# MUSIC RECOMMENDATION THREAD (Obscurity awakes)



## Xenakiboy (May 8, 2016)

I haven't created a thread in a while but I've had the idea for this thread:

Here you recommend music, that you don't expect anyone else to have heard, try and give some exposure to *lesser known* composers and pieces.


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## JosefinaHW (Nov 21, 2015)

You start. Two or three pieces.


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

I'll go with Elverskud Op. 30 for vocal soloists, choir and orchestra composed by Niels Gade. It's a beautiful and uplifting work with three recordings to choose from: Kontrapunkt, Dacapo and Chandos. I favor the Chandos which has top-rate sound, vocal contributions and pacing.


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

Alan Hovhaness - "Island of the Mysterious Bells," for 4 harps. I love it--totally bizarre. Not available on cd, to my knowledge.


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## Chordalrock (Jan 21, 2014)

I've done my fair share of promoting lesser known, even obscure pieces and composers in other threads over the years, but I guess there's no harm in mentioning some of them here:

String quartets, especially the later ones (Hilding Rosenberg) 
Time Machines (Sebastian Currier)
4th Symphony (Michael Tippett)
Missa L'homme arme: Credo (Dufay)
Media vita (Gombert)
Incantations (Rautavaara)
10th Symphony (William Schuman)
Piano concerto (Roger Sessions)
Piano concerto (Unsuk Chin)
Threni (Stravinsky)
La Couperin (Antoine Forqueray)
Missa Votiva: Kyrie, Crucifixus (Zelenka)

There are probably a lot of people on this forum who have heard these pieces, but among the general classical music public, they're rather obscure. However, if you want something more obscure, maybe these'll count:

7th Symphony (Hilding Rosenberg)
Partita (Sebastian Fagerlund)
Spiralat Halom (Aribert Reimann)
Violin concerto 1 (Nancy Van De Vate)
Salve regina, a 5 (Josquin, and as sung by the Clerks, accept no substitutes)
Missa Fortuna desperata: Kyrie (Obrecht)
Missa L'homme arme: Agnus dei (Ockeghem)
Peccata mea, a 6 (Gombert)
Missa de Beata Maria, a 5: Kyrie (Tomas Luis de Victoria)
Dominus Jesus in qua nocte, a 5 (Palestrina)

The difficulty with the really obscure stuff, like some of these, is that you can't necessarily find a recording online, let alone a good recording. (Then there's of course the stuff that one has heard live and that hasn't been recorded, and perhaps won't be recorded.)


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

Jorgen Bentzon composed what he called character polyphony. Racconto No. 1 is an interesting example. The character of the instruments determines the musical material.


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

I was just scanning my collection catalog to find suitably obscure composers and managed to find 3...
George Dyson
Graham Waterhouse
Knudage Riisager

For the purposes of this thread I will go with the latter and recommend his _Qarrtsiluni_. The title is one of those almost untranslatable word, in this case from Iñupiaq. The best description that I can find, and one that perfectly describes the music, is...

"_Every fall [they] must find new songs as they prepare for feasts honoring the whale. Men go into the festival house where no lamps can be lit. They sit in the darkness and stillness and something called qarrtsiluni, meaning that one waits for something to happen. All men are involved, from the youngest barely able to speak to the oldest. They sit in the darkness and this stillness thinking only of beautiful things. As they do this, songs rise like bubbles in the sea seeking the surface where they explode into air." _ - North of Hope: A Daughter's Arctic Journey, Shannon Polson


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## Xenakiboy (May 8, 2016)

Here are a few which I don't think many people would be aware of:

Matthijs Vermeulen - Symphony No 2





Henry Brant - Ice Field





Friedrich Cerha - Concerto for percussion and orchestra





I'll dig into my collection, but I'll start with these three!


