# Three post-WWII composers and your favorite piece by each of them.



## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

Name three composers from the post-WWII period or second half of 20th century and _some_ of your favorite pieces by those composers.
The idea is to learn and share pieces by composers of this period.

(try to post youtube videos; post the link, not the entire video)

1) Pierre Boulez: "Rituel", 




2) György Ligeti: "Nonsense Madrigals", 




3) Toru Takemitsu: "Textures",


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

1) Krzysztof Penderecki: "Symphony No. 1", 




2) Steve Reich: "Triple Quartet", 




3) Henri Dutilleux: "Violin Concerto",


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

scelsi - uaxuctum
ligeti - requiem
barbara pentland - two sung songs


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

Ennio Morricone - Soundtrack to The Good The Bad And The Ugly
Nino Rota - Soundtrack to Fellini's Cassanova (or The Godfather)
Miklos Rosza - Soundtrack to Double Indemnity


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## realdealblues (Mar 3, 2010)

Mine are from that WWII era...I can't find any youtube clips for the first one.

Marc Blitzstein - Airborne Symphony w/Orson Welles Narrating (Bernstein Century: American Masters 2)
Joly Braga Santos - Symphony No. 2 



Leonard Bernstein - Symphony No. 1 "Jeremiah"


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## crmoorhead (Apr 6, 2011)

Although I have listened to quite a few post-WWII composers, my experience is limited to less than half a dozen works from each. I will be very interested to look at everyone else's suggestions, however. Given the above, here are a few that I find especially interesting/enjoyable:

Boulez: Sur Incises 



 (Part 1)

Gorecki: Symphony No. 3 




Glass: Violin Concerto No. 1


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## Andreas (Apr 27, 2012)

Górecki, symphony no. 2
G. Gould, string quartet
Pärt, Magnificat


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## GreenMamba (Oct 14, 2012)

Reich- Music for 18 Musicians
Duckworth- Time Curve Preludes
Part - Te Deum


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

Tcherepnin Piano Concerto 6




Dutilleux Symphony 2




Medtner Piano Quintet


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## Trout (Apr 11, 2011)

Adams: The Dharma at Big Sur
Messiaen: Quartet for the End of Time
Reich: The Desert Music

I don't think Medtner really counts as a "post-WII" composer.


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## Llyranor (Dec 20, 2010)

1) Akira Ifukube - 1st violin concerto






2) Pēteris Vasks - Distant Light






3) Arvo Pärt - Cantus In Memoriam Benjamin Britten


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

Trout said:


> I don't think Medtner really counts as a "post-WII" composer.


He died in 1951, so that makes his very last compositions post WII. That being said, I verified the date the third concerto was published and it was 1943. So that technically doesn't qualify. Fortunately, I also love his piano quintet, which is a posthumous publication that he had been working on since the 1920s but finished just before he died. That does technically count.


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

Richard Strauss- _Four Last Songs_ (1949)-






Benjamin Britten- Cello Suites (1964-71)






Dmitri Shostakovitch- Cello Concerto no. 1 (1959)






Toru Takemitsu- _Toward the Sea_ (1981)






Giacinto Scelsi- _Elohim_ (undated)


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

Tristan Murail- _Gondwana_- (1980)











Osvaldo Golijov- _Lúa descolorida_- (2004)






Osvaldo Golijov- _Three Songs for Soprano and Orchestra_- (2007)






Peter Lieberson- Neruda Songs- (2006)


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## Vaneyes (May 11, 2010)

*Shostakovich*: Symphony 11 (1957)
*Hovhaness*: Symphony 50 "Mt. St. Helens" (1982)
*Schnittke*: Symphony 2 "St. Florian" (1979)


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

Adams: The Dharma at Big Sur
Messiaen: Quartet for the End of Time
Reich: The Desert Music

I don't think Medtner really counts as a "post-WII" composer.

