21st century classical music

[San Antone]

Joey Roukens

Joey Roukens was born in Schiedam, the Netherlands, in 1982. He studied composition with Klaas de Vries at the Rotterdam Conservatory and psychology at Leiden University. Roukens also studied piano privately with Ton Hartsuiker. His works have been performed by major ensembles and soloists in the Netherlands and abroad, such as the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra, ASKO|Schönberg, Britten Sinfonia, Tokyo Sinfonietta, the Nieuw Ensemble, the Rubens Quartet, the Storioni Trio, the Aurelia Saxophone Quartet, Lavinia Meijer, Ralph van Raat and Colin Currie.

I came across Joey Roukens via a CD by the young dutch Rubens String Quartet which included his (first?) string quartet "Earnest and Game" which I liked. His (second?) string quartet "Visions at sea" is to be seen and heard in full length (17 min) on youtube and I like this piece even more. The composer is listening to this performance (left person in the background).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1G5xTbDvDU&list=PLMrFxVyeT8zQuWdWJGIQSqj1uKXlgOhls

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Very nice.  Thanks.

[Rinaldo]

Anyone familiar with Galina Grigorjeva? I just listened to Molitva ('Prayer') and were deeply moved by this beautiful piece.

https://www.youtube.com/v/6w66Ugn2ODM

[San Antone]

Anyone familiar with Galina Grigorjeva? I just listened to Molitva ('Prayer') and were deeply moved by this beautiful piece.

https://www.youtube.com/v/6w66Ugn2ODM

I agree.  There is some information about her on the Estonian Music Information Centre website.

[Sean]

Hi some guy

... people who do not enjoy it probably won't have useful or interesting opinions about it. Probably what they'll express is only their distaste, nothing about the music itself at all. Sean seems convinced that he's talking about the music itself. What he's actually expressing are only his opinions about the music.

Pal, aesthetic experience isn't relative or a matter of opinion. If it was it wouldn't be aesthetic. The aesthetic is universal for all sentient beings with the appropriate sensitivity- which includes me as it happens.

And I'm happy to advise that 21st century music is mostly if not entirely garbage.

...the very worn and tattered term we still use to describe the music we fancy could do with a spot of retirement.

Yes indeed, I also disagree with the use of the word classical instead of art music. It persists out of fear- many people out there want to see fine things misrepresented that are beyond them or they don't understand.

Needless to say, 1750-1820 styles aren't the criterion for judging music- it' aesthetic content or artistic quality.

Presently listening to York Holler's Second piano sonata and Partita for two pianos, intellectualism and cluelessness from another idiotic academic overseeing the demise of our civilization's greatest achievement, though they have just enough reminiscence of past genuine music to keep me interested for my usual five listenings.

[Karl Henning]

Pal, aesthetic experience isn't relative or a matter of opinion. If it was it wouldn't be aesthetic. The aesthetic is universal for all sentient beings with the appropriate sensitivity- which includes me as it happens.

And I'm happy to advise that 21st century music is mostly if not entirely garbage.

I love to laugh. And Sean asserting that his tone-deafness is Universal Artistic Truth is as laughable as it gets.

[Sean]

I know, he knows, and all those who know know.

This thread and the lunatic academic establishment might not know, but everyone else is laughing; chickens in barnyards in mud villages around the world are laughing.

[San Antone]

Phill Niblock turns 82 today. 



Happy Birthday Phill

Phill Niblock is a New York-based minimalist composer and multi-media musician and director of Experimental Intermedia, a foundation born in the flames of 1968's barricade-hopping. He has been a maverick presence on the fringes of the avant garde ever since. In the history books Niblock is the forgotten Minimalist. That's as maybe: no one ever said the history books were infallible anyway.

Bio, news and audio clips can be found here.

[jochanaan]

I love to laugh. And Sean asserting that his tone-deafness is Universal Artistic Truth is as laughable as it gets.

Well, yes, but there are serious criticisms to be made for such a viewpoint, and I'm about to make one:

Hi some guy

Pal, aesthetic experience isn't relative or a matter of opinion. If it was it wouldn't be aesthetic. The aesthetic is universal for all sentient beings with the appropriate sensitivity- which includes me as it happens.

And I'm happy to advise that 21st century music is mostly if not entirely garbage.

Yes indeed, I also disagree with the use of the word classical instead of art music. It persists out of fear- many people out there want to see fine things misrepresented that are beyond them or they don't understand.

Needless to say, 1750-1820 styles aren't the criterion for judging music- it' aesthetic content or artistic quality.

Presently listening to York Holler's Second piano sonata and Partita for two pianos, intellectualism and cluelessness from another idiotic academic overseeing the demise of our civilization's greatest achievement, though they have just enough reminiscence of past genuine music to keep me interested for my usual five listenings.

