Modern Complexity

[PetroHead]

Hello Everyone

This is my first post here and I'm glad to have discovered such a useful resource on classical music.
I'm looking for certain recommendations from your extensive knowledge.

Basically I'm very interested in highly complex, intricate, thorny and technical music. That pretty much excludes anything written before 1900. I'm solely interested in modern works, post 1900 that is. I'm not interested in melody or emotion so please keep that in mind.

I have a fairly respectable knowledge of modern/contemporary classical music. I know almost all of the mainstream composers/styles - serialism, spectralism, new complexity, atonalists, polystylists , post modernists etc. I'm specifically looking for more obscure recommendations and composers who are way out there!

Thank You

[Bonehelm]

Hello Everyone

This is my first post here and I'm glad to have discovered such a useful resource on classical music.
I'm looking for certain recommendations from your extensive knowledge.

Basically I'm very interested in highly complex, intricate, thorny and technical music. That pretty much excludes anything written before 1900. I'm solely interested in modern works, post 1900 that is. I'm not interested in melody or emotion so please keep that in mind.

I have a fairly respectable knowledge of modern/contemporary classical music. I know almost all of the mainstream composers/styles - serialism, spectralism, new complexity, atonalists, polystylists , post modernists etc. I'm specifically looking for more obscure recommendations and composers who are way out there!

Thank You

Hi PetroHead.

If you like modernism you can't go wrong with Stravinsky (primitivism, strong dissonance), Schoenberg (serialism, atonality), Webern (mix of both) etc.

Have fun.

[daPonte]

Well, PetroHead, I'm no new music specialist and my recommendations won't be "obscure," but the most complex music I've really made an effort to appreciate is that of Elliot Carter. And, it's been well worth it.

[PetroHead]

Thanks guys but like I mentioned I already know most of the mainstream composers -  Schoenberg, Webern, Berg, Carter, Xenakis, Boulez, Berio, Nono, Maderna, Stockhausen, Lutoslawski, Messiaen, Dutilleux, Ives, Wuorinen, Ligeti, Penderecki etc.

I'm looking for less well known avantgarde composers and no minimalists please.

[Bonehelm]

Thanks guys but like I mentioned I already know most of the mainstream composers -  Schoenberg, Webern, Berg, Carter, Xenakis, Boulez, Berio, Nono, Maderna, Stockhausen, Lutoslawski, Messiaen, Dutilleux, Ives, Wuorinen, Ligeti, Penderecki etc.

I'm looking for less well known avantgarde composers and no minimalists please.

Hindemith? Gideon? Unruh? Varesae? Ornstein? Ruggles? Rudhyar? Shapey, Les six? There are tons of 'em...

[johnQpublic]

I'm solely interested in modern works, post 1900 that is.   .......  I know almost all of the mainstream composers/styles - serialism, spectralism, new complexity, atonalists, polystylists , post modernists etc. I'm specifically looking for more obscure recommendations and composers who are way out there!

Do you guys even read?

My current favs are Lachenmann, Rihm, Dusapin, Knussen, Aho, Saariaho, Lindberg, Ruders, Norgard, Tuur, L. Andriessen, MacMillan

If you're looking for even more obscure than that you need our poster "UB", but he's not around much these days.

[PetroHead]

Yes now we are moving.

So far I have been able to gather - Gideon, Unruh, Rudhyar, Aho and Tuur. I have heard all the rest of them.
It seems I'll have to hunt down UB.

[pjme]

Check the following websites :

DONEMUS  : Donemus is a dynamic organisation devoted to contemporary Dutch music. With our publications and information we promote works by Dutch composers worldwide.

http://www.donemus.nl/page.php?pagina=home&lang=EN

I think you may like the works of Peter Schat - a big box with his most important works is out now.

Info on Belgian (contemporary) composers can be found at

CEBEDEM :http://www.cebedem.be/ ( very general info) .Karel Goeyvaerts, Luc Brewaeys, Pierre Bartholomée, Henri Pousseur and Lucien Goethals are names to check out.
See also : http://www.muziekcentrum.be/english/index.asp

As in most other European countries, contemporary music has many & diverse faces.

In France neo-tonalists such as Nicholas Bacri, Philippe Hersant , Guillaume Connesson and Thierry Escaich write interesting music . Jean louis Florentz,who died far too young, is another composer well worth investigating and so is Olivier Greif .