If Medtner doesn't count as a "Post WWII Composer" then surely _Quatuor pour la fin du temps_ really doesn't count... considering it was premiered in 1941 in Stalag VIII-A in Görlitz, Germany, where Messiaen was a prisoner of war.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

There is no music after WWII. The world became a sad, dark place. The USA rose and turned the world to garbage.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

Part: Tabula Rasa
Adams: Harmonielehre
Lowell Liebermann: Piano Quintet (or alternately Concerto for Violin, Piano, and String Quartet)

It's interesting that 3 other people suggested Part, but all suggested different works.


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

William Schuman-Symphony 7




Alan Hovhaness-Symphony 2, "Mysterious Mountain" 




Bohuslav Martinu-The Frescoes of Piera della Francesco(I heard this one live for the first time, stunning but intensely thick piece that begs for repeat hearings)


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

StlukesguildOhio said:


> If Medtner doesn't count as a "Post WWII Composer" then surely _Quatuor pour la fin du temps_ really doesn't count... considering it was premiered in 1941 in Stalag VIII-A in Görlitz, Germany, where Messiaen was a prisoner of war.


I also believe that though Medtner was a tonal composer (of the highest stature one could be in those days for being as "conventional" as he was), many of these late pieces have a disillusioned feeling of the utmost darkness. It sure is an irony that his own music becomes so difficult and dark compared to older music despite his use of convention, almost as a reaction to the more experimental modernists(everyone else except Rachmaninoff).


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## Trout (Apr 11, 2011)

StlukesguildOhio said:


> Adams: The Dharma at Big Sur
> Messiaen: Quartet for the End of Time
> Reich: The Desert Music
> 
> ...


Read the OP:



aleazk said:


> Name three composers from the post-WWII period or second half of 20th century and _some_ of your favorite pieces by those composers.
> The idea is to learn and share pieces by composers of this period.


Your logic construct does not seem to make sense considering that he (aleazk) never said the pieces had to be "post-WII", just the composers. Messiaen is pretty clearly a post-WWII composer and so I chose my favorite piece by him, whereas Medtner only lived until 1951 with his last piece, his _Piano Quintet_, was completed in 1948 and published posthumously.


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## Prodromides (Mar 18, 2012)

Only 3 composers?

300, more like, would represent music from the 2nd half of the 20th century. 

If we must confine ourselves to 3, then I should suggest "_*Three* Questions with *Two* Answers_" by this *one* composer:


Luigi Dallapiccola's '62/'63 composition; 




... plus 2 more from 2 more ...

Andre Jolivet
Missa Uxor Tua (1962); 




Concerto for Violin and Orchestra (1972); 




&

Maurice Ohana
Messe (1977); 




Livres des Prodigues (1978/'79);


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

*Peter Sculthorpe:* _Kakadu _(1988) 




*John Cage:* _In A Landscape _(1948) 




*Joaquin Rodrigo:* _Concierto como un divertimento_ (1980's), for cello & orch. The whole thing is on youtube, here's the second movement, my favourite


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

Trout said:


> Read the OP:
> 
> Your logic construct does not seem to make sense considering that he (aleazk) never said the pieces had to be "post-WII", just the composers. Messiaen is pretty clearly a post-WWII composer and so I chose my favorite piece by him, whereas Medtner only lived until 1951 with his last piece, his _Piano Quintet_, was completed in 1948 and published posthumously.


It seems to me that if a composer wrote things past 1945, he is a post world war II composer, or at least was at that point in his career. This has to do with time, not prevalent styles.

At any rate, I'm not answering this according to "unwritten intentions" of the OP, but to what was actually expressed in words, regardless of whether Aleazk is not interested himself in Medtner in this context. I wanted to represent some carryover from earlier times that managed to survive as long as they did despite the ever changing fashions of the music world that sometimes hide the fact that they are not definitive aesthetics of a time period by which one must abide.

Also, out of respect to Aleazk since this is his thread, this is my last statement on this topic in this thread, so if you manage to trump me in this argument on the next post Trout, I guess I'll have to live with not defending myself.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

@Sid: You mentioned my favorite Cage work. I just listened to the Rodrigo for the first time, and it's wonderful. Thanks for suggesting that work! It's now on my list of works to get.