My serious criticism is this: There are people, such as myself and the estimable Karl Henning, who genuinely enjoy such music.  Some of us have spent many years appreciating it, but I enjoyed it before I began my college-level musical studies; I was not conditioned to enjoy it.  What makes your dislike of it any more valid than my love of it?

[San Antone]

Jacob Gotlib : experimental chamber and electronic music



Jacob Gotlib was born and raised in Louisville, KY, and has written music for instruments, electronics, dance, and multimedia.

Bio and audio clips here.

[some guy]

jochanaan, that's just it. Our positive and informed experiences count for nothing against Sean's "aesthetic experience" which is universal--for everyone with the "appropriate sensitivity," that is, which you and I and Karl and some others obviously do not have. It's clear that we don't, because we appreciate things that Sean finds unworthy. Because we appreciate worthless things, our appreciation is as much a delusion as the people's appreciation of the emperor's non-existent clothing.

Oh well.

sanantonio, hey! I know that guy. Met him at a Kansas City do. The EMM festival of 2000 and something. That was some very fun times, I must say. I think the EMM site still has my congratulatory remark up on their first page. (Yep. Right there in a big old banner at the top of the page. ) Well, it's only the truth. Anyway, Jacob's a good guy and does some really fine non-existent music that's worthless which I appreciate very much because my sensitivity to music is innappropriate.

Hey, it could happen....

[Sean]

jochanaan, by the look of your photo you went to college well before the 21st century. And you've been posting here for at least a dozen years... But let's skip the objectivity-subjectivity debate for now, we've been round that bush enough times.

some guy, I also appreciate your argument. You just happen to be wrong and I'm right.

Just how much do you get from the core repertory and its interpretations? It sounds rather like it doesn't mean much to you. You've never had your soul touched by it so, sure thing, post-tonality is just as good as tonality- because it's all equally meaningless surface sound.

But it isn't for everyone.

Best wishes.

[Rinaldo]

You just happen to be wrong and I'm right.

Let's make GMG great again! Vote Sean 2016.

[some guy]

some guy, I also appreciate your argument. You just happen to be wrong and I'm right.

You have revealed the essential vacuity of your position many times before. You needn't keep doing it.

Just how much do you get from the core repertory and its interpretations? It sounds rather like it doesn't mean much to you. You've never had your soul touched by it so, sure thing, post-tonality is just as good as tonality- because it's all equally meaningless surface sound.

What in anything I have ever said anywhere could you have possibly gotten the idea that the core repertory means little to me? How by all that's holy on the basis of no evidence at all (shades of naked emperors, anyone?) could you possibly assert that my soul has never been touched by it?

All of this, all of it--even the part about how I view music as "all equally meaningless surface sound"--is a fabrication of yours, spun out of thin air, with no connection at any point with reality.

It is no wonder that we disagree so fundamentally.

And, even though it's impertinent, I'm going to go ahead and validate your fantasies by telling you a few home truths.

I have been listening to classical music since around 1960, when I received a box of 78s of mostly core classical repertory. I fell in love with that stuff instantly and have remained in love with it for the 55 years or so I've been a listener. Vivaldi, Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Bizet, Grieg, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff. Prokofiev. That's what I started with, and I still listen to it, with pleasure, all the time. Within ten years, I had added all the names that you have doubtless missed from that starting list. That's how much I enjoyed it. In 1972, I had another astonishing experience, probably even more important than the box of 78s. Certainly as important. That's when I discovered twentieth century music, as such. (I knew a lot of it already, as it turns out, but not as part of a category.) That hearing--it was Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra--was going to lead me into the whole wild and wonderful world of that amazing century, Stravinsky, Carter, electroacoustic music generally, Varese, Janacek, Nielsen, Xenakis, Mumma, Cage, Stockhausen, Berio, Oliveros, Shields, Smiley. By 1984, I was listening to music written in 1984. I have kept current ever since.

I still listen to Vivaldi, too. Some of my more recent purchases have been of Vivaldi's operas and of Monteverdi's madrigals. And some performances of Bach that were new to me.

So what, now, do have left to say for yourself? I'm guessing something along the lines of the Black Knight in Monty Python's The Holy Grail, but I have to confess to holding on to a tiny spark of hope that you start to question your certitude as well as your rectitude.

[Sean]

Okay! Maybe it was me who's wrong and you're right. Seriously, I can sometimes speak out of turn.

Actually I've no idea about what you listen to or what it means to you, and I guess I was being a little inflammatory.

This quote from you below makes really marvellous reading and it's heartening to see that you're such a serious listener- you also have about 22 years experience beyond me.

As a closing remark however, you understand that there is a wealth of interpretive possibility for the great works of the repertory- we can hear and understand what performances do with the music and have extraordinary aesthetic experiences. It's amazing.

