Wherein We Elect Our Favourite Classical Compositions of… the 1910s

(At work. Will post at lunch!)

I think this is my favourite decade of classical music but there's quite a lot I haven't heard of here! Got a lot of love for the Bartok string quartet, Three Places in New England, the Debussy preludes and images, the Planets, the Firebird (got a totally charming recording on pedal steel guitar), the Rite of Spring, both the Vaughan Williams, and Strauss' absent Alpine Symphony (if just for the opening, which I used to play over & over).

I'd like to write in a vote for Charles Villiers Stanford's The Blue Bird from his 1910 8 part songs, which cuts me deep for personal reasons and feels so full of loss. Of these I'll vote for Debussy's first book of preludes

I'll seek out that Stanford piece (I'm not familiar with his oeuvre at all tbh).

As ever, don't hesitate to prop up favourite recordings should you have any. I very much admire Jean-Efflam Bavouzet's way with Debussy and the Préludes in particular. And the immortal Michelangeli…

Voted Book I of the Préludes, where I think Pollini gets it more right* than most (*right as in, "how I think each one should go"). Hope someone throws a bone to Webern's 6 Pieces though - the version on the complete works box conducted by Boulez is controlled hysteria.

You can refer to a score here: https://imslp.org/wiki/Special:ImagefromIndex/03959/pnba

NB: I am not a singer.

So this may be basic stuff but, as per Schoenberg's instructions, aiui, the vocalist is expected to follow the notated rhythms strictly. The notated pitches are to be struck but let go immediately and the vocalist follows the line in sliding towards the next note, which strikes me (a non-singer) as pretty tricky. With a mix of conjunct and very disjunct (plenty of sevenths and ninths) contours in the line, and the wide, detailed dynamic range, you have quite a substantial expressive repertoire to work from, but it is one that is also carefully notated and can certainly be followed (and evaluated). Compositionally, the way he could use recognizable sets of intervals in each movement can provide unity. Is that a helpful start? Any vocalists want to jump in?

no clue for this decade, gonna have to listen/relisten to everything

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnMv6-XTROY

2xp He did elaborate later that the pitches should be 'good' but not 'strictly adhered to'.

xp ^^^^ a bourgeoisie properly ooga booga'ed

Ever since I came back around on "classical", this period has been the anchor for my appreciation and understanding of music in general. Amazing how this hazy anxious uncertain cloud of sound just swept in and made the stuff from just a couple decades before seem old and antiquated. This is probably my favourite decade of "classical" music. Voted Concord Sonata on this but I could have gone with any of a dozen pieces, especially the Scriabin sonatas.

Thanks for the display name!

<3

I love Rite Of Spring on a technical level, top 10 works of all time for sure, but when I think about what Concord was attempting (and succeeding at, gloriously)? There is honestly no 20th c. work I admire more.

I don't know if I've been posting about it recently-- upon reading "Essays After A Sonata" my awe of this sonata just runneth over-- but I think the only comparable work to it is Finnegan's Wake; FW works so well as a casual read (or read aloud) and is richly rewarding upon close examination. And in Concord, there are stupefying moments throughout. Certain nudge-and-wink compositional aspects of it-- the viola and flute, the board-- are, sure, hilarious in their apparent superfluousness, but are SO GORGEOUS in execution.

I mean listen to this, this moment in "Hawthorne" is so glorious

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDNPpsUaVYo&t=17m40s

My favourite passage

Hm: hxxp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDNPpsUaVYo&t=17m40s

Oh wow, Debussy Jeux didn't even make the long-list here? scandaloos

Fuck.

This is as ridiculous as the absence of Sibelius's Violin Concerto in the last poll. Mea culpa, once again.

You gotta have either Jeux or the Etudes, man. The place-setters for the next phase of Debussy if not for that goddamn colon tumor.

This is the decade to end all decades. So many masterpieces left off but you know, it’s ok, it makes the vote a little less agonizing!

But I was all set to vote Preludes Bk I for this one, Sibelius either the 7th or Tapiola for the next one. But I forgot fucking Pierrot aggghhhhh

Curiously I don’t feel too tempted by the rite...

It's a testament to the strength of the decade that the Debussy Preludes are not currently in my top 2. I'm pretty sure I wrote a paper on the Concord Sonata in undergrad but I don't remember it very well, weirdly. I can't not listen to it now. Unlikely that anything will beat Pierrot in the end, though.

So this may be basic stuff but, as per Schoenberg's instructions, aiui, the vocalist is expected to follow the notated rhythms strictly. The notated pitches are to be struck but let go immediately and the vocalist follows the line in sliding towards the next note, which strikes me (a non-singer) as pretty tricky. With a mix of conjunct and very disjunct (plenty of sevenths and ninths) contours in the line, and the wide, detailed dynamic range, you have quite a substantial expressive repertoire to work from, but it is one that is also carefully notated and can certainly be followed (and evaluated). Compositionally, the way he could use recognizable sets of intervals in each movement can provide unity. Is that a helpful start? Any vocalists want to jump in?

