# What do you love about your favorite "modern" or "difficult" music?



## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

*What do you love about your favorite "modern" or "difficult" music?*

I feel this sometimes gets lost in all the fighting.

What are your favorite difficult, modern pieces - I mean the kind that don't get played on the radio and start fights on TalkClassical - and why do you love them?

I'm not asking: Why are the things other people say about them wrong? or: Can you prove that they're just as well-constructed as Mozart?

But rather: How do they speak to you, and why do you keep going back?


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

:tiphat: Nice thread: I am looking forward to reading the answers so that I can have a handy listening list.


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## Guest (Mar 28, 2016)

As I said in another thread: tell me why you like Mozart, and I doubt our answers would be very different.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

The only fairly-modern work that I know well is Robert Moran - Requiem: Chant du Cygne (1990). This was recommended to me by PetrB, and I took to it at once. However, I can't imagine that it fits your description of 'being difficult' or 'starting fights'.






I like it because it makes me reflect on the nature of sound itself - it is beautiful & mysterious, and seems to have a meaning just beyond my grasp.


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

I really do not know.

One of my favorite difficult works is the Carter _Clarinet Concerto_. Why? I just like the way it sounds.


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## senza sordino (Oct 20, 2013)

I just listened to the Ligeti violin concerto. I'm impressed with this piece because of the virtuoso playing required. As a violin player, this piece numbs my brain when I hear it. I can only imagine the shifting, bowing, fingering and singing! required. I'd love to see this piece performed live, or better still attend a masterclass with someone playing it.


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## schigolch (Jun 26, 2011)

As a listener, any music I like is not "difficult" to me, rather the other way around. 

However, I'm aware that it could be "difficult" for other people, mostly people with musical tastes centered in the Romantic, Post-Romantic, or Pre-Romantic periods.

_Cassandra's Dream Song_ is a fascinating piece of music, written some forty years ago by Brian Ferneyhough, for solo flute. It's devilish "difficult" to play. I have been playing a flute since I was a child, and I confess I will never be remotely able to play this.

But listening to it, sometimes I feel like it's myself playing by some magical trick, nonetheless; sometimes I'm just in the center of a magical universe. made of these gorgeous sounds, that are rather 'geometrical' to my mind, but also, in the end, with some surprisingly Romantic overtones, too.

It's just around 8 minutes, and if someone, even with a rather traditionalist taste, approaches to the piece with an open mind, maybe he will get a pleasant surprise. Then again, maybe not, but this is the point, isn't it?. To try and see.


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## Guest (Mar 28, 2016)

I could imagine myself playing Ferneyhough on the guitar if it weren't for the nightmarish rhythm. In other words, I could play it in the style of a flexible John Cage Number Piece


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## GreenMamba (Oct 14, 2012)

To somewhat arbitrarily pick a work I like a lot (not necessarily my single favorite: *Jonathan Harvey's Mortuos Plango, Vivos Voco*.

Short answer is, it is interesting. And haunting. And beautiful.

It begins with samples of the bells of Winchester Cathedral and the voice of the composer's young son. These sounds bring with them certain associations. As these sounds are synthesized and mixed, you get electronically modified bits, so you have the piece alternately sounding very old and relatively new. I'm a sucker for this sort of thing.

I think one key is not to treat it as a vocal work. The voice is used for its sounds, not for lyrics. It isn't the lead; the bells aren't the accompaniment.

I've read some fairly technical analysis of the work and I can't quite follow it all. Some isn't that hard to pick out, e.g., that it is in eight parts. I do think it helps that you trust that the work isn't some technical exercise, and thus give it a chance as music.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

I was going to say Ligeti's violin concerto too, but senza sordino beat me to it. I will probably post more of these in the future, but a couple to start off....

Boulez's _Dérives 1 & 2_. (_Dérive 1_ is the first 5:45 of this video - not much of a time commitment, for anyone who's curious!)

