21st century classical music

[Crudblud]

Here is the antidote!

Karl Henning's Out in the Sun

See now, this is what I would think of as "post-minimalist", based on other music I have heard referred to as such. I think this has more of a hard edge though, owing to the Stravinsky jazz vibe.

[amw]

I feel like I've been hearing many pieces exactly like this whenever I look up 21st century orchestral stuff on YouTube. Has this "swimmy" aesthetic been in fashion for several decades now or do I just have a tin ear for what's new?

Out of curiosity, could you & jessop elaborate on what you'd consider the key elements of the "swimmy" aesthetic? Because I think I know what you mean, or at least I felt similarly about the piece, but wouldn't necessarily know how to put it into words.

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

Out of curiosity, could you & jessop elaborate on what you'd consider the key elements of the "swimmy" aesthetic? Because I think I know what you mean, or at least I felt similarly about the piece, but wouldn't necessarily know how to put it into words.

It is incredibly difficult to really describe sound I think..........

Although the 'duller than Lutosławski' comparison seems to make sense somehow. I guess the only thing we can do is listen and compare a bunch of recently composed orchestral music.

To me, a common thing to do in orchestral music is explore a bunch of rather typical sounds on a single note or chord with a few gestures heard in a background layer of the overall texture. The cases in which I really enjoy this kind of orchestration often have an underlying consistency or some kind of internal logic that is set up and then broken in various ways thematically (or even timbrally).

One piece I like which sets up and then breaks patterns is Scales by Christophe Bertrand.

https://www.youtube.com/v/OLLamxVwAT0

Sure, nothing really much happens in it, but it takes an idea and plays around with it in a way which is quite satisfying. Not really filled with anything out of the ordinary when it comes to orchestration techniques, but the material itself is rather focussed and the music has 'direction'. That's how I hear it, at least.

[Cato]

To me, a common thing to do in orchestral music is explore a bunch of rather typical sounds on a single note or chord with a few gestures heard in a background layer of the overall texture. The cases in which I really enjoy this kind of orchestration often have an underlying consistency or some kind of internal logic that is set up and then broken in various ways thematically (or even timbrally).

The ancestor of those ideas would seem to be in Schoenberg's Five Pieces for Orchestra. 

The example of Scales by Bertrand might be more effective if it lasted ten minutes rather than twenty.  It has its moments: at times one is reminded of the Scherzo of Prokofiev's Third Symphony, based on music from The Fiery Angel opera.

Excellent music for a documentary on e.g. warring bee colonies!   On the other hand, let me listen to it again: maybe twenty minutes is what the composer really needs!

[Cato]

The ancestor of those ideas would seem to be in Schoenberg's Five Pieces for Orchestra. 

The example of Scales by Bertrand might be more effective if it lasted ten minutes rather than twenty.  It has its moments: at times one is reminded of the Scherzo of Prokofiev's Third Symphony, based on music from The Fiery Angel opera.

Excellent music for a documentary on e.g. warring bee colonies!   On the other hand, let me listen to it again: maybe twenty minutes is what the composer really needs!

On a similar mission...

https://www.youtube.com/v/mrI39Nf7cj4

[San Antone]

On a similar mission...

https://www.youtube.com/v/mrI39Nf7cj4

I listened to that work yesterday and found it utterly worthless.

[You did it]

I haven't heard that piece yet but a title like that (without a really convincingly witty justification) makes me wince 

[some guy]

I listened to that work yesterday and found it utterly worthless.

I read this sentence just now and found it utterly and et cetera.

Truly San Ant, you are better than this. More details or simply silence on the matter. Truly, declaiming "utterly worthless" is not as valuable nor as convincing as some details about what you heard and why you came to this conclusion. Even more truly, declaiming "utterly worthless" is not as valuable as saying nothing at all about it.

[North Star]

I haven't heard that piece yet but a title like that (without a really convincingly witty justification) makes me wince 

Well, there is justification for writing the title. However, I'm not sure that there is justification for writing the piece.  0:)

[Crudblud]

I think Many, Many Cadences is fun, but in those rhythms and glissandi I can't hear anything but a certain strand of Ligeti's work. Not in itself a bad thing necessarily, but if I want Ligeti I'll go and look up Ligeti, show me somethin' else, Macklay!

[San Antone]

I think Many, Many Cadences is fun, but in those rhythms and glissandi I can't hear anything but a certain strand of Ligeti's work. Not in itself a bad thing necessarily, but if I want Ligeti I'll go and look up Ligeti, show me somethin' else, Macklay!

My impression was that it was a gimmicky.  I try to listen to as much new music as I can, but won't spend time on something like that work.

I am a little disappointed that no one commented on the other works by Ammann I posted, since you and Jessup were fairly critical of his orchestral work.  I wouldn't write him off, he has good ideas and the work for flute and clarinet is especially charming, or to use your word, fun. 