That is indeed helpful, thanks.

There are quite a few excellent performances of Pierrot lunaire available on YT, so side-by-side comparisons are easily undertaken by amateurs such as myself. It also goes without saying that the visual component is hardly irrelevant to the work.

Kiera Duffy does an amazing job here and I'm surprised to encounter Cristian Măcelaru in this repertoire:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bd2cBUJmDr8

The place-setters for the next phase of Debussy if not for that goddamn colon tumor

Tbf three more Sonatas were in the works, so the first three are as much an indication of future directions as Jeux and the 12 Etudes. Not to mention he was a jingoistic motherfucker who could have easily devolved into writing ear-numbing music pour la mère patrie, especially given his response to WWI. But I like to think that wouldn't have happened regardless.

I mean I love it, it rules, it birthed a new moon, but I love it just as much for the sweepstakes it kicked off where every place on earth eventually had a composer floating that land’s own stomping folk colossus. And for the glorious genre of horror film scoring.

Xpost to self

it's Ives' Concord

you dating his Fourth Symphony to the 1920's? fair enough if so!

Yep.

Re Prokofiev peak works convo
The 2nd and 3rd symphonies are magnificent monsters, you pom need to hear them if you haven’t

I have heard them and I don't get them at all. But it's been ages... I'll revisit them next week.

Rushed another Spotify playlist last night but then just went to bed. LOL.

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5uAi4Ii8OSGQqfZp78MH9L

Recording choices subject to ongoing refinement, etc, etc...

This is probably totally cliché, but I'd been somewhat-generally-interested in classical/notated music as a part of the greater music thing until about 22, when a friend at university shoved me into a listening chair at the library, put a CD of the Rite of Spring in the player, got out the score and two sets of headphones, and just kind of conducted me through the thing. I was blown away in general, and also found the source of the start of "The Anal Staircase" by Coil. :-D

So that. You could probably make a credible poll of 50 for each single one of these years. Damn.

(fgti's connection of the Concord Sonata to Finnegans Wake is going to make me listen to the former very soon, though! I guess I've thought of it as a somewhat daunting task, for which I should put on a very serious and pondering face, which I guess is how many non-FW readers view FW, which to me is mostly great fun.)

(the best and also the correct way to read FW is broken up into tweets, sorry if this offends)

Roaratorio was also meant to be experienced as a series of tweet-length snippets iirc.

I like the John Zorn version of Lunaire (w/wind machine)

dull poptimist votes for sibelius 5

That's hardly the most poptimist pick here tbh (see: Elgar, Holst, Vaughan Williams – all British, incidentally).

Disappointed that there's no Lili Boulanger on the list... "D'un matin de printemps" and "Faust et Hélène" especially are among my favourite compositions of this decade.

Have you heard The Oceanides, Brad? As much as I worship the 5th, I feel like it's the purest distillation of Sibelian bliss in the 1910s.

oooh i haven’t

i guess you’re right, my brain skipped over the planets when i was reading the list

You're in for a treat. Check out Osmo Vänskä's performance with the Lahti Symphony Orchestra.

Re: Lili Boulanger, it's a lovely little piece, but not top 50 material imho. Don't worry, it'll stop being a sausage fest very soon.

Sibelius is the poptimist option because it's the most indie sounding!

That's quite the take. Care to expand?

Yeah idgi

(And Sibelius is tied for my all time favorite composer)

Joeks

the so-called nationalist composers are all eager for their respective nations to gain independence -- hence indie!

*runs away very fast*

*ba dum tss*

I usually think of Satie as classical for indie listeners but tbh I don't think I know the Nocturnes. (I voted for the Gymnopédies in their poll; I listen to indie. Don't @ me.)

my own joeks half-formed opinion (also previously aired on these borads) is that Sibelius is v off-putting because it is an uncanny-valley-type of sound that seems to be your regular orchestral music yet is not really, yet is not unlike enough to be something that is not that

I usually think of Satie as classical for indie listeners

My experience as well.

Sibelius is v off-putting because it is an uncanny-valley-type of sound

This is especially true of his late works (The Tempest and Tapiola in particular). Jean was more of a modernist than he let on.

Obligatory "can we not?"

This is especially true of his late works (The Tempest and Tapiola in particular). Jean was more of a modernist than he let on.

Yeah, I do feel a bit bad about how I feel about this, I ought to approach his stuff from a more tabula-rasa standpoint.

Come to think of it, I actually do like his string quartet! It being not orchestral could possibly be relevant.

pom could you suggest a relatively recent piece which exemplifies “Arvo Pärt's now ubiquitous compositional style” and wherein i might hear this RVW influence ?

I hear echoes of both in Dobrinka Tabakova's music.

Btw Pärt's Silouans Song strikes me as a good example of what he (consciously?) owes to RVW.

The Lark Ascending and Fantasia are just magical pieces of music.

Indeed they are. Thanks for linking to that Davis' recording Pom!