# Composers' most "out there" pieces



## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist (Jan 13, 2019)

"Out there", distinctive, innovative, experimental, ahead of their time, whatever. You probably get what I mean. You can do 1 per post or multiple.


I'll start:

Chopin - Prelude op. 28 no. 2


----------



## mikeh375 (Sep 7, 2017)

Holst..The Hymn of Jesus. I've posted this before, but it's well worth mentioning again. Listen at around 12'24" till about a minute later for some bitonal chords that had never been heard before at that time.


----------



## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist (Jan 13, 2019)

Mahler - Symphony no. 8


----------



## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

Beethoven - Grosse Fugue. Like at the section marked A, where all four players are in different rhythms.


----------



## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Maybe I'm defining "out there" differently but Honegger's _Jeanne d'Arc au bûcher_ is certainly out there as is Schittke's Faust Cantata.


----------



## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist (Jan 13, 2019)

Brahms - Intermezzo op. 118 no. 6


----------



## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist (Jan 13, 2019)

Manxfeeder said:


> Beethoven - Grosse Fugue. Like at the section marked A, where all four players are in different rhythms.


Lots of contenders for B .

I might go with Op. 131.


----------



## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

"Mozart connoisseurs and admirers know of course about what is bizarre in the finale of his very last string quartet, K. 590. In its development the harshness of the tone language is particularly unparalleled in the Mozart oeuvre. But the unsettling already starts shortly before the end of the first section: The otherwise so airily sparkling sixteenth notes stall all of a sudden in an almost stranded-like repetitive three-note kink. It is just this spot that Mozart vehemently corrected in his manuscript. The investigation of this correction offers us at hand an analytical key to the understanding of this absolutely special movement.
This spluttering three-note figure, in itself circular, seized up, as it were, against the meter,








_Mm. 122-125, vln 1_​dominates the whole development after its first occurrence and is, of course, heard once again at the end of the movement. Mozart later scrupulously corrected it wherever and in whichever part it appears as well. And indeed, to be specific, its articulation. If in the first draft he had always put sixteenths together in a large legato phrase, then he later corrected the legato (but did not cross it out or erase it in the autograph) by placing under the respective notes the familiar two-note grouping of slurs and staccatos:








_Autograph, mm. 122-125, vln 1_​To date I have never encountered any other autograph where Mozart made such a striking, systematic change in the articulation. Notes, yes, dynamics, yes, but articulation over such a long stretch? ..." < The charm of the unsettling. A special autograph correction of Mozart's in the finale of the F-major string quartet K. 590 >





"the fact remains that the "Great Fugue" is "a controlled violence without parallel in music before the twentieth century and anticipated only by Mozart in the C minor fugue for two pianos (K.426)" < Opera's Second Death / Slavoj Žižek, Mladen Dolar / P.128 >
"Mozart later arranged this fugue for strings as well, adding the introductory Adagio, K. 546. The traditional Baroque idiom that is developed in this fugue for two pianos lays great stress on dissonant chromatic semitones and appoggiaturas. The intensity of the fugal writing is startling, foreshadowing the fugal textures in some of Beethoven's later works, such as the first movement of the Piano Sonata in C Minor, op.111, which exploits a variant of the same idiom. Beethoven was so taken by this piece, in fact, that he copied out the entire fugue in score." < Mozart's Piano Music / William Kinderman / P.46 >





"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 | Mark Berry | P. 135 >


----------



## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)




----------



## 59540 (May 16, 2021)

Bach, Contrapunctus 11 from AoF:




English suite 6, gigue:




Cello suite 5, sarabande:




Fugue 24, WTC I:




And the opening chorus of BWV 14:


----------



## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

Schubert: "Der Doppelgänger" from "Schwanengesang", 2nd movement of piano sonata D 959
Bruckner: Scherzo from 9th symphony
Rott: Scherzo from his symphony


----------



## VoiceFromTheEther (Aug 6, 2021)

Berlioz - Symphonie Fantastique


----------



## chipia (Apr 22, 2021)

Bach WTC Book II, Fugue in B-flat minor


----------



## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist said:


> Lots of contenders for B .
> I might go with Op. 131.


Or the place in Op. 132 in the Heiliger Dankesang toward the end, when he goes to the key of C, which one commentator called "Either the most authentic spiritual illumination on music or the incomprehensible abstraction of a genius out of touch with reality."


