# Genetically engineered composers



## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

If you could combine the talents of two composers to get totally new music, who would those composers be? And (if you dare) what would that composer's music be like?


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

Beethoven and Wagner or Bruckner.
Monumental.


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## Serge (Mar 25, 2010)

Beethoven and John Cage. I would be like nothing heard before.


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## Guest (Mar 7, 2014)

Beethoven (maybe Wagner) with a great late modernist - give us a massive, prolific catalogue with multiple legendary bodies of work, but with the interesting textures/harmonies etc that we're seeing nowadays.

IOW: Just give us a composer now who has all the modern tools at his disposal, except he's as good as Beethoven and writes monumental symphonies and quartets and sonatas and such


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## Guest (Mar 7, 2014)

Serge said:


> Beethoven and John Cage. I would be like nothing heard before.


A deaf composer of silence would be pretty innovative. Like: "This is what I hear every day, bro"


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

arcaneholocaust said:


> A deaf composer of silence would be pretty innovative. Like: "This is what I hear every day, bro"


"My greatest and longest symphony. I call it 114'52". There will be no intermission."


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## Guest (Mar 7, 2014)

I would also like to see the prolific nature of one of the big names, but in the daunting style of Sorabji. If the guy wrote a symphony, there's no doubt Havergal Brian's "record" would be in trouble


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Bruckner with Persichetti to produce a 30 minute symphony.
I don't have all day!


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## Guest (Mar 7, 2014)

I think we can both agree that, since Dec. 2013, you have had a fair portion of the day


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## Guest (Mar 7, 2014)

A composer now who has all the modern tools of composition at her disposal is not likely to write monumental symphonies and quartets and sonatas and such.
















Just sayin' yo.


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## shangoyal (Sep 22, 2013)

Bach and Tchaikovsky. Counterpoint wedded to beautiful melodies. 

Just a thought.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Bach and Satie. Baroque with a sense of humor.


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## Serge (Mar 25, 2010)

Haydn and Mozart. Half-wit.


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## Guest (Mar 7, 2014)

some guy said:


> A composer now who has all the modern tools of composition at her disposal is not likely to write monumental symphonies and quartets and sonatas and such.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Not likely, no. Incapable? Messiaen, for instance, while not using ALL the tools we have now, certainly shows that modern and monumental are not mutually exclusive terms


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## Guest (Mar 7, 2014)

But arcane, I never ever even suggested, not even the shadow of a whisper, incapacity.

And Messiaen is dead.

And "monumental" is first of all just me quoting you and second of all a subordinate word--adjective--modifying the nouns "symphonies," "quartets," and "sonatas."

But otherwise, yes, we are in agreement about likelihood.

(So what did you think of the clips?)


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## Botec (Jan 14, 2011)

It surprises me that David Cope (he of EMI, Experiments in Musical Intelligence, and Emily Howell) flirted with creating computer-generated works in the styles of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Mahler, Chopin and Joplin, but then "essentially stopped doing historical replications. That aspect of [his] work was finished" without ever exploring hybrid composers. But I think the source code is available, if anyone wants to try.

Mahler x Sibelius - settle that symphony question once and for all?


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## Freischutz (Mar 6, 2014)

I would like to combine the musical styles of Igor Stravinsky and Ralph Vaughan Williams. I believe it would sound like a combination of the musical styles of Igor Stravinsky and Ralph Vaughan Williams.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

I think I would genetically engineer my own self combined with, say, Palestrina, and then I wouldn't tell anyone. I'd just spend my life writing lovely polyphony (maybe for the UUs or someone like that). All the critics out there would condemn my music as neo-something and that would bother me even less than I think it would.


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## GGluek (Dec 11, 2011)

Beethoven and Delius. I'd love to see what a deaf and blind composer could come up with.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

GGluek said:


> Beethoven and Delius. I'd love to see what a deaf and blind composer could come up with.


Ahem! I assume you can only mean you'd love to "hear and *see* what a deaf and *blind* composer could come up with."

Very important to be politically correct in these trying times.


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

Beethoven and Ligeti. I'd like to hear _that_ Requiem! Or Pastoral Atmospheres.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Weston said:


> Beethoven and Ligeti. I'd like to hear _that_ Requiem! Or Pastoral Atmospheres.


Believe it or not, this is actually how the Federal Reserve of the USA originally created Thomas Adès. Something might've gone wrong in the mixing, but Kevin Trudeau said (via private correspondence) that Eugene Mallove was behind it all.


