Late 20th Century, Contemporary: Major Composers

[CaramelJones]

Vasks is good.  As engaging as Ustvolskaya, Firsova, Denisov, Schnitkke, Part, Mansurian, Silvestrov from the Baltic/Soviet front.

Where are Stockhausen, Berio, Nono, Rihm, Lachenmann, Ferneyhough, Sciarrino (just to name a handful)?

To be honest - either with a select few who appreciate them, or in the bargain bucket CD clear out bins along with Feldman, Nyman, Glass' overstocked boxes of Glassworks; Harvey just above the shelves of THE Justin Bieber compilation albums and remixes, but not to be mistaken for the intriguing shelf with Ligeti, Xenakis, Dusapin, Koering, Lauba, Escaich and Durosoir. 

Rihm is way less sterile than some of the other atonal post-modernists.  Makes me think of Kalabis.

[petrarch]

Where are Stockhausen, Berio, Nono, Rihm, Lachenmann, Ferneyhough, Sciarrino (just to name a handful)?

To be honest - either with a select few who appreciate them, or in the bargain bucket CD clear out bins along with Feldman, Nyman, Glass' overstocked boxes of Glassworks; Harvey just above the shelves of THE Justin Bieber compilation albums and remixes, but not to be mistaken for the intriguing shelf with Ligeti, Xenakis, Dusapin, Koering, Lauba, Escaich and Durosoir. 

And to be brutally honest, how much of that "bargain" vs "intriguing" classification is your own projecting of tastes and preferences?

[CaramelJones]

And to be brutally honest, how much of that "bargain" vs "intriguing" classification is your own projecting of tastes and preferences?

99.9% of it.


Why? Did you really expect it to be any different on a forum? 

The same applies for your posts; preferences; taste, and justification for those tastes

[Guido]

Kurtag's Stele springs immediately to mind.

And get this disc -
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dutilleux-Lutoslawski-Concertos-Mstislav-Rostropovich/dp/B00006BCDE/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1280739818&sr=8-2-spell

Two of the finest works of two of the finest composers of the last 50 years. The recording is staggering too - beautiful detail, but also this Rostropovich at the absolute peak of his interpretive and technical powers in repertoire tailored to his playing... It really doesn't come much greater than this disc.

[Guido]

There is no question that Shostakovich was a great composer - Symphonies no.1,4,10 and 14 as well as the 6 concertos on their own are enough evidence of that. However, like his great compatriot Prokofiev  he was also very uneven, the pieces he had to compose in some sort of official measure for instance, and sometimes simply (?) because the works are just uninspired and hollow (Symphonies 2, 3, 7, 12). I thought this much was fairly self evident.

[Mirror Image]

My favorite post-WII composer is Carl Vine. I haven't heard that many composers in this era that make such meaningful and lyrical music. My friend Sid (a member of GMG here) said that Vine was like Australia's Britten. On the surface I can understand this comparison, but musically both composers couldn't be more different. Anyway, I've been raving about Vine all week and with good reason he's fantastic.

[Henk]

Cage
Stravinsky
Varese
Ligeti
Lutoslawski
Sciarrino
Donatoni
Birtwistle
Andriessen
Takemitsu
De Raaff
Padding

[some guy]

Henk's baker's dozen is packed with good food, so I'm especially interested in the two loaves I know nothing about, De Raaff and Padding.

I'm also interested in the continuing bias towards acoustic music. It's as if the tape recorder were never invented, as if the synthesizer and the computer had never happened. Am I really the only one here that finds that peculiar? Electroacoustic music is over sixty years old. That's older than the so-called "classical" era ever got to be, or at least as old. And so much delightful music, too.

So here's another list from me, drawn entirely from the world of electroacoustics. I have left off Stockhausen and Cage and Berio and Ligeti and Xenakis and Varese who are known, but known mainly for their instrumental music. Some of these following folks also wrote a lot of instrumental music, but that's not where their main focus was.

Luc Ferrari. I have long pondered the mystery of Luc Ferrari, surely a major composer by any standard, but consistently flying under the radar in the US at least, and for a long time never mentioned in any text book (at least in any of the ones I ever saw). It was gratifying to go over to Europe in 2005 and find that he's held in the highest esteem by the people there who do know about tape recorders and laptops.

Francis Dhomont. The grandfather and father of two generations of acousmaticians, if that even is a word. I made it from acousma, which is the brand of electroacoustics Dhomont and his "progeny" favor. This has to do with manipulating the source sounds one uses, mainly to the extent that they're not recognizable, so is the polar opposite of soundscape, which does hardly anything to the source sounds. Barry Truax and Annea Lockwood are two of the many. Luc Ferrari's Presque Rien was the first of this branch.

Otomo Yoshihide. A monster. Yoshihide has done practically everything imaginable with electricity. Not always the first with the best; almost always the best, though. He is one of the many people, too, who have come into "classical" from other traditions. Indeed, he and his colleagues have been instrumental (as it were!!) in calling into question such terms as "classical," "jazz," and "rock." (Think John Zorn, Nurse With Wound, Dr. Nerve, and Peter Brötzmann for starters.)

Christian Marclay. Turntables, baby! Christian wanted to play in a band with his buddies, but he'd never learned to play guitar, so he held a turntable like a guitar and played that instead. He's doing other things now, but what he started is still going strong. Otomo Yoshihide (remember him?), Martin Tetreault, Busratch, Philip Jeck, and the great eRikm (who has kept Luc Ferrari recordings coming out, too).

Otherwise, Yasunao Tone is to the CD player what Christian Marclay is to the turntable. In a way. And Francisco Meirino has an entire album made up of failing systems, minidisc players, cassette recorders, P.A. systems and more. What fun!

Well, that's all for starters. Here's a list for further listening. Final's in December. Essay questions and listening test.

Denis Smalley
Beatriz Ferreyra
Natasha Barrett
Robert Normandeau
Michèle Bokanowski
Ludger Brümmer
Eliane Radigue
Åke Parmerud
Gilles Gobeil
Keith Rowe

[Henk]

Thanks for this informative and nicely written post, some guy. Going to add some records from these artists and this genre to my listening repertoire.

I know two dutch composers of electro-acoustic music: Jan Boerman and Roderick de Man. I think they are quite interesting composers.

Henk

[some guy]

Jan Boerman and Roderick de Man.

Jan is a superb composer. I bought his and Dick Raaijmakers' multidisc sets back in the day, sound unheard, too! (That was right before the internet and all these useful clips online.) Two of my more successful gambles!

I know I have at least two of de Man's pieces on compilation discs (Cultures électroniques). I should go give those another listen right now, just because I can.

[just Jeff]

I thought by the Thread Tile that you were looking for:

Sciarrino
Lachenmann
Rihm
Harvey
Dillon
Cerha
Mache
Aperghis
Dusapin
Ferneyhough
Kurtag
Holliger
Marco
Halffter
De Pablo
Ruzicka
Estrada
Hosokawa
Saariaho
Lindberg
Gubaidulina
Platz
Norgard
Furrer

...and so on. The High Modernists, so to speak? (I only showed the living composers)

... and, of course, Boulez and Carter...

I was looking for any mention of Mache round these parts, it is the Francois-Bernard Mache, composer of this CD you are referring' right?  Very obscure on my sights but I am looking for that guiding light.  Not one ofter person (in this thread) seemed to know of this composter.