# Music in non-standard forms/structures



## Argus (Oct 16, 2009)

This is a thread to share your favourite music that is not in a form/structure historically used in classical music.

That means no symphonies, concertoes, sonatas, string quartets/quintets, rondos, minuet and trios, waltzes, mazurkas, polkas, fugues, Baroque suites, scherzos, madrigals, and certainly no opera.

I'm not necessarily talking about the instrumentation. So a piece for a typical string quartet can be included as long as it isn't in the typical _form_ of a string quartet.

I'll start.

La Monte Young - Well Tuned Piano
Charlemagne Palestine - Strumming Music & Schlingen-Blangen
Ingram Marshall - Fog Tropes & Gradual Requiem
Colin McPhee - Tabuh-Tabuhan
Edgard Varese - Ameriques
Gyorgy Ligeti - Lontano & Continuum
Terry Riley - In C, A Rainbow in Curved Air & Poppy Nogood
Steve Reich - Violin Phase, Drumming, Four Organs & Eight Lines
David Behrman - On The Other Ocean
Glenn Branca - The Ascension
Annie Gosfield - Flying Sparks and Heavy Machinery
Cornelius Cardew - The Great Learning
John Cage - Number Pieces
Meredith Monk - Dolmen Music
Krzysztof Penderecki - Polymorphia
David Tudor - Rainforest
Rhys Chatham - A Crimson Grail
Arvo Part - Fur Alina

Sorry to people who like umlauts and other accents because I've left out a few.


----------



## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

Giacinto Scelsi - Uaxuctum


----------



## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

This is called a "War Song." But definitely non-standard. There is little to no time signature and rhythm in this piece, and when there is, it's hardly used to support a rhythm. It's more like a melody meandering along.





Literally hundreds of contemporary works like these nowadays. There is no time signature or key signature, and phrases are determined by breath marks.


----------



## Argus (Oct 16, 2009)

norman bates said:


> Giacinto Scelsi - Uaxuctum


I _quite_ like Scelsi's music, but his titles are all excellent. I don't know what it is about them, but they, like Xenakis titles, seem to be intriguing and yet have a neutral relation to the music. Do they have translations or are named after things or are they complete constructs by the artist?


----------



## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

Argus said:


> I _quite_ like Scelsi's music, but his titles are all excellent. I don't know what it is about them, but they, like Xenakis titles, seem to be intriguing and yet have a neutral relation to the music. Do they have translations or are named after things or are they complete constructs by the artist?


In this case (and i suppose it's the same for many of his esoteric titles) i think it's simply program music as you can see in the description of the video: 


> Giacinto Scelsi Uaxuctum (1966) Uaxuctum is subtitled: "The legend of the Maya city, destroyed by themselves for religious reasons" and corresponds to an actual Maya city in Peten, Guatemala which flourished during the first millennium AD. This is an intensely dramatic work, and the most bizarre in Scelsi's output. It depicts the end of an ancient civilization - residing in Central America, but with mythical roots extending back to Egypt and beyond - it is the last flowering of a mystical and mythological culture which was slowly destroyed by our modern world. In this case, Scelsi says, the Mayans made a conscious decision to end the city themselves.


----------

