# Unusual Works and Oddities!



## isridgewell (Jul 2, 2013)

A bit of fun really.

I heard a recording today of the Prokofiev Sonata for Violins in Unison. Very unusual, it was played by a full orchestral violin section and is in 3 movements. It is very melodic and quite charming, however I couldn't help feeling that it sounded like they were rehearsing the violin part to an orchestral work!

Many composers have written slightly eccentric and unusual works (Malcolm Arnold wrote countless amounts!) which have amused or surprised you?


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## kangxi (Jan 24, 2014)

You might try a most peculiar piece by Alkan. I used to have it on vinyl (I seem to recall a distinguished pianist - Lowenthal? Smith? - making the appropriate dirge-like noises). But I don't have it now & can't recall anything else about it. It's a curiosity all right.

Oh, you want to know what it is... This is from the Alkan Wiki: " The bizarre and unclassifiable Marcia funebre, sulla morte d'un Pappagallo (Funeral march on the death of a parrot, 1859), for three oboes, bassoon and voices, described by Kenneth Hamilton as "Monty-Pythonesque"...."


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

Marcia Funebre is a friend of mine, but she's unfortunately prone to depression .


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Messiaen wrote a piece for six ondes Martenot. Parts of it were later re-used in the Quartet for the End of Time.

Takemitsu wrote a piece for two bandoneons and tape called "Cross Talk" (a multi-layered pun like most of his titles), but no one's put it on Youtube. At one point, the players are supposed to press the keys without playing any notes, just for the clacking sound.


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## kangxi (Jan 24, 2014)

Wasn't the harmonium edging into respectability at one time? Dvorak wrote a very decent piece of chamber music (can't recall which one though) which definitely deserves to played. But each time someone wants to include it in a live concert they've got to go and find a harmonionist. Are there many around?

The Jew's Harp! In my vinyl collection I had an LP which featured music by Beethoven's teacher, Albrechtsberger, who wrote a whole 3-mvt concerto for one. Quite jolly it was, but my teeth used to ache in sympathy by the time we got to the end. Love to hear it again though.

I suppose we could also include Haydn's music for Baryton. I thought I'd never hear any of it in my lifetime (who's going to learn an obscure instrument in order to play one composer's works for it, even if it is Haydn). But someone did, and Brilliant issued it, and I bought all 18 or so CDs with it, and it's glorious stuff, showing Haydn to be even more of a craftsman than I thought possible. He write a body of stuff for another obscure instrument, the Lyra, but I can't bring it to mind.

Finally, for now anyway, have you heard a recoding someone did of Handel's firework music using the original instrumentation, so in stead of 20 or 30 violinists sawing away there are banks of oboists instead. It's like meeting an old friend in disguise.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

kangxi said:


> Wasn't the harmonium edging into respectability at one time? Dvorak wrote a very decent piece of chamber music (can't recall which one though) which definitely deserves to played. But each time someone wants to include it in a live concert they've got to go and find a harmonionist. Are there many around?


They used to be pretty common in home and church environments as portable organs. Mahler calls for one in the Eighth (although it's barely noticeable), and Schoenberg's chamber arrangements of Strauss waltzes and Mahler works use one, as does his "Christmas Music".


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

kangxi said:


> Wasn't the harmonium edging into respectability at one time? Dvorak wrote a very decent piece of chamber music (can't recall which one though) which definitely deserves to played.


Actually the Dvorak is well-known and instantly recognizable. Enjoy!






BTW Albrechtsberger wrote several surviving Jew's harp concertos (see YouTube), and I think some that are lost. Nobody's looking too hard for them! :lol:


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## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

None of this is earth-shattering, but I find them bit odd:

Bartók - Sonata for 2 pianos and percussion (4 handed piano is not uncommon, but with percussion?)
Cage - Sonatas and Interludes for prepared piano (a classic, but the prepared piano is strange)
Hindemith - Organ Concerto (not a unique idea, but this work, his last, is curious)
Mendelssohn - Songs without Words (probably the title makes the idea of wordless songs curious)
Prokofiev - Double Sonata for 2 violins (is the OP's piece a transcription of this one?)
Prokofiev- Piano Concerto 4 for Left Hand
Ravel - Piano Concerto for Left Hand
Satie - Parade (uses a typewriter, foghorn, milk bottles and other noise-makers)
Schnittke - Concerti Grossi (pretty novel, when the first one appeared)
Schoenberg - Pierrot Lunaire (for Sprechgesang)
Varèse - Déserts (the first to use tape? or was it Poème électronique?)
Xenakis - Music for Keyboard Instruments (realized on MIDI computer by Daniel Grossmann, almost a robotic performer)

Of course, there is lots and lots in Twentieth Century music that might be considered odd


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## Klavierspieler (Jul 16, 2011)

This was basically Satie's specialty...


