# "Conservative" contemporary classical that uses electronic instruments



## Dim7 (Apr 24, 2009)

Okay, so for a lot of people post-1950 art music is either tuneless / too dissonant / incomprehensible noise, or else bland and repetitive (minimalism). 'Pastiche' isn't allowed, you have to do something new - it's ok to be inspired by older styles but you have to put a new spin on it.... so how about making music that is resembles older styles of classical in terms of melody, rhythm, tonality, harmony & form (not necessarily all of them) but takes advantage of the fact how we can manipulate timbre these days with electronics? Does it exist? Or is that not "new" enough?


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## SeptimalTritone (Jul 7, 2014)

You might enjoy Cage's Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano. Was that what you had in mind? They're pretty accessible, yet very much musique concrete.


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## Guest (May 23, 2015)

Can you get "conservative" and "electronics" in the same sentence without causing a rip in the space/time continuum?


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Not that I'm aware of. My sense is that the people who would gravitate towards using electronic instruments and timbres are generally not the ones who want to continue writing in older styles more or less the same as they were before.


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## SeptimalTritone (Jul 7, 2014)

You might enjoy this too






No no (!) it's not exactly conservative, but it's very singing with the violin line on top of the electronics, and it's quite varied and powerful.


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## Dim7 (Apr 24, 2009)

dogen said:


> Can you get "conservative" and "electronics" in the same sentence without causing a rip in the space/time continuum?


I'm using the word conservative in a highly idiosyncratic sense: "music which does not sound like utter rubbish to my ears". I like plenty of post-tonal music so "tonality" itself is not the main issue, though tonal classical music with bizarre timbres could certainly be very interesting to hear. In non-classical it does exist, but tends to be either repetitive dance music or boring chill-out/ambient music.


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## Guest (May 23, 2015)

OK, but I think I'm with Mahlerian on this one.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Maybe Mason Bates...but his music isn't really that conservative because it seems to be made without much of any awareness of the classical tradition...


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

dogen said:


> Can you get "conservative" and "electronics" in the same sentence without causing a rip in the space/time continuum?


what about the arrangements of Isao Tomita and Wendy Carlos?





Anyway I can think of Constance Demby, she's known as a new age musician but her music was clearly inspired by classical music.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

(sorry)

Edit: Serious answer - Nico Muhly I believe does this sometimes.


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## Dim7 (Apr 24, 2009)

dogen said:


> Can you get "conservative" and "electronics" in the same sentence without causing a rip in the space/time continuum?


Do you have a problem with ripping the space/time continuum? It's my favorite pastime.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Dim7 said:


> Okay, so for a lot of people post-1950 art music is either tuneless / too dissonant / incomprehensible noise, or else bland and repetitive (minimalism). 'Pastiche' isn't allowed, you have to do something new - it's ok to be inspired by older styles but you have to put a new spin on it.... so how about making music that is resembles older styles of classical in terms of melody, rhythm, tonality, harmony & form (not necessarily all of them) but takes advantage of the fact how we can manipulate timbre these days with electronics? Does it exist? Or is that not "new" enough?


Try Jonathan Harvey and Gérard Grisey


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

Mandryka said:


> Gérard Grisey


I don't know about Harvey but "Grisey traditional" is a joke I guess


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

Check out Wendy Carlos' "Digital Moonscapes." It's not a pastiche of older styles, not bloopy synthesizer renditions of Bach etc. It's completely her own, sometimes common practice, classical music. I really really like the "Eden" segment of the collection, but the rest is bit bland for me, much as I love Carlos. Some people are turned off by the seeming lame attempt to emulate orchestral instruments, but the point was to create a sound world with electronic surrogates for orchestral instruments, not to recreate those instruments.










If that satisfies, move on to Carlos' "Beauty in the Beast," a much more interesting effort in my opinion. It is however a bit out there in that it uses strictly microtonal tunings and alternate tunings. The music is nevertheless haunting.










Both of these are _very_ hard to sample due to her thorough routing of anything cropping up on YouTube, Spotify or elsewhere. Who can blame her really?


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

norman bates said:


> I don't know about Harvey but "Grisey traditional" is a joke I guess


Not entirely, 4 chants pour franchir le seuil always reminds me of the last number of Lied von der erde. Anyway I returned to the forum because I thought of a better suggestion, Stockhausen's Himmelfahrt and Freude.

Another one would be Kurtag's Kafka Fragments - anyone who enjoys Schubert songs should love it. But there's no electronics so not what's required here. Another composer to explore is Cornelius Cardew.


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## Clairvoyance Enough (Jul 25, 2014)

I frequently search for this kind of thing too but all I ever find is the same old list of StockVareses and Terry Riley/Vangelis/SocialNetworkOSTs.


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

Okay - here you go.

