# What pieces were out of place in their era?



## LordBlackudder (Nov 13, 2010)

like impressionist during romantic period and so on.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

In my opinion, Erik Satie was pretty much out of place the whole time. Usually the arts had to catch up to him, whether it was Cubism, Surrealism, Dada, Neo-classicism, and whatever you call the quartal/whole tone things Debussy eventually perfected. But his pop songs were spot-on for his time; even his ragtime pieces.


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## Stargazer (Nov 9, 2011)

I always thought that Beethoven's 32nd piano sonata sounded quite out of place with the jazzy bits in the second movement. The first time I ever heard it I actually thought I was listening to the wrong piece, I was like no way this is Beethoven lol. Still, one of my favorite of his piano works!


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## Vaneyes (May 11, 2010)

CPE Bach Symphonies, Haydn String Quartets, Mozart Operas, Beethoven Symphonies, Bruckner Symphonies, Janacek String Quartets, Mahler Symphonies, Stravinsky Rite of Spring.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

"Contrary to public belief it is not that composers are ahead of their time, it is that the music public are 50 years behind the time." ~ Edgar Varèse

I too would have to cite Erik Satie as seeming an musical anomaly by dating, merely, his Trois Gymnopedies, published in a private edition for friends and the few interested in those pieces, in 1888 (!).

Late Romanticism, the Germanic sort, was an amain force throughout Europe, the harmonic language and aesthetic both having permeated the scene, and the majority of non Germanic composers were all 'on the bandwagon,' as it were.

These pieces, contextually, then, published _Three Years after Wagner's Death_ really seem to have come from another planet.

Charles Ives, who trained under Horatio Parker, in a "Brahms Dominated" aesthetic and school of compositional thought, then worked in isolation, not keeping in touch or following any contemporary musical trends or developments. Much of his work did not receive performances or public performances until decades after it was composed. His "The unanswered question" is in a way another unprecedented piece of music, composed in 1906, without knowledge of the earliest of Schoenberg's 'expressionist' chromatic works. Now at one hundred and seven years old, it too, still stands rather well apart.

Then you have the iconoclast Harry Partch, though what he became and 'was about' had more readily attributed influences, by the path he took, the eccentric tunings, the newly contrived instruments, and the social implications of music performance -- all more readily traced to the goings on of his time. (He wished music to once again be a community affair, a rite with the performers not necessarily trained professional performers.)

As eccentric as they may have seemed, or still seem, Scriabin, Sorabji, Alkan, etc. are very much a product of the influences of their own time and the musical 'atmosphere' in which they lived.

I can not think of anyone else, no matter how much they 'beat their own path' or 'marched to their own drummer' (and a host of other appropriate cliches  who was not more directly linked to influence, or still very much a product of their time.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

In last half of 19th century, there was a strong trend going back to Classicism and Baroque. Early on, Mendelssohn was at the forefront of this, but later composers also got into this, eg. Bizet with his _Symphony in C_, many works by Saint-Saens (eg. his _Suite for cello and orch_.), Gounod's instrumental works like the _Petite Symphonie for winds_, also Grieg's _Holberg Suite _and even Tchaikovsky with his orchestral suite _Mozartiana_ and the _Rococo Variations for cello and orchestra_.

So what I'm saying is that the neo-classicism of the early 20th century had a kind of precursor in some of the works of these & other composers. Not everyone in the late 19th century was interested in _doing a Wagner,_ eg. going for the bigger is better kind of aesthetic. Having said that, Wagner's influence did not pass some of these guys by, but they did not simply do rehash of his music. & in any case, Wagner's use of counterpoint in the _Mastersingers of Nuremberg _prelude is nothing if not about going back to the counterpoint of the past and recasting it in a Romantic mould.


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## Klavierspieler (Jul 16, 2011)

Gesualdo..


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