Non-repertory music to recommend a long-time long-suffering listener

[Sean]

Hello folks, this is a little tricky but I'm asking cordially for any notable corners of the art music empire that I might not have explored...

I've been the keenest of listeners for 30 years and long since crossed off all the core repertory in a total of almost 4000 hours by 1220 composers, impressive though that may be. The most important works I don't know are something like the Goetz Piano quartet, Magnard Berenice, Wolf Der Corregidor and Cavalli Missa pro defunctis, none of which will really bring me great grief if I never get to them.

Exploring new music tends to provide diminishing returns as I work my way through ever lower strata in the pyramid of artistic achievement. I can get a bit jaded but I will listen up if there's something that lights your fire which I don't know.

I've recently finished a major batch of stuff and I'm drifting around looking for important performances and artists I'm not familiar with, but without new material admittedly I'm sometimes just not sure what to hear. Parenthetically this often means putting on Brian Eno's Thursday afternoon on Youtube.

Right now I have access to the Naxos CDs via their site and to Youtube. And my listoholic list of music explored across my life is here, if you have a mind to punt through, though I've posted it before.

https://app.box.com/s/buxatah0x8nve2dozviu

I do look through the rest of the forum of course but you could let me know if there's any work, group of works or genre out on the fringes of things that you're particularly enthusiastic about. Thanks, even if there are few or no replies.

[Brian]

Composers you haven't documented in your (gigantic!) file whose omissions can easily be rectified via Naxos:

- George Antheil. American young rebel turned spiky but folksy older fellow. 20th century.
- Gabriela Lena Frank. Peruvian-American-Lithuanian composer with strong South American leanings. Alive (and fairly young).
- Graham Koehne. Very accessible, colorful, almost populist Australian composer. Alive. Not especially important.
- Thomas, Anders, and Benjamin Koppel. The Koppel family has been active across a number of styles in Danish music, even jazz and rock, for four or five decades. Get a cross-sample. Anders' best is the second sax concerto and the chamber music CD.
- Asger Hamerik. For if you like Grieg.
- Alexander Tcherepnin. Actually you have him on the list, but if you liked him, your Naxos subscription will get you 4 new albums of solo piano music. Very interesting stuff.

Also, you misspelled Glenn Gould!

I'm pretty amazed both that you've listened to such a huge amount of music, and that you've taken time to write it all down in a giant file. Not sure which is more surprising.

[ibanezmonster]

You probably haven't listened to my recent discovery:


http://www.youtube.com/v/DNvdPJx-Fws


You should check out my op.9 and op.10, too, through the link in my signature. Highly recommended. 

[Sean]

Greg, many thanks! You'll be very famous one day...

Hi Brian, hey that's great- two or three names there I don't know, and maybe I should get into some more Tcherepnin piano music as you say, especially if so much has been recorded.

I know a few works by George Antheil though, he's on the list, but I'd never have noticed about Glenn ...

If you like here's a list of the composers only, this time in birth date order.
https://app.box.com/s/cybz6os6o0f6wdtmyqnu

Keeping the file up to date is easy enough but I remember having to think hard about the categories years ago. Nice to read the kind words, as you can imagine I don't have many people to share it with but it's invaluable for me to keep track of what I've done and not, especially with much stuff beyond the core repertory not being so memorable... A few notes on the file to indulge further-

Music folder notes                                                                                   

Minimum five listenings is my record of the music I've got to know or listened to at least five times- it currently has 3974 hours of music by 1220 composers and 54 non-art categories including 453 operas and all the core repertory, on 236 pages; I have important works cleared above the rough point presently exploring in the vast pyramid of aesthetic value.

I had around 100 LPs and 200 tapes in the mid 80s, 1030 CDs by 1990 and since 95 I've been an avid borrower, radio recorder and internet listener- I sold the LPs and tapes in 88 and CDs in 98. That's almost 20000 hours' desk time, though total listening is several thousand more, an average of a couple of hours a day for 30 years: I began soon after I was 13 in mid 1982 though listened to less between 91-4.

All entries are fitted under one of seven categories and various subcategories: Orchestral, Chamber, Solo instrumental, Lieder etc, Voice and orch/ ens, Choral etc and Opera, in each case except Opera the entry being largely defined by scoring. 36 works are followed by a question mark indicating it wasn't identified, the first unfortunately being one of these, and 35 works have colons indicating only part of it is known; 4 composers are collaborators without their own entry.

MFL composers in birth date order is a reordering of the composers without their works and Appendices & unknown music etc is seven short lists of sundry items with new music and names to explore; I also have familiarity with much of the great recorded interpretations stock.

Art music is Western civilization's greatest achievement, the attempt to re-establish or acknowledge the intuition or Dionysiac over the intellect or Apollonian mind; aesthetics is the primary relation with reality and music its highest abstracted form and highest revelation. Its content is accessed by the receptive mind with repeated listening to internalize or idealize it independent of any particular performance, providing transcendent life-changing experiences and immeasurable enrichment.

[Sergeant Rock]

Hello folks, this is a little tricky but I'm asking cordially for any notable corners of the art music empire that I might not have explored...
I do look through the rest of the forum of course but you could let me know if there's any work, group of works or genre out on the fringes of things that you're particularly enthusiastic about. Thanks, even if there are few or no replies.

Hey, Sean. If any of the Havergal Brian you've listened to appealed, then I suggest listening to Symphonies 3, 5, 8, 9, 10 and 16. The "trilogy" 22-23-24 is also fascinating, providing you like his style. The new Naxos disc has garnered rave reviews, from professional critcs and we crazy Havergalites. Worth a listen (or five  ).