As always in Boulez's best works, the music has both a very beautiful surface, in terms of its tone color and harmony, and a feeling of coherence, that each little gesture or motive seems to generate what follows. The result, for me, combines the lush, sensual appeal of Debussy with the feeling of sort of "architectural" solidity I get from a Bach fugue - an extraordinary combination.

This doesn't fully explain why I love this piece, though. To me, Boulez at his best was a kind of musical world-builder; listening to his pieces is a little like walking through a cathedral or a forest, aware that I'm part of a much larger structure but perceiving it only a little bit at a time, losing myself.

Wuorinen's first set of _Fenton Songs_:

Beauty, Danger and Dismay
Out of Danger
Serious
Hinterhof

He originally wrote these for voice and piano trio, but I like this slightly later version replacing the piano with two guitars.

I happened to listen to this recently. I've liked them since I discovered them some time in the last couple years. The texts are a first-person account of falling in love, and I think Wuorinen has achieved a really remarkable, haunting musical depiction of that experience, maybe one of the best I've heard. The very short songs manage to pack in a huge emotional range, at times seeming to convey different emotions (elation, fear) simultaneously. The harmony has both a sweetness and a kind of instability and weightlessness that complements the texts.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Schoenberg Piano Concerto.

Absolutely hauntingly beautiful. Sad that I deprived myself of this for so many years.

Thanks PetrB, wherever you are!!! :tiphat:


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

isorhythm said:


> I feel this sometimes gets lost in all the fighting.
> 
> What are your favorite difficult, modern pieces - I mean the kind that don't get played on the radio and start fights on TalkClassical - and why do you love them?
> 
> ...


Don't do that, do just what you like :tiphat:


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

isorhythm said:


> What are your favorite difficult, modern pieces - I mean the kind that don't get played on the radio and start fights on TalkClassical - and why do you love them?


I have difficulty with most of the stuff that does get played on the radio, not with the music that doesn't get played. I actually pay for recordings of the latter and listen to it.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

One thing I like is that in some post war music there's a spirit of iconoclastic individualism, the music is so different from what has gone before that it's like a big fk you to the establishment. I'm thinking of things like the Cage piano etudes, or Gran Torso.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

As far as difficult music is concerned, I love the intricately woven complex voices of the Bach WTC fugues. How he always gets the notes right. So damn complicated, yet for me so wonderful how it all fits together. A mega-genius among mega-geniuses.


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## Cosmos (Jun 28, 2013)

I'm not sure how much this particular piece is "under fire" here, but it is one of the iconic works by this composer that is brought up in Music 101 to show progression of styles through history, and so the people who don't like it and who have nothing better to do with their lives go to videos of this piece on youtube to rant about how "this isn't music" and how "today's culture is degenerate" [despite the fact that this work is over a century old and is in no way "contemporary"]

Schoenberg - Pierrot Lunaire. And I like it because the instrumental ensemble is colorful and the work is wild, energetic, all over the place.


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## Cosmos (Jun 28, 2013)

More "contemporary" [as in, within the past 50 years], Xenakis' piano music; Herma, Evryali, and Mists. Because I love the percussive sound of the piano.


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## Guest (Mar 29, 2016)

schigolch said:


> [...] _Cassandra's Dream Song_ is a fascinating piece of music, written some forty years ago by Brian Ferneyhough, for solo flute. It's devilish "difficult" to play. I have been playing a flute since I was a child, and I confess I will never be remotely able to play this.
> 
> But listening to it, sometimes I feel like it's myself playing by some magical trick, nonetheless; sometimes I'm just in the center of a magical universe. made of these gorgeous sounds, that are rather 'geometrical' to my mind, but also, in the end, with some surprisingly Romantic overtones, too. [...]


Thanks for posting that, Schigolch, I thoroughly enjoyed it.


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## Heliogabo (Dec 29, 2014)

As since my youth I´ve been a free jazz lover (ok, one has to be in the right mood), I don' t get that much labels as "difficult music". It is difficult to listen to only if you don' t like the music.


