The greatest art music since 1985...

[Sean]

jut1972 your link is banned over here in red China so I can only guess at how subversive and egregious it must be.

You lot have made a tidy mess of the topic but at least you sum up post-1985 music as one big joke.

[some guy]

Well, let's slow down a little and really think about what we're saying.

I've seen, to start with, many discussions of greatness, and after all the chaff has blown away, the little bit of wheat left over seems to be that greatness as an inherent quality is a troublesome concept. Mostly, people seem, grudgingly it's true, to admit that greatness is something conferred--by the best (!) minds, of course. That greatness is a consensus.

If that's so, then greatness takes a bit of time. (That's what really behind the silly phrase "the test of time." Not that time tests anything, but to get that consensus does take a little time. And whether one still wants to think that greatness is inherent, it still takes a bit of time for everyone to agree.)

Anyway, if greatness is consensus, which takes a bit of time to develop, then asking what the greatest anything of recent times is is to be at best a trifle disingenuous.

Time passes. Things change. Among them, perspective. What things look like up close, in the present, is quite different from what things look like after some time has passed. After people have done some looking and some listening and some reading. After certain things, by no means all bad, have passed away. After certain other things, by no means all good, have survived. To compare the present to the past, which is after all what "the greatest art music since 1985" implies, is to make a false comparison. Because of that perspective thing.

To claim that art is dead, that nothing (much) good has been done in recent years is to draw a false and a damaging conclusion from something quite simple and neutral--perspective. Of course recent art is going to look frightful or stupid or clumsy or scary or decadent next to the older stuff that we're familiar with. The stuff that's now comfortable. The stuff that no longer irritates, that no longer exemplifies decay and decline.

[DaveF]

Despite everything said so far, I'm totally in agreement with Sean's opinion - not explicitly stated, but clearly implied in his choice of cut-off date - that 1984 was quite a year, giving us Glass's Akhnaten, Birtwistle's Secret Theatre, Maxwell Davies's 3rd symphony (perhaps the greatest British symphony of all time) and Messiaen's Livre du Saint Sacrement.  And that's merely a small selection of the towering masterpieces composed in that terminal year, which also include Lutosławski's Chain 2, Berio's Un re in ascolto, Takemitsu's Riverrun, Hallgrímsson's Poemi and Qu Xiaosong's Mong Dong.  Well, if Western art music had to come to an end (as all good things must), what a way to sign off!

DF

[AnthonyAthletic]

Maxwell Davies's 3rd symphony (perhaps the greatest British symphony of all time)

That's a huge statement Dave    I don't know the work but just had to place it on order after such a hearty recommendation!  I like the quartets I've heard of P.M.D. so hoping this symphony will be a major find.  Should be here by the weekend. 

[The new erato]

That's a huge statement Dave    I don't know the work but just had to place it on order after such a hearty recommendation!  I like the quartets I've heard of P.M.D. so hoping this symphony will be a major find.  Should be here by the weekend. 

I was just going to ask about any recommended recording. Is it available on Naxos?

[AnthonyAthletic]

I was just going to ask about any recommended recording. Is it available on Naxos?

Yes, that's the one I've just ordered.

[asin]B0085AXUWW[/asin]
Mark Jordan, Rob Lea and the BBC Philharmonic.  Picked it up for £3.50 delivered.

[The new erato]

Will put that up for ordering as soon as I'm back from this summers vacation. Looking forward to comments on this board in the meantime.

[DaveF]

I didn't intend to turn this into a Max thread, but if either of you can get hold of the old Ted Downes recording of no.3, it is, IMHO, far superior, indifferent sound quality notwithstanding - just as the other non-Max-conducted symphony recording, Rattle's 1st, is better than the composer's.

[Gurn Blanston]

Gurn

Don't you laugh at me!!

Oops, sorry, Biggus....

[Gurn Blanston]

snyrrr & Sarge somehow dyn forgets how shocked the romantics were by Cosi and its moral corruption...

Not just Cosi, but even more Don Giovanni. I absolutely love that concept, that those silly bastards of the 19th century (including Beethoven, who was pretty silly in anything that involved other than writing music) were truly shocked by something Mozart and Da Ponte took for granted. I'm still delighted by that.

[Karl Henning]

Wuorinen's Fourth Piano Concerto (premièred by Peter Serkin 23-26 March 2005 in Boston's Symphony Hall) is one of the very best new pieces I have heard this century.

[TheGSMoeller]

David Lang's Little Match Girl Passion.

[Lisztianwagner]

John Adams' Harmonielehre.
Einojuhani Rautavaara's Symphony No.7 'Angel of Light'.

[marvinbrown]

1985??? As though you suggest that the "music" of the two hundred years before that could in any way be considered "art"? Already with Beethoven we have left the domain of art and entered the domain of cacophonous bluster and bombast and the blatant sexualisation of music with wanton chromaticism and impure harmonies. The "Romantics" and "Moderns" alike had no care for art, only their own sensual gratification. I challenge you to provide me with a single example of art music after Mozart's Piano Concerto KV 595. All the Webers, Chopins, Schuberts, Wagners, Bruckners, Stravinskys and Ravels put together couldn't write a note of it.

  Oh dear me.........<sigh> a music world without late Beethoven, Liszt, Chopin, Brahms, Wagner, Mahler, Bruckner and Richard Strauss is just not worth living in........oh dear, oh dear, oh dear......................

  marvin 

[Karl Henning]

  Oh dear me.........<sigh> a music world without late Beethoven, Liszt, Chopin, Brahms, Wagner, Mahler, Bruckner and Richard Strauss is just not worth living in........oh dear, oh dear, oh dear......................

  marvin 

Oh, Marvin . . .

Sounds like you need to replace the batteries in your sarcasm detector.

[marvinbrown]

Oh, Marvin . . .

  my sarcasm detector runs on mains power and has blown a fuse.......

  marvin

[Karl Henning]

You want to be careful about that!  Wagner had a near-fatal humorectomy, you know . . . .

[AnthonyAthletic]

Philip Grange (studied with Maxwell Davies), completed a large-scale orchestral piece entitled Eclipsing in 2004.  I attended the concert premiere commissioned by the BBC at the Bridgewater Hall, Manchester.  The BBC Philharmonic under Vassily Sinaisky.  A truly wonderful half hour of planetary twists and turns.

One of those works which will probably never be heard by many people, can't see it being recorded, unless the BBC Mag issue it on their cd....lots of compositions go this way, which is really sad.

I never set out to hear this work as it was a filler to Mahler's 1st and IIRC Aimard performing Mozart's P/C No.9.  The Grange work was every bit as enjoyable.  Come to think of it, Mozart, Mahler, Grange is a funny old line up.  Glad I was there.

[Karl Henning]

Cheers, Tony!  Can't help remembering Zappa's quip, "The program says World Première, but it really means Final Performance."

[jochanaan]

Wuorinen's Fourth Piano Concerto (premièred by Peter Serkin 23-26 March 2005 in Boston's Symphony Hall) is one of the very best new pieces I have heard this century.

Ooooh, thanks for the recommendation!  Is there a recording?