an attempt at a general "What are you currently digging re. classical music" thread

found a gem in one of my two dollar bins at the store:

hidden sparks - maryvonne le dize-richard (violin) and jean-claude henriot (piano) on New World Records from 1986. stuff by elliott carter, tod machover, john melby, and ralph shapey. don't know any of those dudes except for carter. though its possible i have something by melby on an old crystal records lp. (and the melby thing on here is awesome piece for violin and computer-synthesized tape)

anyway, this has been in the two dollar bin forever and its going home with me now.

A few bits from Elliott Carter (Double Concerto), following that article by Rosen.

Hans-Joachim Hespos - a composer who was most active in the 70s and 80s, paints savage landscapes (note I said paint not splashes)...akin to Finnissy or Barrett or Emsley, many years later.

Listening to a few pieces for solo oboe too: Ausgangspunkte by Roger Redgate, Holliger's Studie. Looking for more to compile. xp

currently digging this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrmb9iifnwg

Also a few works by Mark Osborn who died in his early 30s leaving about a dozen or so cracking compositions I can listen to an awful lot at times. He developed a sensibility like few others (he was a colleague of Czernowin's, who I talked about above) that is hard to describe right now.

Spahlinger - El Sonido Silencioso. Great choral piece from the mid-70s, post-Chilean coup.

xpost was scared that was gonna be amanda palmer for a sec

oh come the fuck on

(kidding)

btw Dan have you ever sung in/listened to Ives' Psalms? Had my first hearing of some of them yesterday and really, really dug them.

I've done Psalm 67 multiple times, which is also one of my favorite pieces ever

Luigi Nono - Un Volto, E del Mare, for voice and electronics: what marks it out is that he does such a convincing impersonation of a Renaissance Master (of his contemporaries, maybe only Bussotti wrote better for voice).

Had a wonderful time with Ginastera's 'Panambi' on the recent Naxos disc with Gisele Ben-Dor and the LSO. I have to tell you that I have an almost inexhaustible weakness for large orchestra folk-modernist Rite of Spring ripoffs where 'pagan russia' is replaced with 'pagan <whatever the mother culture of the composer is.' I turned this one up to 10 and did some serious basking in it.

As mentioned on the alex ross thread, I'm burning through Taruskin's late 20th c book and while I got v little mileage out of most of the Babbitt Taruskin talks about, I am v glad to make the acquaintance of his 'Philomel' for soprano and electronics (it's on Spotify fyi).

Haenssler album of Ives' complete Psalms is now on my to-buy list.

for babbitt i like: 1st piano cto, relata i, correspondences, vision and prayer and the sqs 2-6 (esp 6)

have you heard Philomel?

huh, my first thought was "of course i have" cuz it's usually the only babbitt anyone knows, but i don't think i actually have!

Also a few works by Mark Osborn who died in his early 30s leaving about a dozen or so cracking compositions I can listen to an awful lot at times. He developed a sensibility like few others (he was a colleague of Czernowin's, who I talked about above) that is hard to describe right now.

Oy, I knew Mark and did not know he had passed away. He and I were undergrads at the same time and had composition class with Brian Ferneyhough. :)

Anyway, nice guy - I'm so sorry to hear about this. Chaya Czernowin was possibly already a doctoral student at this time.

re: Osborn. Looking at dates the compositions are listed from the mid-90s to 2001, really felt like there was a particular voice there, inventive writing for ensemble that was immediate -- whether harsh and engaging or both (why can't it both? he managed it effortlessly) whereas Czernowin is someone I'm only getting to grips w/now.

Babbitt - try A Solo Requiem for soprano and two pianos, its the one I stopped at.

Listening to Isang Yun - again, a particular voice I want to listen to. First heard his Glisees in this classic album, and Piri (Heinz Holliger on duty) absolutely slays these elongated lines (there are relations to Korean music I've yet to explore) juxtaposed with fast flurries, placed as an afterthought you'd think.

The studies for flute I'm making my way through now, the chamber works have these odd combinations so its all to be explored in a lot more depth although I can't be arsed with 5xsymphonies he wrote in the 80s. We'll see.

Were you trained in New Complexity, Tim?

Ha, no. Mark was a little further advanced than I was and may have been more so. Ferneyhough's first assignment for me was "Create a composition that consists of the numbers one through nine." Those were the only instructions.

And I'm sure Mark's compositions are brilliant. He was the real deal.

Klaus Hubler - listening to Grave e Sfenato. "wotta fackin' piece!", as they say round these parts.

Think I have enough for an "Oboe from Mars" style compilation now..

Nono's Ricorda Cosa Ti Hanno Fatto In Auschwitz for Solo tape is really increadible...from listening and not reading about it I'd say its a non-treatment of the subject, which is possibly the right approach.

In the same way the Spahlinger is a non-treatment of what happened in Chile - its not exactly a choral piece; more fragments of such, its atomized to snatches of song and scream. The way people are shut out.

Was trying to make my way through Britten's War Requiem but uncle Benjy is so emblematic (in my head) of everything that is wrong with the way the arts and music is talked about in this country...I can tell from the first min or so its going to be heavy going.

Nono's Ricorda Cosa Ti Hanno Fatto In Auschwitz for Solo tape is really increadible

Indeed it is

Will give the Nono a first listen later today. God bless YouTube!