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## Guest (Mar 29, 2016)

hpowders said:


> As far as difficult music is concerned, I love the intricately woven complex voices of the Bach WTC fugues. How he always gets the notes right. So damn complicated, yet for me so wonderful how it all fits together. A mega-genius among mega-geniuses.


Then you should appreciate the New Complexity school. Sometimes I think it should be called the New Polyphony school.


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## Guest (Mar 29, 2016)

schigolch said:


> [...] _Cassandra's Dream Song_ is a fascinating piece of music, written some forty years ago by Brian Ferneyhough, for solo flute. It's devilish "difficult" to play. I have been playing a flute since I was a child, and I confess I will never be remotely able to play this.
> 
> It's just around 8 minutes, and if someone, even with a rather traditionalist taste, approaches to the piece with an open mind, maybe he will get a pleasant surprise. Then again, maybe not, but this is the point, isn't it?. *To try and see*.


Just to come back to Schigolch's post again, I have to thank him for posting the Ferneyhough piece because I have had problems in the past with Brian regarding his obviously highly complex scores and their performance feasibility. Well, for the first time I think I have begun to see the light. The YouTube performance here "nails it" very effectively. That said, there is one passage in the score where Ferneyhough instructs the player to perform a short passage "freely". I had to laugh at that!


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

What I really love is how superior and elitist it makes me feel, even though deep down I know I'm not.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

Sounds like nothing else in the world (except some of Ligeti's other micropolyphonic works, a little).

Ligeti was not a religious believer, as far as I know (and in any case was born into a Jewish family), but this is probably my favorite _Lux aeterna_ setting ever; pure, overwhelming, otherwordly sound instead of sweet triads. Awe, beauty and terror all at once.


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## Guest (Mar 29, 2016)

^ This is going to be one of those pieces that remain in the repertoire for ... ever. A bit like LvB's _Missa solemnis_: not so often performed, perhaps more respected than widely loved, but it ain't ever going to go away. I can handle that.


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## Guest (Mar 29, 2016)

hpowders said:


> What I really love is how superior and elitist it makes me feel, even though deep down I know I'm not.


Not sure I follow you here, Mr H.


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

TalkingHead said:


> Not sure I follow you here, Mr H.


I believe that it is called sardonic humor . . .


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## Ilarion (May 22, 2015)

Ok, I'll bite:

"Gulistan" by Sorabji - Such an intoxicatingly exotic and may I say most erotic piece out there...Oh, and to start fights on Tc? Yes, I can easily offend all my colleagues on Tc but why on God's wonderful earth would I want to do that? To deny myself of the privilege of beholding and learning from the majority of Tc'ers? I'd be dumber than dumb. No! Tc is in a class of its own - A real classy outfit kept in tune by a classy "modsquad"...


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## Sloe (May 9, 2014)

Cosmos said:


> More "contemporary" [as in, within the past 50 years], Xenakis' piano music; Herma, Evryali, and Mists. Because I love the percussive sound of the piano.


I have to admit that when I was going to listen to mists I got a headache.
By the way I don´t think I like any music that qualifies the requirements for this thread.


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## Cosmos (Jun 28, 2013)

Sloe said:


> I have to admit that when I was going to listen to mists I got a headache.
> By the way I don´t think I like any music that qualifies the requirements for this thread.


Oh well. To each their own.

And how about music that's really "difficult", like complexity wise?


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

Okay I, as a laymen, will tackle the 800 pound gorilla in the room because I'm naive and know no better: Schoenberg's Suite, Op. 29.

It is the first 12 tone composition that actually moved me, and I think that's because I wasn't trying very hard, having it playing in the background while I was working. I suddenly noticed the instruments seem to be having a conversation I could almost grasp. Whatever thoughts they are exchanging seem very important and animated, sometimes in unison, sometimes in a kind of counterpoint.

With relaxed listening I began to hear the motifs and their gradual evolution and transformations, reminding me of busy molecules combining, splitting, reforming into other structures. On additional listening I could, just barely, pick out melodic fragments and even themes that form an overall structural arc, a kind of symmetry not too unlike classic era pieces. This reaction is to individual movements. I haven't gone so far as to say I hear links between the movements. That would be pushing it a bit at this stage I think.

