open up a whole realm of possibilities. For instance, the stratification of music into layers allows you to develop musical forms based entirely on how the layers rise and sink to and from the surface. The most obvious way of portraying this rising/sinking motion is to make one layer louder in volume over another. A less obvious way requires you to think horizontally instead of vertically: instead of layering two blocks simultaneously, you can splice one block in half and insert another block of a different nature between the two halves, giving you the impression of one block completely silencing another block without that being the case. _Verborgene Formen_ is a great example of this, which is made up of a piece called _Nucleus_ spliced into three sections in between which are new passages as well as the entirety of a piece called _Pol_. The entirety of the _fleuve_ cycle is also constructed this way.

The layering idea (called "overpainting") derives from painter Arnulf Rainer, who would partially or completely paint over works or photographs by other artists, usually with thick layers of pigment so that the act of layering becomes part of the message the art is trying to convey. Rihm does something similar with his manuscripts: he cuts them up and glues photocopies of old manuscripts he wants inserted in between, and you'll notice this if you read the scores. Cutting and pasting manuscripts together raises an interesting issue: is there an end to this process? Is there such a thing as a final work? Rihm says "No" and _Jagden und Formen_ is challenging us to see the dialectic between the search for a form and the form itself (hence the name of the piece). Musical forms are not derived a priori - and never have been derived a priori -- but are derived from immersion in the musical material, in this case the arrangement of chiffre, or sound blocks. And so long as you keep changing the material, the overarching form will also be changing.

*Fleuve (flowing river):* This final point is nearly indistinguishable from "overpainting" but it's really the particular way he achieves it over and above what he does with the splicing of manuscripts. It also explains the sense of momentum and energy you feel in _Jagden und Formen_ as well in the _Vers und symphonie fleuve_ cycle. There are many instances - especially in sections from _Gejagte Form_ -- where blocks of sound are stacked in such a way so that, while one block is playing, the other is silent or sustaining a chord and vice versa. Or, while the English horn is playing its long solo, a viola is hocketing with it just underneath. There is also some layered pulsing in the dynamics in the sections from _Nucleus_, and throughout all of _Jagden und Formen_, Rihm adjusted the tempo markings from the original scores. The result of such techniques is a slight departure from notion of "chiffre" discussed above. Though he is retaining the notion of hermetically sealed sound blocks, what he is letting go is the idea that they have to exist in isolation, such as we see in the _Chiffre_ cycle. The energy we hear in _Jagden und Formen_ sounds less like a Varèse-ian sound-sculpture and more like the flowing movement of late Mahler and Berg. But don't read an aesthetics based on the late 19th century flowing symphony as a retreat into conservatism. On the contrary, it's the reflection of a philosophically rigorous composer who is interested in demonstrating how ideas that were latent in the past can be exploited to a potential far beyond what past composers even imagined. _Jagden und Formen_ is the perfect laboratory to test such ideas.

Links and scores to the _Formen_ cycle:

Pol, 1st version (the 1st version has half the number of instruments; no score available)
Pol-Kolchis-Nucleus (for the scores of Kolchis and Nucleus, see here and here; for score of Pol, see score of Verborgene Formen, bars 33-141, there are no changes to these bars other than a couple new tempo markings)
Gejagte Form, 1st version (for score of 2nd version, see here; the 2nd version just adds the opening strings of Jagden und Formen; there is no recording of the 2nd version or score of the 1st version)
Verborgene Formen (for score see here)
Gedrängte Form (no recording, for score see here)
Jagden und Formen, 2001 version (same recording as previous post, for score see here)


----------



## Phil loves classical

Yup, I always found Jagden und Formen captivating. I think it's the contrast in rhythm and harmony between the different parts, and the longer and shorter term harmony operating simultaneously and interacting with each other, which I interpret as what Calvin mentioned under "overpainting". That's what keeps the forward motion for me, and is never boring to me, even though I wouldn't just sit and do nothing but listen.


----------



## calvinpv

I can't believe I wrote that whole post and forgot to mention how _Jagden und Formen_ specifically is put together. The only material that's new is the opening violin duet (derived from the woodwinds a couple minutes later), the big chord burst about six minutes in and the few measures afterwards, the section with the trumpet solos, the percussion solos heard about two-thirds in, and some new accompaniments scattered throughout. Otherwise, the piece is a collage made up of _Gejagte Form_, _Verborgene Formen_, and _Gedrängte Form_. _Gedrängte Form_ itself has inherited some passages from _Verborgene Formen_ (most of the English horn solo), and _Verborgene Formen_ is a collage of the pieces _Pol_ and _Nucleus_.

For those of you already familiar with _Jagden und Formen_, it might be interesting to hear the other works in the cycle, where you will hear a completely different juxtaposition of the same sound events. I have links to all of these works in my long post.


----------



## Mandryka

calvinpv said:


> I can't believe I wrote that whole post and forgot to mention how _Jagden und Formen_ specifically is put together. The only material that's new is the opening violin duet (derived from the woodwinds a couple minutes later), the big chord burst about six minutes in and the few measures afterwards, the section with the trumpet solos, the percussion solos heard about two-thirds in, and some new accompaniments scattered throughout. Otherwise, the piece is a collage made up of _Gejagte Form_, _Verborgene Formen_, and _Gedrängte Form_. _Gedrängte Form_ itself has inherited some passages from _Verborgene Formen_ (most of the English horn solo), and _Verborgene Formen_ is a collage of the pieces _Pol_ and _Nucleus_.
> 
> For those of you already familiar with _Jagden und Formen_, it might be interesting to hear the other works in the cycle, where you will hear a completely different juxtaposition of the same sound events. I have links to all of these works in my long post.


Thanks for this post, which is interesting. Stockhausen also puts together new music from existing music in the Klang cycle. Why Jagden?


----------



## calvinpv

Mandryka said:


> Thanks for this post, which is interesting. Stockhausen also puts together new music from existing music in the Klang cycle. Why Jagden?


By "Why Jagden?", are you asking what's the point of it given Stockhausen? I only know Cosmic Pulses, so I may be wrong, but I'd say 1. Jagden und Formen was composed about five years before Klang and 2. Klang is using a single "formula", or series of notes, like a strand of DNA to generate all the material. Boulez also does this with the Sacher hexachord. Rihm, however, is stitching together whole pieces that already exist and that have no prior connections with one another other than some vague reference to "hunting" for forms. The two methods are a bit different.

I'm trying to think of a composer before Rihm who composed a work like this, and I honestly can't think of any, especially to the extent Rihm does it. Yes, there are other composer who quote themselves and other composers, but this is order of magnitude different. I don't think a lot people realize just how little new material there is in Jagden und Formen. The piece is almost entirely constructed from three prior works.


----------



## Mandryka

No, I just wondered what the significance of the hunt was. My fault, I expressed myself badly, sorry. The point about Stockhausen was supposed to be independent of that!


----------



## calvinpv

Mandryka said:


> No, I just wondered what the significance of the hunt was. My fault, I expressed myself badly, sorry. The point about Stockhausen was supposed to be independent of that!


What Rihm is "hunting", or searching, for is a musical form. Rihm is trying to show that the hunt for the form and the form itself are more closely intertwined than we like to think. The way we normally think of form is this: that musical forms (for example, binary form, sonata form, ternary form) exist pre-made in abstract space and composers just pick one and "fill" it with matter; in other words, we think form and matter are separate. But that's not true, according to Rihm, and I would have to agree. Forms instead come about through engaging with the "matter" in real-time and evolve as the matter, or musical raw material, evolves.

You could argue this is a background concern with a lot of contemporary music, but Jagden und Formen is making this concern rather explicit by holding all other variables involved in the music-making process constant while changing only the arrangement of the sound blocks. It's kind of a brilliant strategy, to be honest. He's like a scientist conducting several rounds of an experiment who, in each round, holds all but one of the variables constant to see what changes or doesn't change. Here, Rihm is holding all the raw musical material constant in that it all comes from Gejagte Form, Verborgene Formen, Gedrängte Form. The only thing he's changing is the _arrangement_ of the musical material (okay, there is some new raw material, but it's minor). And he's demonstrating -- quite clearly, in my opinion -- that even this one little change in the arrangement of material yields incredible changes in the overarching musical form. And this form isn't stable: if Rihm adds new material, or even just arranges old material, the form will change; in other words, the form is only as good as the current version, and in fact, the 2008 version of the work has about 10 minutes worth of extra material (the only commercial recording is of the 2001 version). Hell, I would even go so far as to argue that, because form and matter are intertwined, no other piece of music can have the same form as the 2001 version of Jagden und Formen or the 2008 version of Jagden und Formen. And vice versa: these two works cannot have the form of any other work.


----------



## calvinpv

Here is Rihm in his own words (from part of an interview reproduced in the Jagden und Formen liner notes):

_What connotations does the word "hunt" have for you? Who or what is being hunted? You yourself?_

Form and self -- these are two forms that one has to work towards, dynamically and processually. In other words, in time and with time. And, of course, this is particularly true of music. Like the "self", "form" does not exist a priori. Both have to be created. And both remain in a state of change. The generative process is an active process, even where the poietic steps [read: poiesis; yes it's a real word] that have to be taken involve passivity and waiting. But form and self can never coincide. And why should they? That would be boring. True, in the arts there is area that is open and in which the discovery of form and personalization have become comparable as a result of the phenomenon of authorship. But your question, I think, was concerned with something else. With the "hunt" and its "quarry". For me, theres no direct association between them. The hunt is about form, the hunt _is_ the form. No quarry breaks through the undergrowth here. And none rushes in from off-stage.

_The three works Gedrängte Form, Gejagte Form and Verborgene Formen provide the basic material for Jagden und Formen. Common to all three titles is the word "form". What does form signify to you?_

The works you've mentioned don't provide any "basic material". At least that's not what I intended. As individual entities, they are part of a process that changes them, breaking them down, covering them up, killing them, restoring them to life and so on. Yes, that is what form is for me: the _shape_ of change. Generally, it seems to be assumed that a composer takes a form and (ful)fills it with music. But a form does not exist outside the musical process. ABA is a series of letters. Musically speaking, ABA would in any case always be ABC or 1, 2, 3, as nothing can ever be repeated. I'm sorry, but that's how it is. History doesn't repeat itself. As a result, Satie tormented himself quite needlessly or, rather, he tormented others quite needlessly.

As an aside, this second paragraph kind of touches on what Phil loves classical and I were talking about with Ligeti and Saariaho a couple of weeks ago.


----------



## Phil loves classical

^ the hunt for form is really nothing new. Absolute music in the 19th century is basically the same thing in different words. In fact absolute music is often tied with the term formalism. That's why Rihm appeals to me more than most contemporary composers do, is his stronger adherence to form.


----------



## Knorf

_Jagden and Formen_ is an incredible piece. Thanks so much to calvinpv for such a thorough presentation. Rihm is a fascinating composer. What I especially love is that I know the smaller, individual pieces as well, and somehow, _somehow_ this new combination reveals the whole is greater than the sum of the individual parts.

Aside from being utterly fascinating in concept, I've found this to be an astonishingly powerful composition as well in an emotional sense.


----------



## calvinpv

Phil loves classical said:


> ^ the hunt for form is really nothing new. Absolute music in the 19th century is basically the same thing in different words. In fact absolute music is often tied with the term formalism. That's why Rihm appeals to me more than most contemporary composers do, is his stronger adherence to form.


I'll have to think about it some more (and it's getting late where I'm at). I haven't read anything about Rihm on the absolute vs programmatic debate in the 19th century, but just extrapolating from what I do know about Rihm, my gut tells me he would reject the two sides as a false dichotomy. I think he would have problems with both absolute and program music. So I'm not sure comparing Jagden und Formen to absolute music is correct. But, again, I'll have to think about it some more.


----------



## Mandryka

calvinpv said:


> Here is Rihm in his own words (from part of an interview reproduced in the Jagden und Formen liner notes):
> 
> _What connotations does the word "hunt" have for you? Who or what is being hunted? You yourself?_
> 
> Form and self -- these are two forms that one has to work towards, dynamically and processually. In other words, in time and with time. And, of course, this is particularly true of music. Like the "self", "form" does not exist a priori. Both have to be created. And both remain in a state of change. The generative process is an active process, even where the poietic steps [read: poiesis; yes it's a real word] that have to be taken involve passivity and waiting. But form and self can never coincide. And why should they? That would be boring. True, in the arts there is area that is open and in which the discovery of form and personalization have become comparable as a result of the phenomenon of authorship. But your question, I think, was concerned with something else. With the "hunt" and its "quarry". For me, theres no direct association between them. The hunt is about form, the hunt _is_ the form. No quarry breaks through the undergrowth here. And none rushes in from off-stage.
> 
> .


I don't understand this at all.

(note, by the way, that Jagden and Formen are plural nouns. The title is Hunts and Forms.


----------



## Mandryka

Phil loves classical said:


> ^ the hunt for form is really nothing new. Absolute music in the 19th century is basically the same thing in different words. In fact absolute music is often tied with the term formalism. That's why Rihm appeals to me more than most contemporary composers do, is his stronger adherence to form.