[Crudblud]

I am a little disappointed that no one commented on the other works by Ammann I posted, since you and Jessup were fairly critical of his orchestral work.  I wouldn't write him off, he has good ideas and the work for flute and clarinet is especially charming, or to use your word, fun.

Sorry, missed 'em earlier. What I'm getting from the string quartet is that same feeling of one thing after the other. Taken from one moment to the next it's often interesting, but taken as a whole it just seems like a bunch of moments that could have gone in any order. I don't think Ammann is a bad composer by any stretch, but these do not strike me as complete pieces, more like sketches joined end on end. Cute appears to have more direction, and not just because they players are literally moving from one side of the stage to the other, but the use of recurring types of gesture throughout reinforces a sense of continuity. The players seem to be having fun with the music at least, so good for them, (speaking as a mediocre clarinet player I could feel hand cramps coming on from watching all that extended trilling) but it may be the case that Ammann is not for me.

[San Antone]

Sorry, missed 'em earlier. What I'm getting from the string quartet is that same feeling of one thing after the other. Taken from one moment to the next it's often interesting, but taken as a whole it just seems like a bunch of moments that could have gone in any order. I don't think Ammann is a bad composer by any stretch, but these do not strike me as complete pieces, more like sketches joined end on end. Cute appears to have more direction, and not just because they players are literally moving from one side of the stage to the other, but the use of recurring types of gesture throughout reinforces a sense of continuity. The players seem to be having fun with the music at least, so good for them, (speaking as a mediocre clarinet player I could feel hand cramps coming on from watching all that extended trilling) but it may be the case that Ammann is not for me.

I can understand your reaction to Ammann.  He can, along with many living composers, sometimes lapse into episodic writing.  When the musical language is non-tonal, gestures can become overly important and sometimes there is little sense of an organic architecture developing.  Of course, I don't know anything about Ammann other than the few works of his I've heard this week.  His philosophy might be exactly that, i.e. using gestural writing in a non-organic manner.

Nothing wrong wth that, and he just might not be for you.

[Monsieur Croche]

As Brümmer put it to me once, the problem with instruments is that they take over--an orchestral piece almost always sounds like "an orchestral piece." The brass are brassy, the flutes are flutey, the percussion is percussive, the strings are stringy. And the music, however interesting or different the composer may have wanted to be, slips into the old, familiar patterns because it's old, familiar instruments that are playing (being written for).

... each machine has certain things it does that over time come to be seen as normal, the natural things for that machine. ...a fairly prominent violinist once went off on how she and her classmates would laugh at Penderecki pieces when in uni because they were so "unviolinistic." I said "What constitutes 'unviolinistic'? If a violin can do it, it's violinistic."  Cowell's and later Cage's "unpianistic" adventures with pianos made one or two people deeply unhappy.

It takes a keen, imaginative mind and a willing performer to push the bounds of what is accepted as natural for each machine. I think we've been lucky at having so many of those two types of people. Still, they are undoubtedly outnumbered by the "this is what a trumpet does, the end" crowd.

This "what is best when writing for an instrument is also what is the most idiomatic to that instrument tenet" is usually what is first taught to those who are studying comp, orchestration, etc.  What an instrument does most readily is a good and very middle-of-the-road place to begin, just as a language is taught, one could walk away too soon and end up thinking all the verbs but three are regular ;-)

Instrumental writing, orchestration, like the music itself, depends entirely upon the composer; if they are inclined to be adventurous, and / or a colorist -- or not. 

One entirely valid argument for HIP performances on period instruments is wholly in this area:  Whatever the decibel level, a FF note in the uppermost register a virtuoso horn player can play on the natural horn is going to have a timbrel character of sounding strained, strife or striving toward, of being literally pushed to its farthest limit, and will have an accompanying tension and excitement to it that no contemporary homogeneous sounding valved French Horn could possibly reproduce.  I.e. when HIP and original instruments first got down to it, music that sounded 'easy,' or 'merely pretty' on modern instruments often revealed itself to be far more vital, edgy, the composer quite canny re: timbre and instrumental combinations, and the players found that music previously thought not difficult as played on modern instruments was at the utmost edge of demands made upon the virtuosity of the best of professional players of the original instruments.  Rameau is noted as one of the first to write with and for instrumental color, and he pushed limits of the instruments, the music very demanding to play, even for the virtuoso players of the day for whom he was writing.  Much old music was far more 'modern' than many can now imagine.

Writing against instrumental conventions is when a composer has to really know their sh_t!  Stravinsky routinely pushed instruments, especially the winds and brass families, to 'places they had never been before,' into ranges that were uncomfortable where intonation was less reliable for professional players, all for a particular quality of timbre. 

What you said re: "if a violin/violinist can play it" reminds me of a comment I read on matters sexual between people and what might be or is often called unnatural, which I now lay on the musical altar of Apollo.  (I wish I could but cannot remember the author, who well deserves credit for this.)

