# Most "colorful" Composers/Works



## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

Who, in your opinion, wrote several works that create vivid imagery in your mind?

and/or

What works stand out to you as being extremely vivid?


I'll vote for Debussy and Ravel right off the bat. Chopin's Nocturnes are very picturesque as well!


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## ST4 (Oct 27, 2016)

Debussy and Ravel are both early 20th c/ posterboys but there's plenty more. 

Even earlier on you got Berlioz. 

Later on you got Messiaen, Stockhausen and Boulez, who where all influenced by Debussy. Then there's Takemitsu, also influenced by Debussy.

I'd say that Debussy is your go-to dude when it comes to "Mr Influence", everyone loves him (even if his music is super-old fashioned now). His sense of timbral, harmonic and contrapuntal color is only really paralleled by Webern around the same time-frame. 

This kind of color has essentially swept up contemporary music, in someways Ligeti was also a late century posterboy for this two, being a big inspiration on the whole Spectral jam (check that stuff out, it's marvelous).


It all depends on what you own personal meaning in asking this was though, do you just want 4-part parallel harmony? there's more of that too.



Cheers Captain :tiphat:


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

ST4 said:


> Debussy and Ravel are both early 20th c/ posterboys but there's plenty more.
> 
> Even earlier on you got Berlioz.
> 
> ...


I'll look into some of those composers you have mentioned!


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

This is hitting the spot right now, I love Impressionistic music!


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## ST4 (Oct 27, 2016)

Captainnumber36 said:


> I'll look into some of those composers you have mentioned!


You like mallets right?


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## Bettina (Sep 29, 2016)

A lot of Russian music is very colorful, especially Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade and Borodin's Polovtsian Dances. Very picturesque and exotic, with many interesting orchestral effects.


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## ST4 (Oct 27, 2016)

Bettina said:


> A lot of Russian music is very colorful, especially Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade and Borodin's Polovtsian Dances. Very picturesque and exotic, with many interesting orchestral effects.


Yes, anything late romantic or "impressionist" is also bound to tick a box or two


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## ST4 (Oct 27, 2016)

Captainnumber36 said:


> I'll look into some of those composers you have mentioned!


Let me pick some pieces so that you don't have a heartattack?


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## Klassik (Mar 14, 2017)

Bettina said:


> A lot of Russian music is very colorful, especially Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade and Borodin's Polovtsian Dances. Very picturesque and exotic, with many interesting orchestral effects.


Yes, very true. I'm glad you mentioned the often overlooked Rimsky-Korsakov. Along the same lines, Respighi delivers some excellent works in this regard. I'm not sure if "colorful" is the word that comes to mind when I think of Respighi, but I think the description works in some ways.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

Bettina said:


> A lot of Russian music is very colorful, especially Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade and Borodin's Polovtsian Dances. Very picturesque and exotic, with many interesting orchestral effects.


I was going to mention those two as well. Borodin is particularly good at creating a sense of the exotic; think, for example, of _In the Steppes of Central Asia_. What a vividly evocative piece it is. 

And of course, when we think of Rimsky-Korsakov, we think almost automatically of _Scheherezade_, which is a sort of _Carmina Burana_ for the Arab world, i.e. it shaped popular opinion of a specific time and place, without necessarily reflecting the whole truth. Or put a different way, both works create a kind of "Hollywoodized" version of respectively the Middle Ages and the Arab world.

I wonder if Borodin ever cooked up some colorful chemicals in his lab...


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

Any good Chamber Music suggestions that fit this criteria?


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

brianvds said:


> I was going to mention those two as well. Borodin is particularly good at creating a sense of the exotic; think, for example, of _In the Steppes of Central Asia_. What a vividly evocative piece it is.
> 
> And of course, when we think of Rimsky-Korsakov, we think almost automatically of _Scheherezade_, which is a sort of _Carmina Burana_ for the Arab world, i.e. it shaped popular opinion of a specific time and place, without necessarily reflecting the whole truth. Or put a different way, both works create a kind of "Hollywoodized" version of respectively the Middle Ages and the Arab world.
> 
> I wonder if Borodin ever cooked up some colorful chemicals in his lab...


Listening now!


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## Omicron9 (Oct 13, 2016)

Captainnumber36 said:


> Any good Chamber Music suggestions that fit this criteria?


Morton Feldman: Piano and String Quartet:


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

Beethoven's 6th must be mentioned!


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

Michael Torke. Literally (he uses his synaesthesia to convert colours into music).


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## DeepR (Apr 13, 2012)

You may want to look into ambient music as well.
In a certain way it's impressionist music taken to its extreme. It's formless, free, without rules and it goes nowhere. But that's the beauty of it. It's painting with sounds. The good stuff is incredibly atmospheric.

Brian Eno - Dunwich Beach, Autumn, 1960


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Along with the already mentioned Debussy and Ravel, I would have to add Ives and Copland.