Can you give me an example of c19 music which exemplifies the _hunt_ for form? It may help me understand what it means.



Phil loves classical said:


> In fact absolute music is often tied with the term formalism.


I've never understood this word formalism in a musical context, does it just mean the strict adherence to a predefined structure? That isn't hunting for a form: the form is found, given, before the music starts! I know people use _formalist_ negatively - Brahms is a formalist, that sort of thing. But it's not clear to me what they're saying, other than Brahms was interested in traditional well defined structures of whole music, or that they don't like Brahms, they think it's cold.



Phil loves classical said:


> . That's why Rihm appeals to me more than most contemporary composers do, is his stronger adherence to form.


Lachenmann deliberately stuck to traditional structures in music which used new sounds in order to confuse the bourgeoisie even more.


----------



## Mandryka

Here's Rihm's Quartet 13. There's something about it which reminds me _Jagden und Formen_, see what you think.


----------



## calvinpv

Mandryka said:


> Here's Rihm's Quartet 13. There's something about it which reminds me _Jagden und Formen_, see what you think.


I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks that. When I first heard it about a year ago, I was almost positive I heard a passage from Jagden und Formen. Which is weird because this string quartet was written in 2011, 3 years after the 2008 version of Jagden und Formen. And I believe Rihm has said that the 2008 version is his final one. Maybe he has more to say after all.

EDIT: I take back everything I said. Listening again, I hear no connections with Jagden und Formen. A year ago, I thought I heard a connection around the middle of the quartet, but I guess I was wrong. Also, if this were the first piece someone were to hear from Rihm, I wouldn't blame them for thinking he's a conservative composer. It's still a decent piece, but a bit conventional.

Here's the score: https://issuu.com/universaledition/docs/rihm-string-quartett-13


----------



## Mandryka

And Berio's Chemin's II -- I obviously must have no idea what Jagden und Formen is doing with forms and hunts!


----------



## Enthusiast

calvinpv said:


> I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks that. When I first heard it about a year ago, I was almost positive I heard a passage from Jagden und Formen. Which is weird because this string quartet was written in 2011, 3 years after the 2008 version of Jagden und Formen. And I believe Rihm has said that the 2008 version is his final one. Maybe he has more to say after all.
> 
> EDIT: I take back everything I said. Listening again, I hear no connections with Jagden und Formen. A year ago, I thought I heard a connection around the middle of the quartet, but I guess I was wrong. Also, if this were the first piece someone were to hear from Rihm, I wouldn't blame them for thinking he's a conservative composer. It's still a decent piece, but a bit conventional.
> 
> Here's the score: https://issuu.com/universaledition/docs/rihm-string-quartett-13


I'm enjoying Jagden und Formen and had enjoyed it when I listened on previous occasions. It is a fine and convincing work of some stature. The thing with Rihm for me is that from the few works of his I know I am not sure I recognise a single distinctive voice yet.


----------



## Mandryka

Enthusiast said:


> The thing with Rihm for me is that from the few works of his I know I am not sure I recognise a single distinctive voice yet.


That's because there isn't one.


----------



## calvinpv

Enthusiast said:


> I'm enjoying Jagden und Formen and had enjoyed it when I listened on previous occasions. It is a fine and convincing work of some stature. The thing with Rihm for me is that from the few works of his I know I am not sure I recognise a single distinctive voice yet.


Rihm's music has never been about major paradigm shifts. His breakthroughs are on a smaller scale and they happen in the "inner recesses" of the "musical substance" (these terms are from Adorno's _Vers une musique informelle_, which I just started reading; apparently, this essay is like a holy bible for Rihm). And I think this is a reflection of Rihm's overall philosophy that the past can never truly escape us, we can only confront it, analyze it, and make small changes at a time (big changes he would probably argue as impossible because you would still accidentally carry over past forms into the present without you knowing; that's basically what Adorno's arguing, in what I've read so far).

Now I don't necessarily agree with Rihm's position; I think spectral music, Lachenmann's musique concrète instrumentale, and electronic music (especially the acousmatic tradition) are major counterexamples to his thinking. But I think, unlike a lot of other more conservative composers, Rihm's music is built on some solid foundations and can't be dismissed outright. I can certainly hear his philosophical positions in his music, but I'm willing to admit that one might need to have at least some knowledge of music to pick them out.

Maybe one way to hear what's distinctive about Jadgen und Formen is perhaps carve out an afternoon and listen to the entire Formen cycle. First listen to Gejagte Form, then Pol (1st version), then Pol-Kolchis-Nucleus, then Verborgene Formen, then Jagden und Formen (there's no recording of Gedrängte Form; otherwise I'd have you listen to it after Verborgene Formen). Hopefully, when you get to Jagden und Formen, you'll hear everything that came before, but in new combinations.


----------



## Knorf

Mandryka said:


> That's because there isn't one.


I emphatically disagree. I'd recognize his music anywhere, even though he uses such a wide variety of styles and techniques; it always sounds like him.


----------



## Phil loves classical

Mandryka said:


> Can you give me an example of c19 music which exemplifies the _hunt_ for form? It may help me understand what it means.
> 
> I've never understood this word formalism in a musical context, does it just mean the strict adherence to a predefined structure? That isn't hunting for a form: the form is found, given, before the music starts! I know people use _formalist_ negatively - Brahms is a formalist, that sort of thing. But it's not clear to me what they're saying, other than Brahms was interested in traditional well defined structures of whole music, or that they don't like Brahms, they think it's cold.
> 
> Lachenmann deliberately stuck to traditional structures in music which used new sounds in order to confuse the bourgeoisie even more.


I believe in late period Beethoven he was on a search for new forms.


----------



## Mandryka

Phil loves classical said:


> I believe in late period Beethoven he was on a search for new forms.


Possibly that's right, I mean, I'm not going to argue with it, and Schumann would be another contender, and Liszt and Mahler. Not to mention Debussy. But it's one thing to say that a composer is exploring new forms, and quite another thing to say that the form of a specific piece of music, with a specific start and end, is the search for new forms. I'm not even sure it makes sense. (Consider the similar sounding idea of a ricercar, where the form of the music is the free search for new ideas generated from a seed.)


----------



## Mandryka

Knorf said:


> I emphatically disagree. I'd recognize his music anywhere, even though he uses such a wide variety of styles and techniques; it always sounds like him.


Well Jagden und Formen sounds a bit like Berio's Chemins II to me, and Das Rot sounds a bit like Hugo Wolff and Eisler, and Fremde Szenen II sounds a bit like mad Schumann, the Schumann of op 11, and the third symphony sounds like a Mahler/Bruckner Frankensymphony (it's on YouTube)

Do they all sound like they're by one composer? If you say so, but possibly not to me. To me he's even more changing, more experimental, than Finnissy - I think there's a lot in common between Rihm and Finnissy in fact - most especially their interest in using existing musics.


----------



## Knorf

Mandryka said:


> Do they all sound like they're by one composer? If you say so, but possibly not to me.


Absolutely I say so. To me, it's really obvious. To be fair, I have listened to _a lot_ of Rihm, both live and in recordings, and I studied with him at Darmstadt. But I knew an individual voice was there immediately, well before I ever met him; it was just right there, clear as can be. If you really can't hear it, I honestly don't know what to say about that. It's as obvious to me as with any great composer.

He does constantly push every element of his creativity, in form, idiom, genre, style, materials, esthetic. But but to me he always sounds like him. A better comparison for me would be Stravinsky: chameleon-like in terms of skin, but always the shape, the personality, is distinguishable.

If you want a famous composer with almost no clear voice or personality, Corigliano is a far more apt choice.


----------



## Phil loves classical

^ Poor Corigliano. He sure took a beating in this thread.


----------



## Knorf

Phil loves classical said:


> ^ Poor Corigliano. He sure took a beating in this thread.


Eh. Believe me, he can handle it.


----------



## 20centrfuge

I am a fan of Rihm. Jagden und Formen is a piece I enjoy. I also really love his work for Violin and Piano: Phantom und Eskapade.

I feel like Rihm has the same problem that Milhaud had. He is sooooo prolific and few pieces really rise to the top. As a result there are very few works that one can point to as nuclei or as masterpieces (Jagden und Formen being maybe the only exception). As a result, his output can feel like an ocean of “good” but not really “great.”


----------



## Knorf

Again, I must emphatically disagree. Not that Rihm isn't prolific; he is. But In terms of quality I think it's way off the mark to compare Rihm to Milhaud.

I mean... really? _Jagden und Formen_ and _Le Boeuf sur la toit_ on the same level? 

If you like, I'll happily rattle off a good ten or so of Rihm's pieces that I unhesitatingly regard as masterpieces, by any standard, with another ten to spare if you want more.

Once again, this forum baffles me. Ripping on the likes of Saariaho and Rihm? That's pure WTF as far as I'm concerned.

(But then, there are threads here on TC ripping on Mozart, so...)


----------



## calvinpv

Knorf said:


> Again, I must emphatically disagree. Not that Rihm isn't prolific; he is. But In terms of quality I think it's way off the mark to compare Rihm to Milhaud.
> 
> I mean... really? _Jagden und Formen_ and _Le Boeuf sur la toit_ on the same level?
> 
> If you like, I'll happily rattle off a good ten or so of Rihm's pieces that I unhesitatingly regard as masterpieces, by any standard, with another ten to spare if you want more.


Not that I need any convincing, but I would be curious in a list of 15-20 pieces, if you don't mind. I'm especially curious for what his best works since 2000 are. The only works I've heard are the ones I cite in my introductory post on Jagden und Formen (which, other than Jagden und Formen, I've heard for the first time in the past couple of weeks) and maybe 5-6 others.



> Once again, this forum baffles me. Ripping on the likes of Saariaho and Rihm? That's pure WTF as far as I'm concerned.
> (But then, there are threads here on TC ripping on Mozart, so...)


One thing I've noticed on TC among the enthusiasts of contemporary music is that their appreciation for it goes up to about 1980 or so. Music afterwards, they enjoy some of it but they don't know how to approach it. And as a result, I keep seeing interpretations of this recent music in terms of how it compares to music between 1945-1980, which reinforces the notion that recent music is derivative (case in point, Mandryka's comment that Rihm has no distinctive voice; apologies Mandryka for using you as an example). It's like, they've accepted in their mind that the Stockhausen, Boulez, Berio, etc. generation discovered all that needed to be discovered and that everyone afterwards is either derivative or a conservative retreat. I know that's not their intentions, but it definitely comes off that way. I think it's an unconscious bias.

But I'm not gonna lie, as phenomenal as the post-war generation was, there are some composers today that, pound-for-pound, can go up against those titans in terms of intellectual rigor, beauty, excitement, artistic integrity, etc. Saariaho and Rihm are two examples, but there are many others, especially many younger ones. But what I would like to see happen more on TC among the enthusiasts for contemporary music is to try and understand these newer composers ***_on their own terms_***. This is why I wrote a long post for Rihm trying to lay out some main points, and why I wrote a long one for Manoury's _Pluton_. I'm just some guy on a computer with no connections to the music world, but even I can see there's a lot happening in today's music, and that there is no need to use a post-war framework to understand them.

There. I had to get that off my chest. I'm not angry, by the way. I'm just more baffled than anything else.


----------



## Knorf

calvinpv said:


> Not that I need any convincing, but I would be curious in a list of 15-20 pieces, if you don't mind.


In no particular order, just off the top of my head:

_Chiffre-Zyklus_ for various chamber ensembles. This is a set of ten or so individual pieces, all amazing. 
_Jagden und Formen_, natch, but also the individual pieces that comprise it. 
_Tutuguri_, "Poème dansé"
_The Conquest of Mexico_, opera
_Requiem-Strophe_, vocal soloists and choir plus orchestra
Symphonie "Nähe fern"
_Two Other Movements_, for orchestra
_Schattenstück_, for orchestra
_Verwandlung I-IV_, for orchestra
_Styx und Lethe_, for cello and orchestra
Viola Concerto
_Sphäre um Sphäre_, for chamber orchestra
Music for Three Strings
_Shrift-um-Schrift_ for two piano and two percussionists

And that's without delving into his string quartets...

I'd think anyone reasonably sympathetic to new art music since 1970 would find much to enjoy in that list. Yeah, he's prolific, but for me that's a list of some pretty incredibly great pieces. Obviously, I'm drawn to his orchestral oeuvre the most... That's just me.