"The only unnatural act is one you cannot perform."


Best regards.

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

Using gestural writing in a non-organic manner sounds awfully close to 'moment form.............'

(which I believe has its place in history!)


((((it's a pretty awful form imo))))

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

This “what is best when writing for an instrument is also what is the most idiomatic to that instrument tenet” is usually what is first taught to those who are studying comp, orchestration, etc.  What an instrument does most readily is a good and very middle-of-the-road place to begin, just as a language is taught, one could walk away too soon and end up thinking all the verbs but three are regular ;-)

Instrumental writing, orchestration, like the music itself, depends entirely upon the composer; if they are inclined to be adventurous, and / or a colorist -- or not. 

One entirely valid argument for HIP performances on period instruments is wholly in this area:  Whatever the decibel level, a FF note in the uppermost register a virtuoso horn player can play on the natural horn is going to have a timbrel character of sounding strained, strife or striving toward, of being literally pushed to its farthest limit, and will have an accompanying tension and excitement to it that no contemporary homogeneous sounding valved French Horn could possibly reproduce.  I.e. when HIP and original instruments first got down to it, music that sounded ‘easy,’ or ‘merely pretty’ on modern instruments often revealed itself to be far more vital, edgy, the composer quite canny re: timbre and instrumental combinations, and the players found that music previously thought not difficult as played on modern instruments was at the utmost edge of demands made upon the virtuosity of the best of professional players of the original instruments.  Rameau is noted as one of the first to write with and for instrumental color, and he pushed limits of the instruments, the music very demanding to play, even for the virtuoso players of the day for whom he was writing.  Much old music was far more 'modern' than many can now imagine.

Writing against instrumental conventions is when a composer has to really know their sh_t!  Stravinsky routinely pushed instruments, especially the winds and brass families, to ‘places they had never been before,’ into ranges that were uncomfortable where intonation was less reliable for professional players, all for a particular quality of timbre. 

What you said re: “if a violin/violinist can play it” reminds me of a comment I read on matters sexual between people and what might be or is often called unnatural, which I now lay on the musical altar of Apollo.  (I wish I could but cannot remember the author, who well deserves credit for this.)

“The only unnatural act is one you cannot perform.”


Best regards.

Back to Rameau? But what about Monteverdi's Il Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda which had the players on strike for the 'experimental' nature of the string writing?

Brian Ferneyhough has some interesting points about composers' concern for sound and how it is produced on instruments, especially if it against instrumental conventions, why composers make these decisions and how to best go about them (basically, to really know how to actually make the sounds that one wishes to write):

https://www.youtube.com/v/JRWLhYNtjWg



But actually the Rameau is a good point anyway. Examples like these can be plucked from many places in western music history, that's the thing.

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

My impression was that it was a gimmicky.  I try to listen to as much new music as I can, but won't spend time on something like that work.

I am a little disappointed that no one commented on the other works by Ammann I posted, since you and Jessup were fairly critical of his orchestral work.  I wouldn't write him off, he has good ideas and the work for flute and clarinet is especially charming, or to use your word, fun. 

The real gimmick to the piece is the Roman numeral analysis at the bottom of the score............

But I am familiar with the piece and I think it's just a simple idea that makes for some pretty fun music.

I haven't listened to the other Ammann works yet, but I am sure the chamber music would be very interesting. I do like Glut by the way, even if it is on the episodic side, and even if it does share a lot of common ground with other orchestral works these days. I listened to it again yesterday. It is good and he obviously knows how to create some cool and good sounds with the orchestra. It just isn't awfully adventurous with the orchestration and the writing is sometimes just a bit too episodic for my taste.

[Monsieur Croche]

On a similar mission...

https://www.youtube.com/v/mrI39Nf7cj4

I stumbled over that cruising youtube a year or longer ago.  Seeing it made me remember exactly what it was, i.e. well-written, very academic while lampooning 'academic' theory 'rules,' blah blah. a piece playing one game or joke, which was funny (made me laugh, I got the joke), which is also patently obvious to about any listener within seconds.  It is short, and it works as a joke, and nothing else, but once.

[Cato]

I stumbled over that cruising youtube a year or longer ago.  Seeing it made me remember exactly what it was, i.e. well-written, very academic while lampooning 'academic' theory 'rules,' blah blah. a piece playing one game or joke, which was funny (made me laugh, I got the joke), which is also patently obvious to about any listener within seconds. It is short, and it works as a joke, and nothing else, but once.

Precisely!      The Bertrand Scales mentioned earlier could be similarly considered, but if so, the joke needs to be shortened.

[You did it]

Well, there is justification for writing the title. However, I'm not sure that there is justification for writing the piece.  0:)

Just listened to the piece now (Many, Many, Many, Many Cadences) and it reminded me of Nancarrow. I'm a huge Nancarrow fan, so those first three minutes where especially enjoyable.