# What are the most 'extreme' composers you have ever heard?



## MusicSybarite (Aug 17, 2017)

Thus far, for me it might Carter, Birtwistle, Boulez, Schoenberg, Lutoslawski, Webern, Johnston, Kagel, Schnittke, Messiaen, Stockhausen, Krenek, Cage, mostly because an important portion of his works seems too cerebral and cold, weird, uneven to grasp.

And, are you willing to try more challenging music of theirs?

For others, the composers above mentioned might be more familiar with them. Every case could be perfectly different.


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## LudwigvanBeetroot (Jan 10, 2020)

Stockhausen, Finnissy, Penderecki, Xenakis, probably more.

Not really my cup of tea, though I don't mind Schoenberg, Berg etc once in a while.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

I have plenty of composers in my CD collection that some might consider extreme (I don't), like most mentioned so far, Ferneyhough and Lachenmann (to name two usual suspects). Right now I'm playing Dai Fujikura. Before that it was Froberger - I like contrasts.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

I've having trouble with the concept "extreme". Many of the composers mentioned so far I did once find difficult but I have been enjoying them, much as other music that I listen to, for quite some time. The OP mentions "Carter, Birtwistle, Boulez, Schoenberg, Lutoslawski, Webern, Johnston, Kagel, Schnittke, Messiaen, Stockhausen, Krenek, Cage" who are mostly composers I can't think of as extreme. In fact I miss those moment when their music suddenly seems to fall into place for me and to move in my mind from interesting noise to music. But I don't know Johnston, Kagel or Kremek's music and don't spend much of my time with Cage. But the rest (it is a very varied list) all form normal parts of my listening along with many others. 

Extreme? 
As in "over the top"? Mahler is extreme sometimes. 
As in "at the edge of my listening"? That definition worries me a little as I can't think of anyone (except maybe some very early composers?) which suggests that I am not exploring as much as I used to. I do sample quite a lot of contemporary music but not a lot of it sounds truly new/alien to me and I'm not sure any new names have stuck yet. Maybe I need to be more conscious about this exploration.

I guess most of the time I am looking for music that is quite special, inspired etc. (but who would not say that?) and I don't spend much time with composers who seem somewhat "2nd rank" to me.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

MusicSybarite said:


> And, are you willing to try more challenging music of theirs?


Sure, but I take a grain of salt whenever people say 'challenging' or 'extreme' to describe them.






The general stuff just strikes me as "glorified film effects" to me. Like, go watch movies in a cinema, you'll hear those effects used in a more convincing way with visual images appropriate for the effects. Why go the hard way by listening to just the music alone, pondering how challenging it is. I listened to Stravinsky's supposed "late masterpiece", Requiem Canticles. Again, _good interesting sound effects_. Nothing more than that. Stockhausen, a good composer for horror films. I lost all respect for him when I learned of his disrespectful comment about 9/11. I think it really revealed his unhealthy mentality.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

^ Sounds like you are scraping the surface of that music. With luck it will at least not make sounds like fingernails on a chalkboard.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

are "opera effects" different from "film effects"? After all, one of the most successful opera composers of today, Jake Heggie, says that he at first didn't get opera because opera is not just music but it must be experienced viewing the action, the actors, the costumes, the background etc, and that very few operas work as just music. And he's right.
And to me, even for music that stands on his own, to hear a music used for a video or a movie has helped me to appreciate things that for prejudices I didn't appreciate before. So I don't see the fact that I can appreciate a music like that as something negative. It tells more about my prejudices.
Actually if someone is able to appreciate Stravinsky watching Fantasia or Ligeti watching 2001 space Odyssey (or Mozart watching Come and see) is a super positive thing.


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## Fabulin (Jun 10, 2019)

My extreme is Messiaen (Turangalila) and Langgaard (Music of the Spheres). If I look for special spices, I revisit this music.


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## soni (Jul 3, 2018)

The composers OP mentioned aren't extreme (at least the ones I've listened to, which is 10 out of the 13 mentioned).
For "extreme" music try:
Ligeti (some pieces)
Xenakis
Ustvolskaya


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## Lilijana (Dec 17, 2019)

It would be interesting to know what people's extremes in the opposite direction are. We may well all love 18th and 19th century music, but what of 13th century _ars subtilior_? Certainly an experimental style of that time, and for me the way I found any kind of 'entry' into that music was to think of it more along the lines of a medieval version of Elliott Carter's rhythmic complexity and polyphony.


