# Out of time and out of place?



## Manok (Aug 29, 2011)

I was listening to something, don't remember what, and kept thinking that it sounded earlier than it should, so that got me thinking about all the pieces that I could come up with that sounded like they were from a different time or even a different country than they were really from. What can you come up with?


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## Taneyev (Jan 19, 2009)

Lalo, NRK, Chabrier, Moszkowsky and others wrote "Spanish" music, none of them being Spaniards.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

I'm reminded of Ned Rorem's assessment of Erik Satie's _Socrate_: "The music is not ahead of its time but rather (and of what other work can this be said?) outside of time."

Ravel and Debussy wrote music which sounded like it came from Spain, i.e., Rhapsodie Espagnole and Iberia.


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## Crudblud (Dec 29, 2011)

Much of Scelsi's music sounds like it comes not from a different time, but from a different planet.


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

Glazunov definitely, especially his later works. His major concertos, particularly the piano and saxophone concertos, they are very anachronistic.


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## Klavierspieler (Jul 16, 2011)

Gesualdo sounds like something out of the 20th century.


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## quack (Oct 13, 2011)

The holy minimalists are about 600 years too late

Also, Puccini sounds like star wars


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## Lisztian (Oct 10, 2011)

Half of Liszt's music sounds like it was written much later than it was, and often it uses the compositional devices of that later time. In fact, Liszt's music was probably the most harmonically advanced of his time - some of his later works (and even early - mid period works) push tonality to the limit - and some of his music clearly foreshadows impressionism. I'd call Les jeux d'eaux à la Villa d'Este the first impressionistic piece (although some of his earlier works come close too), written in 1877. His first Legende and certain pieces from the Harmonies poétiques et religieuses contain passages that would not be reproduced on the piano until Messiaen.


























http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_works_of_Franz_Liszt


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## Ramako (Apr 28, 2012)

Someone has to say the Grosse Fuge.

Still, I generally find, when trying to identify an unknown piece if possible, that they often sound later than I find out that they were composed, which I now factor in. I suppose it depends on listener expectations.


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## jani (Jun 15, 2012)

Grosse fuge wasn't very liked on Beethovens time, because it was way ahead of its time.


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## jani (Jun 15, 2012)

Ramako said:


> Someone has to say the Grosse Fuge.
> 
> Still, I generally find, when trying to identify an unknown piece if possible, that they often sound later than I find out that they were composed, which I now factor in. I suppose it depends on listener expectations.


DAMN,!!! I didn't notice that!


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

Medtner and Rachmaninoff wrote and built on late romantic traditions into the mid 20th century.


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

Most of the English composers of the first half of the 17th C. composed Renaissance music.


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## Norse (May 10, 2010)

clavichorder said:


> Medtner and Rachmaninoff wrote and built on late romantic traditions into the mid 20th century.


R. Strauss, too.


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## Cavaradossi (Aug 2, 2012)

Richard Strauss' Four Last Songs sound timeless to me. Written in 1948, they could just as well be dated 1888 or 2008.

And to beat the Wagnerites to the punch: _Tristan_ certainly sounds more like 1909 than 1859.


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## Norse (May 10, 2010)




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## SottoVoce (Jul 29, 2011)

Mahler was also out of time I think, not in a strictly musical sense, but in a thematic sense; as Leonard Bernstein said, "we really had to go through the grandioseness of the two World Wars, the horror of the 20th century, to understand what Mahler was really talking about."

It is very much like Freud; in his time, a lot of people thought he took sex way too seriously, that he was just a over-obsessed sex counselor; only when we went through the culture of mass consumption of 20s'-50s' advertising, and the sexual independence of pop culture and the 60s' in general did we find out the true significance of Freud.


I also think Arvo Part would be much happier in a Pre-Enlightenment Time period; his temperament and to a lesser extent his musical thought seems to rest easy with that kind of music.


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## Cavaradossi (Aug 2, 2012)

Berlioz bears mention as well. It's pretty remarkable to consider that _Symphonie fantastique_ was written in 1830.

Edited to add: I suppose it could be said Berlioz doesn't sound particularly French either. But I think it's more accurate to say that subsequent German romantic composers sounds Berliozian.


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## Jeremy Marchant (Mar 11, 2010)

Cavaradossi said:


> Richard Strauss' Four Last Songs sound timeless to me. Written in 1948, they could just as well be dated 1888 or 2008.


No, I think the point is that they _could _have been dated to 1888, a few harmonic sideslips apart.
Whether someone in 2008 chose to write in what, by now, would be an ultra conservative style doesn't makes the Strauss songs sound contemporary. It would just make the contemporary work sound dated, tired, a pastiche... Oh yes, sorry, I forgot, that _is _what a lot of contemporary music is.


