# 20th Century Classical Music - One Tune A Day



## Guest (Sep 10, 2018)

Atonal, dodecaphonic, and serial compositions - One Tune A Day - *

September 10th...*

Béla Bartók - "Eight Improvisations on Hungarian Peasant Songs" - Jenő Jandó


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## Guest (Sep 10, 2018)

Atonal, dodecaphonic, and serial compositions - One Tune A Day - *

September 11th...
*

Alban Berg - "Kammerkonzert (1/3)" - (1925) -






Wolfgang Marschner, violino; Paul Jacobs, pianoforte -- Köln Radio Symphony Orchestra directed by Hermann Scherchen (Colonia 2.III.1959)


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## Guest (Sep 10, 2018)

Atonal, dodecaphonic, and serial compositions - One Tune A Day -

*September 12th...*

*Tadeusz Baird - "Canzona for orchestra" - (1981) -*






Polish Radio National Symphony Orchestra, Warsaw directed by Jan Krenz.


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

did I read it correctly? Did you really write one _tune _a day? :lol:


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## SuperTonic (Jun 3, 2010)

I'm fairly certain the Bartok you linked to is neither atonal, dodecaphonic, or serial. I'm not aware that Bartok ever used any of those compositional techniques.


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

Karol Husa _Prague 1968_






Many great performances on You Tube. Above one of the better live one.


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

SuperTonic said:


> I'm fairly certain the Bartok you linked to is neither atonal, dodecaphonic, or serial. I'm not aware that Bartok ever used any of those compositional techniques.


OK polytonal, bitonal and pentatonic sometimes bitonal and pentatonic at the same time.. It's also atonal because it lacks a tonal centre. It's not atonal as in early (pre-twelve tone) Second Viennese school .


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

It's certainly not diatonic. It lies somewhere in that huge, expansive, ambiguous region of music of "free harmonic relations." That's an area where we have left diatonic scales, and notes begin to have relationships to each other in terms of sonorities which float freely. Sometimes they are centric, momentarily, but often rotate out of that, into another orbit. I don't call it "atonal" or "free atonal" because it isn't chromatic enough. Sometimes this kind of quasi-tonal music will deal with one particular aspect of harmony, such as a division of the octave into 3 or 4 equal parts, giving whole-tone and diminished sounds.


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## Guest (Sep 10, 2018)

SuperTonic said:


> I'm fairly certain the Bartok you linked to is neither atonal, dodecaphonic, or serial. I'm not aware that Bartok ever used any of those compositional techniques.


"The first movement, Molto moderato, the original melody is repeated three times without not much variation and a coda at the end. The mode of this melody comes from the Dorian mode scale on C, but the accompaniment plays unrelated triad chords, all of them derived from melody notes.

In the second movement, Molto capriccioso, the main melody is repeated also three times, but here, even though it shares its Dorian mode on C, there are fragments written in Mixolydian mode, its rhythm is much more syncopated, there are much more sudden tempo changes and it is much more dissonant than the first.

The third movement, Lento rubato, is polytonal.

The fourth, Allegretto scherzando, is a very quick scherzo-like movement.

The fifth movement, Allegro molto, uses the pentatonic scale and also counterpoint and polytonal harmonies all along the movement.

The sixth movement, Allegro moderato, molto capriccioso, is a bitonal movement; one hand plays only in the black keys of the piano, making a melody on a pentatonic scale, while the other hand uses all of the white keys, which create dissonances.

The seventh movement, Sostenuto, rubato, is dedicated to the memory of French composer Claude Debussy, for Bartók's music was very influenced by Debussy's style when Bartók was a young composer. It was published separately from this work in a memorial supplement of La revue musicale, published in December 1920 and dedicated to late Debussy, even though this movement contains no references to any of Debussy's works nor to his composition style.

The eighth movement, Allegro, is in a variation form, and its melody is repeated over and over, like in the first movement. The melody is somehow similar to that of the second movement."

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight_Improvisations_on_Hungarian_Peasant_Songs


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## Guest (Sep 10, 2018)

Better lay down some definitions... and perhaps put in an order for lawyers, guns, and money...

*Atonality* -

Atonality in its broadest sense is music that lacks a tonal center, or key.

Atonality, in this sense, usually describes compositions written from about 1908 to the present day where a hierarchy of pitches focusing on a single, central tone is not used, and the notes of the chromatic scale function independently of one another.

More narrowly, the term atonality describes music that does not conform to the system of tonal hierarchies that characterized classical European music between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries . The repertory of atonal music is characterized by the occurrence of pitches in novel combinations, as well as by the occurrence of familiar pitch combinations in unfamiliar environments.

More narrowly still, the term is sometimes used to describe music that is neither tonal nor serial, especially the pre-twelve-tone music of the Second Viennese School, principally Alban Berg, Arnold Schoenberg, and Anton Webern. However, "[a]s a categorical label, 'atonal' generally means only that the piece is in the Western tradition and is not 'tonal'", although there are longer periods, e.g., medieval, renaissance, and modern modal musics to which this definition does not apply.

Serialism arose partly as a means of organizing more coherently the relations used in the pre-serial 'free atonal' music. Thus many useful and crucial insights about even strictly serial music depend only on such basic atonal theory.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atonality

*Twelve-tone technique*

Twelve-tone technique-also known as dodecaphony, twelve-tone serialism, and (in British usage) twelve-note composition-is a method of musical composition devised by Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) and associated with the "Second Viennese School" composers, who were the primary users of the technique in the first decades of its existence.

The technique is a means of ensuring that all 12 notes of the chromatic scale are sounded as often as one another in a piece of music while preventing the emphasis of any one note through the use of tone rows, orderings of the 12 pitch classes. All 12 notes are thus given more or less equal importance, and the music avoids being in a key.

Over time, the technique increased greatly in popularity and eventually became widely influential on 20th-century composers. Schoenberg himself described the system as a "Method of composing with twelve tones which are related only with one another". It is commonly considered a form of serialism.

Schoenberg's countryman and contemporary Josef Matthias Hauer also developed a similar system using unordered hexachords or tropes-but with no connection to Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique. Other composers have created systematic use of the chromatic scale, but Schoenberg's method is considered to be historically and aesthetically most significant.

In practice, the "rules" of twelve-tone technique have been bent and broken many times, not least by Schoenberg himself. For instance, in some pieces two or more tone rows may be heard progressing at once, or there may be parts of a composition which are written freely, without recourse to the twelve-tone technique at all.

Offshoots or variations may produce music in which: 
- the full chromatic is used and constantly circulates, but permutational devices are ignored
- permutational devices are used but not on the full chromatic

Also, some composers, including Stravinsky, have used cyclic permutation, or rotation, where the row is taken in order but using a different starting note. Stravinsky also preferred the inverse-retrograde, rather than the retrograde-inverse, treating the former as the compositionally predominant, "untransposed" form.

Although usually atonal, twelve tone music need not be-several pieces by Berg, for instance, have tonal elements.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve-tone_technique

*Serialism*

In music, serialism is a method of composition using series of pitches, rhythms, dynamics, timbres or other musical elements. Serialism began primarily with Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique, though some of his contemporaries were also working to establish serialism as a form of post-tonal thinking.

Twelve-tone technique orders the twelve notes of the chromatic scale, forming a row or series and providing a unifying basis for a composition's melody, harmony, structural progressions, and variations. Other types of serialism also work with sets, collections of objects, but not necessarily with fixed-order series, and extend the technique to other musical dimensions (often called "parameters"), such as duration, dynamics, and timbre.

Serialism is not by itself a system of composition, nor is it a style. Neither is pitch serialism necessarily incompatible with tonality, though it is most often used as a means of composing atonal music.

"Serial music" is a problematic term because it is used differently in different languages and especially because, shortly after its coinage in French, it underwent essential alterations during its transmission to German.

Twelve-tone serialism - Serialism of the first type is most specifically defined as the structural principle according to which a recurring series of ordered elements (normally a set-or row-of pitches or pitch classes) are used in order or manipulated in particular ways to give a piece unity.

Serialism is often broadly applied to all music written in what Arnold Schoenberg called "The Method of Composing with Twelve Notes related only to one another", or dodecaphony, and methods that evolved from his methods.

It is sometimes used more specifically to apply only to music where at least one element other than pitch is subjected to being treated as a row or series. In such usages post-Webernian serialism will be used to denote works that extend serial techniques to other elements of music. Other terms used to make the distinction are twelve-note serialism for the former and integral serialism for the latter.

Non-twelve-tone serialism - The series is not an order of succession, but indeed a hierarchy-which may be independent of this order of succession.

Rules of analysis derived from twelve-tone theory do not apply to serialism of the second type: "in particular the ideas, one, that the series is an intervallic sequence, and two, that the rules are consistent".

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serialism

Got all that? Okay... we now return you to our regularly scheduled thread...

"Atonality, dodecaphonic, and serial compositions" - One *Tune* A Day...


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## Torkelburger (Jan 14, 2014)

September 10
12-tone technique:


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## Tallisman (May 7, 2017)

One "tune" a day? Shall we start with this charming ditty from Webern? Or a Boulez jingle?


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## Guest (Sep 11, 2018)

Atonal, dodecaphonic, and serial compositions - One Tune A Day -

*September 13th...*

*John J. Becker - "Concerto Arabesque" - (1930)*


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## Guest (Sep 11, 2018)

Tallisman said:


> One "tune" a day? Shall we start with this charming ditty from Webern? Or a Boulez jingle?


Note to self: Use irony judiciously...


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## Guest (Sep 11, 2018)

Atonal, dodecaphonic, and serial compositions - One Tune A Day -

*September 14th...*

*Hanns Eisler: "Palmström" - (1926)*






Mitglieder der Orchester-Academie Berlin


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Sydney Nova Scotia said:


> Better lay down some definitions... and perhaps put in an order for lawyers, guns, and money...
> 
> *Atonality* -
> 
> ...


These definitions or OK as far as that goes, but leave a lot to be desired. In other words, I see a big gap here that needs to be filled. I think it's misleading to use the tonal/atonal dichotomy, because so much music lies in the cracks between.

