# Composer's most unusual pieces



## DeepR (Apr 13, 2012)

You can give your own meaning to the word "unusual"... so let's try to avoid a philosophical debate on what "unusual" means in this context. Yes, I know that every piece is unique, but some are more unique than others? 

So here's some examples I was thinking about... A piece may be unusual because:
- The composer wrote the piece in a style or form unusual to him
- It has unusual instrumentation, use of exotic instruments 
- It's unusual in the effect it has on you as a listener, compared to other music from the same composer
- It's simply completely out of whack compared to anything else the composer wrote 
etc. etc.


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## Cheyenne (Aug 6, 2012)

Ligeti: Poème Symphonique :lol:


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## GreenMamba (Oct 14, 2012)

Arvo Part's Symphony No. 2.

Unusual in that it is unlike his more well-known "holy minimalist" style, although the same could be said of other early works of his. But this is also unusual for its use of squeaky toys.


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## Cosmos (Jun 28, 2013)

For unusual instrumentation, I think most of Hindemith's output would fit. :lol: And some of Mahler's symphonies.

Specific pieces?
- Chopin's Cello Sonata. Wrote it near the end of his life, ages after he stopped publishing music for more than just solo piano. Doesn't really sound like Chopin, and the cello does more work than you'd expect from him, but these are probably due to collaborating with Auguste Franchomme
- Bach's Piece d'Orgue in G for organ. I just find it unusual for Bach because I'd never heard of any of his music being so free and unconstrained by form.
- Harpsichord *Concertos* by de Falla and Gorecki; Poulenc's Concerto Champetre. I still find it weird to hear the harpsichord in 20th century or later works
- Obvious Choice: Beethoven's Grosse Fuge. Unusual at how intricate it is, I think Stravinsky was the one who commented that it was basically Modern


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Ives, Concord Piano Sonata. A kaleidoscopic, colorful score filled with haunting nostalgia. His masterpiece. Nothing like it in the entire piano repertoire.


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## Headphone Hermit (Jan 8, 2014)

Berlioz - Beatrice et Benedict

A jolly opera, full of optimism and sunnyness. Unusually for Berlioz, it avoids plumming the depths: _"a perfectly rounded work, balancing witty elegance with charmingly half-serious sentiment"_ James Haar in The Cambridge Companion to Berlioz (ed Peter Bloom)


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

Cosmos said:


> - Bach's Piece d'Orgue in G for organ. I just find it unusual for Bach because I'd never heard of any of his music being so free and unconstrained by form.


what about the chromatic fantasy?


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Beethoven's Wellington's Victory. A far cry from anything else he wrote.


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## Cosmos (Jun 28, 2013)

norman bates said:


> what about the chromatic fantasy?


Ah I forgot about that one. I add that to my list


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## Kilgore Trout (Feb 26, 2014)

hpowders said:


> Ives, Concord Piano Sonata. A kaleidoscopic, colorful score filled with haunting nostalgia. His masterpiece. Nothing like it in the entire piano repertoire.


While it's probably my favorite piano work, it's nothing unusual in Ives' catalog.


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## Moraviac (Feb 18, 2011)

Mozart's Fantasy in D minor


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## dgee (Sep 26, 2013)

What about The Nose? I don't know heaps about Shostakovich but it sticks out like the proverbial to me from the rest of his oeuvre


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

This early string quartet by Hindemith sounds like Dvorak or something like that.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

dgee said:


> What about The Nose? I don't know heaps about Shostakovich but it sticks out like the proverbial to me from the rest of his oeuvre


The Aphorisms for Orchestra, something of a study for the Fourth Symphony, are very inspired by the Second Viennese School.

Oh, and whichever music student wrote this work...


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## Morimur (Jan 23, 2014)

Stockhausen's entire œuvre.


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## GodNickSatan (Feb 28, 2013)

The last movement to Chopin's second piano sonata is pretty unusual for him.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

Ravel's Bolero is one of his best known pieces, and there is nothing else like it in his oeuvre.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

I would say Bruckner's most unusual piece is his 7th Symphony because it's a masterpiece from first note to last.
I respect it. Highly unusual!


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## omega (Mar 13, 2014)

hpowders said:


> I would say Bruckner's most unusual piece is his 7th Symphony because it's a masterpiece from first note to last.
> I respect it. Highly unusual!


Is it the real hpowders who has written this message?

