[calvinpv]

Beat Furrer's Percussion Quartet (1995)

I can't say this is my favorite contemporary piece, only because I heard it for the first time yesterday and need time to digest it. But if you're looking for pieces people get excited over, this is certainly one of those types of works. Before yesterday, the only other works I knew by Furrer was spur and his Piano Concerto, and so I decided to remedy that (spur is a great piece worth checking out; the Piano Concerto is good, but you need to be in the right mood to enjoy it).

The Percussion Quartet has many interesting aspects to it. I recommend listening with a good set of headphones:

1) There are sequences of gestures that remind me of certain Futurist artworks like Umberto Boccioni's very famous Unique Forms of Continuity in Space or Marcel Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2. Futurists re-imagined motion as no longer involving a 3-dimensional solid body changing its spatial coordinates through empty space but rather as a sequence of 2-dimensional energy-ridden, pulsating surface-images. In the Furrer piece, there are a couple moments where a single very basic percussive gesture (usually a "gliding" sound, for lack of a better word) is multiplied and overlapped into a rapid sequence, with variation in timbral qualities within each iteration of the gesture. Although movement per se isn't getting represented here, you do get a weird feeling of transubstantiation from one place/state to another that is reminiscent of Futurist motion. The sequences that I'm thinking of can be found at [1:10-1:30], [2:20-2:30], [4:44-4:54] [18:55-19:07], [19:30-19:41], but there are many other smaller ones.

2) Related to the above point, there are a couple sequences that also seem to grow in complexity as they unfold. I know this is a subjective impression, but I get an image in my head of a flower coming into bloom. I hear one at [12:45-13:10].

3) There is a rather Cage-like approach to silence. On the one hand, sounds seem to exert themselves in isolation, thereby betraying their own outer limits beyond which you hear the emptiness of the auditorium. There is very little in the way of verticality in the piece: there are no harmonic approaches to the music that remain suspended and overwhelm your ears to the point where silence becomes a conceptual impossibility. Rather, the music develops more "horizontally", with one idea at a time getting presented -- allowing your ears to trace out a discrete geometric shape in the air with its own outer boundaries. And you are also able to pick out each percussionist's individual role.

On the other hand, the opposite happens in the quieter sections, where a multitude of rustling whispers color and shade the silent backdrop, making the silence a sort of "5th percussionist". See [22:00-22:45].

4) There's a marimba-heavy section at [6:40-7:30] that gives the impression of a never-ending Shepard scale, although I doubt that's what Furrer was going for (then again, maybe he was; I don't know too much about how that scale works, so what do I know).

5) There are some very cool rhythmic sections, which I think is important to point out in this case because the word "noise" often comes with the connotation of being uncontrolled and unregulated chaos. But Furrer (and certainly other noise composers as well) shows how easy it is to discipline noise into a rhythmic pattern with precise durations. For example, at [16:20-18:30], though really the whole piece is full of rhythm.

 

[Phil loves classical]

Although this is from 1968, I don't feel it's aged or become outdated one bit. To me all contemporary quartets seem to have been born out of this. This one I feel has real lasting value, and is a masterpiece in my mind. I think the boldness and originality real stands out.

 

[feierlich]

I can't say this is my favorite contemporary piece, only because I heard it for the first time yesterday and need time to digest it. But if you're looking for pieces people get excited over, this is certainly one of those types of works. Before yesterday, the only other works I knew by Furrer was spur and his Piano Concerto, and so I decided to remedy that

Beat Furrer is surely a composer who needs more recognition! I love almost all of his work, and I say almost only because I haven't heard all of it! Apart from this album (of which I own a CD), I also recommend his Aria and String Quartet No. 3.

 

[Simon Moon]

Beat Furrer is surely a composer who needs more recognition! I love almost all of his work, and I say almost only because I haven't heard all of it! Apart from this album (of which I own a CD), I also recommend his Aria and String Quartet No. 3.

I agree.

Furrer is a recent discovery of mine, and I'm really liking what I hear.

I also recently discovered the Kairos label, which seems to have all sorts of interesting music and composers.

I bought Furrer's, Concerto per pianoforte e orchestra (2007) from Kairos just a couple of weeks ago.

 

[feierlich]

I also recently discovered the Kairos label, which seems to have all sorts of interesting music and composers.

Yes, Kairos is a great label! So far I've collected a couple of dozens of their CDs. The only thing is they tend to be more expensive than others, but I see this as a way to support the classical music industry since most of the label's composers are alive (and therefore need to eat!)