There are ways of looking at music which takes into consideration all 12 notes, and different kinds of relations between these notes, that is not primarily a matter of "tonality" or "tone-centricity" as an overriding consideration. Neo-Riemann theory is emerging as the best way to deal with music in the modern era.

Music is always going to have a 'harmonic' aspect, as part of the sound itself, aside from whether it is tone-centric or not. Our ears hear sound in this way.

A major or minor triad in isolation is "tone-centric" because it has a third, a fifth, and a root. It's _larger _centricity depends on how it is used in relation to other triads, and in longer passages. Debussy used parallel triads, and moved them around however he wanted. They had no traditional function, but they worked.

The real "culprit" in this tonal/atonal debate is diatonicism. Our entire Western system is founded on diatonic heptatonic scales. The primacy of the C major scale, and its counterpoint on the piano keyboard, is evidence of this. The key signature system exemplifies diatonicism, not tone-centricity or tonality in any broader sense. Tonality is nearly ubiquitous in every music created by Man, and diatonicism holds no exclusive right to this.

With Neo-Riemann analysis, we can begin to see the symmetries of relations in triads, and how these can be moved and manipulated. Music is harmonic, and has "centricities" which expand outward into larger and larger schemes. The more we examine and question "tonality," the more we begin to see that it is just a relative term.

For me, atonal music is a term referring to 12-tone and serial music which does not have a tonal hierarchy, and is also highly chromatic, and this means the 12 notes are in constant circulation. In other words, by its very nature, it avoids any sence of tone-centricity except in mopmentary glimpses of harmonic occurences, which usually do not refer to any other aspects of the work; thus, "tonality" is not present in any larger sense except singular events of harmonic color. And I hesitate to call this "tonality."


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## Guest (Sep 12, 2018)

SuperTonic said:


> I'm fairly certain the Bartok you linked to is neither atonal, dodecaphonic, or serial. I'm not aware that Bartok ever used any of those compositional techniques.





Taggart said:


> OK polytonal, bitonal and pentatonic sometimes bitonal and pentatonic at the same time.. It's also atonal because it lacks a tonal centre. It's not atonal as in early (pre-twelve tone) Second Viennese school .





millionrainbows said:


> It's certainly not diatonic. It lies somewhere in that huge, expansive, ambiguous region of music of "free harmonic relations." That's an area where we have left diatonic scales, and notes begin to have relationships to each other in terms of sonorities which float freely. Sometimes they are centric, momentarily, but often rotate out of that, into another orbit. I don't call it "atonal" or "free atonal" because it isn't chromatic enough. Sometimes this kind of quasi-tonal music will deal with one particular aspect of harmony, such as a division of the octave into 3 or 4 equal parts, giving whole-tone and diminished sounds.


Musical Analysis

Paul Wilson lists as the most prominent characteristics of Bartók's music from late 1920s onwards the influence of the Carpathian basin and European art music, and his changing attitude toward (and use of) tonality, but without the use of the traditional harmonic functions associated with major and minor scales.

Although Bartók claimed in his writings that his music was always tonal, he rarely uses the chords or scales of tonality, and so the descriptive resources of tonal theory are of limited use.

George Perle (1955) and Elliott Antokoletz (1984) focus on alternative methods of signaling tonal centers, via axes of inversional symmetry. Others view Bartók's axes of symmetry in terms of atonal analytic protocols.

Richard Cohn argues that inversional symmetry is often a byproduct of another atonal procedure, the formation of chords from transpositionally related dyads. Atonal pitch-class theory also furnishes the resources for exploring polymodal chromaticism, projected sets, privileged patterns, and large set types used as source sets such as the equal tempered twelve tone aggregate, octatonic scale (and alpha chord), the diatonic and heptatonia secunda seven-note scales, and less often the whole tone scale and the primary pentatonic collection.

He rarely used the simple aggregate actively to shape musical structure, though there are notable examples such as the second theme from the first movement of his Second Violin Concerto, commenting that he "wanted to show Schoenberg that one can use all twelve tones and still remain tonal."

More thoroughly, in the first eight measures of the last movement of his Second Quartet, all notes gradually gather with the twelfth (G♭) sounding for the first time on the last beat of measure 8, marking the end of the first section. The aggregate is partitioned in the opening of the Third String Quartet with C♯-D-D♯-E in the accompaniment (strings) while the remaining pitch classes are used in the melody (violin 1) and more often as 7-35 (diatonic or "white-key" collection) and 5-35 (pentatonic or "black-key" collection) such as in no. 6 of the Eight Improvisations. There, the primary theme is on the black keys in the left hand, while the right accompanies with triads from the white keys. In measures 50-51 in the third movement of the Fourth Quartet, the first violin and cello play black-key chords, while the second violin and viola play stepwise diatonic lines.

On the other hand, from as early as the Suite for piano, Op. 14 (1914), he occasionally employed a form of serialism based on compound interval cycles, some of which are maximally distributed, multi-aggregate cycles.

Ernő Lendvai (1971) analyses Bartók's works as being based on two opposing tonal systems, that of the acoustic scale and the axis system, as well as using the golden section as a structural principle.

Milton Babbitt, in his 1949 critique of Bartók's string quartets, criticized Bartók for using tonality and non tonal methods unique to each piece. Babbitt noted that "Bartók's solution was a specific one, it cannot be duplicated." Bartók's use of "two organizational principles"-tonality for large scale relationships and the piece-specific method for moment to moment thematic elements-was a problem for Babbitt, who worried that the "highly attenuated tonality" requires extreme non-harmonic methods to create a feeling of closure.

https://courses.lumenlearning.com/musicapp-medieval-modern/chapter/bela-bartok/


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## Guest (Sep 12, 2018)

Atonal, dodecaphonic, and serial compositions - One Tune A Day -

*September 15th...*

*Jean Barraqué - "Au dela du Hasard: No. 1, La nuit sans rayons"

*




Rosemary Hardy (Mezzo Soprano), Klangforum Wien conducted by Jurg Wyttenbach


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

Sydney Nova Scotia said:


> Musical Analysis
> 
> Paul Wilson lists as the most prominent characteristics of Bartók's music from late 1920s onwards the influence of the Carpathian basin and European art music, and his changing attitude toward (and use of) tonality, but without the use of the traditional harmonic functions associated with major and minor scales.
> 
> ...


There were some contradicting analyses of Bartok's music both from tonal and atonal standpoints. A lot of his simpler music is modal. Personally I hear him as tonal with varying degrees. Even this one I feel is tonal in a very general sense, with a centre that shifts from time to time.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

For a good explanation of Bartok's methods, see these. Excellent, clear, concise explanations.


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

I ran into a gentleman who thought Holst's _Planets_ was atonal,


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## Guest (Sep 13, 2018)

Atonal, dodecaphonic, and serial compositions - One Tune A Day -

*September 16th...*

*Alban Berg - "Wozzeck" - Op. 7, Act I: "Langsam, Wozzeck, langsam!" *











Houston Symphony conducted by Hans Graf.

2017 Grammy Award Winner - "Best Opera Recording"

Alban Maria Johannes Berg - February 9, 1885 - December 24, 1935 was an Austrian composer of the Second Viennese School. His compositional style combined Romantic lyricism with twelve-tone technique.

"Wozzeck" is generally regarded as the first opera produced in the 20th-century avant-garde style and is also one of the most famous examples of employing atonality and Sprechgesang.

Berg was following in the footsteps of his teacher, Arnold Schoenberg, by using free atonality to express emotions and even the thought processes of the characters on the stage. The expression of madness and alienation was amplified with atonal music.

Though the music is atonal in the sense that it does not follow the techniques of the major/minor tonality system dominant in the West during the Baroque, Classical, and Romantic periods, the piece is written with other methods for controlling pitch to direct the harmonic flow.

The tritone B-F, for example, represents Wozzeck and Marie, permanently in a struggle with one another. The combination of B♭ and D♭ (a minor third) represents the link between Marie and the child. In this way, the opera continually returns to certain pitches to mark out key moments in the plot. This is not the same as a key center, but over time the repetition of these pitches establishes continuity and structure.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wozzeck


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

arpeggio said:


> I ran into a gentleman who thought Holst's _Planets_ was atonal,


 What planet was _he_ from?


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## Guest (Sep 14, 2018)

Atonal, dodecaphonic, and serial compositions - One Tune A Day -

*September 17th...*

*Arnold Schoenberg: "Suite per pianoforte op.25"*






Paul Jacobs, pianoforte --

I. Präludium. Rasch

II. Gavotte. Etwas langsam [0:57]

III. Musette. Rascher [2:13]

IV. Intermezzo [4:53]

V. Menuett und Trio. Moderato [8:45]

VI. Gigue. Rasch [13:02]


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## Guest (Sep 17, 2018)

Atonal, dodecaphonic, and serial compositions - One Tune A Day -

*September 18th...*

*Pierre Boulez - Anthèmes I pour violon solo - (1991)*






Anthèmes I, pour violon solo 
Jeanne-Marie Conquer, violon

Pierre Louis Joseph Boulez CBE - (26 March 1925 - 5 January 2016) was a French composer, conductor, writer and founder of institutions. He was one of the dominant figures of the post-war classical music world.

As a young composer in the 1950s he quickly became a leading figure in avant-garde music, playing an important role in the development of integral serialism and controlled chance music. From the 1970s onwards he pioneered the electronic transformation of instrumental music in real time.

His tendency to revise earlier compositions meant that his body of completed works was relatively small, but it included pieces regarded by many as landmarks of twentieth-century music, such as Le Marteau sans maître, Pli selon pli and Répons. His uncompromising commitment to modernism and the trenchant, polemical tone in which he expressed his views on music led some to criticise him as a dogmatist.

In parallel with his activities as a composer Boulez became one of the most prominent conductors of his generation. In a career lasting more than sixty years he held the positions of chief conductor of the New York Philharmonic and the BBC Symphony Orchestra, music director of the Ensemble Intercontemporain and principal guest conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Cleveland Orchestra.