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

Nikolai Kapustin-8 concert etudes op 40


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## Turangalîla (Jan 29, 2012)

Messiaen - Turangalila-Symphonie (although not being able to put QPFT is painful...)
Ligeti - Piano Etudes
Schoenberg - Moses und Aron (but, once again, I would like also to put Pierrot Lunaire)


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Picking three: 

Shostakovich: String Quartet #8 
Honegger: Symphony #3
Rzewski: Variations on "The People United Will Never be Defeated"

But it'd be nice if I could get away with mentioning: 

Britten: War Requiem 
Riley: Music for 18 Musicians
Nono: Intolleranza 1960 
Sculthorpe: String Quartet #8


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

Prodromides said:


> Maurice Ohana
> [*]Messe (1977);
> 
> 
> ...


i'm listening to him a lot, thanks to you. The messe has that incredibly ethereal choir just before the alleluia that is stunning, it reminds to me of some ligeti work


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

norman bates said:


> i'm listening to him a lot, thanks to you. The messe has that incredibly ethereal choir just before the alleluia that is stunning, it reminds to me of some ligeti work


Well, that was the idea of the thread. 

-----------------------------------------------------

When I said "from the post-WWII period or second half of 20th century" I was thinking in composers whose compositional career _developed_ in the second half of 20th century.


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## NightHawk (Nov 3, 2011)

Schnittke - _Sym. No. 2 'St. Florian' - 1979_ - 




Ligeti - _Violin Concerto - 1983_ - 



 (pt.1)

Feldman - _Piano and String Quartet - 1985_ -


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## Arsakes (Feb 20, 2012)

Alan Hovhaness
Symphony No.3, op.148 (1956)
I like its Armenian sense of it.

Shostakovich:
String Quartet No.9 (1964)

Khachaturian
Spartacus Ballet (1950–54)
(btw I hate the Spartacus guy, Ave Ceasar!)
Note: If Gayane was in second half of 20th century, it could beat anything!

So two Armenians, one Russian. The first half of 20th century was much better.


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## Arsakes (Feb 20, 2012)

I have to listen to other works of Gorecki, Adams, Britten and find something of Schnittke.

Someone mentioned Ennio Morricone, but I excluded Movie Composers already.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

mmsbls said:


> @Sid: You mentioned my favorite Cage work. I just listened to the Rodrigo for the first time, and it's wonderful. Thanks for suggesting that work! It's now on my list of works to get.


Your welcome. I got to know it by chance myself. I got that same recording on a Sony cd, it was on special. The Delius and Lalo concertos are also on it. Julian Lloyd Webber actually commissioned the work. I dismissed Rodrigo before but I am appreciating and enjoying his music more now. I like how he kind of combined neo-classical and neo-romantic type approaches with his native Spanish music. His melodies, esp. the slow movements, are unique.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Walton: Cello Concerto (1956)

Nigel Westlake: Piano Sonata (1990's) (excerpt)

Castelnuovo-Tedesco: 24 Caprichos de Goya for solo guitar (1960's)(a half hour selection from the work)


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## Guest (Oct 19, 2012)

Arsakes said:


> The first half of 20th century was much better.


One thing is certainly true, the first half of the 20th century is much better _known._

One thing you all may find interesting about the composers mentioned so far who fall largely into the first half: when I first started being aware of twentieth century music as such (in 1972), I was instantly made aware of the antagonism against new(ish) music. Only in 1972, among my friends and in the music reviews I read, it was Bartok and Stravinsky who were excoriated. And most of the other people who've been mentioned here, including Shostakovich and Britten, were not widely admired by any means. (This past spring, at the Oregon Symphony, a patron was livid that she had had to sit through Britten's Four Sea Interludes and Janacek's Sinfonietta--hideous modern (!) pieces that gave her a horrible headache.)

Schoenberg was already established as the anti-Christ, and seems still to be seen as such, Cage and Boulez notwithstanding. (Cage, just by the way, has been dead for over twenty years. Boulez is in his eighties.)

The music changes. Only the antagonism stays the same.* And in 2012, even the antagonism is out of date!!