 

[composingmusic]

It's been a while since I've posted here – life has kept me quite busy, as I've just finished up a piece I've been writing for some time now, and that's been fairly intense. Here's another piece I'm quite fond of:

Tristan Murail's Winter Fragments

It's quite amazing how the electronics unfold from the acoustic instruments. I'm not sure what processes Murail used to create these sounds, exactly, other than he's using various types of spectral sound processing based on recorded sounds (if I'm remembering this correctly). What I can comment on is that the electronics are triggered by someone playing on an electronic keyboard, and there is a rather complicated MAX MSP patch that links the keyboard to these sounds, which are triggered by pressing specific keys. The synthesizer part isn't difficult technically, but it's got to be absolutely together with the ensemble, and the synth player has no control of the dynamics at all (that's all done at the mixing desk). Even though there's a lot happening in real time, the sounds themselves are entirely pre-recorded.

This piece begins with a rather bright synthesizer chord, doubled in piano and flute. The next gesture, which consists of cello harmonics and a flute glissando gesture, is mirrored in the electronics, and Murail has created a sense of space in the echoing electronics that follow. These two gestures are central to this first section of the piece. Around a minute into the piece, these gestures and their electronic counterparts start to vary more in pitch and duration. There's a brief moment of recall at around 1:30, but this is quickly shattered by what happens at 1:40, where the low range is introduced for the first time in this piece. Suddenly, the texture is much thicker: violin trills, low piano, and cello pizzicatos blend to produce a more expansive sound than the single lines we've had previously.

Murail does cross-reference the first section, keeping the bright chords from the opening, and the glissando gesture that originated in the flute. However, this next section is much more active and prominently features the low range. There's a certain foreboding quality to this music, in my opinion at least. At 2:10 or so, the music starts to move back into the higher range again, and becomes more familiar – it's now quite similar to the beginning once more, but Murail has kept some of the low register material in the distant background, which gives the music a particular type of resonance. From 2:20, something extraordinary happens: the bright chords start to evolve into arpeggiated overtones, and this creates a sense of opening up in the high register. Then, the music accelerates and moves back down to the low range. A darker, more foreboding section follows at 2:43, which cross-references material from 1:40. This then transforms into what seems to me to be a time-stretched (and pitch-shifted) version of the opening material.

At 4:02, there is a sudden shift to a much higher activity level and faster rate of change in general. Murail introduces a series of cascading gestures that occur over very bright electronic sonorities (see the opening of the top register that started at 2:20). These also start combining the earlier instrumental gestures and electronics in various ways, and the individual gestures tend to gradually slow down and lose energy before restarting at a higher energy level once more. Finally, this energy dissolves at around 5:30, and Murail recalls the earlier time-stretched and pitch-shifted version of the opening material. It's important to note that this is not an exact repeat; the material is being continuously transformed throughout the piece. This dissolution of energy continues to 6:10, where we are left with just electronic resonance.

6:20 marks an important formal moment: the foreboding low energy material returns with a vengeance in a big gesture. This ushers in a section that combines the low electronic gestures from 1:40, along with a higher register version of the violin material from this section and the opening flute gesture (note: in a more expansive form, and louder dynamic). As the energy level increases, Murail returns to the cascading gestures from 4:02 (this is at 6:52). The texture eventually thins out to a degree, and something very interesting happens at 7:24 – Murail quotes Gérard Grisey's Prologue from Les Espaces Acoustiques in the string parts. This is another musical gesture that will return several times in the final sections of the piece. At 7:32, we return back to the high-energy cascading gestures once more.

Murail keeps recombining these bright cascading gestures with earlier material, including the low electronic gestures from earlier, bright synthesizer chords, and flute glissandos. At 8:26, he quotes Prologue for a second time, but this time slowed down from the earlier instance. This leads into 8:41, where a large upward swoop transforms into a high-register, pointillistic texture between piano and strings. As the energy intensifies once more, the texture morphs into a cascading texture (which is less energetic than previous instances). Gradually, the music dissolves into overlapping fragmented instances of the opening gesture.