He made frequent guest appearances with many of the world's other great orchestras, including the Vienna Philharmonic, the Berlin Philharmonic and the London Symphony Orchestra. He was particularly known for his performances of the music of the first half of the twentieth-century-including Debussy and Ravel, Stravinsky and Bartók, and the Second Viennese School-as well as that of his contemporaries, such as Ligeti, Berio and Carter.

His work in the opera house included the Jahrhundertring-the production of Wagner's Ring cycle for the centenary of the Bayreuth Festival-and the world premiere of the three-act version of Alban Berg's Lulu. His recorded legacy is extensive.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Boulez


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## Guest (Sep 17, 2018)

Atonal, dodecaphonic, and serial compositions - One Tune A Day -

*September 19th...*

*Johanna Beyer - "Cluster Motive, Clusters I, and Clusters II" - (1936)*






Johanna Magdalena Beyer (July 11, 1888 - January 9, 1944) was a German-American composer and pianist.

Much of Beyer's music, particularly that written between 1931 and 1939, reflects the aesthetics of the American "ultra-modernists," a circle which included Ruth Crawford Seeger, Charles Seeger, Henry Cowell, Dane Rudhyar and Carl Ruggles.

Many of Beyer's works are exemplary of dissonant counterpoint, a theoretical compositional system developed by Charles Seeger and Cowell and most famously articulated in the works of Ruth Crawford Seeger. However, Beyer developed her own distinctive gestures and procedures that distinguished her music from that of her colleagues. Her compositions are characterized by an economic use of resources, balanced and well-constructed forms, "a unique sense of humor and whimsy," and a commitment to experimentation.

Although her music was overlooked during her lifetime and for decades after her death, it was some of the most experimental and prophetic work created during the 1930s. Music of the Spheres (1938) is the first known work scored for electronic instruments by a female composer.

The fourth movements of her two clarinet suites (1932) are some of the earliest examples of a pitch-based approach to rhythmic processes, which would not be fully explored again until the late 1940s by composers such as Elliott Carter and Conlon Nancarrow.

Several of her works anticipate the minimalist music of the 1960s, most notably the fourth movement of her first String Quartet. She included tone clusters in Clusters, a suite for solo piano, and the duet, Movement for Two Pianos. The large clusters in these works often require the pianist to play the keys with their forearms.

Perhaps Beyer's most important and overlooked contribution to the development of new music is her repertoire for percussion ensemble. The Percussion Suite of 1933 is one of the earliest examples in this genre and differs from those of her contemporaries in that it "explores the understated and quiet expressive possibilities of percussion."

Other percussion pieces from the 1930s include IV (1935), the March for Thirty Percussion Instruments (1939), which John Kennedy calls one of the "most gorgeous orchestrations for percussion ensemble ever composed," and the Three Movements for Percussion (1939). All of her percussion music is distinguished from that of her contemporaries by its sense of humor, and "emphasis on process over more purely rhythmic exploration."

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johanna_Beyer


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)




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## Guest (Sep 17, 2018)

millionrainbows said:


>


Arthur Berger - (May 15, 1912 - October 7, 2003) was an American composer and music critic who has been described as a New Mannerist.

His works show a preoccupation with vertical and horizontal musical space.

His musical influences include Igor Stravinsky, Arnold Schoenberg, and later Anton Webern. In the forties he composed neoclassical works including Serenade Concertante (1944) and Three Pieces for Strings (1945), and embraced the twelve-tone technique in the 1950s.

His later works moved away from serialism but continued to use tone cluster 'cells' whose pitch classes are displaced by octaves.

George Perle has described his "keen and sophisticated musical intellect" and praised "his serial music [for being] as far removed from current fashionable trends as his diatonic music was a few years ago."

Perle further praises his String Quartet: "in the quartet, as in Berger's earlier works, and in most of the great music of our Western heritage, timbre, texture, dynamics, rhythm, and form are elements of a musical language whose syntax and grammar are essentially derived from pitch relations. If these elements never seem specious and arbitrary, as they do with so many of the dodecaphonic productions that deluge us today from both the left and right, it is precisely because of the authenticity and integrity of his musical thinking at this basic level."

His works include Ideas of Order, Polyphony, Quartet for Winds, described by Thomson as "one of the most satisfactory pieces for winds in the whole modern repertory", String Quartet (1958), Five Pieces for Piano (1969) and Septet (1965-66). He was a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Berger is grouped in the "Boston school" along with Lukas Foss, Irving Fine, Alexei Haieff, Harold Shapero, and Claudio Spies.


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## Guest (Sep 18, 2018)

Atonal, dodecaphonic, and serial compositions - One Tune A Day -

*September 20th...*

*Anton Webern - "Three Lieder, for voice, E flat clarinet and guitar, op. 18" - (1925)*
















Anton Friedrich Wilhelm von Webern - (3 December 1883 - 15 September 1945) was an Austrian composer and conductor.

Along with his mentor Arnold Schoenberg and his colleague Alban Berg, Webern was in the core of those in the circle of the Second Viennese School, including Ernst Krenek and Theodor W. Adorno.

As an exponent of atonality and twelve-tone technique, Webern exerted influence on contemporaries Luigi Dallapiccola, Křenek, and even Schoenberg himself.

Webern's music was among the most radical of its milieu, both in its concision and in its rigorous and resolute apprehension of twelve-tone technique. His innovations in schematic organization of pitch, rhythm, register, timbre, dynamics, articulation, and melodic contour; his eagerness to redefine imitative contrapuntal techniques such as canon and fugue; and his inclination toward athematicism, abstraction, and lyricism all greatly informed and oriented intra- and post-war European, typically serial or avant-garde composers such as Olivier Messiaen, Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Luigi Nono, Bruno Maderna, Henri Pousseur, and György Ligeti.

In the United States, meanwhile, his music attracted the interest of Elliott Carter, whose critical ambivalence was marked by a certain enthusiasm nonetheless; Milton Babbitt, who ultimately derived more inspiration from Schoenberg's twelve-tone practice than that of Webern; and Igor Stravinsky, to whom it was very fruitfully reintroduced by Robert Craft.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton_Webern


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

I think this is the best recording of my favorite work by Carter. Though he wasn't strictly a "serialist," he used the same index of possible sets as Rahn or Forte. He was interested in certain forms of sets, such as "all-interval sets" and sets which retain their identity under inversion.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

I think this piece by Theo Verbey is beautiful.


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

millionrainbows said:


> I think this is the best recording of my favorite work by Carter. Though he wasn't strictly a "serialist," he used the same index of possible sets as Rahn or Forte. He was interested in certain forms of sets, such as "all-interval sets" and sets which retain their identity under inversion.


A rare disagreement with my friend millionrainbows.

My favorite Carter work is also the _Variations_. I have he following recordings in my library.

View attachment 108011


My favorite is still the old Louisville performance.


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

serialism in rock - Henry Cow


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## Guest (Sep 19, 2018)

Jacck said:


> serialism in rock - Henry Cow


Superb selection - my sincere compliments! - and allow me to complement your selection with this -


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## Guest (Sep 19, 2018)

Atonal, dodecaphonic, and serial compositions - One Tune A Day -

*September 21st...*

*Alexander Goehr - "The Deluge Op. 7"*

View attachment 108042


Artist: Claire Booth

Artist: Hilary Summers

Conductor: Oliver Knussen

Ensemble: Birmingham Contemporary Music Group

"*The Deluge Op. 7 - Scene I*" - 






"*The Deluge Op. 7 - Scene II*" - 






"*The Deluge Op. 7 - Scene III*" -






Peter Alexander Goehr - (born 10 August 1932) is an English composer and academic.

Goehr was born in Berlin in 1932, the son of the conductor and composer Walter Goehr, a pupil of Arnold Schoenberg.

In his early twenties he emerged as a central figure in the Manchester School of post-war British composers. In 1955-56 he joined Olivier Messiaen's masterclass in Paris.

Although in the early sixties Goehr was considered a leader of the avant-garde, his oblique attitude to modernism-and to any movement or school whatsoever-soon became evident. In a sequence of works including the Piano Trio (1966), the opera Arden Must Die (1966), the music-theatre piece Triptych (1968-70), the orchestral Metamorphosis/Dance (1974), and the String Quartet No. 3 (1975-76), Goehr's personal voice was revealed, arising from a highly individual use of the serial method and a fusion of elements from his double heritage of Schoenberg and Messiaen.

Since the luminous 'white-note' Psalm IV setting of 1976, Goehr has urged a return to more traditional ways of composing, using familiar materials as objects of musical speculation, in contrast to the technological priorities of much present-day musical research.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Goehr#Vocal


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Taggart said:


> OK polytonal, bitonal and pentatonic sometimes bitonal and pentatonic at the same time.. It's also atonal because it lacks a tonal centre. It's not atonal as in early (pre-twelve tone) Second Viennese school .


The Bartok doesn't fall neatly into any of the categories listed. But it has a tonal center: C.


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## Guest (Sep 20, 2018)

Sydney Nova Scotia said:


> Musical Analysis
> 
> Paul Wilson lists as the most prominent characteristics of Bartók's music from late 1920s onwards the influence of the Carpathian basin and European art music, and *his changing attitude toward (and use of) tonality, but without the use of the traditional harmonic functions associated with major and minor scales.
> *
> ...





EdwardBast said:


> The Bartok doesn't fall neatly into any of the categories listed. But it *has a tonal center: C.*


Just adding additional documentation that I came across while doing research on the topic...

*Bartók, upon studying the Hungarian folklore, felt freed from the restraints of traditional major/minor tonality.* The peasant tunes, based on old modes and pentatonic scales, were very liberating for him. His characteristic melodies seemed to circle around a given note and move within a narrow range. He was fond of repeating fragments on different beats of the measure, producing primitive effects like a melody turning in on itself. The influence of folk songs was also manifest in his use of the intervals of seconds, fourths, and sevenths.

