# The great modernist/contemporary composers who're traditionalists too



## Chordalrock (Jan 21, 2014)

Who am I missing?

Bartok
Alban Berg
Britten
Hindemith
Arthur Honegger
Charles Ives
Martinu
Prokofiev
Schoenberg
William Schuman
Shostakovich
Roger Sessions
Stravinsky

I mean composers who seem, under the new surface, the new harmonic language, still a continuation rather than a break from Common Practice Period music (e.g. Schoenberg and Sessions are brilliant examples but Boulez is too modernist).

Who are the greats that I missed - the classics waiting to be canonised?


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

It seems that you're making form (and perhaps traditional phrasing?) the line of demarcation between common practice and non-common practice.

There are other American composers such as Leon Kirchner, Lukas Foss, and Virgil Thompson, who wrote in relatively traditional fashion and forms.


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## Prodromides (Mar 18, 2012)

Chordalrock said:


> Who am I missing?...
> 
> Who are the greats that I missed - the classics waiting to be canonised?


The Swedish composer Karl-Birger Blomdahl is one such person missing from your list.
During his (short) lifetime, Blomdahl was regarded by Swedish conservatives as the musical _L'enfant terrible_ whilst the composer considered himself to be traditional.


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## Chordalrock (Jan 21, 2014)

Prodromides said:


> The Swedish composer Karl-Birger Blomdahl is one such person missing from your list.
> During his (short) lifetime, Blomdahl was regarded by Swedish conservatives as the musical _L'enfant terrible_ whilst the composer considered himself to be traditional.


Nice. I wish there were more recordings (and compositions for that matter).

Kirchner, Foss, and Thomson haven't been served too well either in terms of available recordings if Spotify is any indication.


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

*Just with American?*

I am sure we can come up with a huge list.

Some American composers I can think of:

Vincent Persichetti
Samuel Barber
Aaron Copeland (some of his early and late works are rather adventurous)
Peter Mennin
Howard Hanson
Wallingford Riegger (Difficult to find recordings of Riegger)
Walter Piston
Morton Gould
George Gershwin (He died to soon. He was on the verge of breaking out with _Porgy, Concerto in F and Cuban Overture_.)
Leonard Bernstein (even though some consider him an uneven composer he still wrote some heady stuff)
Roy Harris (another uneven composer who composed some masterpieces)

Some contemporary American composers who have done some neat stuff:
Marc Camphouse
Frank Ticheli
David Maslanka
David Gillingham
Donald Grantham
Joan Tower
Ellen Taffe Zwilch
Jennifer Higdon
John Corigliano
Richard Danialpour

There are many others.

I am not sure if you would count Elliot Carter in this list.

I am sure our European friends could add many to this list.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Majority wrote in traditional forms and genres, they had to - symphonies, concertos, chamber music etc. This is defines our roots. Even Schoenberg wrote operas, concertos after Handel (arrangement) etc. For a modernist to be great, s(h)e has to respect the past and show that there is influence in their music they write today.


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## Chordalrock (Jan 21, 2014)

The prescription to include only the great ones (as opposed to merely "good") is of course rather subjective and depending on the person the list may be very long or rather short. Anyway, I will be familiarising myself with these. Thank you.



arpeggio said:


> I am not sure if you would count Elliot Carter in this list.
> 
> I am sure our European friends could add many to this list.


I did leave him out based on my impression of what I've listened to - there's something about his style (maybe phrasing) that seems too avant-garde and inaccessible for the most part.


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

I know some of our members considerer Shostakovich as the last great composer.

All of the contemporary composers that I listed came after Shostakovich, so for some of our members...


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## Guest (Dec 31, 2014)

ArtMusic said:


> Majority wrote in traditional forms and genres, they had to - symphonies, concertos, chamber music etc. This is defines our roots. Even Schoenberg wrote operas, concertos after Handel (arrangement) etc. For a modernist to be great, s(h)e has to respect the past and show that there is influence in their music they write today.


Please edit this post to include your citations.


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## Guest (Dec 31, 2014)

Anyway, my newest discovery is the music of Alexander Goehr. Seems like the man was all about "tradition"


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

Chordalrock said:


> The prescription to include only the great ones (as opposed to merely "good") is of course rather subjective and depending on the person the list may be very long or rather short. Anyway, I will be familiarising myself with these. Thank you.
> 
> I did leave him out based on my impression of what I've listened to - there's something about his style (maybe phrasing) that seems too avant-garde and inaccessible for the most part.


