# Edgiest piece of classical music



## adriesba (Dec 30, 2019)

I know, it's a silly question, but what do you think is the edgiest piece of classical music?

I'm thinking of pieces like _Carmina Burana_, _Elektra_, and _Le Sacre du Printemps_.

Here's a definition (#3): https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/edgy


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

Penderecki's Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima is in a different ballpark wrt edginess compared to these two examples....


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

Prokofiev Scythian Suite
Any symphony by Roger Sessions


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

I personally enjoy the edginess of most of the music of Bartok. The first piano concerto, the Concerto for Orchestra etc. Also Prokofiev's third symphony, especially the first movement, has some fine edge. There are lots of other examples......Music of Martinu, Rautavaara Piano Concerto: where to start or stop? Even the first movements of the Bach D-minor Concerto, or the Mozart Concerto 24, or the first Brahms PC have satisfying edginess.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

adriesba said:


> I know, it's a silly question, but what do you think is the edgiest piece of classical music?
> 
> I'm thinking of pieces like _Carmina Burana_, _Elektra_, and _Le Sacre du Printemps_.
> 
> Here's a definition (#3): https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/edgy


those pieces (especially the Rite of spring) were avantgarde like 100 years ago. And I'm not sure Carmina Burana has ever been considered "edgy". I think it depends also on what you would consider that way. For instance something like 4'33'' to mention a famous one is still a piece that produces endless debates (I don't like it, but I think that something really edgy should not be easy to accept so it's a good candidate). The helicopter piece of Stockhausen, a lot of things of Xenakis, the Studies for player piano of Conlon Nancarrow, some new complexity stuff of composers like Ferneyhough... those are few things I can think of. But as said, it depends on what you mean with edgy.


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## S P Summers (Dec 23, 2016)

Henry Cowell - "The Banshee"


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## mahlernerd (Jan 19, 2020)

Stockhausen's Helicopter Quartet. In fact, most of Stockhausen is pretty edgy.


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## ORigel (May 7, 2020)

Crumb Black Angels
Xenakis Perseopolis


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## S P Summers (Dec 23, 2016)

Yeah, pretty much anything by Xenakis and Stockhausen too.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

I think it might be interesting to speculate on which works pushed the limit the most by stretching their listeners musical comfort zone the most. I think the Grosse Fuge must be one. Rite of Spring may be another, but my understanding is that the dancing contributed as much or more than the music. I'm not sure which early 20th century work might be considered the "most extreme" musically. Early electronic music likely would be a candidate.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Look no further than


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

To me, this is the most crazy-brilliant piece ever. This is one of the fastest performances too that you will hear, and I take it that it's still slower than the original metronome indications.


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## Allegro Con Brio (Jan 3, 2020)

When I saw "edgy" I immediately thought "rebelling against the accepted norms of the time." And immediately I thought of _Tristan und Isolde_, after which the attendants at the premiere could not sleep due to the diabolical passions they had just witnessed, and Clara Schumann, in one of my favorite quips of all time (not that I agree) called it "the most repugnant thing I have ever seen or heard." Of course Beethoven 9, Rite of Spring and others had similar effects. And we can't forget the edgiest piece ever written: Cage's _4'33_


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

No discussion of "edgy" though can leave out maybe the "edgiest" composer ever: Erik Satie.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

I thought the discussion was about music that could be perceived as edgy today...


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

norman bates said:


> I thought the discussion was about music that could be perceived as edgy today...


Satie's "Vexations" is still edgy.


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

A couple more candidates would be Strauss' _Salome_ and Berg's _Wozzeck_.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

consuono said:


> Satie's "Vexations" is still edgy.


true, altough just for the sheer lenght of the piece... and I think it was more a joke than anything else.
By the way, speaking of lenght, there's John Cage with his As slow as possible

https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ%C2%B2/ASLSP

"The performance of the organ version at St. Burchardi church in Halberstadt, Germany began in 2001 and is scheduled to have a duration of 639 years, ending in 2640."