Olivier Messiaen - 4 Feuillets inédits per ondes Martenot e pianoforte






Granted there's not a whole lot of timbre manipulation with ondes Martenot, but it's approaching the criteria.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Oh and here's another one - Luc Ferrari's Petite Symphonie Intuitive pour un paysage de printemps, anyone who can tolerate Debussy's impressionism in La Mer should find it really interesting.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

Mandryka said:


> Not entirely, 4 chants pour franchir le seuil always reminds me of the last number of Lied von der erde. Anyway I returned to the forum because I thought of a better suggestion, Stockhausen's Himmelfahrt and Freude.
> 
> Another one would be Kurtag's Kafka Fragments - anyone who enjoys Schubert songs should love it. .



I love that work of Kurtag and it could be considered conservative only if we want to consider conservatives Boulez or Stockhausen too.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Mahlerian said:


> Not that I'm aware of. My sense is that the people who would gravitate towards using electronic instruments and timbres are generally not the ones who want to continue writing in older styles more or less the same as they were before.


I agree. I am not aware of examples.


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## SimonNZ (Jul 12, 2012)

You might like Max Richter's "recomposed" Four Seasons:















If you like that then you might try Ambrose Field's Being Dufay, which is something of a favorite of mine:















You might also try Saariaho's Six Japanese Gardens. I nominated that on the Post 50s project, but its been very slow to garner enough votes ( though it sounds like you might consider that a good sign). Another member investigating it was put off by it sounding too close to his ears like easy listening. Its not in old styles, but its not scarywhatever.


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## SimonNZ (Jul 12, 2012)

Actually if you names some modern/contemporary composers or works you like it might be easier to triangulate more from that.


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

Well, I'll be . . . I finally found the Wendy Carlos piece "Eden" I was referring to earlier. It sounds kind of primitive today I guess. Sweet, but the rest of the album is little less common practice baroque. 





And here is an excerpt from her microtonal Beauty in the Beast which I think is way cooler.





(These are semi-pirated, but for the sake of promotion . . .)


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## Dim7 (Apr 24, 2009)

SimonNZ said:


> Actually if you names some modern/contemporary composers or works you like it might be easier to triangulate more from that.


Good point - "conservative" was somewhat problematic choice of word. I like plenty of pre-50 "modern" stuff, including Scriabin's late music, Bartok's String Quartets, Ravel's/Debussy's piano music (orchestral stuff bores me for some reason), Schoenberg's Piano Concerto and Violin Concerto. Messiaen and Stravinsky ("Russian-period" that is) I feel somewhat lukewarm about, but they are also good examples of "modern but not too modern." Dutilleux's piano sonata was nice too (Dutilleux's orchestral music goes "over my head" I feel). Basically dissonance or "atonality" is not a problem per se, but I dislike when I can't hear any form, melody or themes and the music seems to consist of merely "atmospheric" sounds or is just ridiculously complex. Though that is probably an uselessly subjective way of putting it.

I like Yoshimatsu's Threnody to Toki as well.


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## Lukecash12 (Sep 21, 2009)

Dim7 said:


> Okay, so for a lot of people post-1950 art music is either tuneless / too dissonant / incomprehensible noise, or else bland and repetitive (minimalism). 'Pastiche' isn't allowed, you have to do something new - it's ok to be inspired by older styles but you have to put a new spin on it.... so how about making music that is resembles older styles of classical in terms of melody, rhythm, tonality, harmony & form (not necessarily all of them) but takes advantage of the fact how we can manipulate timbre these days with electronics? Does it exist? Or is that not "new" enough?


Composers like Brahms, Schumann, Rachmaninov, Prokofeiv, Mendelssohn or Bach were either permanently or oftentimes neck deep in older styles, yet they managed to produce music that was new and exceptional by synthesizing, recombining, and refining or also partially updating those styles.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

Schnittke's Peer Gynt Epilogue for 'cello, piano and tape - although the use of tape here is solely to provide a spacey, choral-like background to the dialogue between the two instruments.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

norman bates said:


> I love that work of Kurtag and it could be considered conservative only if we want to consider conservatives Boulez or Stockhausen too.


My own experience is that these things don't go in revolutions, from my point of view as listener. I don't buy the idea that Schoenberg heralded a musical revolution except maybe at the level of compositional technique. Rather there are family resemblances between old and newer musics. So I reject the conservative/non-conservative dichotamy.

There's enough in common between my experience of Winterreise and my experience of Kafka Fragments to make me think that anyone who listens to and enjoys one will enjoy the other.

Of course people may deceive themselves ("I'm not the sort of person who likes stuff like that"), or they may not really listen, or may not listen to a good performance.

Another example would be late Schubert and late Feldman.

Even a work like Luc Ferrari's Presque Rien seems to me as listener to be so beautiful, so carefully composed, that anyone who likes, I dunno . . . a Mahler adagio maybe. . . . will enjoy it.

I think one reason people don't is that they're too hung up about sounds and structures, surface things and technical things. They aren't focusing on the essence of the music.

Another reason is, I think, that some recent music is so beautiful, so emotionally truthful, that it's hard to bear it, to swallow it. It's not sugar coated like romantic music.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

Mandryka said:


> My own experience is that these things don't go in revolutions, from my point of view as listener. I don't buy the idea that Schoenberg heralded a musical revolution except maybe at the level of compositional technique. Rather there are family resemblances between old and newer musics. So I reject the conservative/non-conservative dichotamy.
> 
> There's enough in common between my experience of Winterreise and my experience of Kafka Fragments to make me think that anyone who listens to and enjoys one will enjoy the other.
> 
> ...