*He loosened the old modes through chromatic ornamentation. He also experimented with polymodality. His fondness for the simultaneous use of major and minor sonorities was a result of his experimentation. Characteristic is his technique of superimposing independent streams of chords, as well as quartal harmony, cluster chords, and parallel seconds, sevenths and ninths.

*From the folk dances of southeastern Europe, he incorporated numerous asymmetrical formations. He had a fondness for repeated notes and passages based on alternating patterns. He, along with Stravinsky, played a major role in the revitalization of western rhythm. His orchestration exemplifies the contemporary tendency to use color for the projection of ideas rather than an end in itself.

Bartók was preoccupied with formal unity and coherence, which he attained through the cumulative development and continuous variation of themes and motives.

*The compositions of the late 1920s and the 1930s incorporate a wealth of different scalar resources -- including diatonic, whole-tone, octatonic, and chromatic types -- into a remarkably flexible new stylistic amalgam. By arriving at complex pitch configurations through the addition of simpler and more basic building blocks, Bartók was able to integrate a remarkable varied fund of pitch material, ranging from the simplest diatonicism to full twelve-tone chromaticism.*

Source: http://lcsproductions.net/MusicHistory/MusHistRev/Articles/BartokStyle.html


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

I feel that Bartok's sense of tonality was always somehow grounded, rooted, in Hungarian melodies, scales, or rhythms no matter how far afield, abstract or wild his explorations of tonality would get. I think it gave his music a special character and individuality that some of the other 12-tone or serial composers lacked... His methods merely covered or expanded upon the basic nature of the Hungarian ethos but remained Hungarian and remained him. I also believe Milton Babbitt in his criticisms was completely wrong about him. Bartok was always recognizable as Bartok no matter what he was writing, and that consistent stamp of personal identity is found only in world-class composers.


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## Guest (Sep 21, 2018)

Atonal, dodecaphonic, and serial compositions - One Tune A Day -

*September 22nd... *

*Elliott Carter - "String Quartet No. 1" - The Composers Quartet*

View attachment 108076


*1.) - Fantasia. Maestoso - Allegro scorrevole*






*2.)* * -Allegro scorrevole - Adagio*






*3.)* - *Variations*


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## Guest (Sep 21, 2018)

Atonal, dodecaphonic, and serial compositions - One Tune A Day -

*September 23rd...
*
*John Cage - "Sonata for Clarinet" - (1933)*

View attachment 108082


*1.) - Vivace - *






*2.) - Lento - *






*3.) - Vivace - *


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## Guest (Sep 22, 2018)

Atonal, dodecaphonic, and serial compositions - One Tune A Day -

*September 24th...*

*Karel Goeyvaerts - "Sonata No. 1 for 2 Pianos" - (1950 - 1951)*






View attachment 108134


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## Guest (Sep 23, 2018)

Atonal, dodecaphonic, and serial compositions - One Tune A Day -

*September 25th...*

*Ruth Crawford Seeger - "Nine preludes for piano" - (1925-28)*






*Preludes No. 4 - 5 -*






*Preludes No. 6 - 7 -
*





*Preludes No. 8 - 9 -
*





Ruth Crawford Seeger (July 3, 1901 - November 18, 1953), was an American modernist composer active primarily during the 1920s and 1930s and an American folk music specialist from the late 1930s until her death. She was a prominent member of a group of American composers known as the "ultramoderns," and her music influenced later composers including Elliott Carter.


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## Guest (Sep 24, 2018)

Atonal, dodecaphonic, and serial compositions - One Tune A Day -

*September 26th...*

*Luigi Dallapiccola - "Dallapiccola: Due Studi for Violin and Piano" 
- (1946 - 1947)
*
View attachment 108247


*Dallapiccola: "Due Studi for Violin and Piano - 1. Sarabanda"






**Dallapiccola: "Due Studi for Violin and Piano - 2. Fanfare e Fuga"*






Luigi Dallapiccola (February 3, 1904 - February 19, 1975) was an Italian composer known for his lyrical twelve-tone compositions.

His works widely use the serialism developed and embraced by his idols; he was, in fact, the first Italian to write in the method, and the primary proponent of it in Italy, and he developed serialist techniques to allow for a more lyrical, tonal style.

Throughout the 1930s his style developed from a diatonic style with bursts of chromaticism to a consciously serialist outlook. He went from using twelve-tone rows for melodic material to structuring his works entirely serially. With the adoption of serialism he never lost the feel for melodic line that many of the detractors of the Second Viennese School claimed to be absent in modern dodecaphonic music.


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## Guest (Sep 24, 2018)

Atonal, dodecaphonic, and serial compositions - One Tune A Day -

*September 27th...*

*Jerry Goldsmith - "Christus Apollo" - (1970)*

View attachment 108245


*"Christus Apollo (Part I)" - *






*"Christus Apollo (Part II)" - *






*"Christus Apollo (Part III)" - *






*"Christus Apollo (Part IV)" - *






Jerrald King Goldsmith (February 10, 1929 - July 21, 2004) was an American composer and conductor most known for his work in film and television scoring. He composed scores for such films as Star Trek: The Motion Picture and four other films within the Star Trek franchise, The Sand Pebbles, Logan's Run, Planet of the Apes, Patton, Papillon, Chinatown, The Wind and the Lion, The Omen, The Boys from Brazil, Capricorn One, Alien, Outland, Poltergeist, The Secret of NIMH, Gremlins, Hoosiers, Total Recall, Basic Instinct, Rudy, Air Force One, L.A. Confidential, Mulan, The Mummy, three Rambo films, and Explorers.

Over the course of his career, Goldsmith received 18 total Academy Award nominations, making him one of the most nominated composers in Academy Awards history. Despite this, Goldsmith won only one Oscar, for his score to the 1976 film The Omen. This makes Goldsmith the most nominated composer to have won an Oscar only on one occasion.

Goldsmith was also nominated for six Grammy Awards, five Primetime Emmy Awards, nine Golden Globe Awards, and four British Academy Film Awards.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

I love Dallapiccola. Listen to how atmospheric it is.






George Crumb's Variazione: It's available on the First Edition disc, pictured. It's super-atmospheric, and has a sense of mystery. Crumb revels in the joy of sheer sound, and his music is always sensual, with lots of space. It does wonders for the right side of my brain, or whichever side it is that needs space and mystery.


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## Guest (Sep 26, 2018)

My duties in Ottawa with resultant increased responsibilities necessitate placing all threads on hiatus...

Best wishes - 

Syd


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

Best wishes. One of the reasons I do not participate in games anymore is that they can be time consuming. Hopefully the rest of us can keep this thread going.


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## Guest (Sep 28, 2018)

arpeggio said:


> Best wishes. One of the reasons I do not participate in games anymore is that they can be time consuming. Hopefully the rest of us can keep this thread going.


I'm going to request that the thread be renamed to "20th Century Music - One Tune A Day" as I ponder how bitterly I regret choosing to go with an "ironic' thread title which I found rather humourous for like 15 minutes rather than a more practical one which didn't require hours of research to provide verification for every single selection... Canadians...


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## Guest (Sep 28, 2018)

20th Century Music - One Tune A Day

*September 28th...*

*Duke Ellington - "The Clothed Woman"

- (Live Recording - 1947 - Carnegie Hall)*






"Revealing Ellington's "The Clothed Woman" -

https://professorscosco.wordpress.com/2011/09/09/revealing-ellingtons-the-clothed-woman/


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

millionrainbows said:


> I love Dallapiccola. Listen to how atmospheric it is.


Dallapiccola was low key the best 12-tone composer.


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

Sydney Nova Scotia said:


> Atonal, dodecaphonic, and serial compositions - One Tune A Day -
> 
> *September 23rd...
> *
> ...


You thought that Cage could only compose music for blenders.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Good luck, Sydney Nova Scotia, and we who remain shall hopefully carry on.

Milton Babbitt: Correspondences, for string orchestra and the behemoth early RCA/Princeton synthesizer (on tape). According to Babbitt, there are correspondences between the string orchestra and the electronic sounds. Can you hear them? Like most Babbitt, the string orchestra is used as just another 'sound source' very objectively, rather than traditionally. But, traditionally, the piece seems to build to a climax at the end. It's in a single movement, since traditionally other types of form are based on what the music does; themes, key areas, recapitulations, little of which matters with serial music.


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## Guest (Sep 28, 2018)

millionrainbows said:


> Good luck, Sydney Nova Scotia, and we who remain shall hopefully carry on.


I shall actually be able to participate on a fairly regular basis now that the focus on the thread has been expanded. It took an extraordinary amount of research to ensure that each work presented was authentically atonal, dodecaphonic, or serial. One book or article would make a statement with absolute certainty which would then be summarily contradicted and so on and so on.

The thread will now expand its focus to include all of 20th century classical music - Impressionism, Modernism, free dissonance and experimentalism, Expressionism, Postmodern music, and Minimalism...

- Syd


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## Guest (Sep 28, 2018)

20th Century Music - One Tune A Day...

*September 29th...*

*Charles Ives - "The Unanswered Question" - Leonard Bernstein

- New York Philharmonic Orchestra

- (1966 Columbia Recording)*






View attachment 108413


*Charles Ives - "Central Park In The Dark" - Seiji Ozawa

- New York Philharmonic Orchestra*






"_The Unanswered Question_" is a musical work by American composer Charles Ives. Originally paired with "Central Park in the Dark" as "*Two Contemplations*" in 1908. "The Unanswered Question" was revived by Ives in 1930-1935. As with many of Ives' works, it was largely unknown until much later in his life, and was not performed until 1946.

"The Unanswered Question" is scored for three groups: a string ensemble, a solo trumpet, and a woodwind quartet. The groups play in independent tempos and are placed in such a way that they might not be able to see each other; the strings play offstage.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

That's my favorite recording of the Holidays Symphony. That's my favorite Ives work as well. It reminds me in places of ghosts from the Civil War. Just a beautiful piece of work. I also have high praise for "Three Places in New England," the Tilson-Thomas version on DG.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

It's interesting to compare the song version...


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## Guest (Sep 29, 2018)

20th Century Music - One Tune A Day...