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## Vinyl (Jan 22, 2014)




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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

brotagonist said:


> Hindemith - Organ Concerto (not a unique idea, but this work, his last, is curious)


I'd say his Kammermusik No. 7 for organ and small orchestra is even weirder because the organ so easily overpowers everything else...


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Papa Mozart writing for an instrument uncommon in today's orchestras -- or I suspect even in orchestras of his day!


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## kangxi (Jan 24, 2014)

KenOC said:


> BTW Albrechtsberger wrote several surviving Jew's harp concertos (see YouTube), and I think some that are lost. Nobody's looking too hard for them! :lol:


But, but, but... They're essential! How else are we to define the word "plangent"? Actually I'm rather looking forward to searching them out. I expect that mood will last all of, ooh, 2m30s. But it'll have to wait until I return to the UK. Chinese bureaucracy, in all its wisdom, has decided that youtube is not for the likes of its citizens and has banned it completely. Indeed, it's also recently banned the use of the word "citizen" itself. Today is the start of Chinese New Year, when we slip gracefully from the old. tired 1984 and into the bright, new, welcoming world of... 1984.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

kangxi said:


> But, but, but... They're essential! How else are we to define the word "plangent"? Actually I'm rather looking forward to searching them out. I expect that mood will last all of, ooh, 2m30s. But it'll have to wait until I return to the UK. Chinese bureaucracy, in all its wisdom, has decided that youtube is not for the likes of its citizens and has banned it completely. Indeed, it's also recently banned the use of the word "citizen" itself. Today is the start of Chinese New Year, when we slip gracefully from the old. tired 1984 and into the bright, new, welcoming world of... 1984.


Kangxi, I really like your dictionary (you *are* that one, right? ) but if you're over there right now please be a bit circumspect in your comments. The NSA won't much care, but others might. We want to have you around here for a while!


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## mikey (Nov 26, 2013)

The Arpeggione Sonata has got to be a oddity even though it's very well known.
Mozart's music for glass harmonica.


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## Matsps (Jan 13, 2014)

I still remember my surprise upon my first listening of the 1812. Those cannons! Prokofiev's Toccata in D minor also took me aback. Atonal harmony that sounded good?!


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## kangxi (Jan 24, 2014)

KenOC said:


> Kangxi, I really like your dictionary (you *are* that one, right? ) but if you're over there right now please be a bit circumspect in your comments. The NSA won't much care, but others might. We want to have you around here for a while!


Dictionary? Because when I was younger & couldn't afford the OED (Oxford English Dictionay), and thought the COD (Concise Oxford Dictionary) too small, I was often called after the intermediate one, the Shorter Oxford Dictionary. Get out of here you SOD my mother would lovingly say as she shooed me out of her life again.
(Oh, you mean Kangxi's dictionary? He & have a sort of distant, hands-off relationship. He's dead & I'm not.)
Thanks for the advice; perhaps I will keep my head down. Of course, if I were of a mischievous bent,I would silently abandon my current user name, sneak back here under a new identity and watch you all grieve silently and say nice things about me...:devil:


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

*Great Contrabassoon Part*



Mahlerian said:


> I'd say his Kammermusik No. 7 for organ and small orchestra is even weirder because the organ so easily overpowers everything else...


I played this piece once. I played the contrabassoon and it has a great part for the contra.


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

*Tap Dance Concerto*

About ten years ago our community orchestra performed a _Concerto for Tap Dancer and Orchestra_ by Morton Gould.

There is a recording of it: http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/Drilldown?name_id1=4642&name_role1=1&bcorder=1&comp_id=124064

There are other unusual works on this CD including a _Concerto for Steelpan_ and _Maracas_


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## mikey (Nov 26, 2013)

I once played in a concerto for turn tables and orchestra (student composition although Gabriel Prokofiev has written one also)


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Matsps said:


> I still remember my surprise upon my first listening of the 1812. Those cannons! Prokofiev's Toccata in D minor also took me aback. Atonal harmony that sounded good?!