There is another large formal boundary at 10:02 – after the piece has faded into complete silence, a loud, low electronic gesture appears. This gesture is juxtaposed against an extremely soft gesture in the flute and string harmonics, which is then followed up by another similar gesture. Murail follows this up with a few bright chords in the electronics, and enters a sound world similar to the initial opening at 10:37, although the gestures here are more expansive and contain more variety in pitch content. This is almost immediately combined with material similar to 1:40, and here Murail starts combining and recombining material from several different sections (bright chords, flute glissandos, low electronic material from various sections, arpeggiated overtones, etc). 11:50 in the flute and clarinet really reminds me of the earlier Prologue quotes, but this is more of a distant memory than a direct quote, for me at least. There's an extremely quiet section that fades into 12:09 or so, after which the energy begins to snowball once more.

12:21 leads into one last hurrah, with a final section of descending glittering cascades – this dissolves into the softer section following at 12:35. Here, the cello and violin directly quote Prologue repeatedly, and this becomes almost obsessive. The texture slows down and thins out until only the cello is left. A final, partial iteration of Grisey's quote is then followed up with one last bright synthesizer chord, which is doubled in the piano.

Winter Fragments is dedicated to Gérard Grisey, in memoriam. Grisey had passed just a year before the completion of this work.

 

[Roger Knox]

Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians. While not the first piece of musical minimalism, it is certainly one of the most notable and best and can perhaps stand as representative of the whole genre.
So, is it really classical music? Yes, since it is meant to be listened to: not sung to, danced to, accompanying a ballet or film. It is as radical a departure from traditional Western classical music as serialism.
Now, does it have "legs" or destined to be some kind withered branch off the main trunk of Western music? I think probably the latter. True minimalism was already abased and adulterated from the time it first appeared (sorry, Philip Glass can take a good deal of credit for that).
There is something about minimalism which seems to echo or parallel the ethos of "culture" in the late 20th century. I can't put my finger on what, but there's some kind of connection.

I think Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians is a classic. I don't think there is a main trunk of Western classical music anymore. Nor is it western; Asian and other countries are highly involved. I agree with your last paragraph. Minimalism has a sense of exhaustion with the twentieth century and is part of an ongoing search for peace and spiritual growth. But it can convey a sense of hypocritical complacency, of core detachment from the real. And in my experience minimalism when thoughtless can become aggressive, a sort of relentless unstoppable bulldozer, like someone who thinks they are always right and seldom is.

 

[Simon Moon]

Yes, Kairos is a great label! So far I've collected a couple of dozens of their CDs. The only thing is they tend to be more expensive than others, but I see this as a way to support the classical music industry since most of the label's composers are alive (and therefore need to eat!)

I did not find them to be that expensive at all.

I ordered 3 CD's, they were $13 each, and shipping was free. Maybe I lucked into some special sale.

 

[Simon Moon]

I've been listening to George Perle's "Serenade No. 3 for Piano and Chamber Orchestra (1983)" quite a bit lately.

He had his own idiosyncratic take on serialism. To me, this piece comes off as being quite playful.

 

[Vasks]

I've been listening to George Perle's "Serenade No. 3 for Piano and Chamber Orchestra (1983)" quite a bit lately. He had his own idiosyncratic take on serialism. To me, this piece comes off as being quite playful.

Really fine composer. You can follow his usage of motives regardless of the harmonic language. And yes, his mood can often be playful

 

[HerbertNorman]

I saw this performance of the Witold Lutoslawski Concerto for Cello and Orchestra and I was quite blown away. I knew the composition but it's power was overwhelming when I saw it live . There is so much to enjoy and discover in the piece that I would recommend it to each listener that is not acquainted with his work or even that of the second half of the 20th century.

Another one I treasure , György Ligeti's trio for Violin, Horn and Piano ... just a great piece of modernist chamber music. A special composition , that has a lot to offer. One to enjoy live too!

 

[composingmusic]

I saw this performance of the Witold Lutoslawski Concerto for Cello and Orchestra and I was quite blown away. I knew the composition but it's power was overwhelming when I saw it live . There is so much to enjoy and discover in the piece that I would recommend it to each listener that is not acquainted with his work or even that of the second half of the 20th century.

Indeed, it's a marvellous piece. I've done a good deal of analysis on this piece, as part of my coursework for my current degree (I'm studying composition), and there is quite a lot to unpack.

It's worth mentioning that this is one of a number of pieces that Rostropovich commissioned. He also commissioned Dutilleux to write a cello concerto (that's another piece that I'm a big fan of), Prokofiev, Shostakovich, and Gubaidulina. Rostropovich was also critical for Messiaen's La Transfiguration de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ and Boulez’s Messagesquisse for cello septet – in the Messiaen, there's a large solo cello part that's written for Rostropovich, and Messagesquisse was a commission by Rostropovich for Paul Sacher.