----------



## Mandryka

calvinpv said:


> Not that I need any convincing, but I would be curious in a list of 15-20 pieces, if you don't mind. I'm especially curious for what his best works since 2000 are. The only works I've heard are the ones I cite in my introductory post on Jagden und Formen (which, other than Jagden und Formen, I've heard for the first time in the past couple of weeks) and maybe 5-6 others.
> 
> One thing I've noticed on TC among the enthusiasts of contemporary music is that their appreciation for it goes up to about 1980 or so. Music afterwards, they enjoy some of it but they don't know how to approach it. And as a result, I keep seeing interpretations of this recent music in terms of how it compares to music between 1945-1980, which reinforces the notion that recent music is derivative (case in point, Mandryka's comment that Rihm has no distinctive voice; apologies Mandryka for using you as an example). It's like, they've accepted in their mind that the Stockhausen, Boulez, Berio, etc. generation discovered all that needed to be discovered and that everyone afterwards is either derivative or a conservative retreat. I know that's not their intentions, but it definitely comes off that way. I think it's an unconscious bias.
> 
> But I'm not gonna lie, as phenomenal as the post-war generation was, there are some composers today that, pound-for-pound, can go up against those titans in terms of intellectual rigor, beauty, excitement, artistic integrity, etc. Saariaho and Rihm are two examples, but there are many others, especially many younger ones. But what I would like to see happen more on TC among the enthusiasts for contemporary music is to try and understand these newer composers ***_on their own terms_***. This is why I wrote a long post for Rihm trying to lay out some main points, and why I wrote a long one for Manoury's _Pluton_. I'm just some guy on a computer with no connections to the music world, but even I can see there's a lot happening in today's music, and that there is no need to use a post-war framework to understand them.
> 
> There. I had to get that off my chest. I'm not angry, by the way. I'm just more baffled than anything else.


Things changed over the past 30 years. I'm listening to a lot of Stockhausen's Klang at the moment; and with Rihm I've been listening to some of the Uber die Linie cycle; I've also been listening to Michael Finnissy's new recording of motets. I certainly couldn't tell that they were by the same composers who wrote Microphonie, Chiffre, English Country Dances.


----------



## Mandryka

Knorf said:


> In no particular order, just off the top of my head:
> 
> _Chiffre-Zyklus_ for various chamber ensembles. This is a set of ten or so individual pieces, all amazing.
> _Jagden und Formen_, natch, but also the individual pieces that comprise it.
> _Tutuguri_, "Poème dansé"
> _The Conquest of Mexico_, opera
> _Requiem-Strophe_, vocal soloists and choir plus orchestra
> Symphonie "Nähe fern"
> _Two Other Movements_, for orchestra
> _Schattenstück_, for orchestra
> _Verwandlung I-IV_, for orchestra
> _Styx und Lethe_, for cello and orchestra
> Viola Concerto
> _Sphäre um Sphäre_, for chamber orchestra
> Music for Three Strings
> _Shrift-um-Schrift_ for two piano and two percussionists
> 
> And that's without delving into his string quartets...
> 
> I'd think anyone reasonably sympathetic to new art music since 1970 would find much to enjoy in that list. Yeah, he's prolific, but for me that's a list of some pretty incredibly great pieces. Obviously, I'm drawn to his orchestral oeuvre the most... That's just me.


Thanks for making this list. My own interest is in small scale music and so I don't often listen to music for orchestra. I get a lot of pleasure from Rihm's lieder.

The quartets are interesting, some of them I find very challenging indeed - I had been having a hard time with Quartet 11 until recently when I came across a fabulous, incandescent live performance.


----------



## Phil loves classical

20centrfuge said:


> I am a fan of Rihm. Jagden und Formen is a piece I enjoy. I also really love his work for Violin and Piano: Phantom und Eskapade.
> 
> I feel like Rihm has the same problem that Milhaud had. He is sooooo prolific and few pieces really rise to the top. As a result there are very few works that one can point to as nuclei or as masterpieces (Jagden und Formen being maybe the only exception). As a result, his output can feel like an ocean of "good" but not really "great."


His string quartet No. 12 I feel is really up there. I find he does have a very distinctive voice. What I like of Rihm, is his is logic always shines through any stylistic conventions, and I feel is kind of rare for contemporary music.


----------



## Phil loves classical

calvinpv said:


> Not that I need any convincing, but I would be curious in a list of 15-20 pieces, if you don't mind. I'm especially curious for what his best works since 2000 are. The only works I've heard are the ones I cite in my introductory post on Jagden und Formen (which, other than Jagden und Formen, I've heard for the first time in the past couple of weeks) and maybe 5-6 others.
> 
> One thing I've noticed on TC among the enthusiasts of contemporary music is that their appreciation for it goes up to about 1980 or so. Music afterwards, they enjoy some of it but they don't know how to approach it. And as a result, I keep seeing interpretations of this recent music in terms of how it compares to music between 1945-1980, which reinforces the notion that recent music is derivative (case in point, Mandryka's comment that Rihm has no distinctive voice; apologies Mandryka for using you as an example). It's like, they've accepted in their mind that the Stockhausen, Boulez, Berio, etc. generation discovered all that needed to be discovered and that everyone afterwards is either derivative or a conservative retreat. I know that's not their intentions, but it definitely comes off that way. I think it's an unconscious bias.
> 
> But I'm not gonna lie, as phenomenal as the post-war generation was, *there are some composers today that, pound-for-pound, can go up against those titans in terms of intellectual rigor, beauty, excitement, artistic integrity*, etc. Saariaho and Rihm are two examples, but there are many others, especially many younger ones. But what I would like to see happen more on TC among the enthusiasts for contemporary music is to try and understand these newer composers ***_on their own terms_***. This is why I wrote a long post for Rihm trying to lay out some main points, and why I wrote a long one for Manoury's _Pluton_. I'm just some guy on a computer with no connections to the music world, but even I can see there's a lot happening in today's music, and that there is no need to use a post-war framework to understand them.
> 
> There. I had to get that off my chest. I'm not angry, by the way. I'm just more baffled than anything else.


I'm curious who you think these composers are. My list is less than a handful of living ones. Some that are now gone but were active since 1980 are Ligeti, Henze, Boulez, Lutoslawski, Carter.


----------



## Knorf

Mandryka said:


> Thanks for making this list. My own interest is in small scale music and so I don't often listen to music for orchestra. I get a lot of pleasure from Rihm's lieder.


It's on my list to explore this repertoire more. I have a couple recordings, but it hasn't stuck with me, yet. I'm sure it will.


----------



## Mandryka

Phil loves classical said:


> His string quartet No. 12 I feel is really up there. I find he does have a very distinctive voice. What I like of Rihm, is his is logic always shines through any stylistic conventions, and I feel is kind of rare for contemporary music.


Quartet 3 may be one you'll like, try to get hold of the Arditti performance. But yes, the whole cycle "Fetzen", of which Quartet 12 is part, is lovely.


----------



## Enthusiast

Anyway, the work in question _is _impressive. There are many attractive ideas and the work packs quite a punch. But it also seems that you need to follow and understand a lot of conceptual stuff and I tend to find that sort of thing a bit of a turn off. Music either communicates or it doesn't. This piece does for me but reading all about it makes me feel like I am missing something and perhaps that Rihm is not aiming at a lay audience.

I am sorry to have opened a can of worms by asking if he has a distinctive voice and have come away from that discussion hearing that few can hear it but some hear it instantly. So I am no wiser really and find myself in the "yet to be convinced" camp. But I'm not sure if it matters.


----------



## Phil loves classical

Enthusiast said:


> Anyway, the work in question _is _impressive. There are many attractive ideas and the work packs quite a punch. But it also seems that you need to follow and understand a lot of conceptual stuff and I tend to find that sort of thing a bit of a turn off. Music either communicates or it doesn't. This piece does for me but reading all about it makes me feel like I am missing something and perhaps that Rihm is not aiming at a lay audience.
> 
> I am sorry to have opened a can of worms by asking if he has a distinctive voice and have come away from that discussion hearing that few can hear it but some hear it instantly. So I am no wiser really and find myself in the "yet to be convinced" camp. But I'm not sure if it matters.


I don't think you need to understand a lot of conceptual stuff with Rihm. There are motifs or patterns or certain relationships that to me sound as undeniable as Pachelbel's Canon, but not obvious to me exactly what or how at least at the beginning or without focusing too much. He was part of the New Simplicity movement, which is supposed to be less hocus pocus. For me it was getting used to the contemporary idiom which was the hardest part to be prepared. He is sort of like Contemporary Music for Dummies like me. I sort of see him as the Beethoven of contemporary music.


----------



## Enthusiast

^ Thanks for that, Phil. I get on with quite a lot of contemporary music (and don't generally find it difficult or advanced - I even enjoy some Ferneyhough as music) and I have often enjoyed this piece. But I think I am being told I am missing something ... and if I am then I blame the composer!


----------



## Phil loves classical

Mandryka said:


> Quartet 3 may be one you'll like, try to get hold of the Arditti performance. But yes, the whole cycle "Fetzen", of which Quartet 12 is part, is lovely.


Thanks, I'm listening right now to Quartet No. 3. It's great. Took me a few minutes to adjust, but it a real experience.


----------



## Phil loves classical

Enthusiast said:


> ^ Thanks for that, Phil. I get on with quite a lot of contemporary music (and don't generally find it difficult or advanced - I even enjoy some Ferneyhough as music) and I have often enjoyed this piece. But I think I am being told I am missing something ... and if I am then I blame the composer!


I don't know who gave those movements these names, but Ferneyhough is not really any more complex than Rihm. But I say that on hindsight. It took a much longer time for me to get Ferneyhough. I think his rhythms are more intricate and urgent, so it was like following a spinning wheel at first. Rihm is also more resonant in sound to me.


----------



## Mandryka

Phil loves classical said:


> I don't know who gave those movements these names, but Ferneyhough is not really any more complex than Rihm.


I'm not sure you're right about that. There's more counterpoint, and more extended instrumental techniques in Ferneyhough. And of course Ferneyhough is very hard to play.


----------



## Mandryka

Knorf said:


> It's on my list to explore this repertoire more. I have a couple recordings, but it hasn't stuck with me, yet. I'm sure it will.


Also well worth exploring is Jakob Lenz the opera, especially now that there's a video recording with English subtitles.


----------



## Mandryka

Phil loves classical said:


> Thanks, I'm listening right now to Quartet No. 3. It's great. Took me a few minutes to adjust, but it a real experience.


There's a reference to Janacek in it, you'll hear it if you stay to the end and remind yourself of Janacek's 2nd quartet. I think the Rihm is much more interesting than the Janacek!


----------



## Mandryka

Knorf said:


> _Shrift-um-Schrift_ for two piano and two percussionists
> 
> .


This is an interesting piece of music which I hadn't heard before, thanks for pointing it out. I like music with air and space.


----------



## Kilgore Trout

Mandryka said:


> I'm not sure you're right about that. There's more counterpoint, and more extended instrumental techniques in Ferneyhough. And of course Ferneyhough is very hard to play.


Ferneyhough's music is _complicated_, not complex.


----------



## Knorf

Kilgore Trout said:


> Ferneyhough's music is _complicated_, not complex.


I agree. It's fearsomely complicated in its details, but Brian's music tends to be fairly direct in terms of dramatic/expressive formal shape.


----------



## Mandryka

Knorf said:


> I agree. It's fearsomely complicated in its details, but Brian's music tends to be fairly direct in terms of dramatic/expressive formal shape.


Famously Rihm pissed off the modernist crowd in Donaueschingen in a programme note for one of his pieces in the 1970s by saying that music must be full of complex emotion.


----------



## 20centrfuge

Knorf, Calvinpv:

I actually really like Rihm. I just feel bad for him that he hasn’t had more universally lauded works that are played more — more big “hits” on the international scene. Of course I could be wrong, but it seems that he doesn’t have many works that are his calling cards, if you know what I mean.

I didn’t quite accurately say what I was trying to say about Rihm in my last post.

I honestly have him in my top five of living composers.

As an aside:
Does a composer have to have a calling card? No, but it helps establish them, at least from a marketing perspective. John Adams major calling card being “Short Ride...” or “Nixon...” or Harmonielehre. Saariaho has her calling cards, Chin has her Violin Concerto, Cello Concerto. 

Rihm could stand to have a work or two besides Jagden that the international community all know and love. That was the main point of my previous post.


----------



## calvinpv

I think Rihm is more popular in Europe than in North America. Actually, this could be said for a lot of contemporary European composers. And vice versa: I'm not sure John Adams is that popular outside of the US. Chin is probably "international", though, personally, I'm still trying to figure out which of her concertos is her best. Saariaho, maybe, though if I had to guess why that may not be so, it's because some of her best music involves a lot of expensive equipment for live electronic effects. I think her most popular works, therefore, are her concertos, which lends to a distorted view of what she's all about.

Even with that said, I *think* Rihm's 3rd quartet is played relatively often by contemporary SQ ensembles.


----------



## calvinpv

Phil loves classical said:


> I'm curious who you think these composers are. My list is less than a handful of living ones. Some that are now gone but were active since 1980 are Ligeti, Henze, Boulez, Lutoslawski, Carter.


Georg Friedrich Haas, Helmut Lachenmann, Salvatore Sciarrino, Horatiu Rădulescu, Gerard Grisey, Bernhard Lang, Philippe Manoury, Simon Steen-Andersen, Rebecca Saunders, Tristan Murail, Enno Poppe, George Benjamin, Hugues Dufourt, Mark Andre, Olga Neuwirth, Pierluigi Billone, Gyorgy Kurtag.