Re: that "Oboe from Mars" compilation, don't miss Claus-Steffan Mahnkopf's Solitude-Nocturne!

I've yet to hear a piece by Mahnkopf that I really like - will give that a go.

Surprised you've never heard that Nono piece, Paul!

anyone have any recs for "difficult" classical music? it's always been a kind of slurry undifferentiated background music genre for me and i think the way for me to get around that is to seek out examples that are deliberately antagonistic. I don't know how successful a strategy this will be because I have the same problem with metal.

lachenmann - string quartets

finnissy - english country-tunes

Philip - don't think of this stuff as "deliberately antagonistic" (or to flip a coin, things that might be "beautiful"). I don't think there is much intention for any composer worth listening to be that (Lachenmann, as an example, would interrogate the idea of an idealised beauty that is bandied about but he wouldn't set out to make something deliberately ugly as its a reactianory move).

The first classical things I listened to Webern and Steve Reich and I never had those ideas. Then again I had few ideas about anything, so I appreciate its harder.

Can you go to any contemporary recitals? xp

And if you can't see English Country Tunes playing in yur town soon there is footage of Michael Finnissy playing it in 1984 on youtube (only 25 mins or so, about half of it)

Philip--

Elliott Carter - Double Concerto

thanks for the recs! I didn't really know where to go from nancarrow(sp?) or nico muhly.

Also, Xenakis - Jonchaies

phil: i would just explore influences, regions, time periods. frinstance if you like nancarrow's player piano music you should explore ligeti's etudes, &c

Eonta is my go to Xenakis these days.

Philip - v few classical mixed composer sets that work as albums but Trio Surplus worked up some inspiration. Quite unexpectedly varied yet within a tight spectrum, whether Liza Lim mining talking to the dead or Xenakis as having an almost lightly easternised vibe on Dmaathen, which actually is not his best on its own but works with the rest of the record.

Best of all is A Book of Maps by Ian Willcock.

I attended the recording of this BBC Symphony orchestra performance of some John Zorn works on Saturday - http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01ppw1t. Some of it, the first piece in particular, was absolutely stupendous. Wasn't so keen on the works that had soloists however. They weren't bad by any means but the pieces seemed to work best when the orchestra was working as a whole, without a focal point.

phil: i would just explore influences, regions, time periods. frinstance if you like nancarrow's player piano music you should explore ligeti's etudes, &c

― #YOLO magic orchestra (clouds), Monday, January 14, 2013 4:52 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is p much how I learned classical music. Aside from the above method of branching out, you can also make good discoveries by following performers. As in, I loved this recording of Jan DeGaetani singing composer X, maybe I'll check out this record of Jan DeGaetani singing composer Y.

Surprised you've never heard that Nono piece, Paul!

I don't have an easy time appreciating his tape pieces. Something about them. Maybe his tendency to collage together a lot of unmanipulated instrumental and vocal sounds, and that omnipresent muddy reverberation. Just not drawn to that sound world the way I am to Davidovsky's, say, or to the "Acousmatic" school's (if I may lump them together)…

The only Nono in my collection is the ~20 minute extract from Prometeo on an Abbado/Berlin PO Prometheus-themed disc.

Maybe his tendency to collage together a lot of unmanipulated instrumental and vocal sounds, and that omnipresent muddy reverberation.

Ah ok that piece won't persuade you as I really like a lot of those things. My favourite is Non consumiamo Marx, a collage of sounds from Paris '68.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsWMioCPUJU

Found this piece which mentions Non... here:

On March 6, 1970, at the close of the Second International Free Composers Tribune in Prague, the final composer to be represented at the conference, Luigi Nono, spoke for more than 10 minutes before a large audience of mostly Czech musicians, vigorously criticizing my score for the short film “Pour,” which preceded his presentation. Although the protocol of the tribune permitted each composer only 10 minutes to speak about his or her own music, Nono took those 10 minutes to speak about mine, concluding with a scathing condemnation of my use of vernacular music.

Nono then went on for another 10 minutes about the making of his own work, especially pointing out the theoretically correct choice of the pre-recorded sounds he had employed. He then played a tape of his composition “Non Consumiamo Marx.” When the piece was over there were three people left in the hall at the Janacek Composers’ Club at 3 Besedni Street: Luigi Nono, Mr. Okurka (the technician who operated the tape recorder and sound system) and me.

The choral works I connect with far more readily …

Love Sara Dolce Tacere myself. I think a concert w/Renaissance works and choral pieces by Nono and Bussotti would be a must for me.

(I must say I connect with most Nono I've heard, although I need a refresher on some of the works form the 50s so thx Nilmar)

i don't know nono that well, promoteo, hay que caminar, the string quartets

liebeslied is on one of the wien modern albums that abbado recorded late 80s / early 90s, some pristine live recordings of ligeti, boulez, kurtag etc

Another good Nono piece is "A floresta é jovem e cheja de vida"

Gonna start making my way through Newman's sonatas. They strike me as no other, like updates on older classical sources yet not as physical, also played by Finnissy.

Here is a cut from the CD on MODE

not as physical like yer modernists I mean

Really enjoying Julius Eastman - Unjust Malaise (it's on Spotify). Great piece here on new music box:

http://www.newmusicbox.org/articles/In-Search-of-Julius-Eastman/

That set was the biggest surprise - Julius had a real Cage-ian do it yourself ethos from his compositions, a very indepedently minded spirit to his music.