But we cannot do this with post-tonal music to anywhere near the same extent, if at all. This recording or that recording of Carter or Saariaho or Lachenman or Holler? Who cares? There is no significant convergence of the structural conception with human psychological experience and we just hear contrivance in emptied out tonal terms, the only terms our ears have.

By the way your user name makes you sound like you're a 25 year-old dummy...

Thanks again for this, most interesting-

I have been listening to classical music since around 1960, when I received a box of 78s of mostly core classical repertory. I fell in love with that stuff instantly and have remained in love with it for the 55 years or so I've been a listener. Vivaldi, Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Bizet, Grieg, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff. Prokofiev. That's what I started with, and I still listen to it, with pleasure, all the time. Within ten years, I had added all the names that you have doubtless missed from that starting list. That's how much I enjoyed it. In 1972, I had another astonishing experience, probably even more important than the box of 78s. Certainly as important. That's when I discovered twentieth century music, as such. (I knew a lot of it already, as it turns out, but not as part of a category.) That hearing--it was Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra--was going to lead me into the whole wild and wonderful world of that amazing century, Stravinsky, Carter, electroacoustic music generally, Varese, Janacek, Nielsen, Xenakis, Mumma, Cage, Stockhausen, Berio, Oliveros, Shields, Smiley. By 1984, I was listening to music written in 1984. I have kept current ever since....I still listen to Vivaldi, too. Some of my more recent purchases have been of Vivaldi's operas and of Monteverdi's madrigals. And some performances of Bach that were new to me.

[Karl Henning]

You have revealed the essential vacuity of your position many times before. You needn't keep doing it.

He needn't, but it's often good for a cheap laugh when he does.

You hardly stick your head any deeper in the sand than with, I'm not going to address your objections, nor justify my contrary position, because -- and this is the cruncher -- it just so happens that I'm right, and you're wrong!

[TheGSMoeller]

A new disc that just arrived today, I discovered Marshall's music on Spotify, Fog Tropes to be exact. Adam Shatz is quoted on Marshall's website saying..
"Like the films of Andrei Tarkovsky, much of the music here has a quality of timeless lament, of inconsolable sorrow. Tenderly human in expression yet superhuman in scale, it seems to contemplate our condition from a very great height."
The disc I posted below features works written in the 1980s, but Marshall has works published as recent as 2014. I'm anxious to explore more from this composer.

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

[Mr. Three Putt]

Lately I've been getting a lot of enjoyment from Osvaldo Golijov. I had the benefit of seeing Last Round live last year and it piqued my interest in his music. I guess there's benefit from programming horrible 21st century music with sacred cows. Hardly a year later and I own 5 CDs of his. I'm well on my way to being a full time degenerate.

[Karl Henning]

Lately I've been getting a lot of enjoyment from Osvaldo Golijov.

The good thing there is, chances are excellent that you are enjoying some other composer's work, as well!  Or even, instead!

[Cato]

The good thing there is, chances are excellent that you are enjoying some other composer's work, as well!  Or even, instead!

e.g. http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-golijov-issue-borrowed-music-or-stolen

An excerpt:

In interviews and program notes, Golijov has acknowledged that the principal melody of "Sidereus" came from the composer-accordionist Michael Ward-Bergeman. The composer-critic Tom Manoff, writing on his blog after the Eugene concert, contended that Golijov used rather more than the melody itself—that something like half of "Sidereus" emanates from the trumpet-and-ensemble version of Ward-Bergeman's piece "Barbeich," which Manoff knew from having remastered a recording of it in his studio. ... I have heard neither work in performance, but I've looked at the scores side by side (the Golijov can be seen on the Boosey & Hawkes Web site), and the overlap is indeed extensive. For example, the sixteen-bar passage that the trumpet plays starting at bar 65 of "Barbeich" is duplicated in almost every detail in the piccolo trumpet and trumpet parts starting at bar 166 of "Sidereus," with various doublings elsewhere in the orchestra. To put it bluntly, "Sidereus" is "Barbeich" with additional material attached.

[San Antone]

e.g. http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-golijov-issue-borrowed-music-or-stolen

An excerpt:

Your selective quoting gives an incorrect impression, as can be seen from the next paragraph from the same article:

As it turns out, Ward-Bergeman knew what was happening. In a subsequent e-mail to Bob Keefer, he wrote, "Osvaldo and I came to an agreement regarding the use of 'Barbeich' for 'Sidereus.' The terms were clearly understood, and we were both happy to agree. Osvaldo and I have been friends and collaborators for years. I don't have anything else to say about the matter."

That said, I don't purport to have all the facts concerning Golijov and the accusations that he borrows excessively.