And then there composers I'm not too familiar with but have heard good things about: Pascal Dusapin, Richard Barrett, Peter Ablinger, Chiyoko Szlavnics, Hanspeter Kyburz, Heinz Holliger, Klaus Huber, James Dillon, Georges Aperghis, Michel van der Aa, Claus Steffen-Mahnkopf, Stefan Prins, etc.

And these are just composers in Europe, which I'm currently more into at the moment. I'm not too well-versed in contemporary American music other than the big names, but I'm sure there's someone here who can rattle off some composers.


----------



## garthhudson

More than halfway thru _Jagden und Formen_. I know almost nothing of Rihm, but I'm enjoying the piece. It's clearly the work of a master. Incredible, relentless energy - almost too much energy. I could've used more of that the slow section with the eerie high horn, probably not an accident as it contains some of the more "tonal"-sounding music. The recording by Ensemble Modern is spectacular.


----------



## Knorf

20centrfuge said:


> Knorf, Calvinpv:
> 
> I actually really like Rihm. I just feel bad for him that he hasn't had more universally lauded works that are played more - more big "hits" on the international scene. Of course I could be wrong, but it seems that he doesn't have many works that are his calling cards, if you know what I mean.
> 
> I didn't quite accurately say what I was trying to say about Rihm in my last post.
> 
> I honestly have him in my top five of living composers.
> 
> As an aside:
> Does a composer have to have a calling card? No, but it helps establish them, at least from a marketing perspective. John Adams major calling card being "Short Ride..." or "Nixon..." or Harmonielehre. Saariaho has her calling cards, Chin has her Violin Concerto, Cello Concerto.
> 
> Rihm could stand to have a work or two besides Jagden that the international community all know and love. That was the main point of my previous post.


That's interesting. Hmm. I guess a calling card for Rihm could be something like _Gejagte Form_, which of course is a component piece of _Jagden und Formen_, but appealing for its more modest duration. Or, if you wanted a full orchestra, _Schwarzer und Roter Tanz_, a fragment excerpted from the ballet _Tutuguri_. I think one of Rihm's most played pieces for orchestra is _Dis-Kontur_, which was very early in his career.


----------



## Phil loves classical

calvinpv said:


> Georg Friedrich Haas, Helmut Lachenmann, Salvatore Sciarrino, Horatiu Rădulescu, Gerard Grisey, Bernhard Lang, Philippe Manoury, Simon Steen-Andersen, Rebecca Saunders, Tristan Murail, Enno Poppe, George Benjamin, Hugues Dufourt, Mark Andre, Olga Neuwirth, Pierluigi Billone, Gyorgy Kurtag.
> 
> And then there composers I'm not too familiar with but have heard good things about: Pascal Dusapin, Richard Barrett, Peter Ablinger, Chiyoko Szlavnics, Hanspeter Kyburz, Heinz Holliger, Klaus Huber, James Dillon, Georges Aperghis, Michel van der Aa, Claus Steffen-Mahnkopf, Stefan Prins, etc.
> 
> And these are just composers in Europe, which I'm currently more into at the moment. I'm not too well-versed in contemporary American music other than the big names, but I'm sure there's someone here who can rattle off some composers.


Ferneyhough and Rihm are currently the only ones on my list for living composers that I think are comparable to the all-time greats. Kurtag and Unsuk Chin I have under consideration. I think Saariaho is great at what she does, but it's definitely not for me.


----------



## 20centrfuge

Phil loves classical said:


> Ferneyhough and Rihm are currently the only ones on my list for living composers that I think are comparable to the all-time greats. Kurtag and Unsuk Chin I have under consideration. I think Saariaho is great at what she does, but it's definitely not for me.


I think our taste in music is fairly similar. Which are the Ferneyhough works you like a lot? I have been meaning to explore him more.


----------



## Phil loves classical

20centrfuge said:


> I think our taste in music is fairly similar. Which are the Ferneyhough works you like a lot? I have been meaning to explore him more.


His quartet #6 is out of this world. His imagination is off the charts. It's really only the quartets I especially like. Oh yeah, and his Chute D'Icare.


----------



## calvinpv

Phil loves classical said:


> His quartet #6 is out of this world. His imagination is off the charts. It's really only the quartets I especially like. Oh yeah, and his Chute D'Icare.


His SQ's are the only works I've heard at least more than once, but yeah they're great. It's been a while, but I remember 2 or 3 being pretty amazing as well (can't recall which).


----------



## calvinpv

So back to Rihm: I'm currently writing up a brief listening guide to Jagden und Formen marking up all the different appearances of Gejagte Form, Verborgene Formen and Gedrängte Form, including timestamps to the Ensemble Modern recording as a point of reference. I'll have it done tonight or tomorrow.

But as I'm comparing the different scores, a suspicion is rising: I don't think the "overpainting"/layering technique is happening just at the level of whole pieces. I think it's also happening at the level of individual parts. Like right now, I'm comparing Gedrängte Form to Verborgene Formen. I knew that Gedrängte borrowed verbatim some whole passages from Verborgene. But even in some of the passages new to Gedrängte, I'm finding little fragments that originated in Verborgene. I'm not going to go over these pieces with a fine-tooth comb, but if it's the case that Jagden und Formen is ultimately built up from an overpainting of _phrases_, as opposed to whole pieces, then that would be a true mind****.


----------



## Mandryka

All that stuff about incorporation of existing materials seems more about the compositional process rather the meaning of the music per se.

Rihm says, or said, that he wants his music to express complex emotions. I wonder if people think that Jagden und Formen is a success from that point of view.


----------



## Mandryka

20centrfuge said:


> Rihm could stand to have a work or two besides Jagden that the international community all know and love. That was the main point of my previous post.


Jakob Lenz

CNN's ms n s mes. Son


----------



## calvinpv

Mandryka said:


> All that stuff about incorporation of existing materials seems more about the compositional process rather the meaning of the music per se.
> 
> Rihm says, or said, that he wants his music to express complex emotions. I wonder if people think that Jagden und Formen is a success from that point of view.


It's about meaning as well. If a fragment or whole section reappears in a different context, it will be ascribed a different function in our minds. For example, I'm going over a section on Gejagte Form that appears 4 times in the Jagden und Formen. The first time you hear it is the opening woodwinds a couple minutes into the piece. There, it sounds like a second theme played over the violin duet, which could be interpreted as a first theme. But the second time you hear it is when the English horn, marimba, guitar, and harp play in unison (about 9 minutes in). There, it's accompaniment: your ears are drawn instead to the virtuosic playing of the quartet in unison. And the third time it appears, the first 14 bars are missing and it appears suddenly after a sequence of solos. Those missing 14 bars deprive you of a sense of recapitulation and instead give you the impression of a development or variation on the original -- even though it's a verbatim quotation and not a variation.

Obviously, since the form is being "hunted", there may be no definitive way of interpreting the form of the piece; in fact, I think Rihm would encourage different interpretations.

EDIT: when I say the second appearance is nine minutes in, I mean nine minutes on the Ensemble Modern recording.


----------



## Mandryka

Of course the reuse will present the material in a different way, and in that sense it will have a different meaning. 

I’m suggesting that Formen und Jagden is not like The Ring. In The Ring, knowing how a motif was used in past moments of the cycle is essential to understanding the meaning of what’s happening in the present moment.

It’s more like recycling in Bach. For example, Bach used a melody from a tombeau by Marais in the opening of the St Matthew Passion. Knowing that isn’t relevant to understanding the meaning of the passion music.


----------



## calvinpv

Mandryka said:


> Of course the reuse will present the material in a different way, and in that sense it will have a different meaning.


But usually, whenever material is reused, there is some sort of alteration in the material to aid in the sensation of a new meaning. Recapitulations, for example, will bring material that hasn't been presented in the home key into the home key, it will set up a transition to a coda, it may even reintroduce some material from the development section, etc.

I think Rihm is challenging this as a necessity. You can get just as much mileage making no alterations and just regurgitating material verbatim. But if you can get as much mileage this way, then that means that the mechanism of acquiring meaning happens elsewhere. And I think Rihm would say this mechanism works through: 1. the juxtaposition of sound events and 2. the passage of time. Yes, these two things happen in all other pieces, but they get obscured by internal changes to the material. In a way, Jagden und Formen is a commentary on the true nature of acquiring meaning from musical forms, and he is exaggerating these two mechanisms in this work to make his case.

Also, I should say that juxtaposing sound events in exaggerated ways can be found all over Rihm, not just in this work. See all the examples in my introductory post. They all essentially involve juxtaposition.



> I'm suggesting that Formen und Jagden is not like The Ring. In The Ring, knowing how a motif was used in past moments of the cycle is essential to understanding the meaning of what's happening in the present moment.


I would agree with this.



> It's more like recycling in Bach. For example, Bach used a melody from a tombeau by Marais in the opening of the St Matthew Passion. Knowing that isn't relevant to understanding the meaning of the passion music.


Knowing Gejagte, Verborgene and Gedrängte Form is both relevant and not relevant. Jagden und Formen is a case in open form. There are two components to that term: "open" and "form". If we just focus on "form", then no, those three early works are not relevant because as I said above, what determines the form is juxtaposition and time, not the internal composition of the parts. But if we focus on "open", then yes, knowing these early works is important because one could argue that Gejagte, Verborgene and Gedrängte are early version of Jagden und Formen. To say a work is open is to say it has no final, determinate form. Therefore, the title "Jagden und Formen" refers less to a particular work than to a process or a problem space where Rihm is trying out different forms using a set of core material.

I remember you asking in an earlier post why Jagden und Formen uses the plural of these two terms (hunts and forms). My last point above -- that the title refers to a problem domain and not a particular work -- may answer that question.


----------



## Knorf

Mandryka said:


> Rihm says, or said, that he wants his music to express complex emotions. I wonder if people think that Jagden und Formen is a success from that point of view.


It certainly is for me.


----------



## Kilgore Trout

Mandryka said:


> Rihm says, or said, that he wants his music to express complex emotions. I wonder if people think that Jagden und Formen is a success from that point of view.


I've personaly never met a music fan who felt _any_ emotion when listening to Rihm's music, except boredom.


----------



## Kilgore Trout

blah blah blah blah


----------



## Mandryka

Kilgore Trout said:


> Someone give me a gun so I can kill myself. Seriously, I love some of the composers named, but can't "great music" be something else than pretentious, overly dark and depressing for no reason and full of pseudo-intellectualism?


*Nobody* could call Lachenmann (f.e. Got Lost) Or Sciarrino (try the 12 madrigals) or Enno Popp (Rad for example) pretentious of dark! Hughes Dufourt maybe!


----------



## Mandryka

Kilgore Trout said:


> I've personaly never met a music fan who felt _any_ emotion when listening to Rihm's music, except boredom.


Oh I didn't see this until after I responded to your other post. Sorry, just ignore the previous post.


----------



## Kilgore Trout

calvinpv said:


> Georg Friedrich Haas, Helmut Lachenmann, Salvatore Sciarrino, Horatiu Rădulescu, Gerard Grisey, Bernhard Lang, Philippe Manoury, Simon Steen-Andersen, Rebecca Saunders, Tristan Murail, Enno Poppe, George Benjamin, Hugues Dufourt, Mark Andre, Olga Neuwirth, Pierluigi Billone, Gyorgy Kurtag.


Someone give me a gun so I can kill myself. Seriously, I love some of the composers in this list, but can't "geat music" be something else than pretentious, dark and depressing for no reason, and full of pseudo-intellectualism? I'm tired of emo music for PhDs.


----------



## Enthusiast

^ Perhaps you could share which composers you do approve of people enjoying or valuing ...


----------



## Kilgore Trout

Mandryka said:


> *Nobody* could call Lachenmann (f.e. Got Lost) Or Sciarrino (try the 12 madrigals) or Enno Popp (Rad for example) pretentious of dark!


Pretentious of dark? What is that supposed to mean? Did you mean "pretentious or dark"? I'm not sure if you're joking or not.


----------



## Kilgore Trout

Enthusiast said:


> ^ Perhaps you could share which composers you do approve of people enjoying or valuing ...


I don't pretend to approve anything. People enjoy what they want. But let's not pretend the contemporary music germano-french "milieu" hasn't got a ****** up sense of what music should be.


----------



## Phil loves classical

Mandryka said:


> All that stuff about incorporation of existing materials seems more about the compositional process rather the meaning of the music per se.
> 
> Rihm says, or said, that he wants his music to express complex emotions. I wonder if people think that Jagden und Formen is a success from that point of view.


When I listen to Rihm, I leave my emotions out of it, and it doesn't really conjure any recognizable emotions to me. But I do think the music is striking in expression. Something I never got in any kind of Art (or maybe I maintain some kind of skepticism) was how expression may necessarily translate to emotion. I find a lot of atonal music expressive, but there is no way I can begin to find it containing any sort of emotion, simple or complex.