Lutoslawski's concerto begins with a 4-5 minute solo cadenza, which ends with brass interruptions. This dynamic, with the cello being interrupted by various instrumental groups, is a central idea of the piece – there is an ongoing power struggle between the cello and the orchestra.

The first movement consists mostly of this aforementioned cadenza, and ends with the brass interruptions that I mentioned. This feeds into the second movement, titled Episodes: each episode begins with pizzicato cello gestures, and ends with brass interruptions that mirror the end of the first movement. There's a specific, very chromatic, symmetrical hexachord (0,1,2,6,7,8) that these brass interruptions use. Another thing worth mentioning about these episodes is that Lutoslawski tends to focus on specific instrumental groups – there's something quite block-like about how he's doing this. In some ways, it reminds me of Stravinsky and Messiaen's use of blocks of material (purely in how these people tend to construct blocks of material and use them as objects, even if they sound completely different from how Lutoslawski is using his material). It's also worth pointing out that there is a kind of pitch anchor on the cello's open D string. This is not to say that this music is tonal, but there is a prevalence of this specific pitch, and I think it acts as a pitch centre of sorts.

Following these episodes, Lutoslawski moves into a more lyrical approach for the third movement, Cantilena. At the start of this movement, the strings play Arco for the first time in the entire piece. Longer phrases appear in the instrumental texture, although we can still see passages where Lutoslawski is using the earlier short, interrupting passages. Lutoslawski also introduces a new pitch anchor, which is a low E at the bottom register of the cello. Gradually, the intensity of the music begins to grow, and leading into the fourth movement, Lutoslawski presents an extraordinary passage where all of the strings join the solo cello in unison, in fortissimo. This melodic passage is very compact in range (a perfect fifth spanning G to D), and the line itself moves by major and minor seconds. Another thing that makes this passage particularly striking is the turbulent nature of the relationship between cello and orchestra, which I've mentioned earlier; however, here these two opposing forces are acting together instead of against each other.

The final movement grows from a series of interruptions, as various sections of the orchestra interrupt each other in growing intensity. This culminates in a climax that contains all of the 12 pitches of the chromatic scale. There are juxtapositions here between passages where the cello plays completely alone, and the entire orchestra functions as a single, extremely loud, extremely chromatic, monolithic object. Gradually, the energy dies down, and the cello has an epilogue that mirrors the opening passage. The piece ends with a repeated A in the cello, two octaves above the open A string.

 

[staxomega]

Henze Symphony 5

Like Martinů Henze creates a captivating sound world in his symphonies, I feel like the fifth conveys this quite well. It's almost like an ultra modern ballet in its rhythms, the tension, and release.

 

[haziz]

As someone who is allergic to most 20th century and 21st century classical music, I will be watching this thread with some interest. I am certainly open to anyone who can cure me of my allergy! My allergy does not extend to all musical genres, I will happily consume some 20th century Jazz, as well as late 70s - 80s pop, although again I can be selective there.

I will nominate a couple of compositions I find interesting or moving despite the above mentioned allergy. I suspect some may argue that some of them are not 'modernist', but the fact that they are by living composers makes them 'modern' as far as I am concerned.

Jennifer Higdon: Blue Cathedral

Anna Clyne: DANCE

John Adams: On the Transmigration of Souls

 

[Vasks]

I suspect some may argue that some of them are not 'modernist', but the fact that they are by living composers makes them 'modern' as far as I am concerned.

Haziz - The O.P. said modernist or contemporary. It's perfectly fine to consider the difference between the two as "modernist" being more atonal/non-melodic while others who are still living ("contemporary") who prefer some form of tonality and motivic/melodic usage.

May I suggest that with your taste expressed you may enjoy Paul Moravec, Aaron Jay Kernis, Michael Daugherty, Paul Schoenfield, Christopher Theofanidis and maybe with a slight stretch George Tsontakis.

 

[HerbertNorman]

Indeed, it's a marvellous piece. I've done a good deal of analysis on this piece, as part of my coursework for my current degree (I'm studying composition), and there is quite a lot to unpack.

It's worth mentioning that this is one of a number of pieces that Rostropovich commissioned. He also commissioned Dutilleux to write a cello concerto (that's another piece that I'm a big fan of), Prokofiev, Shostakovich, and Gubaidulina. Rostropovich was also critical for Messiaen's La Transfiguration de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ and Boulez’s Messagesquisse for cello septet – in the Messiaen, there's a large solo cello part that's written for Rostropovich, and Messagesquisse was a commission by Rostropovich for Paul Sacher.

