# Post the Ugliest Music



## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

On the subject of ugly music, I'm sure it is subjective. Ugly doesn't mean uninteresting.

Here is my vote for the ugliest piece of music


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

That's ugly? I thought it was rather beautiful.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

Bulldog said:


> That's ugly? I thought it was rather beautiful.


So did I. Very Bartokian.


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## Guest (Sep 15, 2018)

Probably this 




Because if the tuning it, to me, sounds like the aural equivalent of the uncanny valley. The prevalence of chromatic notes makes it all the more apparent. It's ugly, but so compelling.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Perhaps this?


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## Rogerx (Apr 27, 2018)

wrong thread,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,


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## Rogerx (Apr 27, 2018)

never mind........


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

Rogerx said:


> wrong thread,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,


_______I agree.


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## Portamento (Dec 8, 2016)

No music is ugly.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

Bulldog said:


> That's ugly? I thought it was rather beautiful.


It is interesting, and well put together, but I don't think it can be beautiful aurally. The beauty comes from within.  Ravel, say is way more beautiful aurally. This by the same composer is much more beautiful


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Top this if you can:


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> Top this if you can:


I have heard worse, but I am not so masochistic that I want to try to find a recording of it on youtube.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

Woodduck said:


> Top this if you can:


sounds like an angry 6-year-old rebelling against forced piano lessons.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

I like this piece, but it's ugly and intended to be so.


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## Guest (Sep 15, 2018)

Sorry Beethoven , but I think these variations are tedious.


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## MusicSybarite (Aug 17, 2017)

Almost anything by Carter.


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

Phil loves classical said:


> It is interesting, and well put together, but I don't think it can be beautiful aurally. The beauty comes from within.  Ravel, say is way more beautiful aurally. This by the same composer is much more beautiful


We differ again; I find minimal beauty in your example.


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## Portamento (Dec 8, 2016)

MusicSybarite said:


> Almost anything by Carter.


I hate comments like these, and the threads that spawn them.


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

poco a poco said:


> Sorry Beethoven , but I think these variations are tedious.


Tedious is not ugly, although ugliness can be tedious.


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## MusicSybarite (Aug 17, 2017)

Portamento said:


> I hate comments like these, and the threads that spawn them.


You should be used to it. And I'm sorry, but that music is really awful like a hell.


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## Guest (Sep 16, 2018)

MusicSybarite said:


> You should be used to it. And I'm sorry, but that music is really awful like a hell.


Despite being a huge Carter fan, I really have to agree.............when it comes to playing his music. Those polyrhythms _are_ awful! This is the best I've ever been able to do. I might try this piece again when I'm a better guitarist:

__
https://soundcloud.com/jessop-maticevski-shumack%2Fshard-by-elliott-carter


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

Woodduck said:


> Top this if you can:


The thing is, it just continues like that, by principle ...

This is a more interesting, concertante Sciarrino work with piano, _Recitativo Oscuro_: 





Concerning Eliott Carter, the "_Enchanted Preludes_" shows him in a lyrical mood:


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## Guest (Sep 16, 2018)

I actually think Sciarrino's best works are his operas and vocal music.

Woodduck, I think Ustvolskaya has a piano sonata along the lines of the Sciarrino, but I think it's a lot more bleak.


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)




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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

I nominate symphony 2 by Prokofiev . Ugly and savage but fascinating and unforgettable . It's so dissonant it makes The Rite of Spring sound like Mendelssohn by comparison !


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

Woodduck said:


> Top this if you can: (horrible video removed)


At school I watched a piano slip from a trolley and fall down a flight of steps and sort of burst as it hit the wall. I swear it was more tuneful than Sciarrino's sonata.

So a win for aleatoric music!


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

eugeneonagain said:


> At school I watched a piano slip from a trolley and fall down a flight of steps and sort of burst as it hit the wall. I swear it was more tuneful than Sciarrino's sonata.
> 
> So a win for aleatoric music!


A piano drop at MIT.


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

KenOC said:


> A piano drop at MIT.


Technically a piano duet drop. (It seems to me that they did not properly tune them prior to the drop.)


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

Forgive my xenophobia, but why do Americans so relish this sort of destruction-entertainment? There are so many videos of things being smashed and it seems to please a lot of people.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

eugeneonagain said:


> Forgive my xenophobia, but why do Americans so relish this sort of destruction-entertainment? There are so many videos of things being smashed and it seems to please a lot of people.