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

talking relatively to their time, Charles Ives was ahead in so many ways, using polytonality, atonality, microtonality, complex rhyhtms one against the other.
Also guys like Harry Partch, Obukhov, Luigi Russolo or Gesualdo could be mentioned.


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## Caryatid (Mar 28, 2020)

consuono said:


> To me, this is the most crazy-brilliant piece ever. This is one of the fastest performances too that you will hear, and I take it that it's still slower than the original metronome indications.


That's a hell of a tempo for a live performance.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

adriesba said:


> I know, it's a silly question, but what do you think is the edgiest piece of classical music?
> 
> I'm thinking of pieces like _Carmina Burana_, _Elektra_, and _Le Sacre du Printemps_.
> 
> Here's a definition (#3): https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/edgy


Kraanerg


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## Allegro Con Brio (Jan 3, 2020)

Alright, I've got it...


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## Room2201974 (Jan 23, 2018)

I think that the edgiest piece of classical music is Khachaturian's _Sabre Dance_ which after all, is in a sharp key.


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## Sequentia (Nov 23, 2011)

Stravinsky described Beethoven's _Grosse Fuge_ as "an absolutely contemporary piece of music that will be contemporary forever". That is a judgment that claims to transcend time, for what it may be worth.

The 4th movement of Beethoven's _Hammerklavier_ Sonata is a piece that I find shockingly explosive and unrelenting, no matter how many times I have listened to it (and in spite of exposure to loads of 20th- and 21st-century music). Parts of Messiaen's _Vingt Regards_ (especially sections VI and XX) deserve to be mentioned, as do various works of Janáček and Bartók. Boulez's _Sur Incises_. Various works by Sorabji, if only for their length. The list goes on...


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

norman bates said:


> those pieces (especially the Rite of spring) were avantgarde like 100 years ago. And I'm not sure Carmina Burana has ever been considered "edgy". I think it depends also on what you would consider that way. For instance something like 4'33'' to mention a famous one is still a piece that produces endless debates (I don't like it, but I think that something really edgy should not be easy to accept so it's a good candidate).


I don't find anything edgy about 4'33'; it might be the opposite of edgy.


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## apricissimus (May 15, 2013)

4'33" is certainly edgy if only because so many people seem to get unreasonably upset about it.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

Bulldog said:


> I don't find anything edgy about 4'33'; it might be the opposite of edgy.


do you mean that you see it as something absolutely common, a piece modeled after a lot of similar things and widely praised and accepted without any controversy?
What's your definition of edgy?


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## ORigel (May 7, 2020)

Xenakis Nomos Alpha
Xenakis Tetras


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

The first performance of 4'33 was in a forest setting, and some people see it as an example of American pastoral for that reason. Can you have edgy pastoral music?

In fact Cage composed two pieces called 4'33. The first is the one we all know and love. The second has this for score



> In a situation provided with maximum amplification (no feedback), perform a disciplined action.


The performance of 4'33 No. 2 here is particularly edgy


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

ORigel said:


> Xenakis Tetras


Ergma is edgier


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

norman bates said:


> Bulldog said:
> 
> 
> > I don't find anything edgy about 4'33'; it might be the opposite of edgy.
> ...


I'm suddenly reminded of these:


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

apricissimus said:


> 4'33" is certainly edgy if only because so many people seem to get unreasonably upset about it.


You're talking about a controversial reaction to the music. I'm talking about the music itself, and it has no edge.


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

I think a lot of Bartok fits that description ... none more than the slow movement of the Music For Strings, Percussion and Celeste.