Lutoslawski's concerto begins with a 4-5 minute solo cadenza, which ends with brass interruptions. This dynamic, with the cello being interrupted by various instrumental groups, is a central idea of the piece – there is an ongoing power struggle between the cello and the orchestra.

The first movement consists mostly of this aforementioned cadenza, and ends with the brass interruptions that I mentioned. This feeds into the second movement, titled Episodes: each episode begins with pizzicato cello gestures, and ends with brass interruptions that mirror the end of the first movement. There's a specific, very chromatic, symmetrical hexachord (0,1,2,6,7,8) that these brass interruptions use. Another thing worth mentioning about these episodes is that Lutoslawski tends to focus on specific instrumental groups – there's something quite block-like about how he's doing this. In some ways, it reminds me of Stravinsky and Messiaen's use of blocks of material (purely in how these people tend to construct blocks of material and use them as objects, even if they sound completely different from how Lutoslawski is using his material). It's also worth pointing out that there is a kind of pitch anchor on the cello's open D string. This is not to say that this music is tonal, but there is a prevalence of this specific pitch, and I think it acts as a pitch centre of sorts.

Following these episodes, Lutoslawski moves into a more lyrical approach for the third movement, Cantilena. At the start of this movement, the strings play Arco for the first time in the entire piece. Longer phrases appear in the instrumental texture, although we can still see passages where Lutoslawski is using the earlier short, interrupting passages. Lutoslawski also introduces a new pitch anchor, which is a low E at the bottom register of the cello. Gradually, the intensity of the music begins to grow, and leading into the fourth movement, Lutoslawski presents an extraordinary passage where all of the strings join the solo cello in unison, in fortissimo. This melodic passage is very compact in range (a perfect fifth spanning G to D), and the line itself moves by major and minor seconds. Another thing that makes this passage particularly striking is the turbulent nature of the relationship between cello and orchestra, which I've mentioned earlier; however, here these two opposing forces are acting together instead of against each other.

The final movement grows from a series of interruptions, as various sections of the orchestra interrupt each other in growing intensity. This culminates in a climax that contains all of the 12 pitches of the chromatic scale. There are juxtapositions here between passages where the cello plays completely alone, and the entire orchestra functions as a single, extremely loud, extremely chromatic, monolithic object. Gradually, the energy dies down, and the cello has an epilogue that mirrors the opening passage. The piece ends with a repeated A in the cello, two octaves above the open A string.

Thanks for this @composingmusic , it's just a must listen for people who like the cello and the cellist here Hayoung Choi , played the cadenza just right imo. You could see and feel the suspense and enthousiasm grow in the crowd , for most of them (myself included) it was the first time they had experienced a live performance of the piece. I can say that the live performance completely convinced me of its greatness...

 

[RandallPeterListens]

I think Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians is a classic. I don't think there is a main trunk of Western classical music anymore. Nor is it western; Asian and other countries are highly involved. I agree with your last paragraph. Minimalism has a sense of exhaustion with the twentieth century and is part of an ongoing search for peace and spiritual growth. But it can convey a sense of hypocritical complacency, of core detachment from the real. And in my experience minimalism when thoughtless can become aggressive, a sort of relentless unstoppable bulldozer, like someone who thinks they are always right and seldom is.

I agree. There is an awful lot of "bad" minimalist compositions (again, apologies to Philip Glass). Steve Reich doesn't always hit a home run for me, either. But a few, like "Tehillim" really stand out. There seems to be a tendency for minimalists (both Glass and Reich) to become more "traditional" (development of thematic materials by change of key, rhythm, sense of moving forward with a theme) over time. I haven't found many of these types of composition particularly successful. For me the earlier minimalism (incremental development or change over a static core) was more successful.

 

[Simon Moon]

Here's a piece that, without a doubt sounds completely contemporary, yet is also completely approachable, IMO.

Augusta Read Thomas - Hemke Concerto "Prisms of Light" (2014)

 

[composingmusic]

Wanted to revive this thread because it's great – I'll hopefully post another longer take on a piece in the next few days!

 

[mikeh375]

Here's a piece that, without a doubt sounds completely contemporary, yet is also completely approachable, IMO.

Augusta Read Thomas - Hemke Concerto "Prisms of Light" (2014)

I quite liked that, thanks Simon. It`s consonance and line are certainly easy enough to grasp.