# Unique Works: do they exist?



## Skilmarilion (Apr 6, 2013)

Now, this isn't something I'd really given much thought to before. I was playing through Glass' _Einstein_ and it kind of just occurred to me that I can't think of (and it is unlikely that there is) anything that even remotely resembles the aesthetic, structural, extra-musical and conceptual nature of this work, as well as its musical language. Snippet here:






Given that it is impossible to know for sure, what makes this a safe bet is knowing that Glass himself seemingly never even tried to replicate what he did with this piece. The non-narrative elements are there in Satyagraha. The extreme repetition is there in Music in 12 Parts. And yet neither of those works are remotely like Einstein.

Not sure if I've put that across very well. I guess my point is: this work is seems so far removed from anything that came before it, and anything that's come after it.

There's often talk about a work being original. But is it possible for a work to be unique?


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

Everything is unique isn't it? Apart from some Rossini overtures and maybe Glass's more recent stuff...:lol:

But I do agree that Einstein on the Beach is unique in the entire classical music repertoire. It is an 'opera' as far as that word can be defined=works. It fits to no real genre easily and if we take it as an 'opera' in a more traditional sense of the word, then it is totally bizarre!

I suppose it's like Berlioz and his Romeo and Juliet symphony.

I could mention Stockhausen, but there are too many unique works to list! I'm just gonna say Licht.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

The subject of the thread is interesting. Like you I hadn't thought much about this question. I don't know Glass' Einstein, but Stocjhausen's Licht certainly seems to fit. The only other work that comes to mind is Cage's 4'33". I guess it depends a bit on how removed from other works a _unique_ work must be.


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

mmsbls said:


> The subject of the thread is interesting. Like you I hadn't thought much about this question. I don't know Glass' Einstein, but Stocjhausen's Licht certainly seems to fit. The only other work that comes to mind is Cage's 4'33".* I guess it depends a bit on how removed from other works a unique work must be.*


Yeah. It doesn't require much 'removal' for me. If the work isn't unique, what's the point of it?


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

I think you may be overstating the "uniqueness" of this piece. Aren't its separate elements found elsewhere in music - actually, as you point out, in Glass's own music? Many works have combined speech with instrumental music establishing a mood, if not in this exact style. Isn't that what most music does: combine familiar elements in new ways? I wouldn't be inclined to call anything utilizing minimalist repetition "unique," but I'd have to concede this to be one of its more peculiar manifestations. 

If no one has tried to do anything similar to this, it may be that Glass has simply exhausted his rather trivial concept, or that that concept is not very attractive to other composers. But there's not much here to intimidate anyone seeking to do a knockoff. On the other hand, there is little chance of anyone successfully imitating a late sonata of Beethoven or an opera of Wagner. Maybe greatness - that concept despised by so many around here - is the most genuine form of uniqueness.


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

4' 33" might be unique in that it could only be done once. 

I agree with Woodduck. This is not so unique other than recombining previously existing elements. I think we seldom want the truly new and unique. Like science, music stands "on the shoulders of giants."

On a side note, I find this piece at least uniquely disturbing. I could not watch it all.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Weston said:


> 4' 33" might be unique in that it could only be done once.


For the same reason that a joke is funny only the first time you tell it.


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## Epilogue (Sep 20, 2015)

Actually, that seems like a missed opportunity by John Cage. If 4'33" was worth doing, then another silent (yeah, yeah, just live with the word) piece with a different duration would certainly have been worth doing too. And probably a third and so on - though I suppose at some point the returns do finally become drastically diminished.

Maybe I should write some. Eh, somebody else probably already has.


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

KenOC said:


> For the same reason that a joke is funny only the first time you tell it.


While I did not see it buried in mmslbs's's post, I seldom joke about 4'33". I think it's wonderful.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Appendix said:


> Actually, that seems like a missed opportunity by John Cage. If 4'33" was worth doing, then another silent (yeah, yeah, just live with the word) piece with a different duration would certainly have been worth doing too. And probably a third and so on - though I suppose at some point the returns do finally become drastically diminished.
> 
> Maybe I should write some. Eh, somebody else probably already has.


Cage did say in the published "score", I believe, that the three movements of 4'33" could last any duration of time. Could there be a better defense against all the would-be plagiarists out there?


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## helenora (Sep 13, 2015)

Just have listened to this video! oh, unique!!!???


not really, at least for me ......sort of modern time recitative for 2 accompanied by a violin playing warm up exercises." and where these 2 from a "recitative" section actually disturbs me from listening to a violinist rather energetic scales. sorry, this comment is meant with no offense in mind, just my not very humble opinion.

only a short remark about this particular piece of music and not about a concept of "uniqueness"


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## Guest (Nov 17, 2015)

Unique works? Alvin Lucier is your man.