*September 30th...*

*Olivier Messiaen: "Fête des belles eaux" - (1937)*






"Fête des belles eaux" is a 1937 composition by French composer Olivier Messiaen. The work is scored for six ondes Martenots and was commissioned for the 1937 Paris Exhibition. The work was written to accompany the movement of the fountains at the Exhibition.

This composition is in eight movements. The movement list is as follows: 
I. - Premières fusées
II. - L'eau
III. -Les fusées
IV. - L'eau
V. - Les fusées
VI. - L'eau (à son maximum de hauteur)
VII. - Superposition de l'eau et des fusées
VIII. - Feux d'artifice final

The melodic theme used in L'eau was also used later in the fifth movement of Messiaen's Quatuor pour la fin du temps.


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## Guest (Sep 30, 2018)

20th Century Music - One Tune A Day... 

*October 1st...*

*Krzysztof Penderecki - "Concerto for Violin and Orchestra"

- (1974/1976)*

- Orchestra giovanile italiana directed by Krzysztof Penderecki

- Salvatore Accardo, violin






Krzysztof Eugeniusz Penderecki born 23 November 1933) is a Polish composer and conductor. The Guardian has called him Poland's greatest living composer.


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## Guest (Oct 1, 2018)

20th Century Music - One Tune A Day... 

*October 2nd...*

*Igor Stravinsky - "L'Oiseau de feu" - (The Firebird) - 1910*

 - Pierre Boulez - Conductor

- Chicago Symphony Orchestra (1993)






The Firebird (French: L'Oiseau de feu) is a ballet and orchestral concert work by the Russian composer Igor Stravinsky. It was written for the 1910 Paris season of Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes company; the original choreography was by Michel Fokine, with a scenario by Alexandre Benois and Fokine based on the Russian fairy tales of the Firebird and the blessing and curse it possesses for its owner.

When first performed at the Opéra de Paris on 25 June 1910, the work was an instant success with both audience and critics.

The ballet has historic significance not only as Stravinsky's breakthrough piece, but also as the beginning of the collaboration between Diaghilev and Stravinsky that would also produce the acclaimed ballets Petrushka (1911) and The Rite of Spring (1913).


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## derin684 (Feb 14, 2018)

Sydney Nova Scotia said:


> 20th Century Music - One Tune A Day...
> 
> *October 2nd...*
> 
> ...


And I've been wondering that when you would post this. Satisfied now! Can we also post Rite of Spring someday?

Also best wishes!


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

20th century Music? That could be anything now... Since it's in the classical section I think I recognise the limits.

It means however that I can post this and we can remember that the 20th century in classical music wasn't just a story of "Atonalism/dodecaphony/serialism...etc". There was also Neo-classicism and this is my tune for this day:


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## Guest (Oct 1, 2018)

derin684 said:


> And I've been wondering that when you would post this. Satisfied now! Can we also post Rite of Spring someday?
> 
> Also best wishes!


Thank you for your kind words and your encouragement! - This is one of the reasons why I needed to change the original thread title from "Atonal, dodecaphonic, and serial compositions" to "20th Century Music".

The original focus was too narrow and expanding the range of the thread certainly makes my life easier as the only criteria that I have to satisfy now is that it be written within the 20th century.

And allow me to return the best wishes!

- Syd


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## Guest (Oct 1, 2018)

eugeneonagain said:


> 20th century Music? That could be anything now... Since it's in the classical section I think I recognise the limits.
> 
> It means however that I can post this and we can remember that the 20th century in classical music wasn't just a story of "Atonalism/dodecaphony/serialism...etc". There was also Neo-classicism and this is my tune for this day:


Knock yourself out - really first rate selection that complements its companions - my compliments!

Welcome to the thread and post to your heart's content... This thread is intended as a sanctuary for "modernists" or whichever name they wish to use to identify themselves as everyone should have at least one thread in this forum in which they are welcomed and made to feel as if they are with kindred spirits who share their passion for that which they love and they're spared having to fight tooth and nail battles with relentless foes who care not for that which the others do.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Sydney Nova Scotia said:


> Knock yourself out - really first rate selection that complements its companions - my compliments!
> 
> Welcome to the thread and post to your heart's content... This thread is intended as a sanctuary for "modernists" or whichever name they wish to use to identify themselves as everyone should have at least one thread in this forum in which they are welcomed and made to feel as if they are with kindred spirits who share their passion for that which they love and they're spared having to fight tooth and nail battles with relentless foes who care not for that which the others do...


I'm sure the moderators appreciate that sentiment...

Here is Joseph Schwantner. Listen to the way he combines overtones of chimes and bells to enhance melodies played on instruments, and the Spectral-like effects. Chroma chroma chroma chroma-chrome chroma chroma, hey, hey-ey ey....


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## Guest (Oct 1, 2018)

The New and Improved Official Name of the thread Mach III-

*"20th Century Classical Music - One Tune A Day"*

That's so much better than "20th Century Music", eh? Yeah... I thought so too! - Thanks! :tiphat:

Canadians just kind of have a knack for naming things... eventually...


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## Guest (Oct 2, 2018)

20th Century Classical Music - One Tune A Day

*October 3rd...*

*Humphrey Searle - "Symphony No.1" - (1952/1953)*






Humphrey Searle (26 August 1915 - 12 May 1982) was an English composer.

He was born in Oxford where he was a classics scholar before studying-somewhat hesitantly-with John Ireland at the Royal College of Music in London, after which he went to Vienna on a six-month scholarship to become a private pupil of Anton Webern, which became decisive in his composition career.

Searle was one of the foremost pioneers of serial music in the United Kingdom, and used his role as a producer at the BBC from 1946 to 1948 to promote it.

"The First Symphony, commissioned by Hermann Scherchen, is much grimmer, and powerfully dramatic: it was written in 1952-3 when not only Searle expected a Third World War to be not far off. Its predominant mood is sombre, with an anxious lyricism that rises to great eloquence in the second movement. The third incorporates an extremely ingenious quasi-fugato, the strings, woodwind and brass given related material but moving at different tempos. The finale is a brilliant evocation of violent aggression, declining to a subdued reference to the B-A-C-H motif upon which the entire work is based."

- Gramophone


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## Guest (Oct 3, 2018)

20th Century Classical Music - One Tune A Day

*October 4th...*

*Ernst Krenek - "String Quartet No.1, Op.6" - (1921)*






Ernst Krenek - August 23, 1900 - December 22, 1991) was an Austrian, later American, composer of Czech origin. He explored atonality and other modern styles.

Krenek's music encompassed a variety of styles and reflects many of the principal musical influences of the 20th century. His early work is in a late-Romantic idiom, showing the influence of his teacher Franz Schreker, but around 1920 he turned to atonality, under the influence of Ernst Kurth's textbook, Lineare Kontrapunkt, and the tenets of Busoni, Schnabel, Erdmann, and Scherchen, amongst others.

Krenek abandoned the neoromantic style in the late 1920s to embrace Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique,


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## Guest (Oct 4, 2018)

20th Century Classical Music - One Tune A Day

*October 5th...*

*William Walton - "Viola Concerto" - (Revised 1961 Version)*

- Nigel Kennedy - Violin

- Andre Previn - Conductor

- Royal Philharmonic Orchestra

*Viola Concerto: I. Andante comodo *






*Viola Concerto: II. Vivo, con molto preciso *






*Viola Concerto: III. Allegro moderato*






Sir William Turner Walton, OM (29 March 1902 - 8 March 1983) was an English composer.

"Walton's first successful large-scale concert work, the Viola Concerto (1929) is in marked contrast to the raucous Portsmouth Point; despite the common influence of jazz and of the music of Hindemith and Ravel, in its structure and romantic longing it owes much to the Elgar Cello Concerto.

In this work, wrote Edward Sackville-West and Desmond Shawe-Taylor in The Record Guide, "the lyric poet in Walton, who had so far been hidden under a mask of irony, fully emerged."

Walton followed this pattern in his two subsequent concertos, for Violin (1937) and for Cello (1956). Each opens reflectively, is in three movements, and contrasts agitated and jagged passages with warmer romantic sections.The Cello Concerto is more introspective than the two earlier concertos, with a ticking rhythm throughout the work suggesting the inexorable passage of time."


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

Keeping it neo-classical....


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## Guest (Oct 5, 2018)

20th Century Classical Music - One Tune A Day

*October 6th*

*Ottorino Respighi - "Fountains of Rome" - (1916)*

 - Seiji Ozawa - Conductor

 - Boston Symphony Orchestra

*Respighi: "Fountains of Rome" - 1. The Valle Giulia Fountain At Daybreak*






*Respighi: "Fountains Of Rome", [P. 106] - 2. The Triton Fountain In The Morning*






*Respighi: "Fountains of Rome" - 3. The Trevi Fountain At Midday*






*Respighi: "Fountains of Rome" - 4. The Villa Medici Fountain At Sunset*






Ottorino Respighi - 9 July 1879 - 18 April 1936) was an Italian violinist, composer and musicologist, best known for his trilogy of orchestral tone poems: "Fountains of Rome" (1916), "Pines of Rome" (1924), and "Roman Festivals" (1928).

His musicological interest in 16th-, 17th- and 18th-century music led him to compose pieces based on the music of these periods. He also wrote several operas, the most famous being "La fiamma".

"Fountains of Rome" is a symphonic poem written in 1916 and first published in 1918. It is the first orchestral work in his "Roman trilogy", followed by "Pines of Rome" (1924) and "Roman Festivals" (1928).

Each of the four movements depicts one of Rome's fountains at a different time of the day. Its premiere was held on March 11, 1917 at the Teatro Augusteo in Rome under the direction of Antonio Guarnieri.


