# Avant-garde and Baroque



## Derand (16 d ago)

I equally adore baroque/earlier and avant-garde music. I know several attempts by postmodernist composers to experiment with the style and samples of earlier academic music (Berio's "Sinfonia" for example). But I have not found any examples of avant-garde experimentation with or inspired by baroque music. Maybe I don't understand something, but maybe you have some ideas around here.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

There are pieces which use forms traditionally associated with baroque music, without being in any sense a homage to a particular composer. Ferneyhough’s Intermedio alla ciaccona is an example. And Alfred Schnittke concerto grossos.

These works draw specific inspiration from everyone’s favourite baroque composer, J S Bach.

Uri Caine Variations on a Goldberg Theme
George Rochberg Nach Bach
Michael Finnissy’s Kapitalistische Realisme mit Bachsche Nachdichtungen (in History of Photography)
Mauricio Kagel’s Sankt-Bach-Passion
Sofia Gubaidulina’s Meditiation Uber ….
Brice Pauset’s Goldberg-Ausbreitungen
Wolfgang Rihm Deus Passus
Gerd Zacher, Die Kunst Einer Fuge
Aldo Clementi Variazioni su BACH
Klaus Huber Litania instrumentalis


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## RICK RIEKERT (Oct 9, 2017)

George Crumb often paid homage to baroque pictorialism in his hand-drawn, exquisitely calligraphed scores. Bach loved to write his music in the literal shapes of waves and serpents, or graphically to represent laughter, the ringing of bells, sobbing grief, and so on. In several works by Crumb there appears a phrase drawn from a Lorca poem, “... _y los archos rotos donde sufre el tiempo_ ...” (... and the broken arches where time suffers ...), and at these points the music is symbolically notated in the shape of broken circles or arches. The movements called “Magic Circle of Infinity” and “Spiral Galaxy” in “Makrokosmos I” also are written in circles, and _“Crucifixus”_ is notated entirely in the form of a cross.

Bernd Alois Zimmermann developed his own personal compositional style, the pluralistic “Klangkomposition” – combination and overlapping of layers of musical material from various time periods (from Medieval to Baroque and Classical to Jazz and Pop music) using advanced musical techniques.

The score for_ Chimera,_ Ken Ueno’s solo work for Baroque cello, stipulates that the 5-string cello should be retuned where the top two strings are tuned to the 7th and 11th partials of the C-string, creating unusual sixth-tone intervals that, when combined with the unique timbre of the five-string cello’s gut strings, make for surprising harmonic mixtures. Uono alludes to the Allemande from Bach’s Cello Suite No.6 in “we are resurrected”. The sound-world of _Chimera_ really is a hybrid of old and new.


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## RandallPeterListens (Feb 9, 2012)

While he might not be contemporary or avant-garde enough for you, Shostakovich wrote his 24 Preludes and Fugues as both an homage and updating of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier for the 20th century. Really great, if you ask me. Not a slavish imitation of Bach, but brilliant music in its own right, using similar forms.
More in the avant-garde department, you have Mauricio Kagel, who wrote any number of works referencing back to earlier Western classical music, from medieval to Romantic. One example is "Ludwig Van: an Homage to Beethoven". Kind of silly, if you (again) ask me.
The "avant-garde" label rather flies in the face of quoting the past, no? It's like baking a cake from an old traditional recipe, but saying we shouldn't be eating that anymore.


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## Derand (16 d ago)

Thank you very much for sharing. I'm listening to John Cage's HPSCHD at the moment, and... uhm...


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## tortkis (Jul 13, 2013)

Michael Nyman borrowed melodies or chord sequences of baroque music: Purcell in Chasing Sheep is Best Left to Shepherds, Croft in An Eye for Optical Theory, Couperin in Come unto these yellow sands
Through The Mysterious Barricade is Philip Corner's improvisation after F. Couperin's theme.
Aaron Andrew Hunt: The Equal-Tempered Keyboard - Preludes, Fugues, Inventions in non-12 ET.
Anthony Burgess: Bad-Tempered Electronic Keyboard (1985) - 24 preludes & fugues to celebrate the 300th anniversary of J. S. Bach's birth
Caroline Shaw: Ritornello - her long-term project inspired by the baroque ritornello aria form

And there are contemporary composers who use baroque instruments.
Affect is no Crime - New Music for Old Instruments
Flying Forms - New Music for Old Instruments
The Shock of the Old, Common Sense Composers' Collective & American Baroque


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

There was a double disc with contemporary pieces dedicated to the Freiburg baroque orchestra. I don't have it anymore and don't remember much about it, but it might be interesting for you.


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