*I've finished my third read of William Weber's _The Great Transformation of Musical Taste._ This time through, I was most struck with how many of the standard current cliches about "modern" music, and even how many of the events we associate with the twentieth century actually happened in the 19th century first--that modern music lacks melody, that it's random chaos, that no one will ever like it (on the cliche hand), and the rise of new music concerts,** the shift of contemporary composers from opera and symphonic music to chamber works (cheaper to put on), and even the phenomenon (largely unsuccessful then) of composers seeing the shift in taste and trying to take advantage of it by writing older sounding music (on the event hand).

**Of course, concerts in Vivaldi's and Haydn's times were ALL new music concerts, in a way. In the nineteenth century, these emerged specifically as a reaction to living composers being squeezed off of mainstream concerts.


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## Prodromides (Mar 18, 2012)

norman bates said:


> i'm listening to him a lot, thanks to you. The messe has that incredibly ethereal choir just before the alleluia that is stunning, it reminds to me of some ligeti work


Glad you are exploring the music of Ohana. Hope you've been able to sample some of the recordings made by Erato and/or Timpani; both labels championed Ohana repertoire on volumes of albums.

Conductor Arturo Tamayo is an outstanding interpreter of contemporary music. A listing of Tamayo's album credits can serve as an excellent source of none-too-familiar musical works from 20th century's 2nd half that could reward the adventurous listener upon repeat hearings.

[If interested, French composer Edith Canat de Chizy - a former pupil of Maurice Ohana - writes music in a similar vein without subscribing to any sort of dogma.]


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

Schnittke - Concerto for Piano and Strings
Penderecki - St. Luke Passion
Gubaidulina - Viola Concerto


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Gubaidulina Seven Words (part one)

Boulez Messagesquise for solo cello with 6 other cellos

Stockhausen Tierkreis/Zodiac (part one)


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## PeterFromLA (Jul 22, 2011)

Good taste is on display upthread, I'm happy to see. These are my three favorite post WWII composers, followed by a work by them that I really love, but it's hard to say that each is my *favorite* work by them; they are my favorite composers because they have so many excellent compositions:

Schnittke: Viola Concerto
Lutoslawski: Third Symphony
Ligeti: Chamber Concerto


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

John Cage (1912-1992): Fontana Mix (1958)
Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928-2007): Kontakte (1959/60)
Morton Feldman (1926-1987): Music for Stephan Wolpe


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

clavichorder said:


> He died in 1951, so that makes his very last compositions post WII. That being said, I verified the date the third concerto was published and it was 1943. So that technically doesn't qualify. Fortunately, I also love his piano quintet, which is a posthumous publication that he had been working on since the 1920s but finished just before he died. That does technically count.


The point was, I think, that it is not just the date alone which qualifies something as 'post WWII' modern, but that the vocabulary too, be not retro-romantic (like Rachmaninoff is a 20th century composer, but....


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## Aries (Nov 29, 2012)

Martin Scherber, Wilhelm Furtwängler, John Williams

Martin Scherber, Symphony No. 2 (1952) (excerpts):






Wilhelm Furtwängler, Symphony No. 3 (1954) (fourth movement):






John Williams, Star Wars (1977) (main theme):


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

*Insecure*

After seeing all of the excellant choices, no way I could up with just three.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

I don't really have 3 favorites, but here's a few of the many pieces I enjoy. Others by Luto, Ligeti, Schnittke already mentioned, although I prefer many other Schnittke works to his 2nd symphony.

William Schuman-Symphony No. 7
Frank Zappa-Bogus Pomp 1975 version
Magnus Lindberg-Clarinet Concerto


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

Is this limited to composers within the "post WWII" era? Or literally any composer after WWII?


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

violadude said:


> Is this limited to composers within the "post WWII" era? Or literally any composer after WWII?


As Aleazk said earlier, "When I said _from the post-WWII period or second half of 20th century _I was thinking in composers whose compositional career developed in the second half of 20th century."

That being said, go ahead and answer any way you like. _Onward, through the fog!_


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

The Scandinavians are coming:
Saariaho: Flute Concerto, L´Aile du Songe 



Pettersson: Symphony 8 



Nørgård: Piano Concerto


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