# Chameleonic composers...



## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

I mean composers who go from being like THIS to THIS to THIS & so on (click on links to see what I mean!). These guys were/are leopards who change their spots.

Some I can think of -

*Igor Stravinsky* - Went from one style to another with ease, covering many of the major trends of the c20th from his early romantic tendencies to his late serial explorations.

*Richard Strauss* - He also went from one style to another, from being one of the movers and shakers of late Romanticism to ruffling a few feathers with the dissonances of _Salome _&_ Elektra_, to Neo-Classicism in things like _Der Rosenkavalier_ to aspects of atonality in _Metamorphosen for 23 solo strings
_ & many things in between (but he didn't fully flesh out some of his directions as thoroughly as Stravinsky, I think).

& maybe to a lesser extent -

*G. F. Handel* - A long career traversing three countries - his native German region, to parts of what is now Italy, to the UK. I think his music probably reflects this, though I'm not an expert on him by any means.

*So who do you think are some other notable or representative chameleonic composers?...*

*Do you like how these composers changed or would you have liked them to keep doing certain things and not changing?*

*Do you think that composers who acted like chameleons were able to retain an overall sense of individuality of style or character, despite their tendency to change all the time?*

*Do you think that it was good that they changed, or do you think it was just something like a matter of "change for the sake of change?"

Do you think these guys were like opportunists, jumping onto certain bandwagons and following certain fads when it suited their careers, etc?

These are the kinds of issues I'm hoping to discuss on this thread/topic...*


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

I think Shostakovich fits this bill. He had to be a chameleon and change his style, literally to protect his life under the Stalinist regime. Of course (mostly) everyone knows that his 5th symphony was way toned down (in terms of modernism and experimentalism) compared to his 2nd, 3rd and 4th symphonies. After this more neo-romantic/neo-classical period (I've heard his music of this period described as both), a while after Stalin died, I feel that his music got a lot darker and bleaker (13th, 14th and 15 symphonies and string quartets, 2nd cello concerto, viola sonata). They were also a bit more experimental with modern techniques, but never quite up to date with the experiments going on in the rest of the world at this point. The interesting thing about his last "dark and bleak" style is that I feel that this style very much lived on in the music of his students (Gubaidulina, Ustvolskaya). 

Even though he created many masterpieces under Stalin's iron fist, I think it would have been really interesting to hear what he would have composed if he had complete freedom to compose anything he wanted, and also had proper access to the other parts of the world.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

violadude said:


> I think Shostakovich fits this bill. He had to be a chameleon and change his style, literally to protect his life under the Stalinist regime...


True & also I must add that Shostakovich lived through so many regimes, eg. he was a kid when the old Tsarist imperial regime was about to go down the gurgler, then after that the major rulers were Lenin, Stalin, Khruschev, Brezhnev. Had he lived a mere 15 or so years more - not an inconceivable thing, looking at how long Stravinsky lived - Shostakovich would have seen the end of the Communist system which he had so many problems with, esp. with the need to "work around" the system, as you rightly point out.



> ...a while after Stalin died, I feel that his music got a lot darker and bleaker (13th, 14th and 15 symphonies and string quartets, 2nd cello concerto, viola sonata). They were also a bit more experimental with modern techniques, but never quite up to date with the experiments going on in the rest of the world at this point...


There was also his rock opera - or a kind of soap opera or operetta with rock band? - _Moscow Cheryomushki_ (premiered 1959). I think that Khruschev had a hand in commissioning this. I've only heard the orchestral suite drawn from it, though, which is kind of like light classical music. So he was a man of many sides, not all of them serious or dark...


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

Another 2 or 3 composers:

Leonard Bernstein: He was kind of a renaissance man of classical music. Composer, educator, prominent conductor. He dipped his feet in both "serious" and "light" music. He had jazzy pieces, Americana pieces, pieces in late romantic vein, and very modernist, experimental pieces as well. I feel he was a very well rounded guy when it came to music. 

To a slightly lesser extant you could say this about Copland as well. He went from really modernist music, to light Americana style piece, some Mexican style composition, and also some atonality and serialism. 

Szymanowski also changed styles quite drastically. Listening to all his piano pieces in order of composition, one will hear "modern" Chopin (very similar to early Scriabin), then you will hear very modernist, dense and explosively "gestural" piano writing, then after that you'll hear tons of folk inspired dance music.

About your bandwagon question, I think experimenting with certain styles are very healthy for a good composer. It means they have a curious mind, which is great and it's only natural for them to want to try out other things.


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## HarpsichordConcerto (Jan 1, 2010)

I rather think of it not as _changing_ their styles but rather as being _fluent_ in many styles. Handel was indeed _fluent_ with many styles of his day, as any competent cosmopolitan composer who was first deemed as an imported foreigner would expected to be so. All the great Baroque composers were fluent with Italian and French styles for example, and Handel even absored the English/Purcellian style. (They say he could swear in five languages, and was certainly fluent in several). That said, I also think 20th century composers were fluent in several styles, as Richard Strauss for example was with his operas (the most obvious of amongst major works).