Do not worry about it. I know of members who would consider every composer I listed to be hacks.


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## scratchgolf (Nov 15, 2013)

arcaneholocaust said:


> Please edit this post to include your citations.


*In order to be great, does a modernist have to respect the past and show that there is influence in their music they write today?*

-Yes, more or less
-No, pure and simple
-Ensure


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

The most obvious figure you are missing is Richard Strauss. 

Others that I would include... considering your stipulation of those who continue the tradition... would surely include:

Henry Duparc
Leoš Janáček
Jean Sibelius
Carl Nielsen
Ralph Vaughan-Williams
Benjamin Britten
Edward Elgar
Giacomo Puccini
Gabriel Fauré
Claude Debussy
Frederick Delius
Alexander Gretchaninov
Alexander Glazunov
Charles Koechlin
Alexander von Zemlinsky
Hugo Alfvén
Sergei Rachmaninoff
Reynaldo Hahn
Franz Schmidt
Maurice Ravel
Manuel de Falla
Mieczysław Karłowicz
Franz Schreker
Ernst Bloch
Ottorino Respighi
Karol Szymanowski
Arnold Bax
Charles Griffes
Othmar Schoeck
Heitor Villa-Lobos
Rued Langgaard
Frank Martin
Ernest John Moeran
Virgil Thomson
Erich Wolfgang Korngold
Silvestre Revueltas
Roy Harris
Aaron Copland
Gerald Finzi
Edmund Rubbra
Joaquin Rodrigo
William Schuman
Alan Hovhaness
Witold Lutosławski
Henri Dutilleux
Ned Rorem
Jacques Ibert
Darius Milhaud
Francis Poulenc
Alberto Ginastera
Leonard Berstein
Mieczysław Weinberg
Einojuhani Rautavaara
Veljo Tormis
Henryk Górecki
Valentin Silvestrov
John Corigliano
John Harbison
Joseph Schwantner
Kenneth Fuchs
Peter Lieberson
Jake Heggie
David Diamond
Erik Whitacre
Daniel Catan


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

ArtMusic said:


> For a modernist to be great, s(h)e has to respect the past and show that there is influence in their music they write today.


I think the above statement is ridiculous, and I don't care much for modernist music.


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## Chordalrock (Jan 21, 2014)

StlukesguildOhio said:


> The most obvious figure you are missing is Richard Strauss.
> 
> Others that I would include... considering your stipulation of those who continue the tradition... would surely include:


Thank you. I'm sure I will find your list useful, even if it isn't quite what I was looking for with its late Romantics, impressionists, and possibly other somewhat un-topical figures.


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## Alfacharger (Dec 6, 2013)

arpeggio said:


> I am sure we can come up with a huge list.
> 
> Some American composers I can think of:
> 
> ...


I would include Carter, he did write this...


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

Many modernist composers were rather conservative when they were younger. Carter was in his forties when he started composing in his more modernistic style. Yet when people mention Carter then think of his later style.

I think Schoenberg's first twelve-tone piece was his Wind Quintet, Op. 26 (1924), which was completed when he was forty-nine.

Along with the _Symphony_ some other early works that some may find interesting are the _Holiday Overture_ and the ballets _The Minotaur _ and _Pocahontas_.


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## ahammel (Oct 10, 2012)

arpeggio said:


> I think Schoenberg's first twelve-tone piece was his Wind Quintet, Op. 26 (1924), which was completed when he was forty-nine.


Op. 23 no. 5 predates it by a year. He claimed to have invented the technique in 1921 and communicated it to friends in '22 according to Wikipedia.

He'd been writing music not in any particular key since 1908, though.


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## Guest (Jan 1, 2015)

StlukesguildOhio, your definition of modernism is perhaps passable, but very generous, I think...

Edit: actually, I just saw Faure and Elgar on there. Wat?


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## Blake (Nov 6, 2013)

It would seem pretty impossible to be modernist without first being traditional. You have to soak up the old to be able to do something new with it.


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

Blake said:


> It would seem pretty impossible to be modernist without first being traditional. You have to soak up the old to be able to do something new with it.


This is a point many of us have tried to make on several occasions.