The _Music of the Spheres_ is without any doubt Langgaard's biggest achievement... but it seems he had abandonned all the brilliant ideas he had had in this splendid work.








Speaking of Nielsen, his 6th Symphony is very different from the others...


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

hpowders said:


> I would say Bruckner's most unusual piece is his 7th Symphony because it's a masterpiece from first note to last.
> I respect it. Highly unusual!


In the first two movements, maybe, but I think the latter half is somewhat weak.

I believe that the Fifth and Eighth (revised) are the two Bruckner works that work in their entirety.

But his most unusual piece is undoubtedly this one:


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## Cheyenne (Aug 6, 2012)

Mahlerian said:


> Oh, and whichever music student wrote this work...


It's attribution to Mahler is questionable then, I take it?


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Cheyenne said:


> It's attribution to Mahler is questionable then, I take it?


Not at all. I'm just joking about the fact that it doesn't have any of his style in it!


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## Cheyenne (Aug 6, 2012)

Mahlerian said:


> Not at all. I'm just joking about the fact that it doesn't have any of his style in it!


Ah, I see! Well, it's so characterless to me I could very well believe it was written by someone else!


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Cheyenne said:


> Ah, I see! Well, it's so characterless to me I could very well believe it was written by someone else!


All of the rest of Mahler's student works have been lost. Apparently some of them were kept in a library in Dresden, but it was destroyed in the bombing. Since this was before Mahler was widely regarded as a great composer, of course no one was interested in publishing or performing such juvenilia. Reports claim they weren't terribly great anyway.

The first Mahler music we have after this is three songs (Im Lenz, Winterlied, Maitanz im Gruenen) and Das Klagende Lied, both of which show the beginnings of Mahler's style.


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

An interesting topic, and it has so many directions to go.



hpowders said:


> Ives, Concord Piano Sonata. A kaleidoscopic, colorful score filled with haunting nostalgia. His masterpiece. Nothing like it in the entire piano repertoire.


Quite an unusual piece of music by any measure, but it's a piano sonata that has a part for flute, making it doubly unusual. I'm reminded that Schoenberg has a String Quartet which features a singer as a fifth voice, and George Crumb's "Black Angels" String Quartet features a number of percussion instruments in the score, but all played by the string players I believe.



Lope de Aguirre said:


> Stockhausen's entire œuvre.


Lope is quite right there. I wonder if Stockhausen has anything written in C Major. Meanwhile, one could say the same for Schoenberg, though in a somewhat different respect. While Stockhausen's music is _all _unusual, Schoenberg was capable of writing in nearly every style, and did, so that if one compares his "romantic" works to his "atonal" works to his "neo-classical" works ... one can spot nearly any single piece as being unusual in the context of the other pieces. Stravinsky is much the same. What _isn't_ unusual by Stravinsky.

In jazz, Miles Davis fits a similar mold. Just when you think you know Miles, he changes. If you concentrate on any single period of his work, something from one of the other periods seems unusual. Maybe what's most unusual is such a composer being usual!



hpowders said:


> I would say Bruckner's most unusual piece is his 7th Symphony because it's a masterpiece from first note to last.
> I respect it. Highly unusual!


I see nothing unusual about Bruckner writing a masterpiece, and though the 7th remains my long time favorite Bruckner work, I would argue it is not his only masterwork, thus not unusual in that sense. Yet, Bruckner's symphonies are unusual compared to anyone else out there. He has a unique voice.

As for that 7th Symphony, it holds up from first note to last. There is absolutely nothing weak about the second half of the work. In fact, I cherish Bruckner Scherzos. And the 7th symphony features Bruckner's best one. Best first movement, best second movement, best third movement, and quite a great finale.

As for a "most unusual piece" from a composer, I find _this_ fits the bill:


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

SONNET CLV said:


> As for that 7th Symphony, it holds up from first note to last. There is absolutely nothing weak about the second half of the work. In fact, I cherish Bruckner Scherzos. And the 7th symphony features Bruckner's best one. Best first movement, best second movement, best third movement, and quite a great finale.


Personally, I prefer the Scherzos in the Eighth and Ninth (the latter particularly for its trio) as well as the Fourth and Third. I wouldn't say that the latter half of the Seventh is poor music, necessarily, but it doesn't live up to the work's first two movements. The finale always ends up sounding somewhat perfunctory.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Verdi's string quartet.