These changes in style through fluency was often, I think, a matter of change in taste in what their audiences wanted/thought to have wanted by the composers; certainly that was the case with a majority of composers the earlier in time we go. Handel reluctantly ditched Italian opera seria when his audience grew tired of it (as well as for business reasons) and wrote English dramatic oratorios. R. Strauss, on the other hand, I think was also capable of fluency and displayed it from opera to opera/season to season, rather than from genre to genre over a long period of time (Handel's example).

But what I want to know/understand regards 20th century avant-agarde music, especially the experimental ones. Would you consider these experimental works as change for change sake? And I also think many did this along your last point (in dark grey coloured font, "guys were like opportunists, jumping onto certain bandwagons and following certain fads when it suited their careers", as the electronic genre seems to have had a fashionable period in the 50's, 60's).


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

Tchaikovsky had an excellent ability to compose in a style that resembled the classical style, but that's just a special talent of his. Still, his ballet music shows an amazing ability to bounce around a bunch of colorful a varied styles. 

Taneyev is maybe a better example. His symphonies are nothing like his string quartets, his late string quartets sound very classical(especially the 5th) and his earlier ones(I have no. 2 in mind) sound very richly romantic, though they are comparable in many respects. And of course, his concert suite for violin and orchestra is nothing like any of his other works, and even has classicism mixed in with romanticism like Tchaikovsky in his opera.

Emanuel Chabrier might be said to be quite chameleonic for his number of compositions. The top pieces in Pieces Pittoresque are almost romantic french classicism like Bizet, and then others sound impressionistic. Feuillet D'Album sounds pure french. He occasionally gets in Spanishy mode like Espana or Bouree Fantastique. And in Gwendoline overture he's almost Wagnerian with his own light and fun stamp. And in Le Roi Malgre Lui-Fete Polonaise he sounds like Johann Strauss and Tchaikovsky! Throughout he's always very melodic. 

Debussy and Ravel probably qualify. Schoenberg for sure. Scriabin definitely. Additionally there seems to be little rigidity about the compositional abilities of Mozart, he wrote what he wanted to write. Liszt has his way about him too that is indeed very adaptable.

On the other end of the spectrum we have Balakirev, Bruckner, Janacek and Medtner who once they developed their mature style were quite consistent.


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## Delicious Manager (Jul 16, 2008)

Some chameleon composers:

*Copland*. 1920s/early 30s: A true child of Nadia Boulanger. Late 1930s-1950s: the populist Copland. 1960s-70s the sometime serial experimenter. How much more chameleon would you like?

*Penderecki*. My, my what a disappointment! How could the composer who wrote the _Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima_ and the _St Luke Passion_, then turn into one of the most boring and derivative of composers, which he seemed to do from the late 1970s?

*Prokofiev*. His style when through many changes - from the near Rakhmaninov/Skryabin scents of his very earliest pieces, through the experimental music of his _enfant terrible_ period, to his glorious post-Romantic utterances upon his return to the Soviet Union in the mid 1930s.


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

As for you question about retaining personal style, I think in Stravinsky you can usually tell its him excepting the early Russian sounding works. Stravinsky may be the most remarkable and flexible of them all, but he has such a signature to him that doesn't seem to ever go away though I've paid no attention to his serialism. Bartok is another modernist that can really change on you like Stravinsky. 

Chabrier seems to have it usually, although you sometimes wonder in his piano music how the same composer could have written two of a few given pieces, though usually that's because there are his average works that sound spanish french hybrid and his high quality works of pure Frenchness. His orchestral music always has his signature, excepting the Fete Polonaise, which sounds like an excellent copy of a waltz and the 1812 overture, with Chabrier's rhythmic spanish nuttiness on top of it.

Many of the good ones were not mere opportunists, but were probably just dissatisfied with one this for too long and were the types to have interests that come and go quickly.


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

Delicious Manager said:


> *Prokofiev*. His style when through many changes - from the near Rakhmaninov/Skryabin scents of his very earliest pieces, through the experimental music of his _enfant terrible_ period, to his glorious post-Romantic utterances upon his return to the Soviet Union in the mid 1930s.


And never forget that Prokofiev greatly admired Medtner in his early years.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

*Eric Satie* fits the description. He started out with the Gymnopedies and Gnoissiennes - dance-like pieces made of color chords. Then he got into a phase where he wrote chant-like modally harmonized Rosicrucian pieces. 
After he saw what his friend Debussy could do with this type of music, he intentionally altered his style and wrote Cubist-like pieces which inserted popular melodies out of their context. 
He went to school at 40 and came out writing fugues and chorales.
Toward the end of his life, he wrote what is called white music, pieces of unemotional purity, like Socrate and his nocturnes. 
He also he wrote nonsense music (Le Piege de Meduse), a precursor to the Dada movement. 
He also wrote popular songs (Je te veux) and art songs (Dapheneo).

