# Innovative LIVING composers



## Xenakiboy (May 8, 2016)

I know they exist but it can be a challenge to find them. I'm well aware of composers up to the late 70s but I want to have suggestions of what to look at. So far the composers that I've heard that are living are: Ades, Kurtag, Birtwhistle Ferneyhough, Barrett and a few others. But my problem is that nothing seems to really be innovating into the future. Do you have any suggestions of composers that you believe are the future? thanks


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## SalieriIsInnocent (Feb 28, 2008)

What would you consider innovative? Unless we get a Penderecki who adds dubstep sounds, I don't know what would really push boundaries. You'd have to look to a composer who uses less conventional instruments. 

It's hard to say what is the future. It seems that the more tools people have at their disposal, the more simple music is becoming.


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

What is the word I'm looking for - the study of sound and how its direction impacts ones reactions to it? Kind of an ergonomics of sound? Anyway, whatever that word is I can't find, it seems a study of that might be a trend in innovative or new music in the present day and the near future.

Or maybe that's already old hat.

Either way, I know some composers were exploring those effects and I can't remember their names either.


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## Guest (May 10, 2016)

I'm sure there's plenty of names on various threads around here. I'll just throw out one name: Simon Steen-Andersen.


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## Morimur (Jan 23, 2014)

Georg Friedrich Haas
Michael Hersch

There's a bunch but only a handful are really good.


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## Hildadam Bingor (May 7, 2016)

Gerard Grisey is dead, but if he were still alive he'd be younger than most of those guys and he made me hear sounds I never heard before.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9wnX-fT2pdWFN8rvyrojiU47PypLTyj0

La Monte Young and Helmut Lachenmann are old dudes but they're still alive.

http://www.wnyc.org/story/64957-from-the-vaults-la-monte-young/






And... uh... Wolfgang von Schweinitz, maybe?


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## regenmusic (Oct 23, 2014)

I find Michael Nyman's Concerto for Harpsichord and Strings very good, but I don't really like a lot of his other music.


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## GioCar (Oct 30, 2013)

Pierluigi Billone


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

Of course any answer to this question depends on what you think contemporary music is supposed to be, what you think innovation is supposed to be, how much you want the music of the future to correspond to your own personal taste, how blinded to current reality you are by your own personal taste, who's interested in your opinion, and so on.


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## kanishknishar (Aug 10, 2015)

How about Ades, _Rihm_, Salonen and Haas?


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## Xenakiboy (May 8, 2016)

Herrenvolk said:


> How about Ades, _Rihm_, Salonen and Haas?


I did mention Ades. I've only heard a small bit of Rihm's work. I absolutely love Salonen, both as a conducter and a composer. I'll check out Haas!


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## Xenakiboy (May 8, 2016)

Nereffid said:


> Of course any answer to this question depends on what you think contemporary music is supposed to be, what you think innovation is supposed to be, how much you want the music of the future to correspond to your own personal taste, how blinded to current reality you are by your own personal taste, who's interested in your opinion, and so on.


Well it's not a question of personal taste, but a question of "newness". Who's essentially making music in the classical field, that is pushing the boundaries and creating music that sounds foreign to our ears in 2016. 
(e.g. from the past in 1922, Hyperprism by Varese caused a riot because it was so aggressive.


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## schigolch (Jun 26, 2011)

My favorite living composer is Salvatore Sciarrino. This is "La bocca il piede il suono", for 4 saxophones and ensemble of 100 saxophones:


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

Xenakiboy said:


> Well it's not a question of personal taste, but a question of "newness". Who's essentially making music in the classical field, that is pushing the boundaries and creating music that sounds foreign to our ears in 2016.
> (e.g. from the past in 1922, Hyperprism by Varese caused a riot because it was so aggressive.


In that case I'll say Sarah Kirkland Snider.


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## Kjetil Heggelund (Jan 4, 2016)

Maybe Anna Thorvaldsdottir, at least I really like her music


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## Adam Weber (Apr 9, 2015)

Per Nørgård


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## GioCar (Oct 30, 2013)

dogen said:


> I'm sure there's plenty of names on various threads around here. I'll just throw out one name: Simon Steen-Andersen.


This piece sounds quite new and fascinating to me. You should listen to it in a very quiet environment since it continuosly goes from pppp to ffff.






I've found a sort of description in the composer's site

_In Spite Of, And Maybe Even Therefore (2007)__
"DESCRIPTION":_

_The piece mainly consists of two musics that are both being build and destroyed at the same time._

_The first process is a quasi unison music played fortissimo by the unamplified instruments in the back; closed piano, double bassoon, double bass/cello and percussion. The very beginning of this sequence is repeated over and over in a small loop, slowly getting longer and longer, revealing more and more of the sequence. At the same time this music is interrupted by breaks or inserts of the other music (played by the amplified flute, clarinet and horn). In the beginning it is only seldom interrupted and only for very short durations. Slowly the interruptions come more and more often and they get longer and longer. Just before the sequence is finally revealed in its whole, the intervals between the interruptions get shorter than the length of the sequence, and thus we never get to hear the complete sequence uninterrupted. Soon the interruptions take over and the sequence gets more and more fragmented and ends up being only short echoes of the beginning._

_The second process is one of Beethoven's Piano Bagatels opus 126 played ultra pianissimo by the amplified flute, clarinet and horn sitting at tables in the front. To begin with they only play one chord at the time every now and then, but slowly the chords come closer. In the beginning one only realizes, that it is tonal music, and that the chords are getting closer and closer. At one point we realize that the chords will eventually get so close, that they will form a tonal music or chord progression. But each time a chord is played, a piece of one of the instruments is being dismantled, eventually making the chords harder and harder to play in tune. Exactly at the point where the chords finally come together, the instruments are completely taken apart, leaving only bits and pieces on the tables in front of the musicians. The musicians try very hard to play the Beethoven on the bits, but the original music almost disappears in the sound of picking up and putting down the pieces, and the noisy and out of tune alternative ways of playing the notes. After a while the tones disappear leaving only the sounds of the "choreography" needed to perform these notes. Out of this "musical ruin" the music attempts to build up new relations and new ways of creating continuity, but this attempted continuity is slowly being destroyed by freezes getting longer and longer.
_
The importance of silence, of whispered sounds, reminds me a bit of Sciarrino's works.


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