Define contemporary . For me that could mean mid twentieth century.
Contemporary Classical Composers - new discoveries
I’ll start with my most recent discovery…Valentin Silvestrov. I’ve been going thru some of this Ukrainian composer’s work and I have to say I’m impressed.
Highly recommend to check out the following albums a starting point…
What are some of your favorites?
93 responses Add your response
@mahgister I’ll get back to you with my thoughts on your recommendations in about 6 months 😂 |
@mahler123 good question. Hit us with a recommendation for a contemporary (currently living) composer. |
Because i am almost always serious i will wait ... thanks for the thread...😁😊😋😉😊😎
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@czarivey looks like it might take few attempts to get into Nyman. |
This topic is right up my alley! The vast majority of classical music I listen to is from post 1950's, up through the present era. Although I love the 2nd Viennese School: Schoenberg, Berg, Webern. I tend to like the 'thorny' sounding stuff, so, YMMV with my recommendations. One of my favorite composers is Elliott Carter. But: Charles Wuorinen, Bruno Maderna, Joan Tower, Stefan Wolpe, George Perle, Unsuk Chin, Olga Neuwirth, Roger Sessions, and others are also high on my list.
I'll start with a great Carter piece.
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This is a great thread and very timely for me as well, as I am trying to expand my listening of more contemporary (living or at least mid/late 20th or 21st century) composers. A few that have been playing in my space recently: Gabriela Lena Frank (first heard at Chicago Symphony), Alberto Ginastera, Per Nørgård, Mieczysław Weinberg, Henri Dutilleux, Stephen Hough, Rebecca Clarke, and Missy Mazzoli I'll be checking out some of the others from this thread as well. Thanks for all of this.
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Knowing you only by reading your posts i will give you as gift a Robert Simpsons symphony set or a quartet box...Perhaps you know him ? I consider him a genius ... As a safe gift i will gave you Silvestrov silent songs box...Moving as Schubert was but in his own minimalist way ... I am as you very picky on contemporary composers... They must move me.... I will not give you Akhnaten though because i would be afraid that you put it in a drawer, it is minimalist repetitive music but so amazingly good that it is the ONLY work ressusciting ancient Egypt and it moves me beyond word ... Read the autobiography of OM Seti or Dorothy Eady and AFTER that buy Philip Glass Akhnaten ...( Om Seti hated Akhnaten by the way and his explanation is very logical ) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Eady The book about her is made by long parts of his journal with encounters at night with the Pharaoh Seti his past lovers who come to see her out of time from eternity ... The story is moving beyond words... And she became self taught one of the greatest Egyptologist recognized by all as having supernatural understanding of everything in old Egypt impossible to get by reading books ... His story is impossible to fake ... Then listening the Philip Glass Akhnaten i discovered that Glass tuned to the ancient Gods like a sleepwalker under hypnosis ... i insist here because the most stunning book which changed the course of my life was a mammoth book about Karnak temple by the late Schwaller de Lubicz i bought for 125 dollars in 1975... But this is another story ... 😊
The few exceptions in contemporary music i know was as in Sorabji case amazement by aspects of his obsessive long works that can be amazing to "see" ... And some music dont moves me but i use it more as sound meditation as Jeroen Van Veen which dont play as Sofronitsky or Moravec in an emotional tuned playing field but is able to create his own cosmos in rythms ... Nyman is a genius too in my book ... many others i did know but ... I am busy in jazz, persian music and Indian music and choral music before Bach... Jakob Obrecht and Josquin Des prez were my "contemporary composers" when i was young till this day ... And all the Franco flemish school of choral music...With Bach ... I listen music to be happy with jazz, or to be silent with choral, or to be meditative as with Peter Deunov a bulgarian music master and mystic which music is on youtube ... He died in 1944... His music is celestial as the last Liszt or the Bruckner Motets... All the songs are here ...
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@mahler123 we may be missing out so let’s not worry about that criteria. The thread has evolved beyond it and I think it’s great. I’m familiar with Philip Glass’ work and wanted to give him another chance thinking it’s been years and may be something changed in me and I will love it. He’s still not one of my favorites although I admire the minimalist style and don’t hate it. Just don’t love it. |
Going to go listen to this young lass later this month... ’The Peel’s acoustics suck for bands and such, but for soloists’ ? Better... ;) Smashing Pumpkins? You couldn’t hear the person next to you SHOUTING. Leo Kottke? Great, thanks. ...and with Jiji, we get to sit. In chairs...and not just at the bar....*LOL* The Symps' 'ALT' programs are fun diversions....(and affordable...👍). |
I think the big division occurs between Modernists who were deliberately trying to break with previous generations, and those that viewed their music as part of the long tradition. The Second Viennese School still sounds pretty radical to my ears. It is interesting that the likes of Webern and Berg were contemporaneous with Rachmaninov , Sibelius and Vaughn Williams I really enjoy Walter Piston and American composers who followed in his wake,such as Copland, Bernstein, Diamond, Perischetti, Schuman, Harris. Over the pond Simpson and Rawsthorne. In Russia after Shostakovich and Vainberg Schnittke and Gulbaidulina. From Poland Bacewicz. |
Very good post with which i concur from mahler123... But even this distinction is not enough between more traditionals composers and modernists one... Where is Philip Glass ? Where is Sorabji ? Where is Charles Ives ? Nor traditional nor modernist... Where is Nyman writing music as Sangam inspired by non-european traditions of India or Persia etc in my book it is not traditional at all nor modernist as the Viennese school which look already an "old" traditional school to me almost out of fashion as such ? In neither of this 2 polarized classification...these two groups separate on two extreme limits... Creativity is not limited by ideological borders nor by history ...
