New music

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

How do you feel when you listen to a new (or recent) composition for the first time?

For me, it's incredibly exciting to see a new work performed live. It's like unveiling a panting for the first time BUT BETTER...because the people who hear its premiere don't experience it all in one go. The music takes time to perform, and our experience gradually evolves and changes as the piece progresses. For the musicians on stage, I can only suppose a world premiere performance is like a celebration of all the hard work that went into its composition me painstaking rehearsals of whatever revisions were made and so on....a new work is often much harder to rehearse than something which has been played thousands of times before.

One thing I like very much on my shelf actually is a copy of the 2008 Donaueschinger Musiktage. This festival is probably my favourite for this kind of 'new music' because of the diversity of styles, the excellent performers, and the fantastic CD releases of the festival (which I need more of!).

New music comes in a huuuuge variety of genres within classical music, and so many styles and composers from all around the world that I certainly can never hear all the music composed in one year. What do you like?

[Karl Henning]

We had a meeting last night for Triad, and we started off with each member sharing what he or she found exciting (and challenging) about our prior concerts/preparation.  It was a great pleasure to hear many of them say how engaged they are simply by being part of making new music.

[North Star]

The meaning of 'new music' is a bit different, depending whether it's a question of freshly written music, or a premiere performance of a work that is a bit older (or perhaps a lot older, but either has been forgotten after initial performances or has never been presented to an audience) or just music one has never heard before. As a listener, I don't pay much attention to whether a piece of music is old or new, known to many or none. If it's new to me, it's new, no matter how old it is. That said, it is of course especially important that new works gets performed and heard. And old works, too.

As for new music that I like, there is of course Henning. And many other names too, but I'm terrible at remembering names.

[Karl Henning]

You may not be the only one bad at recalling names.  And that could be why I keep hammering the name Henning here . . . .

[North Star]

You may not be the only one bad at recalling names.  And that could be why I keep hammering the name Henning here . . . .

Fortunately it's not limited to composers.