# Failed Attempt at Composing Ugliest Piece of Music of All Time



## brianwalker (Dec 9, 2011)

http://thebrowser.com/videos/maths-and-music

It was OK. I think the ugliest sounds come from a combination of heavy dissonance and ear grating timbre.

Thoughts?


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

Wow what a beautiful piece of music! Very calm and soothing in my opinion.


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## Crudblud (Dec 29, 2011)

I wouldn't call it ugly, just boring like any rigid process piece (i.e.: It's Gonna Rain).


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## Guest (Jan 25, 2012)

Since every pair of ears is different, "the ugliest piece" is a null set. As is "the most beautiful piece."

Any attempts to compose the ugliest piece of all time will fail. All the time.


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

The problem is that you're always gonna get some guy who actually likes listening to noise.


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## Guest (Jan 25, 2012)

That's a problem??


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

brianwalker said:


> http://thebrowser.com/videos/maths-and-music
> 
> It was OK. I think the ugliest sounds come from a combination of heavy dissonance and ear grating timbre.
> 
> Thoughts?


Thanks for posting the video.

The lecture was interesting although usually I find mathematics quite boring. Relating it to music is interesting, & relevant to what Schoenberg and those other guys did, who he mentioned. They were obsessed with numbers, incl. things like patterns and palindromes.

As for the piece, I found it similar to Boulez's piano sonatas, esp. the 2nd one. I like his sonatas, I like them more than his other things, generally speaking. I try to "reach" for the mood or vibe of these pieces, as there is little repetition, and they are highly fragmented.

I don't think this piece, at the end of the video, was ugly, just it was not like music coming before Schoenberg and Boulez, etc.

The lecturer also said something which I read a psychologist talk about, that music with some elements of repetition and variation of that repetition are what most people think of, "hear" to be music which appeals to them.

I accept this fact, although I do like new and newer classical musics where those more traditional ways of doing things are streched to a fair or high degree, or even rules broken or jettisoned altogether. I'm not averse to a wide range of pieces, but I just basically go by what I like or what engages me to some level, I try to be as receptive as possible to as many things as I can, within my preferences and tastes...


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## HarpsichordConcerto (Jan 1, 2010)

StlukesguildOhio said:


> The problem is that you're always gonna get some guy who actually likes listening to noise.


Enjoy listening to random non-composed noise is one thing, but to base that as evidence for sensible listening advice to art music in general is another.


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

The premise of the article is false. Beauty or ugliness have little to do with repetition. 
The piece sounds like simplified Boulez or Carter. It's not ugly, just uninteresting. 
It's harsh dissonance which many people find ugly, although it's not necessarily "ugly", but pungent and stimulating. 
By these standards, possibly the ugliest piece of music ever written is Prokofiev's symphony no 2, a rarely performed but fascinating two movement symphony which is so grindingly dissonant it makes Stravinsky's Rite of Spring sound like Mendelssohn ! 
And it's basically tonal ! But the harmonies are often far too chromatic to discern a tonal center. Ironically, it ends in a clear-cut D minor ! 
There are a number of excellent recordings , mainly on sets of all 7 Prokofiev symphonies, for example, Gergiev,Ozawa, and Neeme Jarvi . The ocmposer modeled it on Beethoven's lkast piano sonata , and it consists of a first movement in straightforward sonata form, and a second which is an elaborate theme and variations. 
It's a weird and unsettling work, and not for all tastes, but it's a masterpiece of the highest order . It's like seeing a hideously ugly person; horrible to look at ,but you can't take your eyes away .


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## Guest (Jan 25, 2012)

HarpsichordConcerto said:


> Enjoy listening to random non-composed noise is one thing, but to base that as evidence for sensible listening advice to art music in general is another.


Ah yes, the "corrupting the morals of the youth" argument.

Besides, when ever did I use enjoyment of random, non-composed noise as evidence for sensible listening advice? Why, I didn't even mention my enjoyment of that particular thing until just a couple of days ago. And I've never gone on to use that to justify any sensible listening advice.