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## Guest (Oct 6, 2018)

20th Century Classical Music - One Tune A Day - Special Edition - Triple Play Day

*October 7th...*

*Carl Ruggles - "Men" - (1921)*

- Michael Tilson-Thomas - Conductor

- Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra






*Carl Ruggles - "Portals" - (1925)*

- Michael Tilson-Thomas - Conductor

 - Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra






*Carl Ruggles - "Sun-Treader" - (1931)*

- Christoph von Dohnányi - Conductor

- The Cleveland Orchestra






Charles Sprague "Carl" Ruggles (March 11, 1876 - October 24, 1971) was an American composer. He wrote finely crafted pieces using "dissonant counterpoint", a term coined by Charles Seeger to describe Ruggles' music. His method of atonal counterpoint was based on a non-serial technique of avoiding repeating a pitch class until a generally fixed number such as eight pitch classes intervened.

Famous for his prickly personality, Ruggles was nonetheless friends with Henry Cowell, Charles Ives, Thomas Hart Benton, Ruth Crawford Seeger, and Charles Seeger.

Conductor Michael Tilson Thomas has championed Ruggles' music, recording the complete works with the Buffalo Philharmonic and occasionally performing "Sun-Treader" with the San Francisco Symphony.

His dissonant, contrapuntal style was similar to Arnold Schoenberg's although he did not employ the same twelve tone system. He used a method similar to, and perhaps influenced by, Charles Seeger's dissonant counterpoint and generally avoided repeating a pitch class within 8 notes. He also never used sprechstimme in any of the songs he composed although he admired Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire. He only completed ten pieces due to his lengthy process of composition and revision.

"Sun-Treader", his best known work, was scored for a large orchestra. It was inspired by the poem "Pauline" by Robert Browning, particularly the line "Sun-Treader, light and life be thine forever!". The most common intervals in the piece are minor seconds, perfect fourths and augmented fourths. One group of intervals he uses are fourths in sequence where the respective notes are either 13 or 11 semitones apart; the other is three notes which are chromatically related, though often separated by an octave.

Another distinctive feature of "Sun-Treader" is the presence of "waves", both in dynamics and pitch. Pitches will start low, then rise up to a climax, then descend again. Within the ascent (and descent) there are small descents (and ascents) leading to a self-similar (fractal) overall structure.

"Sun-Treader" premiered in Paris on February 25, 1932.

Jean Martinon conducted the Boston Symphony Orchestra in its U.S. premiere in Portland, Maine, on January 24, 1966, as part of a Bowdoin College tribute marking Ruggles' 90th birthday.


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## Guest (Oct 7, 2018)

20th Century Classical Music - One Tune A Day

*October 8th...*

*György Ligeti - "Concerto for Piano and Orchestra" - (1985 - 1986)*

- Pierre-Laurent Aimard - Piano

- Ensemble Intercontemporain

- Pierre Boulez - Conductor

*Ligeti: "Piano Concerto" - (1985-88) - 1. Vivace molto ritmico e preciso - attacca subito*






*Ligeti: "Piano Concerto" - (1985-88) - 2. Lento e deserto*






*Ligeti: "Piano Concerto" - (1985-88) - 3. Vivace cantabile*






*Ligeti: "Piano Concerto" - (1985-88) - 4. Allegro risoluto, molto ritmico - attacca subito*






*Ligeti: "Piano Concerto" - (1985-88) - 5. Presto luminoso: fluido, costante, sempre molto ritmico*






György Sándor Ligeti - (28 May 1923 - 12 June 2006) was a Hungarian-Austrian composer of contemporary classical music. He has been described as "one of the most important avant-garde composers in the latter half of the twentieth century" and "one of the most innovative and influential among progressive figures of his time".

The "Concerto for Piano and Orchestra" is a five-movement piano concerto.

Ligeti wrote:

"_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._"


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## Guest (Oct 8, 2018)

20th Century Classical Music - One Tune A Day - Special Edition - Triple Play Day

*October 9th...*

*Josef Matthias Hauer - "Romantische Phantasie op.37" - (1925)*

 - Gottfried Rabl - Conductor

 - Radio-Symphonieorchester Wien






*Josef Matthias Hauer - "VII. Suite für Orchester op.48" - (1926)*

 - Gottfried Rabl - Conductor

 - Radio-Symphonieorchester Wien






I. Molto ritmico e marcato, alla Marcia

II. Lento, molto tranquillo

III. Allegro, alla Marcia veloce

IV. Largo espressivo

V. Ländler

*Josef Matthias Hauer - "Concerto for Violin and Orchestra op.54" - (1928)*

 - Thomas Christian - Violin

 - Gottfried Rabl - Conductor

 - Radio-Symphonieorchester Wien






I. Allegro

II. Largo

III. Allegro

Josef Matthias Hauer (March 19, 1883 - September 22, 1959) was an Austrian composer and music theorist. He is most famous for developing, independent of and a year or two before Arnold Schoenberg, a method for composing with all 12 notes of the chromatic scale. Hauer was also an important early theorist of twelve-tone music and composition.

Hauer's compositional techniques are extraordinarily various and often change from one piece to the next. These range from building-block techniques to methods using a chord series that is generated out of the twelve-tone row ("Melos") to pieces employing an ordered row that is then subject to systematic permutation.

The so-called 44 "tropes" and their compositional usage ("trope-technique") are essential to many of Hauer's twelve-tone techniques. In contrast to a twelve-tone row that contains a fixed succession of twelve tones, a trope consists of two complementary hexachords in which there is no fixed tone sequence. The tropes are used for structural and intervallic views on the twelve-tone system. Every trope offers certain symmetries that can be used by the composer.


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## Guest (Oct 9, 2018)

20th Century Classical Music - One Tune A Day - Special Edition - Double Play Day

*October 10th...*

*Alan Hovhaness: "Symphony No.19 'Vishnu'" - (1966)*

 - Alan Hovhaness - Conductor

 - Sevan Philharmonic






*Alan Hovhaness: "Requiem and Resurrection" - (1967)*

 - Alan Hovhaness - Conductor

 - New Jersey Wind Symphony






Hovhaness's compositions drew on many exotic rhythmic, melodic, and instrumental resources, as his descriptive titles indicate. His style is often modal and rhythmically intricate, but it is lyrically expressive and de-emphasizes harmony.


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## Guest (Oct 10, 2018)

20th Century Classical Music - One Tune A Day - Special Edition - Double Play Day

*October 11th...*

*George Gershwin - "Rhapsody In Blue" - 1924*

 - Benjamin Grosvenor - Piano

 - James Judd - Conductor

 - Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra 






"Rhapsody in Blue" is a 1924 musical composition by American composer George Gershwin for solo piano and jazz band, which combines elements of classical music with jazz-influenced effects.

*George Gershwin - "An American In Paris" - (1928)*

 - Michael Tilson-Thomas - Conductor

 - San Francisco Symphony






An American in Paris is a jazz-influenced orchestral piece by George Gershwin, written in 1928. Inspired by the time Gershwin had spent in Paris, it evokes the sights and energy of the French capital in the 1920s and is one of his best-known compositions.


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## Guest (Oct 11, 2018)

20th Century Classical Music - One Tune A Day - Special Edition - Triple Play Day

*October 12th...*

*Morton Feldman - "Why Patterns?" - (1978)*






 - The California EAR Unit

 - Dorothy Stone - Flute

 - Arthur Jarvinen - Glockenspiel

 - Gaylord Mowrey - Pianoforte

*Morton Feldman - "Three Voices" - (1982)*






 - Joan la Barbara - Voice

1. Opening

2. Legato

3. Slow Waltz

4. First Words

5. Whisper

6. Chords

7. A non accented legato

8. Snow Falls

9. Legato

10. Slow Waltz and ending

*Morton Feldman - "Coptic Light" - (1986)*






 - Peter Eötvös - Conductor

 - Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra

Morton Feldman (January 12, 1926 - September 3, 1987) was an American composer.

A major figure in 20th-century music, Feldman was a pioneer of indeterminate music, a development associated with the experimental New York School of composers also including John Cage, Christian Wolff, and Earle Brown.

Feldman's works are characterized by notational innovations that he developed to create his characteristic sound: rhythms that seem to be free and floating; pitch shadings that seem softly unfocused; a generally quiet and slowly evolving music; recurring asymmetric patterns. His later works, after 1977, also begin to explore extremes of duration.


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## Guest (Oct 12, 2018)

20th Century Classical Music - One Tune A Day - Special Edition - Triple Play Day

*October 13th...*

*Henri Dutilleux - "Métaboles" - (1964)*

 - Sergiu Celibidache - Conductor

 - Orchestre National de France 






*Henri Dutilleux - "Toute un monde lontain" - (1968/1970)*

 - Godfried Hoogeveen - Cello 

 - Yan Pascal Tortelier - Conductor

 - Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra

I. Énigme

II. Regard [06:30]

III. Houles [13:00]

IV. Miroirs [17:08]

V. Hymne [21:32]






*Henri Dutilleux - "L'arbre des Songes" - (1985)*

 - Isabelle van Keulen - Violin

 - Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra 

I. Liberement

II. Interlude [04:30]

III. Vif [07:08]

IV. Interlude 2 [09:04]

V. Lent [11:04]

VI. Interlude 3 [16:49]

VII. Large et animé [18:02]






Henri Dutilleux - (22 January 1916 - 22 May 2013) was a French composer active mainly in the second half of the 20th century. His work, which garnered international acclaim, followed in the tradition of Maurice Ravel, Claude Debussy, Albert Roussel and Olivier Messiaen, but in an idiosyncratic style.

Some of Dutilleux's trademarks include very refined orchestral textures; complex rhythms; a preference for atonality and modality over tonality; the use of pedal points that serve as atonal pitch centers; and "reverse variation," by which a theme is not exposed immediately but rather revealed gradually, appearing in its complete form only after a few partial, tentative expositions.

His music also displays a very strong sense of structure and symmetry. This is particularly obvious from an "external" point of view, in the overall organisation of the different movements or the spatial distribution of the various instruments, but is also apparent in the music itself (themes, harmonies and rhythms mirroring, complementing or opposing each other).