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## SeptimalTritone (Jul 7, 2014)

Xenakiboy, check out these youtube channels. Great resources.

https://www.youtube.com/user/incipitsify
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsCyncBPEzI6pb_pmALJ9Tw
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6tNUlVwfY-IEs-tX-7VHEw
https://www.youtube.com/user/Belanna999/featured

And finally, this one from our resident member LHB:

https://www.youtube.com/user/wiimarioparty8

Also, since you like spectralism from what I've seen of your posts, check out my favorite spectralist, Horatiu Radlescu:






You may also like the slow, soft, yet tense chords and pleading motifs of Morton Feldman:






You probably already know Boulez, Cage, Ligeti, and Nono, but if not, they are the best at what they did. I think it's also worth listening intently and repeatedly to some of Webern's best works because they have an incisiveness, intelligence, and replay value equal to that of Mozart. Really, Webern is the Mozart of the first half of the 20th century. Try six pieces for orchestra (utterly intense, mournful, and colorful), five pieces for orchestra (less dense, but successful because it's almost like musique concrete), five movements for string quartet, six bagatelles for string quartet, string trio (infinitely tense and symmetrical first movement, explosive sonata form arc of a second movement), concerto for nine instruments, quartet for saxophone clarinet piano and violin (a particularly angular and almost surreal piece, very angular, eccentric, asymmetrical, and boisterous), symphony op 21 (perfect klangfarbenmelodie canons, perfect palindromic arcs and large, mid, and small scales, the most organic and logically tight Webern), variations for orchestra, cantata 1 and 2, Das Augenlicht... there's also a song for soprano, guitar and high e flat clarinet that you should look up I forgot its name.


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## Casebearer (Jan 19, 2016)

I try to post regularly about obscure worthwhile music but more often in the non-classical department. But just yesterday I posted about a recent opera of Theo Loevendie on Baruch Spinoza in the current listening thread. I even got two likes for it!

I'll post another one on Theo Loevendie, his better known Six Turkish Folk Poems:


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

We do it all of the time.

For example, I have lost track of all of the concert band works I have recommended.


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## JosefinaHW (Nov 21, 2015)

Barrington Pheloung, Soundtrack to _Lewis, Theme_ (I am the only person that I've seen post it on here; definitely worth hearing, as are the other pieces Pheloung composed for the series IMO)



Amazon UK will let you preview the pieces:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Lewis-Barr...&ie=UTF8&qid=1464154296&sr=1-1&keywords=Lewis

Sound on the CD is lovely, on YouTube it isn't, but it's not annoying:


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## senza sordino (Oct 20, 2013)

Two years ago here on TC, we compiled a list of "works that should be better known" Post 15 on the link
http://www.talkclassical.com/17996-compilation-tc-top-recommended.html
Some are obscure, some not so obscure but the pieces on that list didn't make it onto other lists.


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## Xenakiboy (May 8, 2016)

SeptimalTritone said:


> Xenakiboy, check out these youtube channels. Great resources.
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/user/incipitsify
> https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsCyncBPEzI6pb_pmALJ9Tw
> ...


I'm already subscribed to two of three of those channels (including our friend LHB). I'll subscribe to the other two.
I'll check out Horatiu Radlescu out! 
I already know Feldman (and his LONG chamber works), he's alright.
I know all the other composers you mentioned, as for Webern... I've heard all his music (small output), though I wouldn't say I've gotten to really know it. I'll be buying a Webern box soon, so I'll become very familiar with it!
:tiphat:


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## Xenakiboy (May 8, 2016)

senza sordino said:


> Two years ago here on TC, we compiled a list of "works that should be better known" Post 15 on the link
> http://www.talkclassical.com/17996-compilation-tc-top-recommended.html
> Some are obscure, some not so obscure but the pieces on that list didn't make it onto other lists.


This isn't really mean't to be a general recommendation thread, it's specified for obscure pieces or composers. Just letting you know. I'll thoroughly check that thread out though!


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

Michael Gordon: Decasia

Donnacha Dennehy: Grá agus Bás

Mieczyslaw Weinberg: Symphony no.3


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## SeptimalTritone (Jul 7, 2014)

Xenakiboy said:


> I'm already subscribed to two of three of those channels (including our friend LHB). I'll subscribe to the other two.
> I'll check out Horatiu Radlescu out!
> I already know Feldman (and his LONG chamber works), he's alright.
> I know all the other composers you mentioned, as for Webern... I've heard all his music (small output), though I wouldn't say I've gotten to really know it. I'll be buying a Webern box soon, so I'll become very familiar with it!
> :tiphat:


It's good that you know the core 20th century avant-garde. That's a sort of first step.

