Modern Classical

[padraig (u.s.)]

or Post-WWII Classical really. I know next to nothing about classical. I would like know more.

The one area I am familiar with is avant-garde/New Music types (Riley, Reich, Cage, Xenakis, Parmegiani, Stockhausen and so on) though even there, outside of Music For 18 Musicians, I pretty much just know their names and stories/mythologies (Xenakis sounds like a right bad man!). I recently got into Penderecki, who reminds me of the darkest darkside jungle minus the jungle part. I'm also interested in any quality contemporary classical or electronic music that mixes in classical elements (Ekkehard Ehlers is a name that comes to mind).

Thoughts? Recommendations? I figure this is the sort of thing that would be right up the Dissensus alley.

 

[Curious Gregor]

Arvo Pärt

I've recently got into Arvo Pärt after liking Cage, Reich, Riley etc. I only have compilations of his work but they tend to be pretty good.

 

[zhao]

judging from your list, when you get tired of listening to penderecki or arvo part, i would strongly recommend Giacinto Scelsi, georgi Ligetti, and the Spectral school composers like Tristan Murail, Horatio Radulescu, Gérard Grisey, Hugues Dufourt, etc.

but i probably dont have to recommend because i think the path of anyone truly intersted in modern music will lead them to those places.

almost all of the recorded works by those frenchies seem to be commercially unavailble. which is why you are lucky to have me around , far as i know my blog remains the best place on the web where Spectralist music is collected and can be downloaded (got a very enthusiastic thanks email from the head of music department at Cal arts when i first posted that up)

http://differentwaters.blogspot.com/search?q=spectralism

and if you poke around a bit more there are lots of good avant classical in there. and if something needs to be re-upped let me know.

also post spectral composers like Kaija Saariaho might be right up your alley:

http://differentwaters.blogspot.com/search?q=saariaho

 

[pajbre]

morton feldman, of course. eliane radigue, maryanne amacher, toru takemitsu, akio suzuki, la monte young, john tilbury & eddie prevost, luciano cilio (only one record but fuck what a record). i do think that the coltranes, milford graves, pharoah sanders, ornette coleman, herbie hancock and many more ought to be considered while talking about new music, despite being nominally 'jazz.'

 

[nomos]

Rambler to thread.

http://johnsonsrambler.wordpress.com/2006/09/25/blogariddims-7-voices-from-afar/

good place to start

 

[CHAOTROPIC]

almost all of the recorded works by those frenchies seem to be commercially unavailble. which is why you are lucky to have me around , far as i know my blog remains the best place on the web where Spectralist music is collected and can be downloaded (got a very enthusiastic thanks email from the head of music department at Cal arts when i first posted that up)

Hi Zhao, your blog looks amazing. I'd love to hear some of the Spectralist stuff you posted but the downloads links seem to have expired. Any chance you could re-up them? I've been listening to nothing but minimalist stuff for the past couple of months & this stuff seems right on my wavelength.

EDIT: the word 'stuff' is apparently looming quite large in my consciousness at the moment. Hm!

 

[Ness Rowlah]

http://www.avantgardeproject.org/ is well worth a look as well

 

[michael]

Rambler to thread.

http://johnsonsrambler.wordpress.com/2006/09/25/blogariddims-7-voices-from-afar/

good place to start

Too funny that Rambler mentions Jack Body as being "the Composer Who Sounds Most Like He Should be a House Producer"! I made that exact joke one day to a friend, loudly going "You know - jack - body - jack your body..." oblivious to the fact Jack Body was walking towards me at the time. He was just grinning away. Assuming he overheard me, I wonder if he had any idea what I was talking about...

 

[michael]

On topic, I'd second Giacinto Scelsi. I find the kind of stasis in his music really really conducive to ears that are used to things like dance music, stoner rock, drones, etc.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

thank you to everyone for all the recommendations!

zhao - I've been to your [excellent] blog before, mostly for the African techno/house stuff. I'll have to the check out that Spectralist business though.