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## soni (Jul 3, 2018)

_______________


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## Kjetil Heggelund (Jan 4, 2016)

Extreme music for me is the electronic experimental stuff. Stockhausen has some, but he can be quite beautiful sometimes. Silver Apples of the Moon by Morton Subotnick is one I remember as extreme. I will dive more into electronic music...


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

MusicSybarite said:


> Thus far, for me it might Carter, Birtwistle, Boulez, Schoenberg, Lutoslawski, Webern, Johnston, Kagel, Schnittke, Messiaen, Stockhausen, Krenek, Cage, mostly because an important portion of his works seems too cerebral and cold, weird, uneven to grasp.


Many of these are my regular diet of listening. Although I'm not familiar with Birtwistle. What is the definition of extreme?


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

Cage's Europera. For me, the worst definition of music, a lazy composition (not really a composition) and a failed experiment. It's a test of how gullible the audience is, a hidden duck test.


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## vtpoet (Jan 17, 2019)

Dunno. Asking after the most 'extreme' composer will always (and has in this comment section so far) result in name-dropping 20th and 21st century composers. That's really almost too easy. I could sit down and bang out a fistful of chords too.

The more interesting question would be: Who were the most extreme composers in any given era?


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

norman bates said:


> are "opera effects" different from "film effects"?


But good operas of the past are often listened to just by the music alone. Visual images are not a determining factor in making them sound good and convincing. With most music of the past, if you don't like something, then you just don't like it. And that's it. With certain contemporary music, on the other hand, there's always 'convenient logic' involved to elevate it: "People are too stuck in the past and too lacking in capacity to understand. They're not accustomed to the advanced use of dissonances etc". In my view, people who go around saying things like that about certain contemporary music are overrating it themselves. Maybe some of it is just "glorified" film scores. I don't know.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

hammeredklavier said:


> But good operas of the past are often listened to just by the music alone. Visual images are not a determining factor in making them sound good and convincing.


To me yes, large portions of operas are not good for the music alone. Operas were (like theatre) the movies of previous centuries. And it's not a case that usually the most successful parts of operas are arias, or preludes, not the part with dialogues that don't often don't have a great musical value taken alone.






(4:45) "I still didn't get operas themselves because we kept listening to them, we didn't go to see them and I realized that opera is theater music and it's only part of a bigger picture: it's meant to be staged, it's meant to be experienced with live staging and scenery and costumes and there are very few operas that work entirely just listening to the music, you have to have a point of reference for staging and visuals and action"
Words of one of the (if not the) most successful contemporary opera composer. And I agree with him.



hammeredklavier said:


> With most music of the past, if you don't like something, then you just don't like it. And that's it. With certain contemporary music, on the other hand, there's always 'convenient logic' involved to elevate it: "People are too stuck in the past and too lacking in capacity to understand. They're not accustomed to the advanced use of dissonances etc". In my view, people who go around saying things like that about certain contemporary music are overrating it themselves. Maybe some of it is just "glorified" film scores. I don't know.


I don't see this difference at all and I think it's just your personal scheme, this "music of the past" vs "modern music". I just think that if a person has a prejudice toward something (a certain musical genre, a certain composer, a certain era) a movie or a video can help appreciate something because it helps removing those barriers. So if one is able to appreciate a music in a visual context, it's just because one is not thinking all the time "I'm not supposed to like this".


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## Heck148 (Oct 27, 2016)

Not sure what extreme really means...
Henry Brant and Earl Brown spring to mind, tho...


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## Red Terror (Dec 10, 2018)

OP: "Extreme" in terms of complexity and innovation? I once considered the Darmstadt boys extreme but no longer.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

Red Terror said:


> OP: "Extreme" in terms of complexity and innovation? I once considered the Darmstadt boys extreme but no longer.


Extremely enjoyable. I love my Darmstadt Aural Documents box.


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