Folks like these are the intellectual (if not “cultural”) heirs of the “standard canon”. Some of them are as good as the three B’s (most of them are at least at the level of say, Schumann or Mendelssohn), and all of them are currently living academics (or former academics).
(Then, in addition, there are the European non-academics like Boulez, etc.)
For what it’s worth, I tried listening to Ferneyhough 2007, and the first few minutes were fascinating. It was as though the music was playing something in the back of my mind. And then I ran out of attention.
Is the sort of music you listed especially dependent on good reproduction, or is youtube enough for a fair sampling?
Is the sort of music you listed especially dependent on good reproduction, or is youtube enough for a fair sampling?
It’s especially dependent on good performance, but I don’t think recording quality is necessarily much more important than for works of earlier periods, at least above a certain minimum threshold. Certainly not for the works I listed, which I think are fairly represented by the linked recordings. (Excepting perhaps Carter’s Variations for Orchestra, for which the audio is too soft.)
I’m not sure how you could tap your foot to the Wuorinen concerto, but I listened to it and his Lepton, and enjoyed the energy level and variety of texture. I wonder if some of that could be brought into more accessible music.
It is possible that it was due to an ephemeral state brought on by listening to an hour of the other stuff. But:
I could tap my foot because the first beat of many measures was emphasized, and notes tended to have only a few lengths, which were integer multiples or divisions of one typical length, which in turn was an integer division of a measure. And I did tap my foot because the piano is more forgiving to “let’s mess with octaves” moments, and the piece involved things like harmony and phrasing. There may even have been a cadence in there somewhere.
I’m wondering if the surprising (to me) number of Conservatory-trained musicians and indeed composers I have known who ended up in heavy metal bands just to get work in the field of music might have a place there … any thoughts on those people?
An ad-hoc (more-or-less-)top-of-my-head sampler, if you’re really curious (sorted alphabetically by composer and chronologically by work):
Babbitt: 1948, 1954, 1964, 1984 1992, 2003
Carter: 1955, 1980, 1971, rehearsal of a 1995 work
Crumb: 1970
Dillon: 1992
Ferneyhough: 1980, 1997, 2006, 2007
First: 1999
Murail: 1983
Ran: 1991
Westergaard: 1958, 2006
Wuorinen: 1971 1984, 1998
Folks like these are the intellectual (if not “cultural”) heirs of the “standard canon”. Some of them are as good as the three B’s (most of them are at least at the level of say, Schumann or Mendelssohn), and all of them are currently living academics (or former academics).
(Then, in addition, there are the European non-academics like Boulez, etc.)
For what it’s worth, I tried listening to Ferneyhough 2007, and the first few minutes were fascinating. It was as though the music was playing something in the back of my mind. And then I ran out of attention.
Is the sort of music you listed especially dependent on good reproduction, or is youtube enough for a fair sampling?
It’s especially dependent on good performance, but I don’t think recording quality is necessarily much more important than for works of earlier periods, at least above a certain minimum threshold. Certainly not for the works I listed, which I think are fairly represented by the linked recordings. (Excepting perhaps Carter’s Variations for Orchestra, for which the audio is too soft.)
Thank you for the list, it was interesting to listen to.
Not gonna lie, though, I got to Wuorinen’s piano concerto and thought (roughly) “thank god! Something I can tap my foot to!”
I’m not sure how you could tap your foot to the Wuorinen concerto, but I listened to it and his Lepton, and enjoyed the energy level and variety of texture. I wonder if some of that could be brought into more accessible music.
It is possible that it was due to an ephemeral state brought on by listening to an hour of the other stuff. But:
I could tap my foot because the first beat of many measures was emphasized, and notes tended to have only a few lengths, which were integer multiples or divisions of one typical length, which in turn was an integer division of a measure. And I did tap my foot because the piano is more forgiving to “let’s mess with octaves” moments, and the piece involved things like harmony and phrasing. There may even have been a cadence in there somewhere.
I’m wondering if the surprising (to me) number of Conservatory-trained musicians and indeed composers I have known who ended up in heavy metal bands just to get work in the field of music might have a place there … any thoughts on those people?