 

[zhao]

sorry the first link above was to the initial blog post, all the links in which are dead. but i have since re upped all of the albums, and 10 of them can be found here

http://differentwaters.blogspot.com/2007/04/even-more-spectral-re-ups-and-also-new.html

and LOL at the crazy 500 words comment i just noticed at the bottom

also, Saariaho's chamber music CD, which is excellent, still works.

there are plenty of Feldman on there too, some of which amazing and OOP.

also some very great Scelsi.

also, highly recommend both of these, first one is satie-esque repetitive piano, but especially the second one: james tenney - Forms 1-4. it is just... in my original words:

presented here and now for its seductiveness, for its devotion and bravery, in leaving petty human drama behind, in transcending our microscopic joys and miseries, and reaching, encompassing a cosmic narrative, some tale of beyond, of glacial or fiery geological, planetary time...

http://differentwaters.blogspot.com/2007/02/following-satie-craze-here-is-lesser.html

 

[Curious Gregor]

What Makes music classical?

Meandering away from the topic I have always wondered what makes someone a classical composer as opposed to any other type, there seems to be some crossover into soundtracks for some of the more modern composers. Is it in the training they have or is it just the way they position themselves in the market?

 

[Rambler]

or Post-WWII Classical really. I know next to nothing about classical. I would like know more.

The one area I am familiar with is avant-garde/New Music types (Riley, Reich, Cage, Xenakis, Parmegiani, Stockhausen and so on) though even there, outside of Music For 18 Musicians, I pretty much just know their names and stories/mythologies (Xenakis sounds like a right bad man!). I recently got into Penderecki, who reminds me of the darkest darkside jungle minus the jungle part.

Hello!

Already mentioned, but the Avant Garde Project is your friend. It's all good if you're really into your hardcore avant gardism but, working from the names you've mentioned, here are some recommendations:

AGP6 - Morton Subotnick. Instrumental and electronic works. MS is best known for his purely electronic stuff (Silver Apples of the Moon), but this is great. There's another Subotnick disc @ AGP59
AGP9 - Ben Johnston. Experimental composer who worked with microtones (intervals between notes smaller than the usual tone/semitone that most other Western music uses). If you like this you also need AGP23 - Harry Partch. Lived as a hobo through the 30s, then devoted his life to building his own instruments (Google them, they're amazing).
AGP25 - Old school classic modernist, but beautifully lyrical. Hugely underrated.
AGP75 - Francois Bayle. I only discovered him last year, but he will rock your world. Electroacoustic bliss. Also: AGP125, which I haven't heard yet.
AGP85 - Horatiu Radulescu and 109–111. One of Zhao's spectralists. Romanian composer, often uses masses of instruments to produce soundscapes that explore the harmonic spectrum. (Byzantine Prayer, eg, is for 40 flutes, I think). Also AGP117 - Iancu Dumitrescu. Lesser known than his compatriot, but I prefer him: Cogito/Trompe l'Oeil on this disc is one of my favourite things.
AGP91 - Harrison Birtwistle. Another old school modernist. Tough and uncompromising. There are several discs on AGP, but I recommend this one for Chronometer, which is basically minimal techno.
AGP99 - Iannis Xenakis. There's plenty of Xenakis, this is free so why not start here.

I'm also interested in any quality contemporary classical or electronic music that mixes in classical elements (Ekkehard Ehlers is a name that comes to mind).

Murcof is the classic name here - lots of Morton Feldman and Arvo Pärt samples. Coming at it from the opposite angle, Wolfgang Mitterer is one of very few composers I think who can use electronica samples in his music without sounding like a dick. Check out his CD Coloured Noise on the Kairos label.

Everyone goes on about the avant garde when they really mean composers who are over 70. Some younger names worth following up: Michel van der Aa; Peter Ablinger; Mark Andre; Mark Applebaum; Richard Barrett; Oscar Bianchi; Matthew Burtner; Aaron Cassidy; Chris Dench; Dror Feiler; Christopher Fox; Evan Johnson; Bernhard Lang (uses turntables and loops); Mitterer; Enno Poppe; Rebecca Saunders; Matthew Shlomowitz ... loads more.

And some older ones who shouldn't be forgotten: Brian Ferneyhough; Gérard Grisey; Helmut Lachenmann; Alvun Lucier; Tristan Murail; Luigi Nono; Hans Otte; Salvatore Sciarrino; Mathias Spahlinger.