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## aajj (Dec 28, 2014)

Blake said:


> It would seem pretty impossible to be modernist without first being traditional. You have to soak up the old to be able to do something new with it.


Schoenberg's admiration for Brahms is a good example.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Aaron Copland wore two hats, writing populist ballet scores like Appalachian Spring, but also kept the modernists happy with Piano Variations and Connotations for Orchestra.


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## Guest (Jan 2, 2015)

arpeggio said:


> This is a point many of us have tried to make on several occasions.


Then please go ahead and make the point for Harry Partch and the like.


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## aajj (Dec 28, 2014)

hpowders said:


> Aaron Copland wore two hats, writing populist ballet scores like Appalachian Spring, but also kept the modernists happy with Piano Variations and Connotations for Orchestra.


How about his piano concerto? It seems to thread the line between modernist and popular. It would never be confused with a jazzy concerto such as Gershwin's but not with Weill's extreme modernism either. In any case, i consider Copland's concerto to be deserving of greater attention.


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

arcaneholocaust said:


> Then please go ahead and make the point for Harry Partch and the like.


Partch may be an exception. Maybe Boulez and Xenakis, too? I do not know. Clarification: All I can say is that based on the moderninsts composers I am familiar with the majority of the them were successful traditional composers as well. If I am wrong, so be it. It will not be the first time.


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## Crudblud (Dec 29, 2011)

Partch was a traditionalist, but he worked with traditions other than the Western. Early pieces, which he apparently destroyed in the 1930s, were written in 12-TET in accordance with prevailing Western music theory of the times, but he would later come to describe his music as "corporeal" and presented it in opposition to absolute music. He created a kind of theatrical performance music indebted to Asian and Ancient Greek dramatic forms. In itself this could be seen as the progenitor of an American lineage including Philip Glass's _Einstein on the Beach_ and the deconstructed operatic forms of Robert Ashley, both of which in full stagings put primary emphasis on elements other than music, dance in the former and word/image combinations in the latter.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

aajj said:


> How about his piano concerto? It seems to thread the line between modernist and popular. It would never be confused with a jazzy concerto such as Gershwin's but not with Weill's extreme modernism either. In any case, i consider Copland's concerto to be deserving of greater attention.


At its premiere, critics disparaged the piece for being a series of horrifying discords without any sense of melody. This was partly in reaction to the "jazz" elements, but Copland continued to have a reputation as a noise-making modernist up until Billy the Kid.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Blake said:


> It would seem pretty impossible to be modernist without first being traditional. You have to soak up the old to be able to do something new with it.


_I'm more hard-pressed to think of a composer whose works are not based upon and somehow still within 'traditional.'_

Of course the OP is cast as "those writing in a syntax and form with which I am already most familiar," which is in no way a solid enough or at all acceptable definition of traditional, unless it is another wholly egocentric Humpty-Dumpty type usage, i.e. to "...it means whatever I want it to mean, no more, no less."


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## MoonlightSonata (Mar 29, 2014)

StlukesguildOhio said:


> The most obvious figure you are missing is Richard Strauss.
> 
> Others that I would include... considering your stipulation of those who continue the tradition... would surely include:...


That's a lovely long list, but they don't all seem to be composers usually considered 'modernists'...


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## Richannes Wrahms (Jan 6, 2014)

Chordalrock said:


> Boulez is too modernist


Done before by Webern.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Arnold Schoenberg ~ a formalist, like his predecessors Mozart, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms.

... as was Berg, another formalist who used all the forms of his formalist predecessors as well as dipping into earlier baroque and classical forms.

Webern ~ another, who certainly knew his music history and his tradition, who still greatly altered 'what music can be' while remaining a formalist.

Karlheinz Stockhausen ~ a formalist, like his predecessors Mozart, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms and Schoenberg.

Luciano Berio ~ another of similar stripe, being in the above grand tradition while leaning more toward Mozart as influenced by the Italianate at least as much as the Germanic tradition and the earlier Italianate and French sensibilities.

Boulez is another who comes from that long tradition, and yet another formalist.

This is basic fact, and has nothing to do with any listener's listening habits or comfort zones, regardless or what anyone may or may not personally like _-- because that is clearly not the question in the OP_ 

I think these need to be pointed out for the very reason they are often mistaken as those who broke from the tradition, and that is entirely false.


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