Any of Edgar Varese's Ameriques, Equatorial, Nocturnal and Ionisation may fit the bill as well.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

hammeredklavier said:


> I'm suddenly reminded of these:


hey, personally I really dislike 4'33'', but (even beside my personal opinion) this thread is about edginess, not about quality or beauty.
In any case I really dislike the idea of the second video. It seems to suggest that what we like in art is not the beauty of art in itself but the ability of the artist, comparing art basically to juggling or something like that, things made to impress. 
And if it's true that modernism (and postmodernism even more) has produced a lot of crap, it has produced also a lot of things of great value. 
The idea that after the impressionists is the desert is just wrong. And I'm saying this agreeing with some of the things of the first video (altough I don't think I would have mistaken that purse for a Pollock).


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## Xisten267 (Sep 2, 2018)

I can't think in anything of content in music more adventurous than Beethoven's *Grosse Fuge*. For my ears it looks like a great, intense, passionate yet labyrinthic modern piece, but composed about a century before the first large scale works of a Stravinsky or of a Schoenberg!


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

Bulldog said:


> You're talking about a controversial reaction to the music. I'm talking about the music itself, and it has no edge.


but you still have to explain what edgy means to you


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## Dedalus (Jun 27, 2014)

I have a different idea of edgy than most people here, I think. To me edgy is a slightly pejorative term for someone or something who tries to be really deep and dark and brooding because they think it's cool or makes them look cool. Edgy people say things like "This whole life is just suffering and then we die and life is one big meaningless joke". And then you say "Wow, you are so edgy, man" with sarcasm. So in this vein, I would say pieces that are actually trying to be all dark and serious. 

I'm thinking of pieces like Kindertotenlieder, which is about children dying of scarlet fever (I think?). That's pretty edgy to me. Mahler is like, yea, I'm gonna write a song about dead children, and it's so sad and dark, people will freakin' CRY.

Another piece that comes to my mind is Symphonie Fantastique because it has the whole witches sabbath going on and all that. I can imagine Berlioz coming up with the concept in the piece and thinking "They're going to go nuts over this", which is exactly the kind of thing an edgy person does.


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## Josquin13 (Nov 7, 2017)

Shostakovich String Quartet No. 8, which was composed after Shostakovich had witnessed the aftermath of the devastating destruction caused by Allied bombers during WW2 of the city of Dresden.


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

norman bates said:


> but you still have to explain what edgy means to you


Sharply defined music.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

Bulldog said:


> Sharply defined music.


this definition doesn't help a lot :lol:


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

Example:

From Bach's Goldberg Variations: no. 29 is edgy, no. 20 is not.


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

Don't know if it is "edgy" by any standard, technical definition, but Peter Maxwell Davies's _Eight Songs for a Mad King_ certainly puts me on edge -- and I _love_ the piece! Of course, it was written _about_ a fellow who certainly _was_ "over the edge."


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Allerius said:


> I can't think in anything of content in music more adventurous than Beethoven's *Grosse Fuge*. For my ears it looks like a great, intense, passionate yet labyrinthic modern piece, but composed about a century before the first large scale works of a Stravinsky or of a Schoenberg!


I think it certainly has elements that anticipate modern aesthetic philosophy (not the kind like John Cage's 4'33''), but it's not quite like modern music. The style is distinctively "Beethovenian" in feel (with his unique use of contrast in modified Classical form).

9th symphony scherzo: 



Grosse Fuge: 




I wouldn't just say _"it's like modern music"_ because that would mean it's "replaceable" by actual modern music (can be "replicated" in modern music) . I cannot agree with Luchesi's claim that 'classical music "advanced", "evolved", "improved" as time progressed.' I think it only "changed". This is why, in this modern era, where "adventurous modern music" is produced in massive quantity, -we still need to listen to Beethoven's Grosse Fuge, a relic from the "golden age". It's still distinct and different from modern music and that's what makes it valuable. And I think Grosse Fuge inspired Bartok (who admired Beethoven more than Bach, Mozart) in aesthetics more than Schoenberg (who admired Bach, Mozart more than Beethoven).



hammeredklavier said:


> "Schoenberg now proudly described himself as Mozart's pupil - and the final movement of the Suite, the 'Gigue', comes close to explicit homage to the G major Gigue, KV 574, in which Mozart at his most neo-Baroque and most harmonically chromatic seems almost to anticipate elements of Schoenberg's serial method."
> ( Arnold Schoenberg, By Mark Berry, Page 135 )


_"The counts, the countesses, the dukes and duchesses, the barons and baronesses, there are thousands of them. There's only one Beethoven."_


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

This seems to me an example of Beethoven as prescient of the some c20 ideas, particularly the insistent battering ram pounding in Stravinsky, in _The Rite of Spring_


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

hammeredklavier said:


> I'm suddenly reminded of these:


It is certainly edgy the way you keep posting those moronic videos!


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Schnittke can be edgy. His piano concerto, for example. Not violent but certainly on the edge. And the first cello concerto can get quite extreme with its amplified cello. And then there is his Faust Cantata, which is on the edge of crazy.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Bulldog said:


> I don't find anything edgy about 4'33'; it might be the opposite of edgy.


It just depends on what you are thinking about while it is being performed, especially if the performance is a good one.


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## Animal the Drummer (Nov 14, 2015)

Schubert's "Der Zwerg".


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## Acadarchist (May 22, 2020)

Strange Magic said:


> I personally enjoy the edginess of most of the music of Bartok. The first piano concerto, the Concerto for Orchestra etc. Also Prokofiev's third symphony, especially the first movement, has some fine edge. There are lots of other examples......Music of Martinu, Rautavaara Piano Concerto: where to start or stop? Even the first movements of the Bach D-minor Concerto, or the Mozart Concerto 24, or the first Brahms PC have satisfying edginess.


Thumbs up for Martinu.


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## Sequentia (Nov 23, 2011)

I forgot to mention Scriabin's Sonata No. 9. The finale of Shostakovich's String Quartet No. 9 also deserves to be listed.


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## Thelonious 58 (6 mo ago)

Shostakovich's very rarely performed 11th string quartet, especially the first two movements


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## Simon Moon (Oct 10, 2013)

I'm not sure what the OP's definition of edgy is, because the pieces they mention, to me, are pretty tame, musically speaking. 

I would say, the vast majority of music by 2 of my favorite composers, Elliott Carter and Charles Wuorinen is pretty edgy sounding.

As is, most music from: Harrison Birtwistle, Roger Sessions, Brian Ferneyhough, James Dillon, Helmut Lachenmann, Anna Thorvaldsdottir, Tristan Murail, Magnus Lindberg, Olga Neuwirth, just to name a few.


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## Yabetz (Sep 6, 2021)

Pretty edgy for 1924:


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## AaronSF (Sep 5, 2021)

To me these are examples of "edgy":

Edgard Varèse, "Ionization":






Bernd Alois Zimmermann, "Photoptosis":


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## Yabetz (Sep 6, 2021)

Is anything really "edgy" anymore though? We've had edgy for over a century now and by now it sounds...the usual.


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## HenryPenfold (Apr 29, 2018)

I think I'd have to go for Faure's Pavane


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

norman bates said:


> ... something like 4'33'' to mention a famous one is still a piece that produces endless debates (I don't like it, but I think that something really edgy should not be easy to accept so it's a good candidate). ... But as said, it depends on what you mean with edgy.





Allegro Con Brio said:


> ... we can't forget the edgiest piece ever written: Cage's _4'33_





Bulldog said:


> I don't find anything edgy about 4'33'; it might be the opposite of edgy.


I return to this post after just having finished a listen to _ab II_ by Mark Andre. The piece is written for contrabass clarinet, cello, cimbalom, percussion, piano and live electronics. (I'm glad the electronics were live -- I hate dead electronics.) I have this 1996-97 composition on a NEOS album, Vol. 2 of the EXPERIMENTALSTUDIO 40 Years Anthology (NEOS 11516). It spurred me to return to a consideration of what "edgy" music might be. 