Also, check out the Blogariddims mixes I did (playlists and links here). Everything's pretty heavily layered in those, so you won't always be able to pick out what's what. If anything really catches your ear, pm me

 

[Rambler]

also, highly recommend both of these, first one is satie-esque repetitive piano, but especially the second one: james tenney - Forms 1-4.

Tenney is the business. Get Postal Pieces, performed by the Barton Workshop (it's available from plenty of download stores, but the CD quality is probably worth it). Huge, hypnotic droney things, each score is short and simple enough to fit onto a postcard, but the effects are amazingly powerful.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

Hello!

Hello yourself! And thanks for the wealth of recommendations.

Everyone goes on about the avant garde when they really mean composers who are over 70. Some younger names worth following up...

Yeah I don't mean to strictly limit myself to the hardcore avant garde & minimal, it's just what I'm most familiar with. And what appeals most as well, I guess, but as I said I'm fairly clueless about classical music and I'm open to anything.

Also, check out the Blogariddims mixes I did (playlists and links here). Everything's pretty heavily layered in those, so you won't always be able to pick out what's what. If anything really catches your ear, pm me

Had a problem w/Internet in the house for a couple days but I just dl'd Blogariddims 7. looking forward to listening to it!

 

[zhao]

Tenney is the business.

story time.

after his passing there was a 3 day Tenney "festival" at Cal Arts where he taught, was kicked out/banned, and then later invited back to teach again. after some wonderful performances which included a 20+ persons rendition of the vocal piece "a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose...", and a 30+ persons rendition of "music for a large open space", which was just gorgeous, everyone went to his widow's house for food and drinks. and there i met one of his daughters who was, shall we say, not exactly overwhelmingly enthusiastic about any of these events surrounding her late father's work. she said something like "well it's just a bunch of academic bullshit (here i paraphrase) that concerns no one outside of a very small circle" and when i told her that i was not a part of that circle, and just a simple, and massive, fan of his music, she was pretty much shocked, but still not convinced.

some might say anecdotes like this are pointless and even tasteless but i'm always interested to see the life side of an artist...

 

[Viral Radio]

Don't forget Isambard Khroustaliov...

 

[whatever]

Don't forget Isambard Khroustaliov...

forget? how could we forget what we never knew?

translation: why dont u tell us smthg about khroustaliov yourself then, since he ain't xactly a household name ... (and it's not even his real name, which is Sam, ya big dummy ...)

on second thought google tells me that our utterly unremarkable Sam Britton/Isambard Khroustaliov has a master's from IRCAM and is doing a dissertation now in composition. like 8 bazillion other young aspiring composers. in other words, his credentials don't exactly qualify him as a "modern classical" bigwig composer whom we should "not forget" to mention in a big fancy dissensus thread, ffs ... U R PROBABLY HIS RECENTLY HIRED PRESS AGENT LOLZ

 

[Viral Radio]

forget? how could we forget what we never knew?

translation: why dont u tell us smthg about khroustaliov yourself then, since he ain't xactly a household name ... (and it's not even his real name, which is Sam, ya big dummy ...)

on second thought google tells me that our utterly unremarkable Sam Britton/Isambard Khroustaliov has a master's from IRCAM and is doing a dissertation now in composition. like 8 bazillion other young aspiring composers. in other words, his credentials don't exactly qualify him as a "modern classical" bigwig composer whom we should "not forget" to mention in a big fancy dissensus thread, ffs ... U R PROBABLY HIS RECENTLY HIRED PRESS AGENT LOLZ

Are you on drugs? Why don't you just listen to his work. I am not his agent, just someone who invites him to play.

 

[whatever]

Are you on drugs?

as a matter of fact ..

Why don't you just listen to his work.

b/c i have a stak of other cds by "modern classical" composers to listen to first, and am not sure that i have time for poseur-composers (nice ring, eh?) using faux-exotic names in order to hide the fact that their music is shit hahahahahaha

I am not his agent, just someone who invites him to play.

wotevz, good on ya, "viral" , no need to get Teh Pannies in a bunch, iss all good