Ives' Concord Piano Sonata and Third Symphony are especially evocative of a more relaxed New England from about 100 years ago.

Copland's Rodeo and Billy the Kid are evocative of the old American West and Appalachian Spring is pure poetry, evocative of Appalachia, and is one of the great American ballets.

Colorful for me means "evocative".


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Arthur Bliss: _A Colour Symphony_: I have always loved this piece, and it certainly fulfills the OP's request....


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

And how about Janacek's Sinfonietta? All fire and spice, and a neat bridge between Dvorak and Bartok.


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## E Cristobal Poveda (Jul 12, 2017)

If by color you mean light and fun, I think Saint-Saens might suffice. Pleasant light listening.


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## Brahmsian Colors (Sep 16, 2016)

Captainnumber36 said:


> Any good Chamber Music suggestions that fit this criteria?


I tend to agree with with those who acknowledge the colorful contributions associated with Russian composers, especially one of my big favorites, Borodin. Despite the fact he did not complete several of his chamber pieces, he did leave us a few whose melodies can be both colorful and endearing, the most salient being his String Quartet No.2. There is also his String Quartet No.1 and Piano Quintet in C Minor.

As for Debussy and Ravel, it's hard to ignore their evocative string quartets. Each also composed a piano trio. One might also check out some of the more prominent chamber works of another Frenchman, Gabriel Faure.


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## Lisztian (Oct 10, 2011)

I would add Stravinsky to those listed in this thread.


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## Klassik (Mar 14, 2017)

hpowders said:


> Along with the already mentioned Debussy and Ravel, I would have to add Ives and Copland.
> 
> Ives' Concord Piano Sonata and Third Symphony are especially evocative of a more relaxed New England from about 100 years ago.
> 
> ...


Along those same lines, Ferde Grofé's suites (at least the more famous ones like the Grand Canyon Suite, Mississippi Suite, Niagara Falls Suite, Death Valley Suite, and the Hudson River Suite) really give you a taste of Americana. While the Grand Canyon and Mississippi Suites are probably his best known works, I actually enjoy the Niagara Falls Suite the most. You really get a sense of the power of the falls when listening to it.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

For me:

Ravel (a work like Daphnis et Chloe is a perfect demonstration)
Delius (I'm tempted to say: everything composed by him, I remember thinking of him as a sort of Maxfield Parrish of classical music)
Charles Loffler (I actually have listened just "La mort de Tintagiles" the other day because a member posted it and I thought it was an extremely colorful work)
John Foulds (stuff like Three mantras or April England)
Lord Berners (the favorite english composer of Stravinsky)
Radames Gnattali (the suite Retratos for instance)
George Gerswhin (an american in Paris)


for chamber music the octets of Alec Wilder are amazing.


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## ST4 (Oct 27, 2016)

For Captain, sorry it took a while. This is in the order of father to son to son:
















Mallets, dynamics, the ghost of papa Debussy, so much information, so much beauty too.

I really hope you enjoy these Captain, they all also happen to be some very well acclaimed works you may or may not already know. I just love that all three of them have such an extensive range of dynamics (aka sometimes it's FFFF and sometimes its p).

I shouldn't have to go through all the colorful orchestration with you (as the purpose of the thread), listen and enjoy :cheers:


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

I'm going to check out some of the youtube's posted in this thread after I finish up Ravel's SQ in F Major!

:tiphat:


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

Some of Beethoven's late SQs could certainly apply here. In fact, this Ravel SQ in F Major reminds me of a late Beethoven SQ.


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## ST4 (Oct 27, 2016)

Captainnumber36 said:


> I'm going to check out some of the youtube's posted in this thread after I finish up Ravel's SQ in F Major!
> 
> :tiphat:


Great! Hope you enjoy. Two of them are longer, the other one (Gruppen) is smaller but condensed with lots of things happening.

To this day I'm still shocked and amazed how beautiful some of it is but at the least, it's highly colorful (and relevant to hear) :tiphat:


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

Lisztian said:


> I would add Stravinsky to those listed in this thread.


I highly agree with this!


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

Strange Magic said:


> Arthur Bliss: _A Colour Symphony_: I have always loved this piece, and it certainly fulfills the OP's request....


Listening now!


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## ST4 (Oct 27, 2016)

Captainnumber36 said:


> I'm going to check out some of the youtube's posted in this thread after I finish up Ravel's SQ in F Major!
> 
> :tiphat:


Cool, I look forward to hearing your thoughts :cheers:


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Sibelius' tone poems are full of color. Also Glazunov's _Stenka Razin_. Almost all your "nationalist" composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries were writing wonderful, magical, colorful music, much of it tone poems of one sort or another. A phenomenon.


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

I've come to the conclusion that all music is colorful, it's just put to us to decide which colors we hear in the music and decide what is for us.

I'm over having to find consistency across my taste in art.

I love Mozart, but find Michelangelo boring, but I'd say Mozart's music reflects Michelangelo's style and subject matter. Heroic & divine.


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