BTW I actually find Jagden und Formen not strictly atonal. Anybody agree?


----------



## Mandryka

Phil loves classical said:


> When I listen to Rihm, I leave my emotions out of it, and it doesn't really conjure any recognizable emotions to me. But I do think the music is striking in expression. Something I never got in any kind of Art (or maybe I maintain some kind of skepticism) was how expression may necessarily translate to emotion. I find a lot of atonal music expressive, but there is no way I can begin to find it containing any sort of emotion, simple or complex.
> 
> BTW I actually find Jagden und Formen not strictly atonal. Anybody agree?


The program note where he said that he wants his music to express complex emotions was, I think, Sub Kontur. Worth listening if only to the opening drum!


----------



## calvinpv

Kilgore Trout said:


> Someone give me a gun so I can kill myself.


There's probably more "depression" behind this one statement than I've heard in most music, traditional or avant-garde. Unless you're using that expression in an ironic manner, in which case I'd say this statement is rather "pretentious", calling attention more to the user than to what you're expressing you're disgust over.



> Seriously, I love some of the composers in this list, but can't "geat music" be something else than pretentious, dark and depressing for no reason, and full of pseudo-intellectualism? I'm tired of emo music for PhDs.


Seriously, do you lose sleep over this music? Do you really think the world is crashing down because Lachenmann writes whole pieces with noise? My response to that is either 1. Write a manifesto detailing how the world should be otherwise or 2. Get over it. Enthusiast is right. I'm of the firm opinion that people who are foaming at the mouth over this music need to provide solutions, not complaints. If you care so much about how "elitist" this music is and how "music should be", wouldn't it be a great service to humanity if you provided us with an alternative? What does it say about you that you refuse to do so?

I could care less if you do or don't like the music. People can like whatever they want. But what I am getting tired of are people who concoct grand unified theories for why their reactions to music are more legitimate than the reaction of others. Seriously, the subtext of what you've said in these few posts is that everyone here is just pretending to like the music. How insulting, calling everyone here "pretentious and uncultivated".

Also, what's wrong with dark, depressing music? Are those not human emotions? Are you a robot or something? It would be far less reflective of humanity if music was all rainbows and unicorns. This isn't Sunday school where we preach only happy thoughts.


----------



## Kilgore Trout

calvinpv said:


> There's probably more "depression" behind this one statement than I've heard in most music, traditional or avant-garde. Unless you're using that expression in an ironic manner, in which case I'd say this statement is rather "pretentious", calling attention more to the user than to what you're expressing you're disgust over.


I'm not surprised you're not getting the irony.



calvinpv said:


> Do you really think the world is crashing down because Lachenmann writes whole pieces with noise? My response to that is either 1. Write a manifesto detailing how the world should be otherwise or 2. Get over it. Enthusiast is right. I'm of the firm opinion that people who are foaming at the mouth over this music need to provide solutions, not complaints.


Who tells you I didn't already do that?



calvinpv said:


> If you care so much about how "elitist"


Don't flatter yourself, I never called this music "elitist". It's only elitist in appareance. I wrote that it was music for the failling elites of the XXIth century, it's not the same thing.



calvinpv said:


> this music is and how "music should be", wouldn't it be a great service to humanity if you provided us with an alternative? What does it say about you that you refuse to do so?


I don't do so because I know how it will end. The alternative exists. Go seek it yourself.



calvinpv said:


> Seriously, the subtext of what you've said in these few posts is that everyone here is just pretending to like the music.


I never said that. I'm sure you're not pretending.



calvinpv said:


> Also, what's wrong with dark, depressing music?


Nothing wrong with that. One of my favorite living composer is Michael Hersch, who writes darker and more depressing music than anyone you named. What is wrong is for a composer to fake these aspects of art because it's his idea of what serious art is. I don't take seriously this music just like I don't take seriously a teenager dressed in black with mascara under his eyes crying "we live in a society". And I know you're going to say "who are to say it's fake" blah blah blah, but I've written tons of thorough arguments to state my case, I've been in the "milieu", I've seen it all, I've heard it all, and now I just don't care anymore.
This music lives on public subsides anyway, so it will die soon, because it is already dead from an asthetic point of view and it's economicaly useless. I just hope no one will complain, as they would have been warned several times.


----------



## Enthusiast

Kilgore Trout said:


> And I know you're going to say "who are to say it's fake" blah blah blah, but I've written tons of thorough arguments to state my case, I've been in the "milieu", I've seen it all, I've heard it all, and now I just don't care anymore.
> This music lives on public subsides anyway, so it will die soon, because it is already dead from an asthetic point of view and it's economicaly useless. I just hope no one will complain, as they would have been warned several times.


Ah. I get it. This is a rant against subsidising the arts with your hard earned cash.


----------



## Enthusiast

Kilgore Trout said:


> I don't pretend to approve anything. People enjoy what they want. But let's not pretend the contemporary music germano-french "milieu" hasn't got a ****** up sense of what music should be.


You say people enjoy what they want ... but you also have it that their enjoyment is fake and part of a pseudo-intellectual stance.


----------



## Kilgore Trout

Enthusiast said:


> Ah. I get it. This is a rant against subsidising the arts with your hard earned cash.


Not at all. I'm all for public subsides and concerts of pretentious music. This is a rant about a milieu not facing its contradictions, still imposing out-dated views on art, and not seeing that it's dying.


----------



## Kilgore Trout

Enthusiast said:


> You say people enjoy what they want ... but you also have it that their enjoyment is fake and part of a pseudo-intellectual stance.


I was talking about the music itself, not its enjoyment by people. People have every right to enjoy pretentious fake pseudo-intellectual music, or whatever, I don't care.


----------



## Phil loves classical

Kilgore Trout said:


> I was talking about the music itself, not its enjoyment by people. People have every right to enjoy pretentious fake pseudo-intellectual music, or whatever, I don't care.


I'm curious which well known composers you consider pretentious fake pseudo-intellectual?


----------



## Mandryka

Kilgore Trout said:


> and now I just don't care anymore..


The lady doth protest too much, methinks.


----------



## Kilgore Trout

Mandryka said:


> The lady doth protest too much, methinks.


To be more precise: I don't care about any argument or opinion in favor of the stuff in question.


----------



## Knorf

A friendly reminder to all: the best way to deal with a troll is to ignore them completely.


----------



## Allegro Con Brio

This music is like a dynamic, elemental explosion of prismatic colors all flying in different directions. The individual details can overwhelm the mind, but the big picture is beautiful. Superb!


----------



## Phil loves classical

Mandryka said:


> The program note where he said that he wants his music to express complex emotions was, I think, Sub Kontur. Worth listening if only to the opening drum!


Can't say I like this work. I found this review on https://www.klassikinfo.de/wolfgang-rihm/, which i had Google translate:

"Music must be full of emotion, emotion full of complexity". That was the confession of Wolfgang Rihm in 1974 when he made his first big appearance during the Donaueschinger Musiktage. A provocative confession by the then 22-year-old Stockhausen student and one that caused a sensation and aroused attention. What Rihm composed for orchestra in his early days can be heard on a new CD on the Hänssler Classic label.
In the same year when Rihm made his Donaueschingen debut - in 1974 - he gave many testimonies in which he let "the abundance" flow and rise again in the flow. About his 22-minute composition Dis-Kontur, a work for large orchestra, Rihm says: "Dis-Kontur is actually composed out of an attitude towards life. While working, I was constantly in borderline situations. Allowing such things to flow into a composition was frowned upon for a long time out of justified mistrust of everything irrational. "
And it is precisely into these exploding Rihm irrationalities that conductor Sylvain Cambreling and the SWR symphony orchestra immerse themselves, conjuring up musical convulsions that immediately capture you. Rhythmic eruptions and at the same time clearings of dull memories make hearing mute.
The other two great orchestral works that were written one or two years later also belong to Rihm's first creative phase, which consciously opens up to the tradition of Beethoven, Bruckner, Mahler and Hartmann. The almost programmatic implementation of "Lichtzwang", a musical eulogy for the poet Paul Celan, is plastic and within reach: the solo violin rises higher and higher in glaring registers, the orchestral crowd sticks to it - Rihm stages the confrontation between the crowd and the individual. The violinist Janos Negyesy is impressive, as in this recording from 1977 he already played the premiere with the SWR Symphony Orchestra Baden-Baden and Freiburg under Ernest Bour. If you have read the informative comments of the composer in the booklet, it is a good idea to
Rihm's third work on this CD, "Sub-Kontur", premiered in Donaueschingen in 1976, presented on the CD again by the SWR Symphony Orchestra under the energetic direction of Ernest Bour, leads in the opposite direction. It's going down. Rihm describes "Sub-Kontur" as "impure music that doesn't stop at mud, full of lust in its aversion to the gray clinical correctness and random arbitrariness of norms that surrounds us."
These are strong words for an equally strong 26 minutes in which the SWR Sinfonieorchester leads us precisely and relentlessly to where one would not really want to go: into the dark, amorphous, fragmented. The complex emotionality of the young Wolfgang Rihm in the three works on this CD provides impressive examples of socially oriented composing in the recent musical past.

Julia Schölzel


----------



## tortkis

This is so captivating that I cannot stop once I start listening to it. Relentless, but never tiring. The parts are well integrated so it was surprising that the work was composed as a collage.


----------



## calvinpv

I know we're getting towards the end of the week here but I thought I'd share with you a breakdown of how this piece is put together. It took me a couple of days, on and off, to put it together, but hey, I like reading about this stuff as much as I like listening to it. Let me stress that *you do not have to read this if you don't want to*. If you want to enjoy the piece without knowing where any of the "seams" are to this "patchwork" of a piece, then by all means don't read it. I totally understand if you don't want to ruin your experience of Jagden und Formen as a single, unified work. But for those of you who want to understand the different layers, then continue on and maybe listen to the piece while reading.

Just to reiterate: Jagden und Formen is made up of mostly three works split up and shuffled + some new material. The three works are Gejagte Form, Verborgene Formen, Gedrängte Form. Gedrängte Form inherits some material from Verborgene Formen (Verborgene was written first). Verborgene Formen itself is a collage of the pieces Pol and Nucleus + some new material serving as transitions (new to Verborgene, that is). At first glance, Gejagte Form has no relation to the other two works.

A key to some abbreviations: "Gejagte" = Gejagte Form; "Verborgene" = Verborgene Formen; "Gedrängte" = Gedrängte Form; "new" = material that makes a first appearance to Jagden und Formen (i.e. it doesn't appear in the other works). All of these terms are *bolded* because these four designate the four possible layers. Though I talk about Pol and Nucleus, I don't bold them because that might confuse things.

The timestamps below are in relation to the *Ensemble Modern* recording. "Track X" refers to the track number for that recording and "b.1", "b.142", "b.161" ... are the names of the tracks. These names refer to the bar numbers in the score, and these tracks divide up the bars pretty intelligently, in my opinion.

It should be obvious what are the timestamps below. "start-end" is also a timestamp, meaning beginning to the end of the track.

This is all I cover below. I don't offer my interpretation of the sequence of layers, only where the layers are. So apologies if this might be a little boring to read.