What i heard of the music by Edith Canat - de Chizy ( http://www.edithcanatdechizy.com/eng_index2.php) was quite impressive : complex yet refined.

This is particularly striking in the string work Siloel (1992) and even more so in the irresistibly appealing violin concerto Exultet (1995). The latter –a piece inspired by the Easter night- spreads out in a quivering dream and smoothly multiplies variations of light thanks to a composition in which all the elements are closely combined. Laurent Korcia brings an uncanny light to this musical adventure which appears to be made of multifarious ignes fatui... »

Pierre Gervasoni - Le Monde

november, 30th 2000

[Al Moritz]

Hans-Peter Kyburz
Beat Furrer.

[The Mad Hatter]

You could try Ian Wilson or Gerald Barry. Just putting a little in from the Irish side (though I have very little time for Barry, personally...)

Particularly Barry's first Piano Quartet and Wilson's first String Quartet might be worth checking out.

[UB]

JQP - How have you been?  That is a good list - some are more complex than others.  Al has also added a couple of interesting composers. Do guys realize we have been doing this Classical Music board thing for about 9 years now.

Petrohead - for those who would like to hear a lot of very contemporary music - much of it never recorded and never will be - I always suggest they dig around in the archives at Dutch station. They have years of 2 1/2 hour broadcast with many of world premieres as well as new music by younger composers. The streams are very good - 96+ kbps. The only maddening thing about them is they cut them into 58 minute pieces so you have to splice some of the works together. But if you are patient you can hear some very excellent music that you will never hear in a concert hall.

[lukeottevanger]

It's always interesting to see complexity where you didn't suspect it - I could cite you Ferneyhoughs, Dillons, Barretts, Denches, Finnissies, Erbers, Powells, Zimmermanns (literally a purality of the latter!)etc till the cows come home, but you're probably aware of them. However, there are some unexpected composers from nearly a century ago who at times anticipate certain features of complexity music, rhythmically speaking. Some of the organ music of Jehan Alain, for instance, incorporates pretty heavy duty tupletizing; Ornstein's Violin Sonata is very much ahead of its time in this and other respects too. More obvious names like Sorabji and Scriabin also need to be remembered. I'll think on about it, because there are a fair few names which ought to be mentioned, and I don't have time now.

To put it into context, though, I'd ugre you to take one giant leap out of the 20th century and back to Matteo de Perugia; have a squiz at my little pet piece of his, Le Greygnour Bien, to see how certain aspects of complexity were afloat even then

[lukeottevanger]

Don't forget, too, non 'complexity' composers who have their complexity moments - obvious examples being, for instance, Messiaen's famous birdsong movement in Chronochromie (the Epode, I think); the odd page of The Rite where the ostinati really pile up; pages and pages if Ives, etc. etc.

[not edward]

Don't forget, too, non 'complexity' composers who have their complexity moments - obvious examples being, for instance, Messiaen's famous birdsong movement in Chronochromie (the Epode, I think); the odd page of The Rite where the ostinati really pile up; pages and pages if Ives, etc. etc.

Yep, the Epode it is.

While we're talking Zimmermenschen, Walter Zimmermann's Wustenwanderung is another good example of the complexity piling up in a non-complex composer's work.

Most of the best examples seem to have been mentioned already, so I'll just throw in a recommendation for Frank Corcoran's symphonies on Marco Polo: craggy, thorny works entirely unlike what you might expect from a student of Boris Blacher.

[Kullervo]

Or how about Jean Barraqué, my favorite serialist?

[lukeottevanger]

Yep, the Epode it is.

While we're talking Zimmermenschen, Walter Zimmermann's Wustenwanderung is another good example of the complexity piling up in a non-complex composer's work.

That's the one I was thinking of 

[karlhenning]

Sonic pile-up! Dig it! 

[Scriptavolant]

Already know Giacinto Scelsi?

Maybe bhodges could make more conscious recommendations on this one.

[karlhenning]

Already know Giacinto Scelsi?

No, and dadgummit, I probably ought to . . . .

[bwv 1080]

I would second Luke's list of contemporary 'new complexity' British composers - Ferneyhough, Finnessey, Barrett et al

The Ian Pace CD Tracts contains a good sampling of solo piano music by these composers, particularly Richard Barrett's Tracts which the pianist said is perhaps the most difficult piece he knows of.

A couple old school serialists not mentioned were Wolpe and Babbitt