Sarge

[Cato]

For some reason your list would not load to my screen.

Anyway, for a real ear-bending experience, have you considered Harry Partch,Ivan Wyschnegradsky (Vyshnegradsky), and Julian Carrillo and other experimenters with quarter-tone/xenharmonic music?

To be sure, not too many CD's are available, but YouTube has performances, and this website has all sorts of composers to explore:

http://classical-music-online.net/

[Karl Henning]

[...]I'm pretty amazed both that you've listened to such a huge amount of music, and that you've taken time to write it all down in a giant file. Not sure which is more surprising.

Eric Anderson listened to quite a lot of music, too . . . .

[(poco) Sforzando]

I cannot open these files either.

Go back to the Renaissance and Medieval periods. The work of such masters as Josquin, Marenzio, Ockeghem, Machaut, Gibbons, Byrd, Janequin, Dufay - none of which, judging from these forums, seems to interest people much these days, next to a good yummy neo-romantic symphony or two or three.

Back to the 19th century, Wolf is a marvelous composer of Lieder too, and I remember very much liking the Corregidor though I don't have a recording now and haven't heard it in perhaps 40 years.

[Drasko]

236 pages of listed works!!! There's now way I could find the time to go through all that, but some spot-checking yielded some result. From what I can see the only thing you've heard from Michel-Richard Delalande are excerpts from Simphonies pour les Soupers du Roy which is pleasant music but really intended as nothing more than sonic wallpaper. Delalande on the other hand is probably the highest point of French Grands Motets, which are the age defining genre, the essence of French idea of sacred music during baroque. You should try at least one disc of Delalande's Grands motets, Christie on Harmonia Mundi is what I think excellent representative.

[The new erato]

They do not open for me either.

[Sean]

Brian, I'm giving A.Tcherepnin's Piano sonata No.2 its due right now, son of Nikolai he makes use of a Messiaen type scale... A couple of his concertos didn't stay with me that much but this is more in the serious Russian miniature genre.

James thanks I'll take a close look at that thread, that's what I'm looking for and going to be very useful. Lansky and Vinao are new names for me and I never got hold of any Donatoni piano works, though I have by Petrassi and the even more interesting Dallapiccola.

Sarge, okay I'll go with the Brian 22-4, starting tomorrow. I see him as a bit peculiar really with his ideas in odd places- the First is one of the most bizarre wastes of invention in all music matched only by late Britten while the material in the Thirty-first also comes to mind as wrongheadedly laid out and hollow in texture.

Cato, Wyschnegradsky and Carrillo I don't know but Partch found something a bit different with his wacky instruments and scales- like so many concoctions of the time though there's only one thing to say and the rest of his works are repetition...

Cato , Sforzando and erato, my regrets that the files didn't open; when I use the link I get a grey screen about a reader update but you just click through that. I'm in China and my father in England can send me files via the site, it usually works okay; it's the National Day holiday over here by the way thanks to Mao on 1st October 1949 so I have a little more time on my hands.

Karl You know, Eric was a bit like me, at least he thought so. He's no doubt listening to Pelleas right now but of my genius you need have no doubts.

Sforzando, were you Larry? Anyway pre-1600 music is a pleasant enough diversion despite its tonal containment and limitations, and Renaissance polyphony is always good for a break from the paroxysm of later centuries. I do know music by those mentioned including quite a lot by Desprez, Ockeghem and Dufay; Janequin's songs if I remember are important repertory I haven't tracked down.

Cheers Drasko, sure Delalande was this figure who's name was remembered in the wrong way; will make a note to check out the motets, in the Lully tradition I guess.

At the local temple

[Sergeant Rock]

Sarge, okay I'll go with the Brian 22-4, starting tomorrow. I see him as a bit peculiar really with his ideas in odd places- the First is one of the most bizarre wastes of invention in all music matched only by late Britten while the material in the Thirty-first also comes to mind as wrongheadedly laid out and hollow in texture.

No, don't bother. I take back my recommendations. You're obviously not in tune with Brian. No sense wasting your time. Give something else a go.

Sarge

[Sean]

Okay, very fair of you.

Maybe I'll do some research and try one more though.

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

Anyway pre-1600 music is a pleasant enough diversion despite its tonal containment and limitations, and Renaissance polyphony is always good for a break from the paroxysm of later centuries.

It also includes some of the most complex music ever written (check out Dufay's isorhythmic motets for example). Bit more than a "pleasant diversion."

[Karl Henning]

"...the paroxysm of later centuries" . . . can always count on Sean for a chuckle!

[some guy]

Judging from the response to Brian, I would recommend something else, a different way of listening.

Right now, you listen to music in order to hear what you like. I recommend that if you really want to expand your listening repertoire, you listen to music in order to like what you hear.

This will make all the difference in the world, I promise you.

[Karl Henning]

Judging from the response to Brian, I would recommend something else, a different way of listening.

Right now, you listen to music in order to hear what you like. I recommend that if you really want to expand your listening repertoire, you listen to music in order to like what you hear.

This will make all the difference in the world, I promise you.

Post of the Year.

[Sean]

Okay some guy...

Velimir, no bun fights but pre-tonal music inevitably becomes a pleasant diversion regardless of how complex it is since nobody can understand it.

Best, Sean

[Sean]

And Cato, I did got hold of The Mother by Alois Haba on LP, a highly persuasive quarter tonal work; his SQ12 was a little less interesting.

[some guy]

Post of the Year.