Ensemble Modern playlist *here*

*Jagden und Formen Listening Guide*

b. 1 (Track 1): *New* string layer (start-end); *Gejagte, bars 1-76* (3:12-end; no alterations or additions to this layer).

b. 142 (Track 2): *New* layer of chord outburst by orchestra (start-0:14); *Verborgene, bars 142-151* (0:15-end; final three notes of clarinet now given to English horn, as lead-in to next section).

b. 161 (Track 3): *Gedrängte, bars 1-28* (start-end; bars 1-19, start-0:57, also in Verborgene bars 8-26, minus flute, guitar and marimba; much of viola and cello also in Pol, which makes up bars 33-141 of Verborgene).

b. 189 (Track 4): *New* layer consisting of English horn, marimba, harp and guitar playing in unison (start-2:11); *Gejagte, bars 1-40* (start-1:53; harp and percussion parts missing, piano part - comprising a single chord heard at 1:15 - retained); *Gejagte, bars 50-55* (1:54-2:11; harp, percussion, piano parts missing); *new* bar consisting of trills (2:12-2:14); *Gedrängte, bars 29-40* (2:15-end; couple notes added to first bar to make smooth transition; bars 35-40, 2:35-end, also in Verborgene bars 27-32).

b. 254 (Track 5): *Gedrängte, bars 41-end, minus bars 44-46* (start-end; bars 44-46 were sustained fermatas that would've ruined the flow); bass clarinet, marimba/bongos, harp, viola, cello and contrabass parts also from near-entirety of Pol, minus last 5 bars (start-3:26; bars 33-136 in Verborgene; this is _not_ a separate layer over and above Gedrängte, just something interesting to point out).

b. 372 (Track 6): *New* layer consisting of series of "solos": violin duet --> quintet (English horn, two trumpets, trombone/tuba, harp) --> trombone solo --> English horn solo (start-end; quintet - 0:52-2:25 - is a 5-part contrapuntal expansion of first 90 seconds of opening track, which was a duet).

b. 458 (Track 7): *Gejagte, bars 15-27* (start-0:38; woodwind parts only); *Gejagte, bars 56-76* (0:39-end; woodwind parts only); *new* layer, including strings playing in unison with woodwinds (start-end).

b. 492 (Track 8): Return of *new* chord outburst from track 2 (start-0:17; extra punctuation about half-way and a gradual crescendo added at end); *Verborgene, bars 1-40* (0:18-end; some instruments are changed - for example, clarinet becomes horn and trombone -- but otherwise no alterations of material; remember, as we saw in tracks 3-4, some of this is also in Verborgene); *new* layer, including quasi-soloistic bassoon (0:18-end).

b. 541 (Track 9): *Verborgene, bars 33-141* (start-end; this is Pol in its entirety, including final 5 bars not present in track 5; this track could be listened to as standalone piece).

b. 650 (Track 10): *Verborgene, bars 142-151* (start-0:27; no alterations, unlike in track 2 where final three notes were changed); *Verborgene, bars 152-191* (0:28-2:07; this is also Nucleus bars 24-63); *Verborgene, bars 192-200* (2:08-2:28); *new* 4 bars extending the explosive pulsing rhythm (2:29-2:37); *Verborgene, bars 177-191* (2:38-3:16; this is also Nucleus bars 49-63); *Verborgene, bars 192-202* (3:17-end).

b. 739 (Track 11): *New* layer, consisting of virtuosic and unstable percussion/piano + string layer from track 1 (start-2:17; not the whole string layer from track 1 but the part beginning at 3:12 in that track, minus a few uninteresting bars); *Verborgene, bars 193-201* (2:18-2:38); *new *10 bars extending the explosive pulsing rhythm (2:39-3:03); *Verborgene, bars 202-204* (3:04-3:10); *Verborgene, bars 205-210* (3:11-end; this is also Nucleus bars 64-69).

b. 816 (Track 12): *Verborgene, bars 211-end* (start-end; this is also Nucleus bars 70-84 followed by bars 7-16 plus some alterations; the alterations are kept in Jagden und Formen).

b. 841 (Track 13): Return of *new* chord outburst from tracks 2, 8 (start-0:14; some textures thinned for brass and strings; textures added for guitar); *new* layer consisting of piano and four strings playing in unison + brass playing in unison with Gejagte sections (0:15-2:59); *Gejagte, bars 1-14* (0:15-0:55; woodwind parts only); *Gejagte, bars 15-27* (0:56-1:33; woodwind parts only); *Gejagte, bars 56-61* (1:34-1:51; woodwind parts only); *Gejagte, bars 50-55* (1:52-2:09; woodwind parts only); *Gejagte, bars 28-35* (2:10-2:33; woodwind parts only); *Gejagte, bars 68-76* (2:34-2:59; woodwind parts only); *Gejagte, bars 77-108* (3:00-end; no alterations or additions).

b. 938 (Track 14): *Gejagte, bars 109-177* (start-end; no alterations or additions).

b. 1007 (Track 15): *Gejate, bars 178-224* (start-2:12; no alterations; the woodwinds to bars 178-191 - start-0:40 -- are the same as those in bars 1-14 of Gejagte; the woodwinds to bars 192-200 - 0:41-1:04 - are the same as those in bars 15-27 of Gejagte; these aren't additional layers but something interesting to point out); *new* layer (2:13-2:38); *Gejagte, bars 225-241* (2:39-3:27; no alterations); *new* layer (3:28-3:43); *Gejagte, bars 242-end* (3:44-end; no alterations).


----------



## 20centrfuge

*Maxwell Davies: Concerto for Trumpet (1988) [30]*

_submitted by 20cents_

9/27 Blancrocher - Lutoslawski: Piano Concerto "For Krystian Zimerman" (1988) [25]
10/4 BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist - Messiaen: Éclairs sur l'au-delà... (1991) [60]
10/11 tortkis - Garland: Peter: String Quartet No. 1, "In Praise of Poor Scholars" (1986) [20]
10/18 PeterfromLA - Schnittke: Symphony No. 5 "Concerto Grosso No. 4" (1988) [35]
10/25 Knorf - TBD
11/1 Allegro Con Brio TBD


----------



## 20centrfuge

Mandryka, would you like to submit a work?


----------



## 20centrfuge

Maxwell Davies:

I really don't have program notes at the moment on this work though I will give some general thoughts. There seems to be some influence by Sibelius in terms of soundscape and maybe mood. PMD's music often has a cloudy, dark feel to it. Max lived for many years in the Orkney Islands north of Scotland. His music easily associates with the ocean and the type of weather one would find on a rocky island in the north.

One of the reasons I feel this piece works is that it takes that dark, stormy backdrop and uses the trumpet as a sort of beacon, a clarion call over the top. I hope you all enjoy it.


On another note, I have to thank you all for participating in this thread. I know we all have different levels of experience, different perspectives and tastes, but I appreciate people listening, discussing, and giving room for each others thoughts.


----------



## Phil loves classical

I've listened to a few of his symphonies and this trumpet concerto before and relistened the concerto just now. For some reason I still don't feel I know Davies. I always felt he didn't have a distinctive voice, even though I can sense he has a lot of skill.


----------



## Kilgore Trout

Phil loves classical said:


> I've listened to a few of his symphonies and this trumpet concerto before and relistened the concerto just now. For some reason I still don't feel I know Davies. I always felt he didn't have a distinctive voice, even though I can sense he has a lot of skill.


Funily enough, Davies said the exact contrary: "I realise when I look at these people like Tom Adès or Jimmy MacMillan that they're far cleverer and more brilliant than I could ever be, as conductors and in many other ways - but I kept my corner. And nobody else could write the music that I write."

His voice is very distinctive once you know it.


----------



## Mandryka

20centrfuge said:


> Mandryka, would you like to submit a work?


James Weeks, Mala Punica.


----------



## Phil loves classical

Kilgore Trout said:


> Funily enough, Davies said the exact contrary: "I realise when I look at these people like Tom Adès or Jimmy MacMillan that they're far cleverer and more brilliant than I could ever be, as conductors and in many other ways - but I kept my corner. And nobody else could write the music that I write."
> 
> His voice is very distinctive once you know it.


I feel his sound world is very similar to Henze, but his music less volatile (and interesting to me) overall. Anybody else feel they are similar?


----------



## 20centrfuge

PMD generally takes some work from me. I have to concentrate and listen several times to "get it." I wouldn't expect everyone to like his music, but for me it works. It is organic music that doesn't have a lot of seams.


----------



## 20centrfuge

Updated Schedule:

9/27 Blancrocher - Lutoslawski: Piano Concerto "For Krystian Zimerman" (1988) [25]
10/4 BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist - Messiaen: Éclairs sur l'au-delà... (1991) [60]
10/11 tortkis - Garland, Peter: String Quartet No. 1, "In Praise of Poor Scholars" (1986) [20]
10/18 PeterfromLA - Schnittke: Symphony No. 5 "Concerto Grosso No. 4" (1988) [35]
10/25 Knorf - TBD
11/1 Allegro Con Brio - Dutilleux: L'arbes des songes (1985) [30]
11/8 Mandryka - *TBD (Weeks, James: Mala Punica was composed between 2008-2009)*
11/15 WRAP-UP!! IT'S BEEN A GOOD RIDE!


----------



## Knorf

Oh, dear. Apparently I'm the lone holdout for my selection. Ok. The pressure's on...

I'll pick something soon, I promise.


----------



## 20centrfuge

*Lutoslawski: Piano Concerto "For Krystian Zimerman" (1988) [25]*

_submitted by Blancrocher _

10/4 BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist - Messiaen: Éclairs sur l'au-delà... (1991) [60]
10/11 tortkis - Garland, Peter: String Quartet No. 1, "In Praise of Poor Scholars" (1986) [20]
10/18 PeterfromLA - Schnittke: Symphony No. 5 "Concerto Grosso No. 4" (1988) [35]
10/25 Knorf - Ruders: Solar Trilogy (1992-1995) [85]
11/1 Allegro Con Brio - Dutilleux: L'arbes des songes (1985) [30]
11/8 Mandryka - TBD
11/15 WRAP-UP!! IT'S BEEN A GOOD RIDE!


----------



## 20centrfuge

I guess most of you took a pass on the Maxwell Davies


----------



## Kjetil Heggelund

Max is one of my favorites! This went me house past (stupid Norwegian/English translation). I actually haven't heard the trumpet concerto...

Short Note by Paul Griffiths

This is a big virtuoso piece, scored for a full orchestra with a characteristically lively tuned percussion ensemble, and drawing on the energy and splendour Davies has found in the trumpet since his 'opus 1' sonata. But it is also, by implication, a work of essential simplicity, since it makes use of a plainsong for the feast of St. Francis. There is even a sermon to the birds in the Adagio molto, where the trumpet's declamation sets off a chorus of northern species in high, chill calls. This is contained between what can be distinguished as an Allegro with slow introduction and a dance finale, though the work plays continuously.

Last year I discovered the Lutoslawski piano concerto and listened to it 3 times in a row. I instantly liked it  Guess I have to hear it again.


----------



## Phil loves classical

Thumbs up for Lutoslawski's Piano Concerto. I've heard the Zimmermann version too many times and got tired of it. So here is a different version with more immediate sound.


----------



## calvinpv

Here's yet another version by Louis Lortie. I prefer it over the Zimerman, to be honest. It has more of that glistening shimmering quality that I really like in Lutoslawski, like you're listening to the sounds of an enchanted world. Zimerman's interpretation sounds a bit more rooted in the real world, which I don't want in this case. But that's just me.

This is probably my favorite late 20th/early 21st century piano concerto.


----------



## Knorf

I prefer the Lortie recording/performance of Lutosławski's Piano Concerto as well, calvinpv. The imagination is more unbounded.


----------



## calvinpv

Knorf said:


> I prefer the Lortie recording/performance of Lutosławski's Piano Concerto as well, calvinpv. The imagination is more unbounded.


If you like this, you should check out his 2-disc set of Ravel's piano music -- playing style is very similar. That's how I found out about his Lutoslawski, when I was looking through Lortie's catalogue on Chandos after having heard the Ravel.

Moreover, this piano concerto + the cello concerto from the same series on Chandos were the very first contemporary works that I ever liked. So there's some sentimental value for me with this recording. Who knows, in an alternate timeline, if it weren't for them, I may not even be participating in this thread right now.


----------



## 20centrfuge

I’ve enjoyed the Lutoslawski this week. And I’m curious which works by Lutoslawski are your favorites?


----------



## Knorf

20centrfuge said:


> I've enjoyed the Lutoslawski this week. And I'm curious which works by Lutoslawski are your favorites?


String Quartet
Concerto for Orchestra
Cello Concerto
Symphonies Nos. 3 & 4
_Les Espaces du sommeil_


----------



## calvinpv

20centrfuge said:


> I've enjoyed the Lutoslawski this week. And I'm curious which works by Lutoslawski are your favorites?


String Quartet
Mi-Parti
Chain II
Chain III
Symphony 3
Symphony 4
Piano Concerto
Les Espace du sommeil
Cello Concerto
Variations on a Theme by Paganini

I probably don't like Lutoslawksi as much as I used to because I've since found other composers who are more interesting, but his Cello and Piano concertos being the first two contemporary works I've ever liked, he'll always have some sentimental value for me.


----------



## 20centrfuge

*Messiaen: Éclairs sur l'au-delà... (1991) [60]*

_submitted by BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist_

10/11 tortkis - Garland, Peter: String Quartet No. 1, "In Praise of Poor Scholars" (1986) [20]
10/18 PeterfromLA - Schnittke: Symphony No. 5 "Concerto Grosso No. 4" (1988) [35]
10/25 Knorf - Rouders: Solar Trilogy (1995) [65]
11/1 Allegro Con Brio - Dutilleux: L'arbes des songes (1985) [30]
11/8 Mandryka - TBD
11/15 WRAP-UP


----------



## Phil loves classical

I like the Messiaen, but it's just too slow for me. I think it could be condensed considerably.


----------



## 20centrfuge

It's funny you say that Phil, I was having similar thoughts about it's slowness while listening to it this afternoon. It made me wonder what the tempo marking is.....(fast forward a few minutes)...and now I see that it is marked sixteenth note=44. It feels like it wants to be a bit faster than that. I think if I were a conductor I would take his tempo markings with a grain of salt and do some actual INTERPRETING.


----------



## Phil loves classical

20centrfuge said:


> It's funny you say that Phil, I was having similar thoughts about it's slowness while listening to it this afternoon. It made me wonder what the tempo marking is.....(fast forward a few minutes)...and now I see that it is marked sixteenth note=44. It feels like it wants to be a bit faster than that. I think if I were a conductor I would take his tempo markings with a grain of salt and do some actual INTERPRETING.


I was thinking more slow in terms of changes overall. But the first movement is kind of slow tempo-wise too now you mention it.