From compounded resonant frequencies to controlled modulations along a wire to super-amplified brainwaves... Lucier's masterworks all offer extraordinary perspectives.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

I've always enjoyed Mosolov: _Iron Foundry_. Always find it exhilarating--a real mind-clearer. One doesn't hear an Eisenblech-bogen played every day.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Woodduck said:


> Cage did say in the published "score", I believe, that the three movements of 4'33" could last any duration of time. Could there be a better defense against all the would-be plagiarists out there?


Plagiarists indeed! Silent music has been published since 1897. What defense can Cage himself plead against plagiarism?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_silent_musical_compositions


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

I think this is a very unique keyboard piece by Bach, his _Chromatic Fantasy & Fugue in D Minor_. A most unusual score in his keyboard composition,


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## Guest (Nov 17, 2015)

KenOC said:


> For the same reason that a joke is funny only the first time you tell it.


Hahaha, maybe you're just a bad teller. Jokes that are funny are funny the third time and the fourth and so on.



Appendix said:


> Actually, that seems like a missed opportunity by John Cage. If 4'33" was worth doing, then another silent (yeah, yeah, just live with the word) piece


Not a silent piece. Maybe you should get used to living with that fact.



Appendix said:


> with a different duration would certainly have been worth doing too.


Certainly unnecessary to do the same piece over and over again with different durations. Do you seriously think that would have a point?

Cage did do a piece called 0'00" though, and referred to it as 4'33" nr. 2. Completely different piece, though.



Appendix said:


> I suppose at some point the returns do finally become drastically diminished.


Not appropriate vocabulary (or concepts) for art, however, is it?



Appendix said:


> Maybe I should write some.


Yeah. See what happens if you do.:devil:


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## Skilmarilion (Apr 6, 2013)

Thanks for the replies!



Woodduck said:


> *I think you may be overstating the "uniqueness" of this piece. Aren't its separate elements found elsewhere in music - actually, as you point out, in Glass's own music?* Many works have combined speech with instrumental music establishing a mood, if not in this exact style. Isn't that what most music does: combine familiar elements in new ways?


You make a lot of interesting points. I guess I'm not clear on what these "separate elements" are supposed to be? Considering the excerpt...

There is a kind of melodic/harmonic passage played by solo violin, also found in Bach's chaconne. That passage is repeated numerous times, like the ode to joy melody in Beethoven's 9th. There is instrumental accompaniment to spoken text, also found in Pierrot Lunaire. The whole work itself has cyclical elements, in that certain passages (esp. in the knee plays) reappear in slightly different guises throughout the work - cyclical elements are found in Tchaikovsky's 5th. The opera (at over 4 hours) is really quite lengthy, as are most of Wagner's.

Just a basic (near trivial) breakdown of some of the elements - yet these elements seem really, really far removed from the accompanying examples of similar elements in other works. And of course, all works are made up of "elements", which may found all over classical music, but it's the sum of those parts that counts, and those parts don't add up to the sum that we get in Einstein.



Woodduck said:


> If no one has tried to do anything similar to this, it may be that Glass has simply exhausted his rather trivial concept, or that that concept is not very attractive to other composers. But there's not much here to intimidate anyone seeking to do a knockoff.


Fair point, but it seems strange to me why seemingly no-one has tried to imitate this work, especially if others shouldn't be intimidated by it. Most radical works end up getting imitated and imitated and imitated, don't they?



> ...there is little chance of anyone successfully imitating a late sonata of Beethoven or an opera of Wagner. Maybe greatness - that concept despised by so many around here - is the most genuine form of uniqueness.


Yep, but of course can "greatness" be unique it it applies to many composers?


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

If what you mean by "unique" is "seeming to come out of nowhere, profoundly unlike anything else" - then I'd say that's fairly rare in music history, but has happened.

These pieces almost never _stay_ unique, however; the original composer and often others invariably continue to build on whatever truly new discovery made the piece unique.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Skilmarilion said:


> All works are made up of "elements", which may found all over classical music, but it's the sum of those parts that counts, and those parts don't add up to the sum that we get in Einstein.
> 
> It seems strange to me why seemingly no-one has tried to imitate this work, especially if others shouldn't be intimidated by it. Most radical works end up getting imitated and imitated and imitated, don't they?
> 
> Can "greatness" be unique it it applies to many composers?


I admit that in the _sum_ of its elements, their exact combination, the piece is unlike any other I've heard, but surely that's true of a lot of music.

The piece has few elements: a solo instrument playing repetitions of scale and arpeggio figures, and a couple of voices doing repetitions of commercial messages. This hardly seems substantial enough to establish a genre. What would we call it? "Minimalist commercials with solo instrumental obbligato"? It wouldn't be hard to do such things, but why would anyone want to? What could other composers contribute that isn't essentially here in this example? I view this sort of thing as an amusing conceptual "stunt," more or less a one-off by its very nature. Its uniqueness lies more in that concept than in the actual musical substance it contains, which isn't especially odd except perhaps for its paucity - but then it is minimalist, in which paucity is normal.