I can see your point but clearly that's not what Dim7 was asking for with "electronic music that sounds conservative". I'm not sure even of my suggestion of Debussy arranged for synth because Debussy was not someone who used traditional tonality like Mozart or Brahams. 
And I have to say that I like both Winterreise and Kafka fragments and they are so completely different that I can't see the similiraties: one is clearly the work of a romantic composer using traditional harmony, the other is the work of an avantgarde composer that sounds like 20th century avantgarde.


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## Dim7 (Apr 24, 2009)

norman bates said:


> I can see your point but clearly that's not what Dim7 was asking for with "electronic music that sounds conservative". I'm not sure even of my suggestion of Debussy arranged for synth because Debussy was not someone who used traditional tonality like Mozart or Brahams.


Well as I said I'm not meaning conservative necessarily in the "orthodoxically tonal" sense (I even like some "atonal" music if that word means anything) - the words "conservative" and "modern" have largely lost their meanings because of the gap between what today's composers are composing and tastes of the audiences.


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## manyene (Feb 7, 2015)

The various arrangements of classical pieces played on the theremin plus Kalevi Aho's recent theremin concerto?


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## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

Dim7 said:


> ...for a lot of people post-1950 art music is either tuneless / too dissonant / incomprehensible noise...


No, not really. I am interested in the stuff that is happening.



Dim7 said:


> ...or else bland and repetitive (minimalism).


Yes, sometimes. Obviously, the American minimalism, but also the European variety, the followers of Nono's late hyper-minimal style.



Dim7 said:


> 'Pastiche' isn't allowed...


I wouldn't go quite that far.



Dim7 said:


> ...you have to do something new - it's ok to be inspired by older styles but you have to put a new spin on it....


There is something here. Composers have always built upon the work of their musical 'ancestors', but a lot of new compositions leave me feeling that I've heard this all before. It sounds somewhat like Nono, Ligeti, Stockhausen... whoever. I ponder my collection: I have lots of Ligeti, some Stockhausen, a bit of Nono, etc. Do this need this new piece, then? Probably not. I can just put Nono, Ligeti or Stockhausen on, when I want something that sounds like _that_.



Dim7 said:


> ...so how about making music that is resembles older styles of classical in terms of melody, rhythm, tonality, harmony & form (not necessarily all of them) but takes advantage of the fact how we can manipulate timbre these days with electronics?


I can like electronics, when used judiciously, but, mostly, I think it's a cheap trick.

The new composers that will win their ways into my hearem will do so one way or another and what I just wrote will not likely have any bearing on it


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## SeptimalTritone (Jul 7, 2014)

Dim7 said:


> Good point - "conservative" was somewhat problematic choice of word. I like plenty of pre-50 "modern" stuff, including Scriabin's late music, Bartok's String Quartets, Ravel's/Debussy's piano music (orchestral stuff bores me for some reason), Schoenberg's Piano Concerto and Violin Concerto. Messiaen and Stravinsky ("Russian-period" that is) I feel somewhat lukewarm about, but they are also good examples of "modern but not too modern." Dutilleux's piano sonata was nice too (Dutilleux's orchestral music goes "over my head" I feel). Basically dissonance or "atonality" is not a problem per se, but I dislike when I can't hear any form, melody or themes and the music seems to consist of merely "atmospheric" sounds or is just ridiculously complex. Though that is probably an uselessly subjective way of putting it.
> 
> I like Yoshimatsu's Threnody to Toki as well.


I would then recommend as a next step Schoenberg's 3rd and 4th string quartet, and string trio. They are beautiful, and singing, and fun. Since you liked the violin and piano concertos, I think these would be a fair next step.


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## Dim7 (Apr 24, 2009)

SeptimalTritone said:


> I would then recommend as a next step Schoenberg's 3rd and 4th string quartet, and string trio. They are beautiful, and singing, and fun. Since you liked the violin and piano concertos, I think these would be a fair next step.


Thanks for the recommendations, but I've tried those works and I didn't like them very much. I'm feeling more optimistic about Variations for Orchestra though it needs some digesting.
Plus none of them have electronic instruments


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## DeepR (Apr 13, 2012)

If you want more tuneful stuff you're probably better off listening to electronic music in the broadest sense of the word.


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

Salonen's Wing on Wing doesn't have electronic instruments exactly, depending on how you define "electronic." It does have some recordings of a lecture by a famous architect which to my ears serves as a kind of rhythmic drone, it being quite in a monotone, and also recordings of a strange sound made by a fish. (There is a connection, but it's better to read about it directly form the source.) These effects coupled with the sopranos is pretty freaky, occasionally spine tingling for me. 

I suppose that's not strictly electronics, but to my mind once you put a microphone in front of something it becomes electronic anyway. I've never understood musicians who grumble about electronics and then play an acoustic guitar with a mic at 110 decibels, completely altering its essence.


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