----------



## 20centrfuge

Maybe this is helpful for people who don't know Messiaen.

When I think of Messiaen, the following things come to mind:
•	How he heard “in color” – Synaesthesia.
•	His use of bird-song. He thought of bird-song as nature’s own music. Birds don’t care about trends, styles, or music theory. They sing what is hard-wired into them.
•	He was a fine organist -- the organist of Église de la Sainte-Trinité in Paris for over 60 years. He often treats the orchestra as an organ by using dense chords, brass or string chorales, carefully chosen orchestral voicings and colors. 
•	His great love of Debussy’s music and that, as Debussy did, he used exotic sounding non-traditional harmonies.
•	He was a teacher of composers, having taught Xenakis and George Benjamin, among others.
•	His spiritualism and religion. He was a devout Catholic and his music seems to emphasize the mystery of God.
•	His use of rhythm. Quartet for the “END OF TIME” was essentially a piece that sought to deal away with conventional rhythm. It seeks rhythmic devices that sound organic and sometimes meter-less.

He was unique. He didn't seem to be influenced by Serialism but instead forged his own path away from conventional music. His music is instantly recognizable. 

One of the strange things about his music is that it sometimes seems immune to poor interpretation. Big blocks of sound like monoliths that don't always seem to require a deft hand by a good conductor.


----------



## tortkis

This is a long piece, but I don't find any dull or banal moments, and the slowness mentioned above doesn't bother me. The harmonies and the transitions keep the interest. I think this is a great work.


----------



## Allegro Con Brio

Doing a bit of catch-up for this group. I enjoyed the Davies piece even if I thought it was a bit static. I really like the visceral, nature-like sounds of his music; you can really taste the salt air and hear the crashing waves off the Scottish coast. Almost Sibelian. This is almost like a symphony with trumpet obbligato rather than a concerto. The transluscent textures and the trumpet calling from afar like a distant omen is quite memorable.

Lutoslawski is a composer that I generally like and his piano concerto is elusive, playful, colorful, and inventive. I love it. It's not too "experimental" or "thorny" either, a work that I would feel comfortable recommending to someone new to contemporary music. Definitely one I want to revisit.

Messiaen is a great favorite of mine and Eclairs is one of my favorite orchestral works post-1980. Looking forward to giving it another listen this week.


----------



## calvinpv

Just so everybody knows, the video posted above is just part 1 of the work. It goes for another 25-30 minutes in part 2, depending on the recording. Here's the same recording above, but with part 2 (Sylvain Cambreling, SWR Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden und Freiburg).

If you didn't think the work was slow enough ...


----------



## calvinpv

Some other recordings:

Myung-Whun Chung, Orchestra de l'Opéra Bastille

Ingo Metzmacher, Wiener Philharmoniker

David Porcelijn, Sydney Symphony Orchestra

Simon Rattle, Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra


----------



## 20centrfuge

*Garland, Peter: String Quartet No. 1, "In Praise of Poor Scholars" (1986) [20]*

Submitted by tortkis

10/18 PeterfromLA - Schnittke: Symphony No. 5 "Concerto Grosso No. 4" (1988) [35]
10/25 Knorf - Rouders: Solar Trilogy (1995) [65]
11/1 Allegro Con Brio - Dutilleux: L'arbes des songes (1985) [30]
11/8 Mandryka - TBD
11/15 WRAP-UP


----------



## Phil loves classical

Found it here. I found the music charming and moody. Has a rustic quality. It's not the kind of quartet that is virtuosic and really pushes the technical limits. More like a set of mood pieces for quartet.

https://www.earsense.org/chamber-mu...-Praise-of-Poor-Scholars/?ri=0&v=QEcfo12fIk43


----------



## tortkis

Peter Garland, String Quartet No. 1, "In Praise of Poor Scholars" (1986)
Apartment House, Cold Blue





http://coldbluemusic.com/cb0031/
_"This CD presents the premiere recordings of two spirited and enticing quartets that draw on the composer's well-traveled ear and great sense of personal vision. Both works move with a unique sense of grace and a sincerity of expression that is purely Garlandesque-marked by a sometimes lively dancing, a sometimes alluring stasis, and an often sauntering gait that allow musical ideas to seem to appear intuitively and develop subconsciously.."_

The title comes from a poem by Tao Yuanming (365?-427), which is about solitude, projecting a poor scholar on a solitary cloud and a strayed bird.

Peter Garland studied with James Tenney and Harold Budd, and his is an expert on American Indian music.


----------



## Allegro Con Brio

I did revisit the Messiaen, and found it as compelling as ever. I don't think it really holds up as a cohesive whole like some of his other large-scale works but the sheer invention and force of his music always gets me. 

Listening to the Garland right now. It's certainly unlike anything else we've listened to in this group with its folk-music inspirations and hardly any dissonance. It's interesting to hear but not particularly captivating and I doubt I'll have the desire to hear it again. I feel like all the movements are essentially similar in style and there's not enough variety.


----------



## calvinpv

Interesting how each instrument is restricted to the same register (middle-high for viola and the two violins, low for the cello) throughout the six movements as well as the same mode (Lydian?); in other words, each instrument is restricted to a small handful of notes. And yet, Garland is able to make each movement sound just different enough to make the piece interesting. Or rather, I should say that Garland's ability to extract differences from such restrictions is itself the interesting bit.

Also, I was reading the set of reviews on the piece that tortkis linked to, and there was a lot of mentions about Garland's inspirations from folk music, especially those from East Asia, Mexico and the American Southwest. But it seems to me that he's not so much putting down to paper particular dances and traditions but rather distilling a particular feature from these traditions and turning them into his own thing, whether that feature is a particular dance step or a particular sequence of harmonies that recur often in a tradition. Knowing nothing about folk music around the world, I could be totally wrong, but my ears tell me his approach to using folk traditions isn't "literal" or a "verbatim copycat".

Overall, I probably prefer a bit more the other minimalist piece we heard, the one by Kyle Gann. But I'll definitely be checking out Garland's second string quartet on the same disc.


----------



## 20centrfuge

*Schnittke: Symphony No. 5 "Concerto Grosso No. 4" (1988) [35]*

_Submitted by PeterfromLA_

10/25 Knorf - Rouders: Solar Trilogy (1995) [65]
11/1 Allegro Con Brio - Dutilleux: L'arbes des songes (1985) [30]


----------



## Mandryka

calvinpv said:


> Also, I was reading the set of reviews on the piece that tortkis linked to, and there was a lot of mentions about Garland's inspirations from folk music, especially those from East Asia, Mexico and the American Southwest. But it seems to me that he's not so much putting down to paper particular dances and traditions but rather distilling a particular feature from these traditions and turning them into his own thing, whether that feature is a particular dance step or a particular sequence of harmonies that recur often in a tradition. Knowing nothing about folk music around the world, I could be totally wrong, but my ears tell me his approach to using folk traditions isn't "literal" or a "verbatim copycat".
> .


I wonder if the folk inspiration comes from microtones and scales. The music seems in a bit like James Tenney's music to me.


----------



## Phil loves classical

Everyone forgot about the submission this week? It's great! Always a fan of Schnittke. Never boring.


----------



## calvinpv

It's been forever since I heard this work. I only know of the recording by Neeme Järvi / Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra on BIS. I'll listen to it later, but here's the liner notes to that recording:



> Concerto Grosso No.4 - Symphony No.5
> 
> The use of polystylisticism by the Soviet composer Alfred Schnittke, decried all too hastily by some critics as eclectic and as a "musical odds-and-ends shop" is no more and no less than a far-striding attempt to assure himself of the musical material which is held in store by (for Schnittke principally) the musical history of the West. As Schnittke (b. 1934), whose father was a Jewish translator and journalist from Frankfurt and whose mother was a Volga German, once said, it concerns "the conscious collaboration of different styles and their effects upon each other, - not merely blind eclecticism." To clarify Schnittke's meaning we only have to think of Bernd Alois Zimmermann·s opera Soldaten or Berio's Symphony or the music of Charles Ives, all fine examples of the compositional technique which develops an autonomous musical language by means of adaptations, combinations and assimilations of styles. Schnittke's style is aesthetically moulded by polystylisticism but it is clear that amazingly broad, differentiated formal and expressive possibilities exist within the framework of this compositional principle.
> 
> The Fifth Symphony, composed for and commissioned by the Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam for its 100th anniversary, indicates polystylisticism even in its title: Concerto Grosso No.4 - Symphony No.5. By means of the "Concerto Grosso" first movement Schnittke quotes a form which has played a part elsewhere in his output too - a "quoted quote" as it were. Also written in was the attempt to find a relaxed -"Concerto Grosso gesture" of today. From the mixture of a loose attack upon the material (in which violin, oboe and harpsichord compete with the orchestra) and gently distorted musical mime the composer creates an extremely lively, modern type of Concerto Grosso music.
> 
> In the second movement, an Allegretto, the large orchestra with its heavy percussion section attempts to conJure up a Mahlerian sound world. This is done by means of a long "movement" which appears three times. It is a reminiscence of something that never was - the second movement of Mahler's unfinished Piano Quartet from 1876. At the end of the second movement of his symphony, Schnittke quotes the 24 preserved bars of the Scherzo of Mahler's Piano Quartet: the four instrumentalists. grouped around the piano. operate from within the orchestra.
> 
> The third movement. which starts with a gloomy wind passage in slow tempo, rises rapidly to dramatic, excited climaxes and leads to a slow reprise which Schnittke conceived as a fourth movement. Visionary and transfiguring elements cannot develop so well from the funeral march character of this reprise; the movement ends with a despairing, uprising fortissimo gesture which leads to a short, almost sighing Lento conclusion.
> 
> In spite of its surprising duration - almost three quarters of an hour - Schnittke's "Concerto Grosso Symphony" impresses the listener as possessing an unusual degree of formal concentration, colourful in its instrumental nuances, full-blooded and rich in musical gestures. From the playful concerto-like opening the piece develops into a broad culmination of expressive music par excellence.
> 
> Gerhard Rohde, "Dunkle Mahler-Beschworungen", from Neue Musik Zeitung, 611988, Gustav Bosse Verlag, Ravensburg.


----------



## Allegro Con Brio

I agree that Schnittke is never boring. He is really one of the most original composers of the latter half of the century. He is capable of heartwrenching emotion (I think of the 2nd string quartet and the piano quintet) but I don't know what to think about the huge, ambitious concerti grossi and symphonies. It's hard to tell whether he's trying to be comical or serious sometimes. At the least it's always an entertaining experience to listen to him. I find what he was trying to do with polystylism pretty fascinating, but in the passages where the music is really dense, dark, and dissonant he loses me. Clearly a troubled soul with an intriguing story and an even more intriguing outlook on art.


----------



## tortkis

I have not listened to this for a long time. I like the eerie atmosphere, which sometimes becomes otherworldly, sometimes sarcastic. Harpsichord creates really weird effect. The loud parts are too violent for me, but I agree that this is entertaining throughout. I didn't know that the 2nd movement is based on Mahler's piano quartet. The movement sounds like decaying Mahler.


----------



## 20centrfuge

I listened to the Schnittke twice and am on my third time through. The third movement, in particular, is quite complex. There is a lot there to digest and comprehend. I feel like I will need to live with this work for a while. But I really enjoy it. My favorite work I've ever heard by Schnittke. I also pick up subtle moments that remind me of Prokofiev's Symphony no.3, which is very welcome to me. I'm really glad to be introduced to this work.


----------



## 20centrfuge

*Ruders: Solar Trilogy (1995) [65]*

_Submitted by Knorf_

11/1 Allegro Con Brio - Dutilleux: L'arbes des songes (1985) [30]


----------



## Kjetil Heggelund

Aha! I missed out on Schnittke! A longtime favorite composer. I don't think I heard his piece before, but listening to Schnittke over and over gives me a feeling that he really belongs to the classics, meaning he uses composition techniques that are similar to Mozart and Beethoven even though he goes crazy over them!

The Solar Trilogy by Ruders is a work I have heard several times in the past. He is on my "very important composer" list, especially since he wrote something for classical guitar and is a grand veteran of Danish music. The Danes have some great contemporary composers and I am lucky to hear about them  I think I heard a world premiere of a percussion concerto by him in the early 90's, when our conservatory went on a schooltrip to Denmark.


----------



## Phil loves classical

I found 1 of the 3 for Ruders' Solar Trilogy on Youtube, the rest I found on Spotify. I thought the orchestration is great and some real nice sonorities, but the material wasn't that interesting or too drawn out. Zenith was a highlight, but again sort of drawn out.


----------



## calvinpv

Here's the whole thing:

Part 1: Gong






Part 2: Zenith






Part 3: Corona


----------



## 20centrfuge

The Ruders work is a slow burn. I liked it though I admit to my mind wandering at times with it. Ruders Symphony 4 is a work of his I like quite a lot.


