Composers whose legacy will grow

[Al Moritz]

I don't think I'm really knowledgeable enough to say why exactly I think so (perhaps I shouldn't have said anything). I just don't think his music "carries" very well. From his experiments in "intuitive" music, to his over-the-top stunts like his LICHT cycle and the Helicopter String Quartet — his works seem too difficult (not to mention expensive) to reproduce. Notice how nearly every performance of his work is supervised by Stockhausen himself. Who will bother with it after he's gone?

You have a point to some extent. Stockhausen himself has said that his works were children that were difficult to parent. However, he was wise enough to make, for example, reduced excerpts from LICHT that are easily performable (from the expense point of view, not from that of playing the works), e.g. Ave for basset-horn and alto flute from the scene Message in Montag aus Licht. There is even a "Stockhausen-Trio", consisting of truly outstanding players, that has dedicated itself to performances of such works:

http://www.michelemarelli.com/stockhausentrio.htm

And few of these performances are supervised  by the composer himself. Also the Klavierstücke (piano pieces) are performed all over the world by diverse players, with Stockhausen rarely being present. Most pieces of the new cycle KLANG (Sound, the 24 hours of the day) are for small forces as well, and easily performable.

During the Stockhausen summer courses in Kürten, Germany, numerous young interpreters are learning the music, often giving tremendous performances. Even though this is all on the level of soloist(s) or small ensemble, understandably this makes Stockhausen happy and hopeful about the future of his music.

Furthermore, as Larry says, live performances only tell half the story about music's future. Time will tell how it all plays out with records, CDs and the internet.

[longears]

History suggests that in order to endure, art must adhere to enduring values, not just to the fashions of its age.

[david johnson]

adams will be around while and i'm glad.  don't know about his cohorts.

dj

[Greta]

Oh ditto to John Adams and the Finns born circa 1950s. Thanks Brett and Bruce, that's who I was going to mention too.

It takes a long time for music to spread, I'm still introducing people all the time to John Adams's stuff besides Chairman Dances and Short Ride, they just haven't gotten around to hearing it, and totally love it. Harmonielehre is a masterpiece IMO. And I love most everything of his. And Reich, Glass, Nyman, Corigliano, their legacies have and are certainly growing in recent years.

Very, very few music people I know (in person) are even aware of the Finnish crop, I say I'm into Finnish composers recently, and they say oh, yeah, Sibelius! Well, love him of course, and sometimes they sort of know of Rautavaara, but seriously, you say Saariaho, Aho, Salonen, Hakola, and Lindberg, and they think you're speaking in tongues!  Only our composition professor here really knows of them. But when people hear their music they have positive responses, and find their music very attractive.

It's interesting that those last three, born in 1958, all quite radically changed style around early to mid 90s, going from very modernist, thorny to much more accessible, fun, colorful pieces, I think a degree of accessibilty is something people are really looking for these days. We even have a section on that in our new edition of our Music History text (the Grout/Palisca book), heading "The New Accessibility". A few others, fit in there that are pretty appealing too, Michael Torke, Michael Daugherty, and Richard Danielpour, Christopher Rouse, people seem to enjoy this "intelligent synthesis" going on that is a feature of many of the recent orchestral compositions today.

Other new updates to the widely used text "The History of Western Music", greatly expanded section on John Adams, mentions of Sofia Gubaidulina, Joan Tower, Ellen Twaffe Zwilich. Peter Schickele gets a mention too.  Neo-Romantics: late Penderecki, late Rochberg (I hadn't heard of him), David Del Tredici and a feature on "Final Alice". Zwilich as an example of "accessible modernism", Alfred Schinittke as an example of "polystylism".

[Kullervo]

Surfersdirt is more compex than most of you think! Ha-ha-ha! 

[Larry Rinkel]

I don't think the profile of the Boulezes and Stockhausens will remain the same either. Perhaps we should relegate that (well, Stockhausen) to a "Composers whose legacy will be diminished" thread, or perhaps I am being too presumptuous.

No more or less presumptuous than to pose the question as you did originally. All I can say is that, if the best we can offer as a legacy are composers on the level of John Adams, Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Michael Daugherty, and Michael Torke, we're in deep doo-doo. Some of it is respectable, and Adams has shown some signs of growth in a work like Naive and Sentimental, but on the whole this group represents an impoverished, diminished level of achievement compared to what the earlier half of the 20th century produced, not to mention later and stronger voices like Lutoslawski, Ligeti, and Carter. A typical Reich or Glass composition seems to me comparable in banality to those enormous structures by Richard Stella currently on view at MoMA in New York, where you wander in and out for a half-hour wondering if there's anything of substance at all, which there is not.

[Kullervo]

No more or less presumptuous than to pose the question as you did originally. All I can say is that, if the best we can offer as a legacy are composers on the level of John Adams, Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Michael Daugherty, and Michael Torke, we're in deep doo-doo. Some of it is respectable, and Adams has shown some signs of growth in a work like Naive and Sentimental, but on the whole this group represents an impoverished, diminished level of achievement compared to what the earlier half of the 20th century produced, not to mention later and stronger voices like Lutoslawski, Ligeti, and Carter. A typical Reich or Glass composition seems to me comparable in banality to those enormous structures by Richard Stella currently on view at MoMA in New York, where you wander in and out for a half-hour wondering if there's anything of substance at all, which there is not.

I'm in total agreement, but I'm not that familiar with Adams's work so I couldn't comment on him.

[paul]

No more or less presumptuous than to pose the question as you did originally. All I can say is that, if the best we can offer as a legacy are composers on the level of John Adams, Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Michael Daugherty, and Michael Torke, we're in deep doo-doo. Some of it is respectable, and Adams has shown some signs of growth in a work like Naive and Sentimental, but on the whole this group represents an impoverished, diminished level of achievement compared to what the earlier half of the 20th century produced, not to mention later and stronger voices like Lutoslawski, Ligeti, and Carter. A typical Reich or Glass composition seems to me comparable in banality to those enormous structures by Richard Stella currently on view at MoMA in New York, where you wander in and out for a half-hour wondering if there's anything of substance at all, which there is not.

I agree about those Richard Serra sculptures. I was at MoMA last Sunday and I couldn't figure out if there was anything more to them than the scale and the fact that I was closer to them than any other sculpture I've seen. I looked through a book of interviews with him at the bookstore and he seems like an interesting guy, so maybe I'll investigate further.

[Larry Rinkel]

I agree about those Richard Serra sculptures. I was at MoMA last Sunday and I couldn't figure out if there was anything more to them than the scale and the fact that I was closer to them than any other sculpture I've seen. I looked through a book of interviews with him at the bookstore and he seems like an interesting guy, so maybe I'll investigate further.

Thank you, Paul. Somehow I confused Richard Stella and Frank Serra in my mind. 

[longears]

http://moma.org/exhibitions/2007/serra/flash.html