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

One of my favorite examples of "out of time and place"






So, this is a composition by a Russian composer, while living in the US, that is a Polish dance... in Italian style.


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

Norse said:


>


This is quite nice! I did not have a very high opinion about Schnitke, but this shows that he can be conventional too.


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

Hilltroll72 said:


> Most of the English composers of the first half of the 17th C. composed Renaissance music.


Very true!


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## Norse (May 10, 2010)

clavichorder said:


> This is quite nice! I did not have a very high opinion about Schnitke, but this shows that he can be conventional too.


Well, in one sense it isn't conventional. Especially for 1972. 

You could check out the other movements from the suite. I think I might prefer the original version for violin and piano, though.


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## Lisztian (Oct 10, 2011)

Cavaradossi said:


> Berlioz bears mention as well. It's pretty remarkable to consider that _Symphonie fantastique_ was written in 1830.
> 
> Edited to add: I suppose it could be said Berlioz doesn't sound particularly French either. But I think it's more accurate to say that subsequent German romantic composers sounds Berliozian.


Absolutely. Not only the Fantastique, but works like the Requiem and hell, even the _
Messe solennelle_ of 1824. I don't think he really reached compositional maturity until the Fantastique, but the earlier works like that mass truly show that he was a revolutionary figure right from the start. He came out of nowhere and even if you don't like his music, you must admit he's truly one of the most novel and original geniuses in the history of music.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

quack said:


> The holy minimalists are about 600 years too late
> 
> ...


Well yeah, I suppose I can understand the 'holy minimalist' movement, coming in the 1970's as a reposte to 'total serialism' and other techniques that where touted as the 'be all and end all' of music (various avant-gardist dogmas related to 'progress' etc.). However, today its dismaying that composers in that movement - like Arvo Part - who did great works earlier on have been doing not much else but rehashing themselves for the last 20 years or so.



Cavaradossi said:


> Richard Strauss' Four Last Songs sound timeless to me. Written in 1948, they could just as well be dated 1888 or 2008.
> 
> ...


I'd say more like the former than the latter (I agree with Jeremy Marchant on this). Another work by R. Strauss of his post-1945 late period, _Metamorphosen for 23 solo strings,_ to my ears does sound uncannily similar (in terms of things like the string techniques I hear used) to Schoenberg's _Transfigured Night _of about 50 years before. Its not an issue for me, I like both these works immensely. But basically R. Strauss stopped innovating by about 1910, _Elektra_ was his last work to really push boundaries.


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## techniquest (Aug 3, 2012)

Listening to the opening of Mahlers' 1st and then realising that this was just 2 years after Brahms 4th shows just how far apart these two pieces really are.
Also I would suggest that Charles Ives was _way_ ahead of his time. The '4th of July' movement in his Holidays Symphony was completed in 1912, the year before 'The Rite of Spring'...


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

Just like how the English were pushing late Renaissance into the mid baroque with the disciples of Gibbons onwards to Purcell, they were also pushing late Baroque into the mid classical with Thomas Arne and William Boyce, who managed to retain a sound not far from Handel into the late 1770s.


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## principe (Sep 3, 2012)

I believe any truly Classical work from the Great composers can tick any box of unnecessary or even irrelevant questions. Beethoven, for instance, respected his past (early works), honoured his present times (most of his early and mid-period works) and went beyond any time (Late String Quartets, Piano Sonatas, 9th Symphony, Missa Solemnis, etc.).
Bach is (by definition) a late Baroque composer who can be of reference to any aspiring, mature or radical composer, including musicians outside the Classical realm (Jazz, for instance).
Minor composers sometimes cannot fit even in their own times (e.g. Ibert).

Principe


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## Guest (Sep 4, 2012)

I've always thought the second movement of Harold in Italy was particularly unique and modern sounding:






The whole movement is fantastic in my opinion, with one long note frequently repeated. But around 4:00 he starts doing a kind of pattern which reminds me of Pete Townsend. Then starting at around 6:30 and continuing for the next minute there is a weird (and minimalist?) alternation of tones. I'm not aware of anything else in the 19th century which sounds even remotely similar.

I haven't heard enough other versions to know whether this is really in the music, or whether this is just something Colin Davis pulls out of the music. But I'm always blown away when I hear it.

(The youtube sound quality is just awful by the way.)


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## Guest (Sep 4, 2012)

Here's another amazingly ahead-of-its-time composition - Enescu's Legend:






Sounds like something Miles Davis or one of his followers could have written in the 1970s. In fact it was written in 1906.


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