A "Top 5" List --- The Most Bizarre Works You've Ever Heard?

[Mirror Image]

YOUR "TOP 5" MOST BIZARRE WORKS

                                                                             
                                                                             

[Symphonic Addict]

YOUR "TOP 5" MOST BIZARRE WORKS

                                                                             
                                                                             

Top 5 bizarre works that are three paintings. 

[Mirror Image]

No one can come up with a list?

Maybe I can get the ball rolling...

Here my "Top 5" bizarre works (or works that I think are bizarre):

In no particular order -

Schoenberg: Weihnachtsmusik
Falla: El retablo de maese Pedro
Xenakis: Jonchaies
Ravel: Chansons madécasses
Satie: Musique d'ameublement

[Maestro267]

You've just given us three pictures with absolutely zero context of what they represent. How are we supposed to respond to that? Also I have no idea what counts as "bizarre". Some people find...idk, Penderecki bizarre. Bizarrity is in the eye of the beholder.

[vandermolen]

Langgaard: 'Carl Nielsen, our great composer...' (36 bars to be repeated throughout eternity).

[Brian]

Hmmm, somebody posted a list referencing Sciarrino Piano Sonata IV and then they deleted their post?

I've decided to increase the diversity and interest of my list by choosing bizarre works from 5 different centuries! The idea was to branch out and create some different definitions of "bizarre," so it's not all avant garde or anything like that. I'm also going to provide explanations.

1600s!

Biber - Battalia a 10
I have the Savall recording, where one of the movements of this 1673 work features different members of the orchestra playing 7 different folk songs at the same time. The idea is to capture the raucous sounds of the army encampment before the battle, so Biber has the players perform various national tunes and anthems. There is some difference of opinion on how to perform this; some ensembles give each tune in turn, like a karaoke night, while Savall has everyone jump straight in. It's absolute chaos!

1700s!

Boccherini - Musica notturna delle strade di Madrid
This was the hardest century for me to think of a piece. The 1700s were all about balance and taste, and although there were a lot of quirky works in the classical tradition (see: Haydn), there aren't a lot of "bizarre" ones. I considered submitting Art of Fugue, but my 1800s choice is a collection of fugues. So I'm going with this Boccherini suite, a series of vivid pictorial descriptions with no development or unifying structure. It's one of my favorite pieces from the whole century. But it does have an entire movement that's just a stringed instrument imitating a drum. Also, Boccherini himself wrote, "The piece is absolutely useless, even ridiculous, outside Spain, because the audience cannot hope to understand its significance, nor the performers to play it as it should be played."

1800s!

Reicha - Quatuor scientifique
A 48-minute-long extreme exploration of Reicha's conviction that fugues can be based on any melody of any shape, and the different voices in the fugue can play in any key they want to. It's the Outback Steakhouse of string quartets: no rules, just right 

1900s!

Langgaard - Carl Nielsen Our Great Composer
A work for choir and orchestra with the choir singing "Carl Nielsen, Our Great Composer," over and over and over forever, per the composer's instructions, "with all possible force" and "to be repeated for all eternity." I guess nobody told him that singers are mortal 
(NOTE: I spent an entire day writing this post, mostly trying to think of something for the 1700s, and am glad to see vandermolen agrees with me here. I'm not changing my answer just because he technically posted it first. Although the idea of eternity did remind me of Scriabin's apocalyptic Mysterium.)

2000s!

I must admit, this one has me puzzled. There's just so much stylistic diversity in the 21st century, what even constitutes bizarre anymore? We have music dictated by random chance. We have single notes sustained forever (like the GMG thread says). We have Jorg Widmann requiring his performers to scream in the middle of pieces. We have Nikolai Kapustin writing out fake jazz improvisations. We have Georg Friedrich Haas writing a string quartet which must be played entirely in the dark. Anybody can write anything they want now. Is the most bizarre work a direct, sincere pastiche of an earlier era?

I'm tempted to stretch my definition of the 2000s to include 1997, so that I can choose The Most Unwanted Song, a 22-minute composition which deliberately combines all of everyone's least favorite musical things (there's a soprano rapping with a tuba, a wild west interlude, and a children's choir singing Walmart commercials).

For now I'll say Shadows by Peter Eötvös because I saw it live in 2011 and it calls for many of the performers to have their backs turned, playing away from the audience. The music itself was pretty normal though.

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I would LOVE to see more suggestions of most bizarre 1700s and 1800s work!

[foxandpeng]

Peter Maxwell Davies - Eight Songs for a Mad King

What on earth is that about?

Bizarre, but I love it.

[Mirror Image]

You've just given us three pictures with absolutely zero context of what they represent. How are we supposed to respond to that? Also I have no idea what counts as "bizarre". Some people find...idk, Penderecki bizarre. Bizarrity is in the eye of the beholder.

I gave my own list above this post of your own. Use your own imagination. Also, if a piece of music is bizarre, then obviously it's in the ear of the beholder. This is a list that is just for amusement purposes only.

[The new erato]

Great list Brian but for the 1700s Perhaps Mozarts Musicalischer Spass?

[The new erato]

And Hin und Zuruck by Hindemith for the 20th?

[Symphonic Addict]

+1, a quite inventive list

For me, regarding 1900s:

Cage: 4'33''
Berio: Sequenza III for female voice

[Brian]

Great list Brian but for the 1700s Perhaps Mozarts Musicalischer Spass?

Oooh the Mozart is a great idea! I don't know the Hindemith; I'll try to stream it this week.

[The new erato]

Read up on the Hindemith structure.

[Florestan]

The 1700s were all about balance and taste

Were they really?

[Mirror Image]

I'm surprised to not see contributions from Cesar, Karl, Jeffrey (a "Top 5"), Kyle et. al. in this thread.

[Mandryka]

One would have to be Schubert's Der Zwerg.

[Florestan]

I'm surprised to not see contributions from Cesar, Karl, Jeffrey (a "Top 5"), Kyle et. al. in this thread.

Define a bizarre musical work, John, and you'll have my contribution. 

[Mirror Image]

Define a bizarre musical work, John, and you'll have my contribution. 

You cannot definite bizarre just like someone can't definite when music is "eerie" or "beautiful". Every listener has their own interpretation of what such a word truly means. Again, this list, like any one in The Polling Station section of the forum, is meant to be fun and not to be taken too seriously.

But bizarre by definition of the word per Webster Dictionary online:

bi·​zarre | \ bə-ˈzär  \
Definition of bizarre (Entry 1 of 2)
: strikingly out of the ordinary: such as
a: odd, extravagant, or eccentric in style or mode
His behavior was bizarre.
bizarre stories
a bizarre outfit
b: involving sensational contrasts or incongruities
the bizarre timidity of a tall, strapping young man

[Florestan]

/quote]
odd, extravagant, or eccentric in style or mode

Okay, John, thanks.

I nominate these, then:





Two volumes of exactly odd, extravagant and eccentric in style or mode music.

[Symphonic Addict]

I'm surprised to not see contributions from Cesar, Karl, Jeffrey (a "Top 5"), Kyle et. al. in this thread.

Here you have!

Berio: Sequenza III for female voice
Ligeti: Aventures
Milhaud: L'Homme et son désir
Ustvolskaya: Symphony No. 5
Schulhoff: Sonata Erotica

If these works are not considered bizarre, I don't know what they are then.