I reference some of this thread's previous quotes about Cage's seminal 4'33". I can say I've heard the Cage work performed several times by various performers in various venues. Some of those performances were edgier than others. A few were dull. A few were comical. I suspect dullness and comedy can be "edgy", but the real matter is to get to the bottom of what "edginess" (especially in reference to music) is. I imagine a performance of the 4'33" undertaken by a solo instrumentalist standing on the edge of the rooftop of a high rise. Will he be able to sustain his performance mode for the full four and a half (plus) minutes? It may depend upon whether he is balancing himself with a flute or harmonica in hand rather than with a tuba, bass drum, double bass, or harp.

Some fine definitions of "edginess" have here been proposed, but I'm not sure any of them is fully adequate. It seems that edgy music must have at least some sense of surprise or the unexpected or unanticipated in its fabric, a definition that allows for Haydn's Symphony No. 94 in G to be "edgy". Yet, if such a definition holds, the edginess would disappear with a repeated hearing of the work.

As I contemplate my varied experiences with the Cage 4'33" I ponder the idea that perhaps what brings edginess to a work is not its composition but its performance. The infamous 1962 broadcast performance of the Brahms D minor Concerto with Glenn Gould and the apologetic Leonard Bernstein might well serve as an edgy work, though I don't usually think of the Brahms Concerto in that way. Nor do I consider the Beethoven Fifth musically "edgy", though I hesitate in such a judgment when I encounter the performance recorded by Pierre Boulez. Yet, perhaps the Fifth, a revolutionary symphony that rivals Beethoven's Third, is most certainly "edgy". And does even familiarity remove that quality in the case of the Beethoven pieces?

No, I haven't settled on a definition of "edginess" in music, but I did return for a repeat listen to Andre's _ab II. _And I'm feeling very unsettled by the piece.


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## Yabetz (Sep 6, 2021)

I think Pärt and Górecki were two of the edgiest composers in fairly recent times precisely because they turned away from what had been considered edgy but then had become establishment. Today Bach would be edgier than Ferneyhough.


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## Philidor (11 mo ago)

adriesba said:


> I know, it's a silly question, but what do you think is the edgiest piece of classical music?


To my humble opinion, the answer depends at 100 % on the listener.

Some people found Beethoven 9th edgy (at the time of its premiere).

Almost all music that I found edgy some day lost this quality the more I listened to it, including Stockhausen, Ives and other canonical candidates for the hypothetical title of the "composer of the edgiest music".


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## Simon Moon (Oct 10, 2013)

Yabetz said:


> I think Pärt and Górecki were two of the edgiest composers in fairly recent times precisely because they turned away from what had been considered edgy but then had become establishment. Today Bach would be edgier than Ferneyhough.


It seems like some people are defining edgy, as music that challenges the norms and the establishment. 
Others (me, for one) are defining it purely based the sound of the music itself.

For me, I couldn't care less about what is or isn't the establishment. I listen based on the music itself. 

No matter how big of a challenge at the time, 4:33 was. it is not edgy, because it doesn't sound edgy.

And for me, Ferneyhough, Wuorinen, Dillon, Schwatner, Maderna, Carter, Tower, will always be edgier _sounding_, than Pärt, Górecki or Bach, no matter how much a part of the establishment they are. 

And for my tastes, I'd much rather listen to the former, not the latter.


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## Yabetz (Sep 6, 2021)

Simon Moon said:


> ...And for me, Ferneyhough, Wuorinen, Dillon, Schwatner, Maderna, Carter, Tower, will always be edgier _sounding_, than Pärt, Górecki or Bach, no matter how much a part of the establishment they are. ...


In what way, exactly? "Edgy" is a comparative quality. What makes any of the above edgy compared with Webern or Berg?


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## Heck148 (Oct 27, 2016)

Prokofiev - Le Pas D'Acier...


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