I'd say that greatness implies uniqueness, in that a really great work, even though it may substantially share a musical vocabulary with other works, tends to have a bold profile, a freshness of inspiration, and a sheer craft, which together assure the unlikelihood or impossibility of successful imitation. It's the difference between being deeply original and being merely peculiar or novel - uniqueness on a different level.


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

I think this is one of the most unique pieces writing by a Dutch composer.

http://www.simeontenholt.com/

Simeon Ten Holt: Canta Ostinato.


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## Epilogue (Sep 20, 2015)

some guy said:


> Appendix said:
> 
> 
> > Actually, that seems like a missed opportunity by John Cage. If 4'33" was worth doing, then another silent (yeah, yeah, just live with the word) piece
> ...


But nobody has to "get used to living with that fact," because that's what everybody except the fans calls it.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Endnote said:


> But nobody has to "get used to living with that fact," because that's what everybody except the fans calls it.


Actually, I don't really give much of a darn about 4'33", and perhaps am dubious on the question of whether or not it qualifies as music under my own paradigm, but I'm very well aware that it's not a silent piece, and think the endless vituperation against it as some kind of reductio ad absurdum of why modern music is horrible is tiresome and completely off the mark.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

"[Rauschenberg's] white paintings came first; my silent piece came later."

- John Cage


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## Stirling (Nov 18, 2015)

There much better Cage, but for fans of nothing else, 4'33" is God.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

I thought Clapton was God.


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## Stirling (Nov 18, 2015)

Not to worshipers of Cage 4'33". Every temple has a unique god.


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## Epilogue (Sep 20, 2015)

Mahlerian said:


> I... think the endless vituperation against it [4'33"] as some kind of reductio ad absurdum of why modern music is horrible is tiresome and completely off the mark.


I agree entirely.

Modern music is horrible because of what apparently nobody _can_ do any more, not because of what anybody _did_. Or, if anybody is to blame for setting bad examples, it's certainly not John Cage, who, even when he isn't good enough to be a good influence, is always too genuinely humble to ever be a bad influence.

(People to blame for setting bad examples: Nancarrow, Partch, Ligeti, all the minimalists, Lachenmann)


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## Ilarion (May 22, 2015)

Unique works - There's something that made my mind bend, but not in the way you might or might not think - Mefeels that Sorabji's *Opus Clavicembalisticum* qualifies as unique music...


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

For its time, I can mention three operas that are unique: Monteverdi's _L'Orfeo_, Wagner's _Tristan_ and Berg's _Wozzeck_. I like all of them and the atonal music of _Wozzeck_ works particularly well dramatically in an opera (compared with pure instrumental).


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## SeptimalTritone (Jul 7, 2014)

Endnote said:


> I agree entirely.
> 
> Modern music is horrible because of what apparently nobody _can_ do any more, not because of what anybody _did_. Or, if anybody is to blame for setting bad examples, it's certainly not John Cage, who, even when he isn't good enough to be a good influence, is always too genuinely humble to ever be a bad influence.
> 
> (People to blame for setting bad examples: Nancarrow, Partch, Ligeti, all the minimalists, Lachenmann)


But those guys really _did_ a lot of ridiculously excellent things...


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## Epilogue (Sep 20, 2015)

@ArtMusic It seems to me that the logical last entry on that list is not _Wozzeck_ but _Erwartung_.


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## Epilogue (Sep 20, 2015)

SeptimalTritone said:


> But those guys really _did_ a lot of ridiculously excellent things...


Well, some of them did. (I'm not sure Partch, La Monte Young, or Lachenmann did anything all that good.) Unfortunately talent and bad influence aren't mutually exclusive.


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## SeptimalTritone (Jul 7, 2014)

Well, then I'm enraptured by Partch, Young, and Lachenmann's bad influence. Never has harmfully influential music been so good!


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## Epilogue (Sep 20, 2015)

Harmfully influential music has been much better than that - e.g. Wagner.


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## Morimur (Jan 23, 2014)

Endnote said:


> I agree entirely.
> 
> Modern music is horrible because of what apparently nobody _can_ do any more, not because of what anybody _did_. Or, if anybody is to blame for setting bad examples, it's certainly not John Cage, who, even when he isn't good enough to be a good influence, is always too genuinely humble to ever be a bad influence.
> 
> (People to blame for setting bad examples: Nancarrow, Partch, Ligeti, all the minimalists, Lachenmann)


Minimalists? Agree. Nancarrow, Partch, Ligeti and Lachenmann? You're out of line, buster.