----------



## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

hammeredklavier said:


> "Mozart connoisseurs and admirers know of course about what is bizarre in the finale of his very last string quartet, K. 590. In its development the harshness of the tone language is particularly unparalleled in the Mozart oeuvre. But the unsettling already starts shortly before the end of the first section: The otherwise so airily sparkling sixteenth notes stall all of a sudden in an almost stranded-like repetitive three-note kink. It is just this spot that Mozart vehemently corrected in his manuscript. The investigation of this correction offers us at hand an analytical key to the understanding of this absolutely special movement.
> This spluttering three-note figure, in itself circular, seized up, as it were, against the meter,
> 
> 
> ...


When I first heard Hagen Quartett play 590 I though the whole thing was extraordinary, not just the finale.


----------



## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

hammeredklavier said:


>


I fins these very static Schubert pieces very challenging, they are clearly experimental, but very hard to understand with the repeats.


----------



## Richannes Wrahms (Jan 6, 2014)

Sibelius - Symphony No.4

Debussy - Preludes book 2 / Jeux / Etudes

Webern - 6 Pieces for Orchestra


----------



## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Richannes Wrahms said:


> Sibelius - Symphony No.4
> 
> Debussy - Preludes book 2 / Jeux / Etudes
> 
> Webern - 6 Pieces for Orchestra


A friend of mine, a composer, says the same about Debussy Preludes Bk 2 - I think he once said to me that the rhythms make the music so bold. Sibelius 4 is clearly an extraordinary thing, or can be.


----------



## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Mention of Sibelius makes me want to propose one: Tchaikovsky 6th symphony.


----------



## adinfinitum (Apr 5, 2021)

The fifth canon of Brahms' 13 canons is rather out there, I find, being almost minimalistic in nature.





In some ways, it bears resemblance to Bach's canon 'Trias Harmonica,' a contrapuntal experiment that is also reminiscent of minimalism.


----------



## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)




----------



## fbjim (Mar 8, 2021)

Weber - Der Freischutz

I'll confess I don't know much about Weber- but it's hard for me to square the guy who wrote some very nice CPT-esque symphonies and tuneful concertos into the guy who wrote that masterpiece of romanticism. 

What a shame he died so soon after! It would have been interesting to see if he could have taken that further.


----------



## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)




----------



## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

Richard Wagner - Polka, WWV 84


----------



## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

You'll never mistake this "divertimento" (?!) for any other composers'; take note of the use of harmony; ex. 6:22


----------



## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

hammeredklavier said:


> You'll never mistake this "divertimento" (?!) for any other composers'; take note of the use of harmony; ex. 6:22


All this classical style stuff sounds the same.


----------



## RICK RIEKERT (Oct 9, 2017)

In 1803 Antonin Reicha deliberately set out to destroy the classical laws of fugue with his '36 Fugues pour le piano' dedicated to Haydn.


----------



## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist (Jan 13, 2019)

The first one sounds a bit like Shostakovich's op 87 no 7, no?


----------



## DeepR (Apr 13, 2012)

You could say half of his music is "out there", but this little piece is a good example


----------



## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

*Carlo Gesualdo* - _Moro, lasso, al mio duolo_


----------



## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

Have you seen Werner Herzog's movie on Gesualdo? Very interesting.
It used to be on youtube years ago but maybe it was taken down for obvious reasons,


----------



## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

Kreisler jr said:


> Have you seen Werner Herzog's movie on Gesualdo? Very interesting.
> It used to be on youtube years ago but maybe it was taken down for obvious reasons,


No, I haven't. But thanks for letting me know about it.


----------



## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Richannes Wrahms said:


> Sibelius - Symphony No.4
> 
> Debussy - Preludes book 2 / Jeux / Etudes
> 
> Webern - 6 Pieces for Orchestra


I once performed the Webern. If you listen to it enough, you begin to hear aspects of Mahler in it.


----------



## mossyembankment (Jul 28, 2020)

Has anyone yet mentioned Schumann's Geistervariationen (Ghost Variations)?


----------



## Haydn70 (Jan 8, 2017)

Kreisler jr said:


> Have you seen Werner Herzog's movie on Gesualdo? Very interesting.
> It used to be on youtube years ago but maybe it was taken down for obvious reasons,


For rent ($4.99) or purchase ($11.99) here:

[video]https://vimeo.com/ondemand/329899[/video]

There are other cheaper rental/purchase options toward the bottom of the page.

The Blu-Ray DVD is available on Amazon.

Thanks for mentioning this documentary...I will be watching it.


----------



## Livly_Station (Jan 8, 2014)

DeepR said:


> You could say half of his music is "out there", but this little piece is a good example


Love it, but isn't it a bit more normal than usual?


----------



## 59540 (May 16, 2021)

mossyembankment said:


> Has anyone yet mentioned Schumann's Geistervariationen (Ghost Variations)?


