The most esoteric period?

[kishnevi]

I chose Contemporary simply because there is so much being produced and so many active that I don't know about,  and which in many cases is known to very few.

[jochanaan]

The words "experimental music" have been mentioned, evoking a memory of a quote by Edgard Varese: "My experiments go in the waste-paper basket...Whatever comes before the public is a finished product, not an experiment."  (Maybe not a verbatim quote: I can't look up the source right now...)

[Cato]

Via Alma Mahler, one of her husband's Bruckner stories:

Mahler recalled Bruckner saying that his students were expected to follow the rules of musical theory, while they were students!  But later if they were still properly following all the rules as composers, don't come back to show him a manuscript: he would throw them out!

So yes, as Karl Henning has pointed out above, "theory has consistently followed the music" created by composers!

I was thinking earlier today (for some reason) of Stravinsky's interest late in his career in Gesualdo, a rule-breaker if there ever was one, and not just the musical rules!   

...by 1789, when Charles Burney wrote his General History of Music both musical fashion and theory had changed to the point where the praise given to Gesualdo by his peers was incomprehensible and his music was dismissed as 'amateurish'. '[H]is points of imitation are generally unmanageable,' writes Burney, 'and brought in so indiscriminately on concords and discords, and on accented and unaccented parts of a bar, that, when performed, there is more confusion in the general effect than in the Music of any other composer of madrigals with whose works I am acquainted. His original harmony ... is difficult to discover ... And as to his modulation, it is so far from being the sweetest conceivable, that, to me, it seems forced, affected, and disgusting.'...

After centuries of tonality, it seemed to Hugo Leichtentritt in 1915 that Gesualdo's 'harmony is so unusual, even eccentric, that it could not be appreciated before the twentieth century, because it surpassed in strangeness anything that had been produced up to our own age.'

(My emphasis above)

See:

http://www.gesualdo.co.uk/2011/12/28/gesualdo-in-the-twentieth-century/

[EigenUser]

I've often wondered about this sort of thing, not in the case of Haydn and Mozart admittedly, but in the case of Bach and Beethoven. Whether those composers engaged in theoretical work, or whether they composed intuitively,casually going wherever the intuition led them. I wonder if someone who knows about Bach and Beethoven could confirm whether what Karl's saying is true,

For what it's worth you sometimes read that Bach was very much working with a rhetorical theory.

Other composers who were really interested in theory, published the theoretical ideas which underpinned their music, just off the top of my head: Monteverdi, Frescobaldi, F. Couperin, C P E Bach, Schumann, Xenakis, Ferneyhough, Grisey, Dufourt

I've always wanted to read this. Well, not always, but since I discovered Messiaen.

[Fagotterdämmerung]

I've always wanted to read this. Well, not always, but since I discovered Messiaen.

It's actually much more clear and easily understandable than one might expect from a man with so many peculiar associations in his work. I've always wanted my own copy. 

[Fagotterdämmerung]

  I voted for Medieval, but only narrowly beyond 21st century work which is on the periphery. The music written before 1400 really doesn't get a lot of play... and in truth, comparatively, there is much less of it than we have for the 1400-1600 period.

  ( As an aside, I love renaissance music, but I get a little annoyed at how often it, and sometimes Baroque music, are used to represent periods long before. We have enough from the period to give it some soundtrack. Vivaldi in the 1300s makes about as much sense as having the French revolution echo with Gangnam Style. )

[Ken B]

  I voted for Medieval, but only narrowly beyond 21st century work which is on the periphery. The music written before 1400 really doesn't get a lot of play... and in truth, comparatively, there is much less of it than we have for the 1400-1600 period.

  ( As an aside, I love renaissance music, but I get a little annoyed at how often it, and sometimes Baroque music, are used to represent periods long before. We have enough from the period to give it some soundtrack. Vivaldi in the 1300s makes about as much sense as having the French revolution echo with Gangnam Style. )

Machaut makes Gangnam style sound tame!

I know what you mean about soundtracks, and anachronism in general. It distracts me.
The problem with Perotin say as soundtrack is how strange it is. Not what producers want in a soundtrack.

[EigenUser]

It's actually much more clear and easily understandable than one might expect from a man with so many peculiar associations in his work. I've always wanted my own copy. 

Are you familiar with this?

My university library has 5.5 of the 7 volumes. Unfortunately, there is no English translation and my French is very rusty.

His analysis of the Turangalila-Symphonie is indispensable. The library didn't have volume 7 or the second half of volume 5 (if I am remembering the numbering correctly) which I really want because they have analyses of the Trois Petites Liturgies and the Sept Haikai, respectively. I love both of those works. No one ever seems to talk about the Sept Haikai on here, but I think it is one of his better works from the 60s.