A thread for when the avant garde pay homage to the traditional

[Mandryka]

I think, but I'm not sure, that this is a significant contemporary trend, so here's a thread to collect things and comment. Making a link to (rather than a rejection of) past music has, obviously, been a preoccupation of European (i.e. Darmstadt and Huddersfield oriented) composers since the 1980s at least.

Maybe the thread will come to nothing, maybe it'll be a revelation. Time will tell.

[Mandryka]

First up, Rihm and Brahms. This is a biggy. I've been really enjoying the short piano piece called Brahmsliebewalzer. There are quite a few examples streaming, for example

https://open.spotify.com/track/40upSGqNWoHGOsSI2pG4CX?si=f98b0d5314ab4107

The reason I say this is a biggy is explained in this paper.

https://escholarship.org/content/qt2p7505c1/qt2p7505c1_noSplash_c3e8eef3b42dfbbbd4622bcf09fee8f2.pdf?t=pwa2ha

[Mandryka]

And while I'm here and thinking of piano I may as well mention Michael Finnissy's homage to Scriabin, which I think is rather lovely

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWVHyijSAMw&ab_channel=JaredRedmond

Finnissy did a similar thing for Satie's nocturnes -- worth listening to the nocturnes before or after (preferably played by Egoyan)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GprSG2uu3o&ab_channel=LeSheetMusicBoi

[prémont]

Does Kagel's  Music for Renaissance Instruments count here as a tribute to the traditional?

[Mandryka]

Does Kagel's  Music for Renaissance Instruments count here as a tribute to the traditional?

I like it very much. But I don't think it's a homage either to a composer or an old style of music. One which I'm not sure about is Kagel's Sankt-Bach-Passion. I think there is a relationship to Bach's music, but I'll be damned if I can hear it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqtVsK0b3lI&ab_channel=pelodelperro
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65xLkTU7JWA&ab_channel=WelleszTheatre.

[Mandryka]

James Weeks's Book of flames and shadows is a homage to Jacques Arcadelt

Some notes from the composer about his thinking here

https://jamesweeks.org/a-book-of-flames-and-shadows/

[Mandryka]

Scott Field's Haydn is a homage to Haydn's op 20 quartets. Some information here from the composer

https://www.challengerecords.com/products/1400742583

It contains a significant amount of indeterminacy - I've not seen the score, but it seems to be a structure for improvisation.

Bernhard Lang wrote a work (called The Anatomy of Disaster) which is also a homage to a Haydn quartet (7 last words)  This review (which I've just skimmed) seems to contain some useful info about it.

https://www.musicandliterature.org/reviews/2015/2/2/bernhard-langs-brithe-anatomy-of-disaster-monadologie-ixi

The Lang is a mainstream piece, as composed as something by Brahms, and blessed and Ardittified, indeed they've even released a CD.

Lang is big on borrowing past musics, it's the basis of a huge series of works each called Monodology followed by a number. They all use a similar process of sampling, repetition, variation - using computers to generate some of the development.

[Mandryka]

Richard Barrett's Nacht and Träume is a homage to Schubert's song and the the poem by Matthäus von Collin which Schubert set. He is inspired the opposition be sleeping and waking, day and night. There are allusions to Schubert's music.


https://soundcloud.com/r-barrett/nacht-und-tr-ume-2007-for-1

[Mandryka]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxlr7RFUEJE&ab_channel=MatthiasPintscher-Topic

Plretty clear references to Sibelius in Rihm's verwandlung 2

[DaveF]

A few things that come to mind, although some were avant-garde 50 years ago rather than now, such as Max Davies's Purcell and early Scottish realisations.  There's also an early work by Birtwistle, unrecorded as far as I know, The world is discovered, which reworks music by Heinrich Isaac.  I've heard it, but can't claim to remember it well.

And there's Thomas Adès, again perhaps not quite avant-garde, and his Couperin things.

[ritter]

Cristóbal Halffter surely deserves mention in this thread. His Spätstil (from the mid 1970s onwards, more or less) is characterised by the frequent inclusion of quotes from music of the past in his (sometimes very complex) scores. There's references to Beethoven, Handel, Juan del Enzina (in Versus and his opera Don Quijote) in many of his works, or he "recomposes" music from the past (Soler's Fandango in Preludio para Madrid 92, Cabezón and Cabanilles in Tiento del primer tono y batalla imperial —his best known work—).

Here is his Fantasía sobre una sonoridad de G. F. Handel:

And the aforementioned Preludio... (an occasional piece —commissioned by the Madrid regional government when Madrid was named "European Cultural Capital' in 1992– but a very effective and brilliant one):

[pjme]

I suppose André Laporte's Nightmusic (1970) can be mentioned aswell:

The original Discover cd:

[Mandryka]

Random list of Bach homages made for someone else

Uri Caine Variations on a Goldberg Theme
George Rochberg Nach Bach
Michael Finnissy's Kapitalistische Realisme mit Bachsche Nachdichtungen (in History of Photography)
Mauricio Kagel's Sankt-Bach-Passion
Sofia Gubaidulina's Meditiation Uber ....
Brice Pauset's Goldberg-Ausbreitungen
Wolfgang Rihm Deus Passus
Gerd Zacher, Die Kunst Einer Fuge
Aldo Clementi Variazioni su BACH
Klaus Huber Litania instrumentalis