That Prokofiev is not "atonal," (he composed no atonal music, period) but we know what you mean


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

PetrB said:


> That Prokofiev is not "atonal," (he composed no atonal music, period) but we know what you mean


Well young man, in Macon it's atonal! Except for that Peter and the Wolf thing, of course.


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## Guest (Jan 31, 2014)

I clicked the second page of this thread and read post #16. After doing so, I scrolled down actually looking to see who would be the first chap to point out "OMG NOT ATONAL GET IT RIGHT". 

PetrB does not disappoint.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

mikey said:


> I once played in a concerto for turn tables and orchestra (student composition although Gabriel Prokofiev * has written one also)


* Grandson of Sergei...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel_Prokofiev
The above mentioned concerto in full--


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

arcaneholocaust said:


> I clicked the second page of this thread and read post #16. After doing so, I scrolled down actually looking to see who would be the first chap to point out "OMG NOT ATONAL GET IT RIGHT".
> 
> PetrB does not disappoint.


Well, it isn't, is it?

That is partly because I love Prokofiev for _what it is_ ;-)

One could let all that go by and go on, but think, at some point that party might say just that and be surrounded by actual snobs who instead of gently saying ("Well, actually....") just roar with disdainful laughter. I hope to prevent such occasions, (kinda like informing your n00b friend at their first concert about that no applause between movements thingy _before_ the orchestra starts playing) since the snobs are not so readily preventable.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

KenOC said:


> Well young man, in Macon it's atonal! Except for that Peter and the Wolf thing, of course.


Hell, in vast areas of the globe, Prokofiev did not even write in the proper scale of five notes! Bach or Prokofiev, it is all just that jangly nasty ugly discordant and out of tune noise that is called "western classical music."


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## Berlioznestpasmort (Jan 24, 2014)

brotagonist said:


> Varèse - Déserts (the first to use tape? or was it Poème électronique?)


brotagonist - it was _Déserts_, in 1954; Poème électronique in '58


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

kangxi said:


> Dictionary? Because when I was younger & couldn't afford the OED (Oxford English Dictionay), and thought the COD (Concise Oxford Dictionary) too small, I was often called after the intermediate one, the Shorter Oxford Dictionary. Get out of here you SOD my mother would lovingly say as she shooed me out of her life again.
> (Oh, you mean Kangxi's dictionary? He & have a sort of distant, hands-off relationship. He's dead & I'm not.)
> Thanks for the advice; perhaps I will keep my head down. Of course, if I were of a mischievous bent,I would silently abandon my current user name, sneak back here under a new identity and watch you all grieve silently and say nice things about me...:devil:


That's been done before, I'm thinking there is an in memoriam thread of which its subject is still gloating, though I could be wrong.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

KenOC said:


> Well young man, in Macon it's atonal! Except for that Peter and the Wolf thing, of course.


First, dragged, kicking and screaming all the while, back into the union from which it had seceded, and then, with great efforts of applied labor, kicking and screaming all the while yet again, to be partly pulled into the loathsome first half of the 20th century. Life is _rough_


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

Again I was going to start a thread about quirky pieces, but found this one which I will now resurrect. It's not too old anyway.

Today I listened at random to what at first seemed an organ piece. I thought, "Wait a minute. I don't like much solo organ. What is this, and why is it on my iPod?" The screen read *Franz Schmidt: Fuga Solemnis, for organ, 16 wind instruments & percussion* 

I thought that was weird. Why would someone write for organ and 16 wind instruments? Isn't an organ already sort of a wind instrument triggered by a keyboard? Much to my surprise, what he is calling "wind" turned out to be brass in this recording at least, and it's surprising. If you can persevere and make it almost to the end of the link above, it can be rewarding. This thing builds to quite a thunderous climax.


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## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

Milhaud designed his 14th and 15th String Quartets to be playable as independent works or to be played simultaneously as an octet.


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## senza sordino (Oct 20, 2013)

Malcolm Arnold Grand Grand Overture for Three Vacuum Cleaners, Floor Polisher and Four Rifles


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## techniquest (Aug 3, 2012)

The 3 orchestral 'Hymns' works by Nikolai Korndorf are rather unusual works. All three are about 25-30 minutes long and have a marked arching structure i.e. they start quiet, build gradually to massive central noise before diminishing to silence. You may think that many works go like this, but with the Hymns there is little (if any) other development or thematic material going on. Hymn 1 "Sempre Tutti" is my favourite of the 3, the third, incidentally, adds a soprano soloist and is subtitled 'in honour of Gustav Mahler'.


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