Apparently he was staying at a hotel during a delay in the production of _Aida_ and had some time to kill. He said, "I don't know whether it's beautiful or ugly, but I do know it's a quartet."

He appears to have been correct.


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## Serge (Mar 25, 2010)

It's a quartet all right. What we were talking about?


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## Serge (Mar 25, 2010)

I'm glad the mods are not busting me any more now. Because I speak in tongues.


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## Serge (Mar 25, 2010)

Serge said:


> I'm glad the mods are not busting me any more now. Because I speak in tongues.


Wait, what a stupid joke that is!


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

Something gets me to pondering Mussorgsky. I began to wonder -- what is unusual in Mussorgsky's oeuvre? Most probably, a completed work, or one that hasn't been revised by someone else.

In any case, his "Cradle Song" seems a bit too tender for this Russian master of the macabre.






It sounds during the first three minutes or so of the above clip, I believe. Galina Vishnevskaya sings, accompanied by the Russian State Symphony Orchestra conducted by Igor Markevitch.

Equally unusual is this song: "Where are you, little star?", written in 1857 when Mussorgsky was 18.






The lyrics of this song don't seem especially unusual for a Mussorgsky work, I suppose.


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## mikey (Nov 26, 2013)

Cosmos said:


> - Chopin's Cello Sonata. Wrote it near the end of his life, ages after he stopped publishing music for more than just solo piano. Doesn't really sound like Chopin, and the cello does more work than you'd expect from him, but these are probably due to


Playing this right now and have to say, compared to the piano, the cello does just about as much as you would expect!



GodNickSatan said:


> The last movement to Chopin's second piano sonata is pretty unusual for him.


The whole thing is pretty dam weird! Like Schumann said, 4 of his strangest creations rolled into one (something along those lines).

I'd go with this


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## OldFashionedGirl (Jul 21, 2013)

I can't recognize Bartók in this piece:


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

Walton's Facade - the modish music combined with Sitwell's rich wordplay makes it stand out from the rest of Walton's work, I think.


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## ptr (Jan 22, 2013)

elgars ghost said:


> Walton's Facade - the modish music combined with Sitwell's rich wordplay makes it stand out from the rest of Walton's work, I think.


And is doubtless his best work!

/ptr


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## Serge (Mar 25, 2010)

Ravel's Bolero? Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture?


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## jtbell (Oct 4, 2012)

hpowders said:


> Beethoven's Wellington's Victory.


In keeping with the "original instruments" movement, I'm surprised that (apparently) no one in modern times has reconstructed Mälzel's Panharmonicon in order to record Wellington's Victory in its original form!


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## Funny (Nov 30, 2013)

The 2nd movement of Haydn's 64th symphony is extremely unusual for him - and indeed for any composer before Wagner - in that it contains no cadences. The cadences are there in our listening - we can hear where and how they're supposed to occur - but during those moments Haydn has everybody silent. And while experiments in music are not all that unusual for Haydn, this particular one goes against the very foundation of the kind of music he was helping to establish: cadential structures are the very bread and butter of 18th-century music to a degree much higher than either the Baroque or Romantic periods. To omit them entirely is at one level simply perverse, at another level a musicological query that fits with early 20th-century experiments.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Funny said:


> The 2nd movement of Haydn's 64th symphony is extremely unusual for him - and indeed for any composer before Wagner - in that it contains no cadences. The cadences are there in our listening - we can hear where and how they're supposed to occur - but during those moments Haydn has everybody silent. And while experiments in music are not all that unusual for Haydn, this particular one goes against the very foundation of the kind of music he was helping to establish: cadential structures are the very bread and butter of 18th-century music to a degree much higher than either the Baroque or Romantic periods. To omit them entirely is at one level simply perverse, at another level a musicological query that fits with early 20th-century experiments.


They're not omitted so much as elided. One can still hear where they would be in the pauses. It is quite an intriguing movement, though it's very different from music that actually avoids all full cadences like the Tristan prelude or the second of Mahler's Kindertotenlieder.


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## circulus (Jul 1, 2014)

Zappa used moo cans and plastic ray guns in his recordings with the Ensemble Modern.


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## meredull (Aug 8, 2014)

Jon Leifs - Requiem, Op. 33b


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

*Gould Tap Dance Concerto*

Check out the following post I submitted in another thread: http://www.talkclassical.com/30344-unusual-works-oddities-2.html#post598697


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