Formal thoughts aside, it's really the texture and conversational quality that still lures me in to this tough nut to crack.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Unsuk Chin - Xi for ensemble and electronics

The music that I love most doesn't strike me as difficult, as others have said. At the very least, it no longer seems difficult to me; it's a familiar friend whose qualities I know well. I have a _general_ idea of what many others may find difficult, but there's no way of objectively quantifying something so utterly subjective.

Chin's Xi starts with a breathing sound, and everything grows out of it. What follows is an accumulation of density of timbres and harmony until everything fractures into musical shards. To me, this is the culmination of the piece, which finally returns to its origins.

Unlike some of the earliest pieces combining electronics and live instruments, Chin here blurs the boundaries between the two groups and we as listeners are often unsure of the source of a sound; the heavy use of extended techniques makes the conventional instruments seem unfamiliar.

Overall, it's easy to hear the clear narrative arc of the work, a narrative without conventional means of motifs, structured through timbre like a piece for electronics alone. I am always left wondering at those who claim that modernist music today sounds no different than it did 100 years ago. To me, there are many aspects of this piece, even aside from its electronic features, that betray its far more recent origins.

People who cannot access the above link may find the work here, in two parts: Part 1, Part 2


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Schoenberg Piano Concerto. What I love is how modern and difficult it is.


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

Mahlerian said:


> Unsuk Chin - Xi for ensemble and electronics
> 
> . . .
> 
> ...


I've heard the piece a while back before I was fully -- not sure of the word. Indoctrinated? No. Acclimated! Before I was acclimated to more contemporary music. I wasn't sure enough to purchase it. Following the link now, I love it!

[Edit: I found the mp3 album on Amaz*n. Yay!]


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

I am attracted to modern music for often contrasting reasons.

1. Complexity: I like the complexity of Elliot Carter's music. It is like serialism applied to Charles Ives or Americana.
I also like Milton Babbit for his complexity, but his music is playful in a way Carter's is not. I like the "harmonic complexity" of Schoenberg's Piano Concerto, even though I know it is not functioning as harmonic music does. It becomes a kaleidoscope of possibilities, of expectations constantly built up to only be instantly invalidated, then built up again.

2.Simplicity: As in John Cage and Morton Feldman, and in Philip Glass and Steve Reich.

3. Pure sensual, sonorous sounds: as in Babbitt's Philomel, where the ear is treated to a constantly inventive series of electronic sounds, all underpinned by the soprano voice and taped interludes. As in John Cage's prepared piano works. As in Morton Feldman's open and spacious instrumental groupings.


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## vampireslugger (Aug 5, 2015)

I get cravings for dissonance, which is one reason. Modern music and its harmonic and textural harshness and variety is what drew me finally into classical music. It's complexity, too, is a result of its wide range of expression, so there's another reason. I also think some music lovers like myself have what, in a more vulgar sense, could be considered analogous to pornography addiction. First we tire of the I IV V chord sequences of rock. Then we get bored of, say, the flatness and relatice inexpressiveness of metal, or the indiscipline of many alternative genres. We come to classical music not for a 'cosy' Bach Orchestral Suite or something (though now I am indeed adore such music), but instead we are looking for the next extreme. Modern music isn't a challenge or obstacle to be met, its just one very strong part of my appetite for new music, in every sense of the word 'new'. Listening to Sofia Gubaidulina, for instance, is very special in the way it makes me feel less empty. Then again, so does Tchaikovsky's Sixth -- so what am I saying then? I guess modern music is just able to satisfy a diversity of appetites for me, to a greater extant perhaps than any other.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

I really got into Charles Ives much more deeply when I realized that there was nothing 'hidden' in his music, no 'systems' or logic which was beyond me; he simply liked dissonance.


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

millionrainbows said:


> I really got into Charles Ives much more deeply when I realized that there was nothing 'hidden' in his music, no 'systems' or logic which was beyond me; he simply liked dissonance.