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Yes, I over simplified, as many composers can’t be pigeon holed into one of the two camps. Perhaps there are 3 main divisions. The first two that I previously elucidated would probably describe Classical Music for a good chunk of the 20th Century, but in the last 50 years or so we have rise of composers who find these distinctions irrelevant, just want to create, and let people like me do the pigeon holing. I dislike minimalism. If I want to listen to mind numbing repetition I can tune into pop music. Ives is truly unique. For me, he is a composer that I tend to respect more than I love. I do like his Concord Sonata, and Central Park in the Dark. I enjoy the 4 symphonies but tend not to seek them out. Not that familiar with Nyman |
i feel the same as you in your last post...For Ives... Save for minimalism... I dont like all minimalist music first, second i can meditate and think write with minimalist music as a tool to guide my thinking process out of any distraction and keep it focused ... I will not listen most classical music this way , save Bach, and i had no use for any pop music ...I prefer jazz ... Then some minimal music can be a tool for keeping consciousness on some trance like thinking mode... Some thinker more concentrated than me prefer silence... I myself like to alternate silence and music especially if i wrote... When thinking out of the silence hours, music give us a dream like states when our thought organize themselves without the conscious ego impediment ...Music is a thinking sleep mode where we go deeper without any ego to keep us at the surface of waters ... Then i dont like minimalism for the sake of it generally , but as a necessary musical state in my listenings...( Glass for example is an exception we can call his music minimalism but it is more than that because of his rythmic sophisticated mastery and his content ) Pop music i had no use for it as in many hours listening sessions even for an hour ... I like to have a few minutes nostalgia on the radio in my car listening by chance a song that remind me my 20 years old... I dont see any other reason to listen pop extensively ... I prefer Jazz or Persian or Indian music ( rag music is great as minimalism for thinking as well as Bach) and other cultures music even fado to pop ... I dont dislike pop ... Many pop singers and musicians had a deep impact on me... But i dont go for them out of the random moment in my life where by accident they remind me of the past... For example "California dreaming " by Mamas and the Papas... I had 13 years old or 14... I walked in our new apartment too small for my poor family , and the rythmic irresistible hope suggested by the well done harmony transform my sadness in pure joy... how can i forgot that ? Each time this music play i feel young again .,.. The same is true at the same age for Otis Redding marvelous "dock of the bay" which create the opposite in me , a deep sense of my solitude on the dock of St Lawrence river ...how can i forget this special feeling of sadness being alone ? Each time i hear it i reenter in my young self ... I remember the exact moment of my first listening of the group Cream on the stairs between two levels of the school House, or Jimi Hendrix or the first listening of Frank Zappa... Each pop music is for me a deep memory ... But i dont entertain ONLY AND MERELY nostalgia when i listen music... I use music to dream, think, sleep , or meditate and contemplate the musical content...Nostalgia is great only by chance or for very short moment of choice ... |
His first works with the "perfumed garden" are a must...Begin with that ... His 100 transcendental studies too ...Buy Ullen here ... Dont begin with anything else... Sorabji is an obsessed mind creating 9 hours pieces... It is in a way a genious lost in himself ... it is the reverse of Scriabin who spoke to us... His short pieces transform us ... Sorabji dont transform me but propose his own inner world for the sake of it and is indifferent to the listener in a way Scriabin was not , Scriabin vouched to redempt and save humanity from himself , he is a mystic; Sorabji is not a mystic but a poet inspired by mathematics and geometry...A Bach without the center of God... but is geometry is astounding and ask for a focussed attention almost no one can give...And it is unplayable on piano not for the same reason than Scriabin short pieces... how to keep the intensity for 4 or 5 hours in the Clavicem ? Ogdon only do it...Ullen do a job without defect on the transcendent studies... i like Sorabji and by moment love him ... Anyway no other composer use the piano this way....And anyway he is unknown because he had forbid people to play his works and anyway they are impossible to play because of duration...
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I concur with Arvo Part suggestion ... All these composers go out of the dead end road created by Schoenberg... 😊 Music must speak to the human heart or to the body metabolism or to the soul...When it spoke out of tonality or out of cultural grounded modes or out of articulated rythms as speech is , music begin to be a mind space only where we have nothing to eat and give to the heart, the soul or to the body... You can heal someone with Bach or Beethoven i doubt you can do it so successfully and easily with the second Viennese school... The OM sound or the CHrist sound or Yoruba speaking drums will do it better ...😊 Finally in music there is tastes, we are each one of us different with our own history and biases, but ultimately music as acoustic is not about tastes.. Tastes there is, but tastes it is not .... |