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## Skilmarilion (Apr 6, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> The piece has few elements: a solo instrument playing repetitions of scale and arpeggio figures, and a couple of voices doing repetitions of commercial messages. This hardly seems substantial enough to establish a genre. What would we call it? "Minimalist commercials with solo instrumental obbligato"? It wouldn't be hard to do such things, but why would anyone want to? What could other composers contribute that isn't essentially here in this example?


I agree with most of your assessment. But on the points above, you might be completely right - this is a work that comes across as conceptual, devoid of enough interesting musical substance to warrant imitation. And yet, I do find it intriguing that seemingly (I actually don't know for sure) no-one has tried, especially so because of how "easy" it would be. Or maybe - it isn't as easy as it looks?

I think ArtMusic makes a point about some works being unique "for their time". That makes work original, not unique. Unique implies that there is nothing like it _after the fact_. Case in point: Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto. He sticks the cadenza before the recap - original. Tchaikovsky does the same in his concerto about 3 decades later - imitated, and that's the end of any "uniqueness".

And of course, I'm not really concerned whether Einstein on the Beach is unique. Or any other piece. I was kind of just thinking whether it's actually possible for a piece of music to be so, or very close to it. I think the point about elements is a good one, but it might take a little extra persuading re: that point to convince me that the answer to this thread is indeed negative.


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## Sloe (May 9, 2014)

ArtMusic said:


> For its time, I can mention three operas that are unique: Monteverdi's _L'Orfeo_, Wagner's _Tristan_ and Berg's _Wozzeck_. I like all of them and the atonal music of _Wozzeck_ works particularly well dramatically in an opera (compared with pure instrumental).


I prefer atonal music in instrumental form. But I agree that it works well in Wozzeck.


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## Haydn man (Jan 25, 2014)

All works are unique in that they can only be composed once.
However, I note battle lines being drawn up for round 5137 of the old chestnut 'modern music is crap/great' which is far from unique around here.


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## Epilogue (Sep 20, 2015)

Well, nobody's right if everybody's wrong.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Endnote said:


> @ArtMusic It seems to me that the logical last entry on that list is not _Wozzeck_ but _Erwartung_.


I might give Erwartung a listen.


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## Sloe (May 9, 2014)

ArtMusic said:


> I might give Erwartung a listen.


You should it sounds a bit strange but in a good way. It is surely very tuneful and easy to listen to.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Sloe said:


> You should it sounds a bit strange but in a good way. It is surely very tuneful and easy to listen to.


That's very encouraging.


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## Epilogue (Sep 20, 2015)

ArtMusic said:


> I might give Erwartung a listen.


I very enthusiastically recommend the recording of Helga Pilarczyk and the Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie, conducted by Hermann Scherchen. (Specifically that one. Pilarczyk and Scherchen each made several.)

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x19bajc_schoenberg-erwartung-op-17-pt-1_music
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x19bak7_schoenberg-erwartung-op-17-pt-2_music

http://www.amazon.com/Sch-nberg-Erwartung-Monodram-einem-Opus/dp/B00AYHY95G/

If mono sound is a deal breaker, then Anja Silja and the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Christoph von Dohnanyi.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkeWP6mPF57j_t-tjZxN1PGK-uVUXoaft (Scroll about halfway down the playlist.)

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0015RBGTQ/

Synopsis on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erwartung#Synopsis

Libretto (in German; sorry, can't find it in English; scroll about halfway down the page): http://www.schoenberg.at/compositions/werke_einzelansicht.php?werke_id=472


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

"Unique," as a concept, is an absolute, not an expression of degree. For something to be truly unique it must not resemble anything else in any respect. A thing can't be "more unique" or "less unique." If we're talking about a matter of degree, we should more accurately say a thing is "unusual" or "original;" we can't properly call it "unique." A thing may have certain unique _aspects_ which serve to make it unusual or original, but we can't say that the thing as a whole is unique, only that it is unique in those particular aspects - its sounds, perhaps, or its construction, or some concept it embodies.

For a piece of music to be wholly unique, it would have to consist of sounds never before used in music, arranged in ways sounds have never before been arranged. This seems possible, and I would suppose it must have been done. I don't think this particular piece, bizarre as it is, quite meets those conditions.


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## MosmanViolinist (Nov 10, 2015)

Olivier Messaen, truly unique imho


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

isorhythm said:


> "[Rauschenberg's] white paintings came first; my silent piece came later."
> 
> - John Cage


A silent piece and a white painting are comparable, but only within the limitations of a mind who wishes to take everything literally. What's a better comparison is the experience of a blank canvas in a room willed with a certain type of light, atmosphere, sounds from the people or weather or objects around etc. with a piece in which the perfomer is directed to remain silent so the audience can experience the sounds of the world around them.


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