Music where anything seems possible

[Mandryka]

Listening to Ferneyhough's Funérailles II - and I like this sense of boundaries being constantly pushed and expectations being constantly confounded. And yes, it is poetic!  Is there anyone else who is as imaginative and bold as Ferneyhough when he was a young firebrand? The one I was listening to was with Boulez heading up Ensemble Intercontemperain - this one on YouTube with Ensemble Recherche seems to be harsher, but none the worse for that


https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=r0Z6ZaAcXmQ

[DaveF]

Xenakis' Metastaseis possibly falls into this category, especially if heard after the two movements that originally preceded it, Procession aux eaux claires and Le sacrifice, which sound, respectively, like Debussy and Messiaen.  There's a story, possibly apocryphal, that Varèse was at the first performance and commented "This is the music of the future".  Whether he was shaking his head in despair at the time is not recorded.

[Mandryka]

Xenakis' Metastaseis possibly falls into this category, especially if heard after the two movements that originally preceded it, Procession aux eaux claires and Le sacrifice, which sound, respectively, like Debussy and Messiaen.  There's a story, possibly apocryphal, that Varèse was at the first performance and commented "This is the music of the future".  Whether he was shaking his head in despair at the time is not recorded.

Unfortunately I can't find a way to hear Procession aux eaux claires and Le sacrifice.

(I've only just seen your post -- I wasn't ignoring you!)

[DaveF]

I have them on here: https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/products/7967609--musica-viva-06

(searching not helped by being billed under the collective title Anastenaria).

[Mandryka]

Thanks Dave.

[Mandryka]

Heard it now.

Procession aux eaux claires makes me think of Les Noces! I can see your point about Messiaen in Le Sacrifice.

I'd quite like to see (but not participate in) a real Anastenaria.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anastenaria#:~:text=The%20Anastenaria%20(Greek%3A%20%CE%91%CE%BD%CE%B1%CF%83%CF%84%CE%B5%CE%BD%CE%AC%CF%81%CE%B9%CE%B1%2C,Northern%20Greece%20and%20Southern%20Bulgaria.

[Todd]

I just relistened to this, and anything seems possible, and everything is done.  The mega-pastiche piece surpasses even Berio in terms of regurgitating musical history, blended with gnarly as heck modernism.

[Leo K.]

I thought his way about Charles Ives's 4th Symphony, still do!