Poll: How old is the youngest composer you regularly listen to?

[gomro]

I listen to a lot of, if not young, at least still breathing composers:

Jennifer Higdon (1962): just gave her swell Concerto for Orchestra a spin during my commute to work today, in fact. Hallelujah for the MP3 player.
Takashi Yoshimatsu (1953)
Eric Ewazen (1954)
Lorenzo Ferrero (1951)
Richard Danielpour (1956): spun his First Light before the Higdon. It's a lengthy commute.
Kenneth Fuchs (another 1956)
Samuel Jones (1935! Oof! Had no idea he was that old. His Roundings is a gem, in a sort of neo-Coplandish way)
Paul Moravec (1957) I really like his Time Gallery; Naxos has released another disc of his music, which I need to get sometime soon.
Stephen Dankner (1944! Surprised me. This is a guy whose response to the twentieth/twenty-first century's musical innovations is to pretend they don't exist; the music on his disc Hurricane! is some of the best Richard Strauss that Richard Strauss never wrote.)


basically, I subscribe to the Stockhausen Theory of Musical Proportion, which he stated in a 1985 article printed in Perspectives of New Music: "...the proportion should even be 75% new music and 25% old music."

[op.110]

the keyword is regularly; and no one but the immortalized greats are worth listening to "regularly"

except John Williams  (I didn't know he went to Juilliard and studied with Rosina Lhevinne until about five minutes ago).

[Mozart]

Mozart (1756)

[Greta]

Wow, I didn't realize Ades was so young! Anyone have any good Ades and Turnage recommendations?

[Wendell_E]

The youngest is Adès (b.1971)

Me, too.

[Guido]

I haven't heard a note by Ades. Where should I start? Apparently he got a double starred first from Cambridge!

[Sergeant Rock]

Alla Pavlova is 54 or 55 (I don't know her birthday but she was born in 1952).

Sarge

[lukeottevanger]

I haven't heard a note by Ades. Where should I start? Apparently he got a double starred first from Cambridge!

Yes, a Kingsman a few years before me (of my list of young composers above Benjamin and Weir were also at Kings). There's a lot of wonderful Ades, but my own favourite is possible the Sonata da Caccia (oboe, horn, harpsichord) inspired by Couperin, who is one of his favourite composers (as he says, he'd be happy to be locked up all day with a harpsichord and the scores to Couperin's Ordres, and I know what he means).

On the same Couperin theme, the discs whose headline work is 'America - A Prophecy' also contains Ades' rescoring of Couperin's Barricades, bringing out various hidden lines within it, is a real delight. I find this one intruiging, since I assume Ades had essentially the same lecturers and lectures as me, and an analysis of the orginal Couperin piece was the subject of the very first lecture I ever had (W Dean Sutcliffe gave it); I assume Ades' piece, which is almost an aural reconstruction of that analysis, may partly have been inspired by that lecture. I may be wrong. (There's also a re-scoring of the Madness song Cardiac Arrest on that same disc, which you may like!)

Others of Ades pieces which I particularly enjoy are the string quartet Arcadiana (you'll like that one too, I think) the chamber orchestra piece Living Toys (with its incredible horn lines); you might like The Origin of the Harp too, with its three trios of clarinets, violins and celli (plus percussion); and among more recent pieces his Piano Quintet is a real gem, concise, clear-cut and yet dazzlingly complex. But there isn't a weak piece among them - always inventive, always finding new ways to work with tradition.

[Sergeant Rock]

On the same Couperin theme, the discs whose headline work is 'America - A Prophecy' also contains Ades' rescoring of Couperin's Barricades, bringing out various hidden lines within it, is a real delight. I find this one intruiging, since I assume Ades had essentially the same lecturers and lectures as me, and an analysis of the orginal Couperin piece was the subject of the very first lecture I ever had (W Dean Sutcliffe gave it); I assume Ades' piece, which is almost an aural reconstruction of that analysis, may partly have been inspired by that lecture. I may be wrong. (There's also a re-scoring of the Madness song Cardiac Arrest on that same disc, which you may like!)

The music sounds fascinating. I just ordered the CD (6.99 Euro at JPC).

Sarge

[Harry Collier]

Youngest composer I listen to often is probably Schubert. Though Purcell and Mozart are runners-up.

[Florestan]

Youngest composer I listen to often is probably Schubert. Though Purcell and Mozart are runners-up.

Ah, well, if you interpret the question that way, then for me it's Arriaga.

[lukeottevanger]

And for me, Julian Scriabin!  (well, perhaps often is stretching it...)

[Florestan]

And for me, Julian Scriabin!  (well, perhaps often is stretching it...)

Are you saying that his works have been recorded? 

[lukeottevanger]

There are some tiny Preludes as a filler on one of the Naxos Scriabin Preludes discs. Absolutely incredible for a boy of that age (clearly and unavoidably influenced by pops)

[Florestan]

There are some tiny Preludes as a filler on one of the Naxos Scriabin Preludes discs. Absolutely incredible for a boy of that age (clearly and unavoidably influenced by pops)

Kind of Wolferl and Leopold?

[lukeottevanger]

Who knows what could have been...  

[bhodges]

Others of Ades pieces which I particularly enjoy are the string quartet Arcadiana (you'll like that one too, I think) the chamber orchestra piece Living Toys (with its incredible horn lines); you might like The Origin of the Harp too, with its three trios of clarinets, violins and celli (plus percussion); and among more recent pieces his Piano Quintet is a real gem, concise, clear-cut and yet dazzlingly complex. But there isn't a weak piece among them - always inventive, always finding new ways to work with tradition.

Yes, yes, yes, to all of these (great list, Luke).  I want to add Asyla, which is on a DVD with Rattle and Berlin as the opener to the Mahler Fifth.  (I may even like the performance of Asyla better than the Mahler.)  Rattle and Berlin did it at Carnegie recently and it was a lot of fun; I don't recall ever hearing the Berlin Philharmonic tackle a piece like this, and they did it beautifully. 



--Bruce

[Florestan]

Who knows what could have been...  

But AFAIK, Scriabin was gay. Until today I never knew he had a son.

[lukeottevanger]

I wouldn't know about the former, but I suppose the two aren't mutually exclusive.

[Florestan]

I wouldn't know about the former, but I suppose the two aren't mutually exclusive.

They aren't. I know of other similar cases, too.