I would at some point check out Feldman again. Only four works are over two hours: violin and string quartet, For Christian Wolff, For Phillip Guston, and String Quartet 2. The rest of his late chamber works are anywhere from Beethoven symphony in length to Mahler symphony in length, but no longer.

Feldman is unique, and what he did is unrepeatable in the sense that Mozart, Chopin, or Webern are unrepeatable. The main variable in Feldman's music is _time scale_, and he did this so well.

Before Feldman, composers wrote separated their music at long time scales with form and sections: sonata form, ternary form... and their music at short time scales with melody, phrase, cadence, dissonance, resolution, rhythm, color, and textural contrast. At both these long and time scales, harmony, harmonic goal, and harmonic contrast was integral as the central glue that related sections.

Feldman composed music with a structure of time scale, both long time scale and short time scale. However: this time scale structure was independent of all the elements I described above!!! His time scales aren't informed by the goals of harmony (whether it be from a Debussy scale or a Schoenberg tone row) or the goals of phrase and melody. His "sections" aren't "as long as they need to be", rather, their temporal lengths are their own breath, their own kind of expression. And because Feldman, in his words, didn't "push the notes around", he allows his time scales to be not clear cut, but blurred. There is a mix of sudden changes, gradual changes, geological changes, and (yes) gradual changes of gradual changes of sudden changes in the case of his longest works.

Feldman invented a new kind of music that only he had a sense for! While Wagner's and Stockhausen's operas or Mahler's symphonies are wide in scope and length, they don't have an essential organism of fluid hierarchy of time scale as the central musical variable.

On another note, there's a huge breadth of electronic music. Some of the French were excellent at this: Schaeffer, Henry, Varese, Ferrari, Dhomont, Parmegiani, Dufour, eRikm, Risset... Also check out Francisco Lopez: his La Selva is a masterpiece 



 (interestingly enough, Lopez has his own sense of organic time scale with the various sounds that can come from a rainforest, although there's perhaps less of a deliberate shape, contour, and hierarchy in that time scale structure.)


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## Xenakiboy (May 8, 2016)

SeptimalTritone said:


> It's good that you know the core 20th century avant-garde. That's a sort of first step.
> 
> I would at some point check out Feldman again. Only four works are over two hours: violin and string quartet, For Christian Wolff, For Phillip Guston, and String Quartet 2. The rest of his late chamber works are anywhere from Beethoven symphony in length to Mahler symphony in length, but no longer.
> 
> ...


I do understand where Feldman is coming from, I am interested in his music. He's mentioned ideas in interviews that have inspired me. Just like a lot of composers, it's not like I have unlimited time to listen to a single composer, including my beloved Xenakis. But I gradually get to hear everything over time. I do agree that his theoretical ideas and the sound world he has created is incomparable.

As for those electronic composers, I'm very familiar with Schaeffer, Varese, Dufour and Henry. I'll also check the others out!


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## dieter (Feb 26, 2016)

I commend you guys for recommending new music.


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## worov (Oct 12, 2012)

Paul Creston : Piano Sonata (check out the others movements on YouTube)






It's a wonderful piece of music! It should be more well-known.


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## Xenakiboy (May 8, 2016)

worov said:


> Paul Creston : Piano Sonata (check out the others movements on YouTube)
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Thanks I'll check that out!


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

worov said:


> Paul Creston : Piano Sonata (check out the others movements on YouTube)
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Perhaps in the jazz world


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## alan davis (Oct 16, 2013)

Ross Edwards, "Symphony Da Pacem Domine".


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

For those wanting slightly more conventional fare, I found Miloš Sokola's Variation Symphony interesting enough, and I'd never heard of him before.


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## LHB (Nov 1, 2015)

Hans Kox's War Triptych
















Stunning work. Only first heard of this composer a few days ago from a friend.


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## Xenakiboy (May 8, 2016)

LHB said:


> Hans Kox's War Triptych
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Thank you buddy, I'm grateful for your channel too. I've been subscribed long before I even joined this site, so thanks!


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## mstar (Aug 14, 2013)

This:


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