Aside from the Debussy encounter, the rest of his life, he was pretty much following his muse. Although I don't think his Rosicrucian music is very successful, as to the rest of his music, each phase is distinctive for its own particular style, content, and ideas and is uniquely his.


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

Based on what I know of his orchestral music and a chamber concert I went to, Samuel Barber is definitely a chameleon as well, writing nearly Atonal songs, post romantic symphonies and concertos, music that occasionally has a more american flavor, and some Jazzy stuff.


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## Klavierspieler (Jul 16, 2011)

You mean like Beethoven? He sounded much like his teacher, Haydn at the beginning of his career. At the end he sounded like he might have come out of the 20th century.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

violadude said:


> Leonard Bernstein: He was kind of a renaissance man of classical music...


Agreed, & the thing that all of his different works have in common is a strong sense of theatricality (eg. who else would write a piece called _Mass_, which is more of a musical about a mass than a "traditional" mass in itself?).



> ...To a slightly lesser extant you could say this about Copland as well. He went from really modernist music, to light Americana style piece, some Mexican style composition, and also some atonality and serialism...


Agreed also, there was a lot of variety in Copland's output, even though he finished composing 20 years before he died. His long career makes me shudder even more at what Gershwin would have achieved had he lived that long.



> ...Szymanowski also changed styles quite drastically. Listening to all his piano pieces in order of composition, one will hear "modern" Chopin (very similar to early Scriabin), then you will hear very modernist, dense and explosively "gestural" piano writing, then after that you'll hear tons of folk inspired dance music....


Yes, I was thinking of him when making the opening post, but restriced myself to three examples. His earlier works are clearly Romantic, with the feel/influence of German composers not too far away (eg. _Concert Overture, Symphony #2_). Then a kind of middle period where his use of lush harmonies/textures, walls/layerings of sound and a kind of sensuousness (eg. _String Quartet #1, Symphony #3 "Song of the Night"_), then the Goral melodies come in, inspired by the music of the Tatra Mountains in Poland (esp. in his ballet-pantomime _Harnasie_), and finally a more astringent and pared down, aggressive modernism (_Symphony #4 "Symphony-Concerto for piano & orch.," & String Quartet #2_). A friend of mine says Szymanowski was like the master of rehash, but I disagree. I think he had an individual style, but it changed a lot, so it's difficult at first to hear his voice throughout all these quite different works.

Again, Szymanowski's early death in middle age makes me think what he would have done had he lived longer (he was born around the same time as Stravinsky).



> ...About your bandwagon question, I think experimenting with certain styles are very healthy for a good composer. It means they have a curious mind, which is great and it's only natural for them to want to try out other things.


Yes, & I think it also speaks to a composer's flexibility and adaptibility...


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

HarpsichordConcerto said:


> I rather think of it not as _changing_ their styles but rather as being _fluent_ in many styles...
> 
> ...These changes in style through fluency was often, I think, a matter of change in taste in what their audiences wanted/thought to have wanted by the composers; certainly that was the case with a majority of composers the earlier in time we go....


I think these are excellent points. I see little point in someone doing something if it's going to be the same all the time or almost the same. Even composers like Chopin who composed mainly for one instrument had a lot of variety in what they did.



> ...But what I want to know/understand regards 20th century avant-agarde music, especially the experimental ones. Would you consider these experimental works as change for change sake? And I also think many did this along your last point (in dark grey coloured font, "guys were like opportunists, jumping onto certain bandwagons and following certain fads when it suited their careers", as the electronic genre seems to have had a fashionable period in the 50's, 60's).


Well yes, there were quite a few "bandwagons" in the decades immediately following 1945, and a lot of ideological battles going on around music then (eg. the ideology of progress vs. stagnation, for example). But it was similar to what happened in earlier times. It depends on what a composer does after jumping on the bandwagon, eg. do they develop these techniques in an interesting/unique way? Or do they just do pure rehash? I mean, composers like Smetana & Dvorak went off the bat of German models/influences (eg. Brahms, Wagner especially) but they ended up doing things, composing music, that doesn't sound like a carbon copy of the Germans at all. So I'd argue that the best of the best of music from 1945 until today and beyond is a matter of refining and developing ideas in music, latest trends, etc. and doing interesting things out of them, just as it was in the past...


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

*@ Delicious Manager *- I agree about Copland & Prokofiev, but I think that Penderecki's music after he returned to the "tonal" fold is still interesting and does have some aspects of contemporary trends, although it is somewhat conservative compared to his earlier things. In any case, I find some of his earlier things quite full-on & intense to listen to, while his later things are easy listening in comparison. But yes, my favourite pieces by him so far are things like the first cello concerto and symphony respectively, the _Aus den Psalmen Davids_, the _Canticum Canticorum Salomonis_, the _Dies Irae_ (or _Aushwitz Oratorio_), which are all from his earlier period. He has such a facility with orchestral texture & colour & the human voice, and I think he's still good in this in his more recent works, but he was more interesting earlier on.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

& thanks *clavichorder* (re Chabrier) & *Manxfeeder* (re Satie) - I didn't know these two guys had such a varied & "chameleonic" output...


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