I had this experience with Janacek : On an Overgrown Path:tiphat:


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## Casebearer (Jan 19, 2016)

What I love about my favorite modern/complex music is that I find non-complex music quite boring in general. Of course there are exceptions.

I like it when your brain has got something to do also. I don't mean that in a cerebral way. I don't like modern music that can only be appreciated as a cerebral act (by me). It still needs to touch me directly at an emotional level (although that 'emotion' can also be a sphere/mood).


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

TalkingHead said:


> Not sure I follow you here, Mr H.


I was attempting to define a "superiority complex" from what I've read in the psychology journals that I got from the state prison library.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

Saariaho, _Graal théâtre_: link

I get a similar musical "world-building" kind of effect from this piece as from the Boulez I described, but it's much sparer, darker, more mysterious. The beginning is like the creation of sound from nothingness. What follows has the logic and feeling of a beautiful and sometimes frightening dream.

The ultravirtuoso violin writing is also a lot of fun of course.

Glass, _Music in Similar Motion_: link

I only like Glass's earliest period. There's not that much to describe here; you focus on the inherent beauty of the scale, as the repetitive process induces a trance state. Each section ramps up the intensity until it can no longer be sustained and ends.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

I like that even though psychologically I had blocked Schoenberg's Piano Concerto from listening consideration, after a few months of repeated listening, thanks to the recommendation of PetrB, I can now finally "hear" it and actually like it.


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## cimirro (Sep 6, 2016)

I had to listen several times some pieces before enjoying them. I'm not sure about how difficult they are to listen...
But on the other hand, I remember I couldn't move my body while listening part of "Licht" by Stockhausen, who usually is related to "difficulty" in listening to; The music, anyway, is amazing in my opinion;


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## James Mann (Sep 6, 2016)

It's the way it effects you, it's irresistible. Though some people would disagree


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## Kjetil Heggelund (Jan 4, 2016)

I've loved modern music since my teens because it takes me to an exciting new place away from the ordinary museum


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

I think Schoenberg and his Piano Concerto are for fence-sitters who are hesitant to make the leap into a totally new musical language, as exemplified by, at the very least, Elliott Carter, and further with Babbitt, Varese, Wuorinen, Cage, and Boulez.

Schoenberg was such a traditionalist that his music still has plenty of "linear narrative" elements, which are already in the grasp of most conservative listeners. If you really want to claim modernist cred, then engage with music such as Varese, Boulez, Cage, and music which demands a new, non-linear way of perceiving music.


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## Chronochromie (May 17, 2014)

millionrainbows said:


> I think Schoenberg and his Piano Concerto are for fence-sitters who are hesitant to make the leap into a totally new musical language, as exemplified by, at the very least, Elliott Carter, and further with Babbitt, Varese, Wuorinen, Cage, and Boulez.


No.

What is "modernist cred" anyway?


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

millionrainbows said:


> I think Schoenberg and his Piano Concerto are for fence-sitters who are hesitant to make the leap into a totally new musical language, as exemplified by, at the very least, Elliott Carter, and further with Babbitt, Varese, Wuorinen, Cage, and Boulez.
> 
> Schoenberg was such a traditionalist that his music still has plenty of "linear narrative" elements, which are already in the grasp of most conservative listeners. If you really want to claim modernist cred, then engage with music such as Varese, Boulez, Cage, and music which demands a new, non-linear way of perceiving music.


Yes I'm very impressed by what your starting to say about modernism and narrative. I hope you'll carry on posting about your experiences with non linear listening.

I'd just mention that I think that non linear perception is not going to be as easy for Babbitt as it is for Schoenberg, I think I said that once before.

And maybe, just maybe, one adequate response to modernism is an interpreter who performs so imaginatively as to create the appearance of narrative, tension and release, denouement, development, that sort of thing. Some like Crismani in Cage, Rzewski in the Stockhausen Klavierstuck on Hat Hut, Biret in Boulez, Arditti in Ferneyhough, The Composers Quartet in Carter, Liebner in the Cage Fractions . . .


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