----------



## 20centrfuge

*Dutilleux: L'arbes des songes (1985) [30]*

_Submitted by Allegro Con Brio_


----------



## Allegro Con Brio

I like Dutilleux because his music is lush, dreamy, and ravishing like my other favorite contemporary composers Messiaen, Takemitsu, and Boulez; you can really hear the French Impressionist thread running through it. I love all the works of his that I've heard - the cello concerto _Tout un monde lountain_, Symphonies 1 and 2, the piano sonata, but most of all his late song cycle Correspondances struck me as incredibly genius, but it just missed the cutoff for this thread. So I chose this violin concerto in all but name. I normally don't like the sound of the solo violin, but for some reason I like several 20th century and contemporary violin concerti and this is one of them. Wiki says:

_According to the composer, it is based on a process of continual growth and renewal (hence the title): "All in all the piece grows somewhat like a tree, for the constant multiplication and renewal of its branches is the lyrical essence of the tree. This symbolic image, as well as the notion of a seasonal cycle, inspired my choice of 'L'arbre des songes' [The Tree of Dreams] as the title of the piece."_

And here's a great essay on Dutilleux from Tom Service's consistently interesting series on contemporary composers.

Last time I submitted a work for this group the reaction was almost universally negative, so hopefully either things go better this time or I just have minority tastes

And for the Francophiles - can anyone clarify the proper pronunciation of "Dutilleux?" As far as I know it's something like Doot-ee-yö with the umlaut o on the last syllable, but I'm probably missing something.


----------



## Phil loves classical

It's an intriguing work. Nothing really jumps out at me, but worth listening. I like his quartet better.


----------



## tortkis

This is a very fine piece with many impressive moments. I am not a big fan of modern/contemporary orchestral works in general, but the delicate texture of this work attracts me.


----------



## Kilgore Trout

Allegro Con Brio said:


> And for the Francophiles - can anyone clarify the proper pronunciation of "Dutilleux?" As far as I know it's something like Doot-ee-yö with the umlaut o on the last syllable, but I'm probably missing something.


As sounds are better than words, this is the right pronunciation:


----------



## 20centrfuge

I listened to the Dutilleux about 4 times today. I REALLY LIKE IT ALOT. A very cool piece that makes me want to explore this composer more.


----------



## 20centrfuge

*1980-2000 LISTENING GROUP - WRAP UP*

Which pieces have been revelations to you?

How have you enjoyed this experience? What would you change about it?


----------



## 20centrfuge

Here are the pieces we explored:

1. Adès: Living Toys, Op.9 (1993), [20] (20centrfuge)
2. Arnold: Symphony No. 9, Op. 128 (1986) [50] (Phil loves classical)
3. Benjamin: Palimpsests (1998-2002) [20] (Enthusiast)
4. Berio, Voci "Folk Songs II" (1984) [30] (PeterfromLA)
5. Birtwistle: The Cry of Anubis for Tuba and Orchestra (1994) [15] (Enthusiast)
6. Boulez: Sur Incises (1996-1998) [35] (mmsbls)
7. Carter: Symphonia: sum fluxae pretium spei (1993-96) [45] Blancrocher
8. Corigliano: Symphony No. 1 (1988-1989) [40] (SuperTonic)
9. Davies: Concerto for Trumpet (1988) [30] (20centrfuge)
10. Dhomont: Forêt profonde (1994-96) [60] (Trout)
11. Dutilleaux: L'arbes des songes (1985) (Allegro Con Brio)
12. Ferneyhough: Kurtze Schatten II (1983-19890 [15] (Kjetil Heggelund)
13. Gann: Long Night (1980-81) [25] (tortkis)
14. Garland, Peter: String Quartet No. 1, "In Praise of Poor Scholars" (1986) [20] (tortkis)
15. Gubaidulina: Jetzt immer Schnee for chamber ensemble and chamber choir (1993) [30] (Art Rock)
16. Johnston, Ben: String Quartet No. 7 (1984) [25] (SuperTonic)
17. Kurtag: Grabstein für Stephan, Op. 15c (1989) [10] (Kjetil Heggelund)
18. Ligeti: Piano Concerto (1988) [25] (Phil loves classical)
19. Lutoslawski: Piano Concerto "For Krystian Zimerman" (1988) [25] (Blancrocher)
20. Manoury: Pluton for Piano and Live Electronics (1988-89) [50] (calvinpv)
21. Messiaen: Éclairs sur l'au-delà... (1991) [60] (BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist)
22. Murail: Désintégrations (1983) [25] (mmsbls)
23. Nono: "Hay que caminar" soñando (1989) [20] (Portamento)
24. Penderecki: Song of the Cherubim (1986) [10] & Nystedt: Immortal Bach (1988) [5] (Ravn)
25. Rautavaara: Symphony No. 7 "Angel of Light" (1994) [35] (Ravn)
26. Rihm: Jagden und Formen (1995-2001, revised 2008) [50] (calvinpv)
27. Ruders: Solar Trilogy (Knorf)
28. Saariaho: Du cristal...à la fumée (1989) [40] (Kjetil Heggelund)
29. Sallinen: Songs of Life and Death, for baritone, choir and orchestra, Op. 69 (1995) [45] (Art Rock)
30. Sciarrino: Luci mie traditrici (1998)
31. Schnittke: Symphony No. 5 "Concerto Grosso No. 4" (1988) [35] (PeterFromLA)
32. Takemitsu: From Me Flows What You Call Time (1990) [25] (BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist)
33. Vivier: Lonely Child (1980) [20] (Trout)
34. Xenakis: A l'île de Gorée (1986) [15] (Portamento)


----------



## 20centrfuge

*The ones that I hadn't heard before that made the biggest impact on me are:*

Benjamin: Palimpsests: I really worked to listen to this piece and I thought it really, really worked.

Birtwistle: The Cry of Anubis for Tuba and Orchestra: I'd never heard tuba as such a heroic dynamic instrument. I loved this piece.

Dhomont: Forêt profonde: I really climbed into this one. I felt like I really understood the call to the subconscious that this piece makes.

Ferneyhough: Kurtze Schatten II: The guitar virtuosity left me spellbound.

Kurtag: Grabstein für Stephan, Op. 15c: A dynamite work

Gann: Long Night: Long Night was really good, but what really did it for me is that it provided a springboard into some of Gann's amazing just-intonation works.

Johnston, Ben: String Quartet No. 7: I thought the microtonal aspect of this was super fascinating.

Nono: "Hay que caminar" soñando: So stark, it's music that took me to a place I hadn't been before.

Schnittke: Symphony No. 5 "Concerto Grosso No. 4": For me, easily the most attractive work by Schnittke I'd ever heard.

Sciarrino: Luci mie traditrici (1998): This opera was so cool. I really enjoy how Sciarrino uses the instruments in guttural, visceral, ways with the sound of woodwind keypads smacking and alternate flute and string techniques. The singing and writing also really captured that sense of nervousness or torment that the characters experience.

Xenakis: A l'île de Gorée: The use of harpsichord in this was right up my alley. Loved it!


----------



## 20centrfuge

*What did I like about this?*

On the whole I think it was a very valuable experience. I got to know a bunch of works that I NEVER would have heard otherwise. Some of which are new favorites for me.

*
What would I change about this?*

I think it would be nice to have more people participating and to make the total number of weeks that the thread runs be a little shorter. Interest declined towards the end -- myself included. Maybe 20 weeks is an ideal length of time.

I also really like that we took a brief pause to pick an opera together. That type of spontaneity and consensus-chosen listening is fun.

Sometimes I feel like people are put down if they say they don't like a work. In general, I think we should not come down on people if they don't like something. We all have to be willing to admit that sometimes we just don't understand a certain composer or their music just doesn't call to us. Let's be honest - this music can sometimes require serious demands on the listener. Sometimes that leads to huge rewards, but sometimes it, well... doesn't.


----------



## Phil loves classical

The ones that impacted me were ones by bigger names, Rihm's Jagden, Boulez's Sur Incises, Murail's Desintegrations, Carter's Symphonia, Ligeti's Piano Concerto, Schnittke's Symphony No. 5. I'm all for discovering smaller names, and giving the underdogs a chance over the well-known champs, but this thread made me realize the big names are big for a reason. Even though I'm not a huge fan of Saariaho or Davies at all, I found her Graal Theatre and his Trumpet Concerto more distinguishing than a lot of smaller names. 

One work by a bigger name Corigliano didn't impact me nearly as well as I remembered before (that was before Knorf's scathing review!) I was a fan of Johnston's String Quartet No. 7 before, but it hasn't worn well with me lately at all, I think I got over my initial enthusiasim for micotonality.

This thread was a great way to be exposed to lesser known works. I didn't find it too long. I always was excited to hear a new work or rediscover one and see how it affected me.


----------



## Kilgore Trout

Phil loves classical said:


> The ones that impacted me were ones by bigger names, Rihm's Jagden, Boulez's Sur Incises, Murail's Desintegrations, Carter's Symphonia, Ligeti's Piano Concerto, Schnittke's Symphony No. 5. I'm all for discovering smaller names, and giving the underdogs a chance over the well-known champs, but this thread made me realize the big names are big for a reason.


Wait, who isn't a big name in that list? Dhomont, Gann, Garland and Nystedt are the only one whom I would call "underdogs". All the other ones are "major" and very well known.


----------



## Allegro Con Brio

Thanks for the group, 20cent! I think it could be fairly said that it helped me get into contemporary music. One week back in April I decided to listen to the Boulez Sur Incises just for the heck of it because it was featured here, and I thought it was absolutely ravishing. No turning back at that point! I'd say more than any other period there's about an equal amount of contemporary music that I dislike and love, but there's certainly much to explore and much to cherish and this group has given me a great taste of the scope of its potential.

I'd say, besides the Boulez, my favorite work that I discovered was the Rihm Jagden und Formen. Wow, what music that is! Next would be Vivier's Lonely Child, which I thought to be haunting and profound. I also loved Lutoslawski's piano concerto, Saariaho's Graal Theatre, and Johnston's 7th quartet. Stuff that is still beyond my comprehension/personal tolerance - all electronic music.


----------



## calvinpv

*Which pieces have made the biggest impact?*

Besides the ones I already knew:

Sciarrino's _Luci mie traditrici_: Yes, I did pick it for our opera week, but I didn't know it other than hearing a recording once about 5 years ago. I remember thinking it was weird back then, but I was new to contemporary classical at the time, so decided to give it another shot with this listening group. And my goodness, did I make the right call! I'm in total agreement with 20centrfuge with this one.

Gann's _Long Night_ and Garland's _String Quartet 1_: These pieces weren't my absolute favorites of the group (though I did like them). But what they did do was expose me to some names outside the mainstream American minimalist movement. Reich, Riley, Glass, and both John Adams are all I know about American minimalism, and though I certainly don't hate this kind of music, I sometimes fall into the trap of viewing this music as all sounding the same. But hearing new perspectives of minimalism in Gann and Garland helped shake me from my slumber.

Carter's _Symphonia: sum fluxae prestium spei_: Granted I haven't heard many of Carter's works, but his music has never done anything for me. However, this symphony was fabulous. Listening to it made me want to give Carter another shot (though I haven't followed up on that yet).

Finally, though I was already familiar with Manoury's _Pluton_ and Rihm's _Jagden und Formen_ before presenting them to the group, I really enjoyed doing the preparation for my presentations, reading about the composers and their music, listening to related works by them and other composers, and just thinking about broader questions of musical aesthetics as they pertain to these two works and other contemporary music. And if I remember correctly, I did some reading up on Boulez and Vivier as well. I think I learned that I enjoy reading and thinking about music as much as do listening to it.

Unfortunately, there were two pieces that, after hearing them again for the group, I'm now less enthusiastic for:

Dhomont's _Forêt profonde_: There is too much spoken text, turning the work into a word puzzle that you have to crack the code to, like you're in dream analysis with a psychoanalyst. It was just too much effort for me the listener. For me, Dhomont failed to strike the right balance between word and sound; someone like Natasha Barrett is a much better acousmatic composer in this regard.

Messiaen's _Éclairs sur l'au-delà_: Messiaen really needed to cut out some of the repeat sections, especially when those sections have very little interesting material to begin with (the first movement was particularly egregious with repeats).

*How have I enjoyed this experience?*

Like everyone else, just hearing new and exciting music is always a plus, especially in a setting conducive to learning about the music, learning about others' opinions about the music, etc.

*What would I change about it?*

Maybe another opera, but I think this went as well as it could have.


----------



## tortkis

This has been a very nice opportunity to find new works (I liked Nystedt, Xenakis, MacMillan, Rihm, Arnold, Manoury) and to re-listen to works I liked but hadn't heard for a long time (Messiaen, Schnittke, Dutilleux, Johnston, etc.), though I didn't participate every round. I purchased recordings of Rihm and Arnold and may get some others for later re-listening. I liked the slow pace that allowed me to listen to each work multiple times. It is amazing to see there are so many varieties of music in the period.


----------



## Knorf

This was a fun thread. The only thing I'd change is to make sure there had been more pieces by women.


----------

