# Surreal Music



## schuberkovich (Apr 7, 2013)

Which pieces do you find "surreal"? I mean the types of pieces that after becoming totally engrossed in you feel that you have stepped out of an incredibly vivid dream.

A few I get that feeling with are:





and





Actually, a lot of Ravel's stuff, especially Gaspard de la Nuit as well...

Any thoughts?


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## Blake (Nov 6, 2013)

Most things by Scelsi. Feels like some sort of other-dimensional, spiritual purging going on.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

Penderrecki's Threnody to the victims of Hiroshima.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

In a surreal twist, I happened to be listening to this at the moment you posted this thread:
Teizo Matsumura - Hymn to Aurora

I note that the examples given so far have all been modern, but music that's sufficiently far out of our general reference can be surreal, regardless of when it was written.

Machaut - Messe de Nostre-Dame: Agnus Dei

There's also the element of the bizarre, like that moment in the Scherzo of Mahler's Fifth when a headlong rush in the strings and brass suddenly turns into an ostentatiously archaic organ-like passage for winds, which becomes a brass chorale....


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## schuberkovich (Apr 7, 2013)

Interesting choices so far. Especially that Machaut Mahlerian, I've never heard anything like it!


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

The Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes by Britten.


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## Winterreisender (Jul 13, 2013)

I don't know about "surreal," but I feel as if Satie is the closest thing to "surrealist" music, not only for his cameo role in the Rene Clair film "Entr'acte" but also for such wonderfully eccentric compositions as "Sports et Divertissements," which kind of makes me feel as if I have slipped into a parallel universe.


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## The nose (Jan 14, 2014)

From Bellini's _Sonnambula_


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## DeepR (Apr 13, 2012)

One of my favorites of his late piano miniatures. A brief but wonderful glimpse into an ever fascinating world.


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## Schubussy (Nov 2, 2012)




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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

Erik Satie and George Antheil were two composers associated with the surrealist movement from the very outset. In fact, the very term "surrealism" was coined by Guillaume Apollinaire after hearing Satie's score for the ballet Parade (it was used in the program notes). 

I don't know very much about the surrealist movement in music as much as I do in the visual arts, but those two composers were very significant in its history.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

Lots of info on the web about the surrealist movement. 

I might even include Sibelius's 4th symphony, despite being composed ten or more years before the Surrealist Manifesto was written, it was sort of nicknamed "the psychological symphony." Psychology, especially that of the science behind dreaming, was an important lead up to surrealism and was a huge influence on the subject matter of the works. I haven't found out if this symphony is in any way connected to the later surreal music from the 1920s and further on, but it is an interesting thought....does anyone here know much about influences on the surrealist movement in music?


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## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

schuberkovich said:


> Machaut... I've never heard anything like it!


A fan of ancient music, I have  but it is a new aspect to hear in it surreality. I had never considered that when listening to Machaut previously. Okay, I see... I was thinking more of surrealism than dream... but to dream... yes, it is the early past of our then still developing civilisation that I dream in these early masterpieces when I listen to them.


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## Draugen (Dec 26, 2013)

Winterreisender said:


> I don't know about "surreal," but I feel as if Satie is the closest thing to "surrealist" music, not only for his cameo role in the Rene Clair film "Entr'acte" but also for such wonderfully eccentric compositions as "Sports et Divertissements," which kind of makes me feel as if I have slipped into a parallel universe.


I agree with Satie, he definitely had links with Dada and Proto-Surrealism. Atlas press published 'A Mamal's Notebook', a collection of Saties 'Memoirs of an Amnesiac', an absurdist play, musical commentaries and others. I wonder if anyone here has read it?

http://www.atlaspress.co.uk/index.cgi?action=view_arkhive&number=5


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

I can think of lots and lots of non-classical music I would consider surreal, but little in the way of classical or art music. That's a shame. 

Maybe some Ligeti. "Aventures" perhaps.


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## stevederekson (Jan 5, 2014)

Definitely Ligeti.


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## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

Weston said:


> I can think of lots and lots of non-classical music I would consider surreal, but little in the way of classical or art music.


If you define surreal as "having the qualities of surrealism," then it limits you. However, google gives as synonyms:

"unreal, bizarre, unusual, weird, strange, freakish, unearthly, uncanny, dreamlike, phantasmagorical".


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

Using brotagonist's definition: Bartók, Ligeti, any of the spectralists, Babbitt, Schnittke, and a lot of others.
It's my favorite kind of music, btw.
I love music that takes you to strange and bizarre worlds, the whole piece being like some kind of journey through that world.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Like the introductory music to the old Rod Serling "Twilight Zone" show.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

brotagonist said:


> A fan of ancient music, I have  but it is a new aspect to hear in it surreality. I had never considered that when listening to Machaut previously. Okay, I see... I was thinking more of surrealism than dream... but to dream... yes, it is the early past of our then still developing civilisation that I dream in these early masterpieces when I listen to them.


Yet, I really have no immediate idea of music which I would associate with this, the iconic fur-lined cup and teaspoon....


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

PetrB said:


> Yet, I really have no immediate idea of music which I would associate with this, the iconic fur-lined cup and teaspoon....
> View attachment 32757


OOH!!! Widor organ symphony no. 5 is PERFECT for that.


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## Il_Penseroso (Nov 20, 2010)

The only major composer related somehow to Dadaism and Surrealism is Satie. He wrote a film score for René Clair's Entr'acte and a ballet score called Relâche for Francis Picabia and Marcel Duchamp, but his musical structure is more concrete rather than a 'Surrealist' work which is usually defined by featuring unfamiliar melancholic elements.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> OOH!!! Widor organ symphony no. 5 is PERFECT for that.


Coag is pleased to be witty


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## dgee (Sep 26, 2013)

Les Six when they were associated with Duchamp? I suppose one could make a case for there being an element, a whiff, of surrealism there?


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## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

dgee said:


> Les Six when they were associated with Duchamp? I suppose one could make a case for there being an element, a whiff, of surrealism there?


More than a whiff, I'd say. Poulenc and Auric set quite a lot of surrealist poetry to music. Not counting the religious works, practically every vocal piece Poulenc wrote in the 1930s and 40s was to a text by a poet associated with the surrealist movement.


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## dgee (Sep 26, 2013)

Ah yes - who could forget The Breasts of Tiresias! It's quite neat music too


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