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## Guest (Oct 12, 2018)

20th Century Classical Music - One Tune A Day - Special Edition - Triple Play Day

*October 14th...*

*Leon Kirchner - "Sonata for pianoforte" - (1948)*

 - Cheryl Seltzer - pianoforte 

- Lento, Tempo II - Adagio - Allegro risoluto






*Leon Kirchner - "Concerto for pianoforte and orchestra n.1" - (1953)*

- Leon Kirchner - pianoforte 

- Dimitri Mitropoulos - Conductor

 - New York Philharmonic

I. Allegro

II. Adagio

III. Rondo






*Leon Kirchner - "Trio for violin, cello and pianoforte" - (1954)*

 - Geoffrey Michaels - violin

 - Beverly Lauridsen - cello

 - Joel Sachs - pianoforte






Leon Kirchner (January 24, 1919 - September 17, 2009) was an American composer of contemporary classical music. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and he won a Pulitzer Prize for his String Quartet No. 3.

Kirchner's musical style is generally linear, chromatic, rhapsodic and rhythmically irregular; it is influenced by Schoenberg but does not employ the twelve-tone technique.

Many of his early works are sectional, with strongly contrasting textures and tempos. In his later works, the textures and tempos tend to be more continuous and changes more gradual.

By and large, Kirchner favored compact structures based on a minimal number of motifs. According to Alexander Ringer, he remained consistently individual, unimpressed by changing fashion where "idea, the precious ore of art, is lost in the jungle of graphs, prepared tapes, feedbacks and cold stylistic minutiae".


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## Guest (Oct 12, 2018)

20th Century Classical Music - One Tune A Day - Special Edition - Triple Play Day

*October 15th...*

*Henri Pousseur - "Caractères" - (1961)*

 - Steffen Schleiermacher - pianoforte 






*Henri Pousseur - "Mnemosyne 2" - (1968/1969)*

 - Werner Seiss - Conductor

 - Continuum Ensemble Dortmund






*Henri Pousseur - "Les Éphémérides d'Icare 2" - (1970)*

 - Pierre Bartholomée - Conductor

 - Ensemble Musique Nouvelle Bruxelles






Henri Pousseur (23 June 1929 - 6 March 2009) was a Belgian composer, teacher, and music theorist.

Generally regarded as a member of the Darmstadt School in the 1950s, Pousseur's music employs serialism, mobile forms, and aleatory, often mediating between or among seemingly irreconcilable styles, such as those of Schubert and Webern (Votre Faust), or Pousseur's own serial style.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

One of my favorite electronic/music concrete pieces, by Pousseur:


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## Guest (Oct 17, 2018)

20th Century Classical Music - One Tune A Day - Special Canadian Edition - Double Play Day

*October 16th...*

*Harry Somers - "Symphony No.1" - (1951)*

 - Victor Feldbrill - Conductor

 - National Arts Centre Orchestra

 - Prologue. Lento. 1st Subject

 - 2nd Subject. Allegretto scherzando [7:54]

 - 3rd Subject. Lento [11:42]

 - Development. Lento - Allegro [18:14]

 - Epilogue. Lento [28:19]






*Harry Somers - "Elegy, Transformation, Jubilation" - (1980)*

 - Alex Pauk - Conductor

 - Esprit Orchestra

- I. Elegy
 
- II. Transformation, Jubilation [3:41]






Harry Stewart Somers, CC (September 11, 1925 - March 9, 1999) was one of the most influential and innovative contemporary Canadian composers of the past century. Possessing a charismatic attitude and rather dashing good-looks, as well as a genuine talent for his art, Somers earned the unofficial title of "Darling of Canadian Composition."

A truly patriotic artist, Somers was engaged in many national projects over the course his lifetime. He was a founding member of the Canadian League of Composers (CLC) and as such, was involved in the formation of other Canadian music organizations, including the Canada Council for the Arts and the Canadian Music Centre. He frequently received commissions from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and the Canada Council for the Arts.

Somers was immensely successful as a composer. He had an eclectic, personal approach to 20th century styles and composed a large body of work that walked a fine line between an elite modernity and popular appeal. His works were performed nationally and internationally during his lifetime, with performances in the USA, Central and South Americas, Europe and the Soviet Union. His output consisted essentially of tonal works that incorporated elements of atonality later on in his career.

Somers music is known for its diversity of influences and themes. Due to the isolated nature of Toronto during the 20th century, the city in which he first began composing, Somers was fortunate enough to develop his own sense of originality before he began his formal compositional studies. Once he began studying at the Royal Conservatory, his sources of influence increased and his musical palate grew as well.

The people and styles that are said to have influence him the most are the music of Weinzweig, Bartók and Ives, Baroque counterpoint, serial technique and Gregorian chant. Somers himself said that he aimed to "unify conceptions of the Baroque … with the high tensioned elements of our own time" in many of his compositions. Somers also makes great and unique use of dynamics. He developed a technique for creating what he referred to as 'dynamic unrest' which consists of one sound sustained, be it chord or singular pitch, isolated or prolonged in a melodic line, developing a dynamic envelope of its own.

Somers's approach to serialism was intuitive and always kept within the realm of accessibility. When he began his studies with Weinzweig, Somers dabbled in the use of serialism in his music, but he refrained from drastically implementing it into his pieces until 1950. Even then, it was never the main aspect of his work, but rather acted as supportive material for other elements.

Prior to 1959, he tended to keep sections that included serial elements contained within tonal confines. It wasn't until the beginning of the 1960s that Somers began to broaden his scope, increasing his experimentation with non-thematic textures and with the visual and spatial aspects of performance.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Somers


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## Guest (Oct 17, 2018)

20th Century Classical Music - One Tune A Day - Special - Double Play Day

*October 17th...*

*Ralph Vaughn Williams - "The Lark Ascending" - (1914)*

 - Tasmin Little - Violin

 - Sir Andrew Davis - Conductor 

 - BBC Philharmonic Orchestra






"The Lark Ascending" is a poem of 122 lines by the English poet George Meredith about the song of the skylark. Siegfried Sassoon called it matchless of its kind, "a sustained lyric which never for a moment falls short of the effect aimed at, soars up and up with the song it imitates, and unites inspired spontaneity with a demonstration of effortless technical ingenuity... one has only to read the poem a few times to become aware of its perfection".

The poem inspired the English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams to write a musical work of the same name, which is now more widely known than the poem. He originally composed it in 1914 for violin and piano. It premiered in 1920, the same year the composer re-scored it for solo violin and orchestra. This version, now the more often performed of the two, premiered in 1921.

"The Lark Ascending" influenced at least two other British composers. Firstly, Robin Milford whose The Darkling Thrush, Op. 17 (based on the poem by Thomas Hardy) has been described as "...the Lark re-ascending" in an article on the centenary of the composer's birth.

Secondly, William Alwyn's 1939 "Pastoral Fantasia for Viola and Orchestra" which was dubbed "The Hawk Ascending" by a reviewer following the release of the 2008 Naxos recording.

*William Alwyn - "Pastoral Fantasia for Viola and Orchestra" - (1939) *

 - Stephen Tees - Viola

 - Richard Hickox - Conductor

 - City of London Sinfonia






William Alwyn CBE, born William Alwyn Smith (7 November 1905 - 11 September 1985), was an English composer, conductor, and music teacher.

Alwyn relished dissonance, and devised his own alternative to twelve-tone serialism.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Following the theme of Canadian composers, here's Michael Matthews, from String Quartet No. 3. It's fairly dissonant, yet it "coheres" in ways that we expect other harmonically-based music to cohere; in other words, not as radical as Ferneyhough or Boulez. It's good exercise for your "ear" to listen to music that lies in this harmonic territory.


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## Guest (Oct 18, 2018)

20th Century Classical Music - One Tune A Day - Special Edition - Quadruple Play Day

*October 18th...*

*John Cage - "First Construction" - (1939)*

 - Eddy De Fanti - Conductor

 - Ensemble Percussion Ricerca






*John Cage - "Second Construction" - (1940)*

 - The Kroumata Percussion Ensemble






*John Cage - "Amores: for prepared piano and percussion" - (1943)*

 - Carlo Rabeschin - prepared pianoforte

 - Eddy De Fanti - Conductor

 - Ensemble Percussion Ricerca 

- I. Solo for prepared piano

- II. Trio (for 9 tom-toms and a pod rattle) [1:32]

- III. Trio (for 7 wood blocks) [4:42]

- IV. Solo for prepared piano [5:56]






*John Cage - "Concerto for Prepared Piano and Chamber Orchestra" - (1950/1951)*

 - Giancarlo Simonacci - prepared piano

 - Nicola Paszkowski - Conductor

 - Orchestra V. Galilei

- I. First part

- II. Second part

- III. Third part






John Milton Cage Jr. (September 5, 1912 - August 12, 1992) was an American composer and music theorist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde. Critics have lauded him as one of the most influential composers of the 20th century.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

I had an English professor at college who had come from the University of Illinois, and he said he remembered John Cage there. He was working with large, thin sheets of steel which he suspended and banged on, making tons of racket. This was probably the same time he was doing the "Constructions." I guess he also considered them to be sculptures, hence the name "Construction in Steel."

That was the closest I ever got to John Cage, in "Kevin Bacon" terms.


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

One of the groups I play with is the National Concert Band of America. Our next concert is on October 28th. One of the works we have programed is a work that is new to me. The _Chorale and Shaker Dance_ by John P. Zdechlik. I am only familiar with one of Zdechlik's chamber works.






Link to information about work: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chorale_and_Shaker_Dance


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

20th Century Classical Music - One Tune A Day






This brings back memories. It's one of the vinyl LPs I found in the cut-out bin at K-Mart for $4.99...