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## Guest (Mar 7, 2014)

science said:


> I think I would genetically engineer my own self combined with, say, Palestrina, and then I wouldn't tell anyone. I'd just spend my life writing lovely polyphony (maybe for the UUs or someone like that). All the critics out there would condemn my music as neo-something and that would bother me even less than I think it would.


If you were to write something like Palestrina, then what you wrote _would_ be "neo-something," by definition, Palestrina being in the past and all.

Interesting how a description has turned into a condemnation.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

some guy said:


> Interesting how a description has turned into a condemnation.


Happens with every label, sooner rather than later. The only solution is constant invention of new labels. For example, yesterday my posting style was post-neo-hyper-genuinism, while today that has become cliche and I've moved on artistically, ethically, and spiritually to electro-poly-counter-vaguarianism. Having explored this psychic space for over sixteen hours now, I'm tiring of it, but I will recreate myself artistically, ethically, and spiritually - a "long dark night of the post-artist."


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Wagner, combined with Webern. The result would be two-minute operas which would retain a remarkable degree of thematic unity even when played upside-down and backwards.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

I think I would genetically engineer my own self combined with John Williams, and not tell anyone. Then I'd go into competition with the real John Williams, and before you know it, we'd be writing the same things. 

Since there is always a time-gap between what is scored and what is released in a movie, I could take him to court and sue him for plagarism before release, while the music was only in score form. I'd do this so many times, on so many projects, that soon people would start suspecting his credibility, and his reputation would be ruined. Ha haa!


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## Guest (Mar 8, 2014)

Whether it's done with genetics or not, we need to experiment with creating more Haydns. Stick some kids on an estate half their life, but instead of 100+ symphonies, maybe now we'll get a few thousand vibraphone concerti?


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

arcaneholocaust said:


> I think we can both agree that, since Dec. 2013, you have had a fair portion of the day [/
> 
> Yes. I love classical music. Thanks for noticing.
> 
> ...


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

arcaneholocaust said:


> Whether it's done with genetics or not, we need to experiment with creating more Haydns. Stick some kids on an estate half their life, but instead of 100+ symphonies, maybe now we'll get a few thousand vibraphone concerti?


Good idea! We could program in some OCD, with of course the risk of getting the same symphony over and over. But perhaps we'd get a Vivaldi instead. :lol:


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## Guest (Mar 8, 2014)

hpowders said:


> Put me on "ignore" if my posts bother you.
> Sorry that you can't seem to find anything of value in any of them. :tiphat:


I have never said that your posts bother me. In fact, I value some of them here and there, in one way or another. I think we can all agree that a thousand posts per month is deserving of a playful bro-joke here and there, and that's all I was saying.


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## Avey (Mar 5, 2013)

I proposed this combo way way back -- back in my young'n days. I still want to see it through.

Johannes Brahms and Steve Reich.

Conservative modernism. Popular avant-garde. Intermezzo counterpoint. Etc.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

You want to kill Brahms????


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## Serge (Mar 25, 2010)

Serge said:


> Beethoven and John Cage. I would be like nothing heard before.


Beethoven and John Cage. *It* would be like nothing heard before.

Darn, I killed my own joke!


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

I think we should inject Beethoven's DNA into a chimpanzee and see what kind of music it comes up with. Given its unique experience as a chimpanzee, I wonder how it would affect his or her music.


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## Serge (Mar 25, 2010)

Beethoven's DNA? Where you gonna get that?


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Bone marrow.


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## Fortinbras Armstrong (Dec 29, 2013)

This is more than slightly off-topic, but I would love to hear a fusion of klezmer and zydeco.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

Serge said:


> Beethoven's DNA? Where you gonna get that?


How are we going to proceed with any of these plans?


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

First you have to find out where he's really buried.


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## TurnaboutVox (Sep 22, 2013)

violadude said:


> I think we should inject Beethoven's DNA into a chimpanzee and see what kind of music it comes up with.


Ah. Now here's an idea - Beethoven's DNA, a cloning lab, an _infinite number of Chimpanzees_, unlimited music staff paper or 'Sibelius' software licences...


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## Blake (Nov 6, 2013)

Mahler and Schnittke.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Vesuvius said:


> Mahler and Schnittke.


That could actually work!


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## Serge (Mar 25, 2010)

Vesuvius said:


> Mahler and Schnittke.


Please, let's not create some two-headed monsters here.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Vesuvius said:


> Mahler and Schnittke.


So we wind up with Adolf Schnitzler.


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## Blake (Nov 6, 2013)

I think it's a great idea, myself.


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