Like Boulez?

[Florestan]

"If you have something to say, the idiom in which you choose to say it is irrelevant." - Lorin Maazel

[Florestan]

Too much swearing in Jane Austen for me.

Then I guess you avoid The Good Soldier Švejk as plague. 

[Karl Henning]

Od's bodikins!

[Turner]

Hello GMG, I have been reading extensively from this forum and learning a lot.  I'm familiar with some of the work of the great composers before the modern era, but looking for some specific recommendations on contemporary composers.  Pierre Boulez has been my favorite composer the last couple years.  Although his music is often complex, dissonant, and atonal, I hear plenty of beauty in it as well (not that complexity, dissonance and atonality preclude beauty, but it seems as though composers from previous eras designed their music more often with beauty of sound in mind, even when expressing drama or melancholy).  I hope that I can get some recommendations on contemporary composers who make pretty sounds sometimes like Boulez (I'm glad there is a section for beginners here lol).  I hear power and richness in other contemporary composers like Stockhausen, Varese, Berio, and some others, but it seems to me that they lack the ravishing, glistening sounds of Boulez.

Franco Donatoni wasn´t mentioned, and thinking of his experiments with style, and the shimmering, restless, vibrant and yet transparent, chamber-music-like qualities of many of his works, he´d be one of those that come to mind.

He composed a lot, some of the you-tube material has bad sound, but here´s Arpege for ensemble:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ykCVOnkgLA

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

Some other French composers worth checking out for those who find they like Boulez:

Barraqué
Dusapin
Dutilleux
Jean-Claude Risset
Manoury
Mantovani
Dufourt
Christophe Bertrand
And perhaps Murail
and perhaps Grisey

But I also find that there are a number of British composers who follow a similar aesthetic, especially when it comes to the orchestral works. Particularly Helen Grime and Oliver Knussen.

[Karl Henning]

On the whole, I think I am unlike Boulez.

[Karl Henning]

[...] Surely we all agree that music that we call "classical" will, most of the time, trascend pure enjoyment and have a deeper (if very elusive) meaning [....]

What if pure enjoyment is itself transcendent? 

[Karl Henning]

FTFY oh Mennin 8 fan.

Hah!  I gladly own that some subset of my likes are likely somewhere other than rational  0:)

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

I find it almost ironic that Dutilleux is on there, didn't Pierre and Henri like hate eachother, almost like arch enemies?!

Perhaps they did, but they both do have a similar musical heritage as being post-Debussy post-Ravel French composers. Boulez had no interest in conducting any of Dutilleux's music and they often had quite different creative aims as well, but I think for anyone who already likes Boulez and wants to explore more composers based on the fact that they like Boulez, Dutilleux would seem a fairly obvious composer due to him being from the same time and place in classical music history.

[PotashPie]

I agree with jessop in post #104, as far as similar syntax, especially Barraqué.

With sanantonio, what he said above is a main reason I like Boulez. He seems to use categories of sound, as in plucked strings (harp, pizz strings, guitar), struck mallet instruments (vibraphone, glockenspiel, marimba, xylophone), sustained sounds (strings, woodwinds), and it seems to be based on timbre, which was derived from electronic sounds and later IRCAM spectrographic studies of instruments.

I associate this "exotic" instrumentation with Boulez, and I think it can be heard in Messiaen (Et Exspecto, 7 Haiku) and Takemitsu (A Flock Descends, Quatrain).

There is a "jazz" Boulez ensemble recording, using a plucked stand-up bass and electric guitar, a la "jazz." It's here, for a penny:

[Mandryka]

There is a "jazz" Boulez ensemble recording, using a plucked stand-up bass and electric guitar, a la "jazz." It's here, for a penny:

It's fun and full of life, well worth hearing.

[Karl Henning]

Was he borrowing a page from the Babbitt book?—

http://www.youtube.com/v/G6o8ZnKN_H8

[PotashPie]

Was he borrowing a page from the Babbitt book?—

That's a connection. Babbitt played jazz & popular music on a clarinet or something; Allan Forte was a jazz pianist.

Also, whenever I think of jazz and modern music together, I think of that jazz guitar in the Twilight Zone Main Theme, composed by Marius Constant. I don't think the identity of the guitarist has ever been known.

[Abuelo Igor]

Apparently (http://www.guitarplayer.com/lessons/1014/play-it-right-the-theme-from-the-twilight-zone/48417), it was Tommy Tedesco, or Howard Roberts, or both.

[Niko240]

Thank you all for the helpful recommendations and excellent information, I appreciate your time.  Much to explore