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Jump to navigationJump to search*Henri Pousseur* (23 June 1929 - 6 March 2009) was a Belgian composer, teacher, and music theorist.
Contents​

1Biography
2Compositional style and techniques
3Selected compositions
4References
5External links

Biography[edit]Pousseur was born in Malmedy and studied at the Academies of Music in Liège and in Brussels from 1947 to 1952, where he joined the group called Variations associated with Pierre Froidebise. It was in this group that he first became familiar with the music of Anton Webern and other 20th-century composers. During his period of military service in 1952-53 at Malines he maintained close contact with André Souris. He encountered Pierre Boulez in 1951 at Royaumont, and this contact inspired his _Trois chants sacrés_, composed that same year. In 1953 he met Karlheinz Stockhausen, and in 1956 Luciano Berio (Decroupet 2009). A less-well-known influence from his early years was the powerful impression of listening to the music of Anton Bruckner, and he maintained a lifelong interest in medieval and Renaissance music, as well as in extra-European music and their practices (Bartholomée 2009, 68)
In 1954 he married Théa Schoonbrood with whom he had four children: Isabelle (1957), Denis (1958), Marianne (fr) (1961), and Hélène (1965) (Whiting 2009).
Beginning in 1960, he collaborated with Michel Butor on a number of projects, most notably the opera _Votre Faust_ (1960-68) (Decroupet 2009).
Pousseur taught in Cologne, Basel, and in the United States at SUNY Buffalo, as well as in his native Belgium. From 1970 until his retirement in 1988 he taught at the University and Conservatory of Liège where he also founded the Centre de recherches et de formation musicales de Wallonie, in 2010 renamed as Centre Henri Pousseur. He died in Brussels, aged 79, on the morning of 6 March 2009, of bronchial pneumonia (Machart 2009).
Compositional style and techniques[edit]Generally regarded as a member of the Darmstadt School in the 1950s, Pousseur's music employs serialism, mobile forms, and aleatory, often mediating between or among seemingly irreconcilable styles, such as those of Schubert and Webern (_Votre Faust_), or Pousseur's own serial style and the protest song "We shall overcome" (_Couleurs croisées_).
His electronic composition _Scambi_ (Exchanges), realized at the Studio di Fonologia in Milan in 1957, is unusual in the tape-music medium because it is explicitly meant to be assembled in different ways before listening. When first created, several different versions were realized, two by Luciano Berio, one by Marc Wilkinson, and two by the composer himself (Sabbe 1977, 175n86). Since 2004, the Scambi Project, directed by John Dack at the Lansdown Centre for Electronic Arts at Middlesex University, has focused on this work and its multiple possibilities for realization.
In addition to his compositional and teaching activities, Pousseur published many articles and ten books on music, amongst which are _Fragments Théorique I: sur la musique expérimentale_(Brussels: Université Libre de Bruxelles, 1970), _Schumann le Poète: 25 moments d'une lecture de Dichterliebe_ (Paris: Klincksieck, 1993), and _Musiques croisées_ (Paris: L'Harmattan, 1997). In 2004, two volumes of his collected writings, selected and edited by Pascal Decroupet, were issued by the Belgian publisher Pierre Mardaga (Pousseur 2004a, 2004b). He also published the first French translation of the writings of Alban Berg (Bartholomée 2009, 68)
Selected compositions[edit]

_Sept Versets des Psaumes de la Pénitence_ for four vocal soloists or mixed choir (1950)
_Trois Chants sacrés_ for soprano and string trio (1951)
_Prospection_ for three pianos tuned in sixths of a tone (1952-53)
_Séismogrammes_ electronic music (1954)
_Symphonies à 15 Solistes_ (1954-55)
_Quintette à la memoire d'Anton Webern_ for clarinet, bass clarinet, violin, cello, and piano (1955)
_Scambi_ electronic music (1957)
_Mobile_ for two pianos (1957-58)
_Rimes pour différentes sources sonores_ for orchestra and tape (1958)
_Madrigal I_ for clarinet (1958)
_Ode_ for string quartet (1960-61)
_Madrigal II_ for four early instruments (flute, violin, viola da gamba, harpsichord) (1961)
_Trois Visages de Liège_ electronic music (1961)
_Caractères_ for piano (1961)
_Madrigal III_ for clarinet, violin, cello, 2 percussionists, and piano (1962)
_Votre Faust_ (1960-68), opera for five actors, four singers, thirteen instruments, and electronic music, libretto by Michel Butor. Several "satellite" works are related to this opera:
_Miroir de Votre Faust_ (_Caractères II_) for solo piano and (optional) soprano (1964-65)
_Jeu de Miroirs de Votre Faust_ for piano, soprano and tape (1964-65)
_Echos de Votre Faust_ for mezzo-soprano, flute, cello, and piano (1961-69)
_Les Ruines de Jéruzona_ for mixed choir and "rhythm section" (1978)
_La Passion selon Guignol_ for amplified vocal quartet and orchestra (1981)
_Parade de Votre Faust_ for orchestra (1974)
_Aiguillages au carrefour des immortels_ for 16 or 17 instruments (2002)
_Il sogno di Leporello: Parade 2 (de Votre Faust)_ for orchestra (2005)

_Apostrophe et six Réflexions_ for piano (1964-66)
_Phonèmes pour Cathy_ for mezzo-soprano solo (1966)
_Couleurs croisées_ for large orchestra (1967)
_Mnémosyne_ monody solo voice or instrument, or unison choir (1968)
_Mnémosyne II_ for variable media (1969)
_Les Éphémérides d'Icare 2_ for a soloist, three-part concertino, and four instrumental quartets (1970)
_Crosses of Crossed Colors_ for vocal soloist, two to five pianos, six tape-recorder operators, two turntablists, and two radio operators (1970)
_Paraboles-Mix_ electronic music (1972)
_Vue sur les Jardins interdits_ for saxophone quartet (1973)
_Die Erprobung des Petrus Hebraïcus_ chamber opera in three acts, libretto by Léo Wintgens after Michel Butor (1974). Several "satellite" works are related to this opera:
_Chroniques berlinoises_ for piano and string quartet with baritone _ad lib._ (1975)
_Chroniques illustrées_ for large orchestra with baritone _ad lib._ (1976)
_Ballade berlinoise_ for piano solo (1977)
_Humeurs du Futur quotidien_ for two reciters and chamber orchestra (1978)
_Pédigrée_ for female voice and seven instruments (1980)
_Chroniques canines_, for two pianos with soprano voice _ad lib._ (1984)

_Canines_ for voice and piano (1980)
_Flexions IV_ for viola solo (1980)
_La Seconde Apothéose de Rameau_ for 21 instruments (1981)
_Chroniques canines_ for two pianos with soprano _ad lib_ (1984)
_Tales and Songs from the Bible of Hell_ four singers with real-time electronic transformation and pre-recorded 4 track tape (1979)
_La Passion selon Guignol_ for amplified vocal quartet and orchestra (1981)
_La Paganania_ for solo violin (1982)
_La Paganania seconda_ for solo cello (1982)
_Traverser la Forêt_ (1987)
_Déclarations d'Orage_ for reciter, soprano, baritone, three improvising instruments (alto saxophone, tuba, synthesizer), large orchestra and tape (1988-89)
_At Moonlight, Dowland's Shadow passes along Ginkaku-Ji_ for shakuhachi, shamisen, and koto (1989)
_Leçons d'Enfer_ music theatre for 2 actors, 3 singers, 7 instruments, tape, and live electronics; texts by Arthur Rimbaud and Michel Butor (1990-91)
_Dichterliebesreigentraum_ for soprano, baritone, two solo pianos, choir and orchestra (1992-93)
_Aquarius-Mémorial (in memoriam Karel Goeyvaerts)_
_Les Litanies d'Icare_ for piano (1994)
_Danseurs Gnidiens cherchant la Perle clémentine_ for chamber orchestra (1998)
_Les Fouilles de Jéruzona_ for orchestra (1995)
_Icare au Jardin du Verseau_ for piano and chamber orchestra (1999)

_La Guirlande de Pierre_ for soprano, baritone and piano (1997)
_Navigations_ for harp (2000)
_Seize Paysages planétaires_ ethno-electroacoustical music (2000)
_Les Icare africains_ for solo voices, _ad lib._ choir, and orchestra (2002)
_Stèle à la mémoire de Pierre Froidebise_ for solo clarinet (2009), unfinished at the composer's death, completed and premiered by Jean-Pierre Peuvion


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

*20th Century Classical Music - One Tune A Day

*This is an interesting juxtaposition of music concrete and real instruments. Since the taped interpolations are altered recordings of the instruments themselves, it gives a unity to the whole piece. Sometimes it's hard to tell what is real and what is taped.*
*
*



*


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

This is the definitive vesion of George Crumb's Madrigals, performed by the singer they were written for: Jan DeGaetani.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

A classic: John Cage's Fontana Mix. This is the original 2-track tape version. Many later versions have added voice or instrument on top of the tape.

Cage made the final version by following a detailed set of instructions on editing, which involved cutting various lengths of tape and splicing them together (these were the days before digital editing). He wasn't sure of the result beforehand, so the piece is "indeterminate" in that regard.

The source tapes used before assembling the piece were a collection of sounds from various sources, following his descriptions: sounds of water, sounds of machinery, sounds of voices, and so on.

The final version is a two-track stereo tape, and none of the sounds are "panned" in any way, so they remain on the far left or far right. The result is a curiously "schizophrenic" collection of sounds which appear in one's left or right ear.

There are elements of perhaps (or perhaps not) unintended humor: dogs barking (1:11-1:15) (11:07-11:22), slowed-down voices (0:38-0:39) (1:30-1:35), chanting (7:04-7:09), and other elements.

This is one of those pieces in which Cage has left his "fingerprints" unintentionally (or perhaps not). He did try to remove himself as much as possible from his compositions, but in this case, and with the "Variations" recorded at an art gallery in Los Angeles, the choice and repetition of some sound sources belie a sense of humor.


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## Dorsetmike (Sep 26, 2018)

Lacrimosa from Requiem for my friend (I much prefer this version sung by Elżbieta Towarnicka, to that by Sumi Jo


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Charles Ives: The Short Pieces conducted by Gunther Schuller. This is my preferred version of these. Also available from the Orpheus Chamber Ensemble, and on a KOCH CD.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Stockhausen: Zeitmasse


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Anton Webern: Op. 4 Songs, Nr. 5
This is my favorite Webern song. The words are about looking at ashes of a dying fire. I like the way this girl sings, too.


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