Plus, how often do I give advice as to what to listen to? I'm the one who's usually encouraging people to ignore advice about particular pieces or composers or genres and just listen. If from my lofty pinnacle of fifty some odd years of listening, I have anything to say about it, it's that you have to do it yourself.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

The lecturer's premise in the video is similar to what I put in THIS thread, about what a psychologist said about how our brains process music, that kind of thing.

Composers need to balance the predictable and random/chaotic elements in a piece successfully for it to appeal to a wide audience, or at least a significant segment of the classical listening audience.

We can argue for fringe composers but basically, music is communication. BTW, I do like some of Boulez's music, as well as Carter's, and many others, some of their pieces are among my favourites of modern times.

The fact is that if a mathematician or psychologist is giving you facts about these things, you can either accept them as fairly objective fact or truth or whatever, or you can dodge it with the usual convoluted thinking, manipulating what they say.

Basically, it's fact and a fair deal of common sense against the usual dogmas, theory with practical back ups, and ideology...


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

I thought the piece was ugly, but no, it wasn't the ugliest thing imaginable. I don't like the hyperbole of the argument, which goes essentially like this:

Repetition is _important_ to beautiful music --> beautiful music is _all_ about repetition --> therefore a piece of music with no repetition is the ugliest kind.

First, repetition is _not_ the only thing that makes music beautiful. What about timbre? Maybe if they artificially pitched a deafening fire alarm, that would have worked better. The same goes for many other facets of good music. Also, there are certain things in this mathematical approach that the brain is too simple to capture. For example, I think he said that all the notes were a different length, but we certainly can't pick up on that, and its probably impossible for the performer to realise that in his playing, so it ends up sounding as though repetitive rhythms are there.


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## regressivetransphobe (May 16, 2011)

Specifically setting out to write ugly music for piano is a doomed venture from the start. There's been almost a century of advancement in assisting newer instruments to sound ugly no matter what's played.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

Polednice said:


> I thought the piece was ugly, but no, it wasn't the ugliest thing imaginable. I don't like the hyperbole of the argument, which goes essentially like this:
> 
> Repetition is _important_ to beautiful music --> beautiful music is _all_ about repetition --> therefore a piece of music with no repetition is the ugliest kind.
> 
> First, repetition is _not_ the only thing that makes music beautiful. What about timbre? Maybe if they artificially pitched a deafening fire alarm, that would have worked better. The same goes for many other facets of good music. Also, there are certain things in this mathematical approach that the brain is too simple to capture. For example, I think he said that all the notes were a different length, but we certainly can't pick up on that, and its probably impossible for the performer to realise that in his playing, so it ends up sounding as though repetitive rhythms are there.


I've been thinking of attempting to compose the "ugliest" composition after watching that TED talk. It _will_ be repetitive (to the point that there might possibly be mass suicide) and have extremely painful to the ears noises at extreme registers to drive away civilisation and leave me in peace with my composition.

What _I_ generally find to be beautiful music comes not with repetition but with the harmonic structure. I find the opening of "Stairway to Heaven" by Led Zeppelin quite beautiful because of its chord progression (minor key: i, V, III, IV or let's transpose it to the key of A minor with the chords being: A minor, E major, C major, D major) and Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance march no. 1 infuriating because of the chord progressions used in that. Now if a good melody is written over the top of a beautiful chord progression (I myself like chord progressions with chromatically descending bass lines eg "When I am Laid in Earth" from Purcell's Dido and Aeneas) than you would have a beatiful piece of music.

What I figured out from this, is that by avoiding anything I have mentioned in the paragraph above you would have "ugly" music. I haven't written anything yet where I have tried to create the ugliest piece possible with my theory of beatiful/ugly music but I will try it soon.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

I also think tintinnabuli is quite beatiful.

Fratres for violin and piano by Arvo Pärt:


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

Opening from "Glassworks" I also take to be a beatiful piece of music because of the chord progressions used in it:






But the fact that the same hemiola rhythm is used throughout without variation is not the main reason why this is a beatiful piece. If this piece was written with the same notes and chord progressio but rhythms that do not repeat over and over I'm sure it will still be a beautiful piece of music.


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