I had never ever heard of that. I'll have to look it up. Thanks.


----------



## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Mandryka said:


> All this classical style stuff sounds the same.


Try


----------



## Xisten267 (Sep 2, 2018)

*Jean-Féry Rebel *- _Les élémens_ (1737):


----------



## Tristan (Jan 5, 2013)

This is undoubtedly Liszt's most "out there" work:






A similar effort from Biber:


----------



## Portamento (Dec 8, 2016)

Here's a few.

Cage - 4'33"
Kagel - Staatstheater (I'll single this one out as being amazing. Batsh!t, but amazing.)
Ligeti - Atmosphères
Lutosławski - Symphony No. 2
Penderecki - Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima
Reich - Four Organs
Riley - In C
Schnittke - Symphony No. 1
Schoenberg - Erwartung, Op. 17


----------



## Pat Fairlea (Dec 9, 2015)

BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist said:


> "Out there", distinctive, innovative, experimental, ahead of their time, whatever. You probably get what I mean. You can do 1 per post or multiple.
> 
> I'll start:
> 
> Chopin - Prelude op. 28 no. 2


Yes! Isn't it odd?


----------



## Kivimees (Feb 16, 2013)

Rued Langgaard, Music of the Spheres:


----------



## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist (Jan 13, 2019)

Faure - Violin Sonata no. 2

Perhaps


----------



## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Manxfeeder said:


> Beethoven - Grosse Fugue.


I'm appalled at the originality of that answer.
But if I were you, I would have mentioned instead:


----------



## Orfeo (Nov 14, 2013)

Try Adolfs Skulte's Fifth Symphony.


----------



## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Tristan said:


> A similar effort from Biber:






https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosary_Sonatas
"In his sonatas for violin, Biber integrated new technical skills with new compositional expression and was himself able to accomplish techniques that no other known violinist could at his time (Dann 2011). The Mystery Sonatas include very rapid passages, demanding double stops and an extended range, reaching positions on the violin that musicians had not yet been able to play (Hill 2005)."
"Biber's scordatura tuning helped create music that was relevant to the themes of each mystery (Holman 2000). Apart from the first and last sonatas, each is written with a different scordatura. Scordatura is a technique which provides the instrument with unusual sonorities, colors, altered ranges and new harmonies made available by tuning the strings of the instrument down or up, creating different intervals between the strings than the norm."


----------



## jdec (Mar 23, 2013)

Tristan un Isolde.


----------



## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

jdec said:


> Tristan un Isolde.


That's "und"; consult my signature.


----------



## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Couchie said:


> That's "und"; consult my signature.


Have you noticed this one recently as well?:



TwoFlutesOneTrumpet said:


> Tristan *and* Isolde *and* Parsifal.


My goodness, people, Richard must be moving in his grave...


----------



## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

Richannes Wrahms said:


> Webern - 6 Pieces for Orchestra


Interesting you list that work. It is the only work by Webern I enjoy.


----------



## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Myaskovsky's 13th Symphony(?):


----------



## Norse (May 10, 2010)

I remember thinking Fauré's Preludes (op. 103) were the furthest away from "salon music" I'd ever heard him, especially for solo piano.


----------



## RICK RIEKERT (Oct 9, 2017)

George Antheil's _Ballet mécanique_, written in 1924, was conceived for 16 pianolas in 4 groups of 4, operated electrically from a single master roll; 2 human-played pianos; 3 xylophones; 4 bass drums; 3 airplane propellers; a siren, and a set of electric bells. But the technology of the time was not capable of performing the piece.


----------



## Yabetz (Sep 6, 2021)

RICK RIEKERT said:


> George Antheil's _Ballet mécanique_, written in 1924, was conceived for 16 pianolas in 4 groups of 4, operated electrically from a single master roll; 2 human-played pianos; 3 xylophones; 4 bass drums; 3 airplane propellers; a siren, and a set of electric bells. But the technology of the time was not capable of performing the piece.


Ha! That's mesmerizing. It's nearly a century old and still avant-garde.


----------



## Neo Romanza (May 7, 2013)

Langgaard: _Music of the Spheres_ certainly springs to mind:


----------



## trazom (Apr 13, 2009)

Chopin's Polonaise-Fantasy op.61.






It's much more respected these days but back in the day even Liszt was baffled by it, writing(among other things) that it was "an elegiac tristesse... punctuated by startled movements, melancholic smiles, unexpected jolts, pauses full of tremors, like those felt by somebody caught in an ambush, surrounded on all sides…"


----------