It serves several purposes for us. First, we view wrecking things as a form of free expression, which is classified under the First Amendment of the Constitution as protected free speech. We like periodically to demonstrate our inalienable rights in the most obnoxious way possible - and, in this case, we are also showing anyone who questions those rights what we will do to them if they try to stop us. Second, we like to pretend to ourselves that we are wealthy and powerful enough to destroy things without paying a price; in West Virginia we actually blow the tops off mountains and fill watersheds with coal sludge because we can. But, third, we know that we the people aren't really that wealthy, that we have no real power, that wealth and power belong to an elite class who rob us in every way possible, that there's nothing we can do about it, and that the only way we can express our righteous rage is to push pianos down flights of stairs, crash trucks in demolition derbys, shoot unarmed black teenagers, elect semi-literate narcissistic despotic creeps to destroy the government and the planet, drug ourselves oblivious, and long fervently for the Rapture and the Apocalypse, the final demolition which will make crashing trucks look genteel.

You European socialist snowflakes don't know what real fun is.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Woodduck said:


> ...the only way we can express our righteous rage is to push pianos down flights of stairs, crash trucks in demolition derbys, shoot unarmed black teenagers, elect semi-literate narcissistic despotic creeps to destroy the government and the planet, drug ourselves oblivious, and long fervently for the Rapture and the Apocalypse, the final demolition which will make crashing trucks look genteel.


I've always been partial to figure-eight racing. No need to describe that further. A hundred years ago people were having fun smashing locomotives into each other. Note that "NRA" in those years was the National Relief Act, and the other train is named "Old Man Depression."


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Also, I collect atomic bomb movies.


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

You are right sir. I am going back to my ivory tower and my government handouts, so that I can do no more harm.


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

KenOC said:


> Also, I collect atomic bomb movies.


William Shatner has a knack of associating himself with questionable projects. Atomic Bombs, movies entirely in Esperanto... Star Trek.

Maybe one of them shouldn't be on that list.


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## 13hm13 (Oct 31, 2016)

Ugly: Music featured by or used by NPR that is not classical. E.g., KPCC (news/features NPR station, LA ,Calif.)

There are exceptions ... WGTE (NW Ohio, USA) used to have a Heats of Space program ... but WGTE was partially a classical NPR station.


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## BiscuityBoyle (Feb 5, 2018)

Woodduck said:


> Top this if you can:


Love it. The cluster-like textures are great fun and I can hear a musical line threading it.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

"Ugly" is a term that never enters my mind when listening to any piece of music. I don't understand the idea of an ugly sound.


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## Euler (Dec 3, 2017)

starthrower said:


> "Ugly" is a term that never enters my mind when listening to any piece of music. I don't understand the idea of an ugly sound.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

BiscuityBoyle said:


> Love it. The cluster-like textures are great fun and I can hear a musical line threading it.


There's one in every crowd.


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> There's one in every crowd.


Yes, and that person is usually called the composer.


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## Barelytenor (Nov 19, 2011)

Woodduck said:


> Top this if you can:


Andante orribile

Kind regards, :tiphat:

George


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

KenOC said:


> I've always been partial to figure-eight racing. No need to describe that further. A hundred years ago people were having fun smashing locomotives into each other. Note that "NRA" in those years was the National Relief Act, and the other train is named "Old Man Depression."


Minor correction: Natonal Recovery Administration.


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## regenmusic (Oct 23, 2014)

Thank God for satire. That's why we find Archie Bunker types so funny.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

There's often something more to ugliness than meets the ears, but I wouldn't exactly call this beautiful, either:






I'm reminded of an old lady named "Ergma" being helped across the street who didn't want to go. Sometimes I feel that Xenakis wanted to rub the noses of his listeners into the sense of violence that he experienced in his own life and make them take it so they'd somehow sense how he felt. So perhaps what he wrote is closer to violence than ugliness, and I feel there is a difference. That's why I'd rather not use the word ugliness habitually as a way of quickly dismissing a composer or work. It's too lazy of a word and it doesn't go far enough to describe what may be happening beneath the surface.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

^^ I declare this the ugliest so far. Thanks for sharing. I don't buy the idea there is no ugly music, because that would invalidate there being beautiful music either. If everything is beautiful, then it becomes non-descriptive. I suspect Xenakis wanted to create this harsh music with a purpose.


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## geralmar (Feb 15, 2013)

I have no musical expertise; I only remember years ago reading the opinion (I believe in the long defunct High Fidelity Magazine) that Schoenberg's Woodwind Quintet (1923-24) was monumentally "ugly."


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## Guest (Sep 22, 2018)

geralmar said:


> I have no musical expertise; I only remember years ago reading the opinion (I believe in the long defunct High Fidelity Magazine) that Schoenberg's Woodwind Quintet (1923-24) was monumentally "ugly."


Honestly, I think it's a _fairly_ ugly piece, and probably not as great a piece as some of his other works from the 20s


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## BiscuityBoyle (Feb 5, 2018)

starthrower said:


> "Ugly" is a term that never enters my mind when listening to any piece of music. I don't understand the idea of an ugly sound.


It's not hard to imagine what the epithet would've meant for Haydn and Mozart, but in our post Boulez and Captain Beefheart world it is something of an anachronism, I submit.


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