Musicological Observations 8: Essential listening from post-1945 New Music?
Posted: October 16, 2016 Filed under: Music - General, Musical Education, New Music | Tags: brian ferneyhough, helmut lachenmann, karlheinz stockhausen, luigi nono, morton feldman, pierre boulez 14 CommentsI was considering what I thought should be essential listening from the repertoire of post-1945 new music, to which anyone doing a music degree course which has a Western art music focus should be exposed during the course of their study. I want to be uncompromising and avoid easy populist, ‘democratic’, patronising choices (but look to major, difficult works for which exposure and explication at a university level might really make a difference. So here are six suggestions – I am looking for some others (I have lots of ideas, naturally, but am interested in those of others) that might make this up to ten suggestions. Please do post below. I am aware that there all the below choices are men, so would welcome various views on which works of women composers might also be included, according to the criteria I lay out.
Pierre Boulez, Pli selon pli (1957-62, rev. 1989-90)
Karlheinz Stockhausen, Kontakte (1958-60)
Luigi Nono, La fabbrica illuminata (1964)
Morton Feldman, Violin and Orchestra (1979) (only an excerpt is included above)
Brian Ferneyhough, Second String Quartet (1980)
Helmut Lachenmann, Allegro sostenuto (1987-88, rev. 1989-91).
Desiring Progress 
[…] Musicological Observations 8: Essential listening from post-1945 New Music? (16/10/16) […]
hard to go past 4’33 i guess – and, conveniently, it’s quite short.
maybe one of the early Glass pieces, like Music In Twelve Parts?
Cardew’s The Great Learning
Grisey, Les Espaces acoustiques.
Elliott Carter–but there’s so much of it! Perhaps the 2nd String Quartet, the Concerto for Orchestra, or the Double Concerto?
Can’t imagine post-war music without Ligeti.
The listening assignments post-1945 (in addition to all the music we listen to in class) in my 20/21st century survey are:
György Ligeti: Second string quartet
Iannis Xenakis: Tetras
Luciano Berio: Sinfonia
Karlheinz Stockhausen: Gruppen
Pierre Boulez: Le Marteau sans maître
John Cage: String Quartet in four parts
Helmut Lachenmann: First string quartet ‘Gran Torso’
Elliott Carter: Night Fantasies
Louis Andriessen: De Staat
Kaija Saariaho: Lichtbogen
Claude Vivier: Bouchara
Luigi Nono: Fragmente, Stille, an Diotima
Steve Reich: Piano Phase
Obviously, many of these choices could be replaced by other works and I notice that some periods/styles are less well represented (new complexity is absent from this list, for one, and apparently it stops in the 1980s – what would be the essential pieces for the ’90s and ’00s?)
Basically, rather than forming a canon of ‘essential’ listening, I am convinced that exposing the students to a wide selection of interesting and representative pieces is what matters most and then hope that they move on to discover more music by themselves.
Anthony Braxton, “Creative3 Orchestra Music 1976”
That’s “Creative”, of course.
Ferneyhough’s Transit (or Time and Motion 3). Several works of Carter could easily make it: the Piano Concerto, Variations for Orchestra, Symphony of Three Orhcestras, First Quartet. Lachenmann’s Gran Torso. Maybe a work of Holliger’s such as Pneuma (or the Scardanelli Cycle?). Martino’s Concerto for Three Clarinets. Perhaps Babbitt’s Dylan Thomas Piece. Perhaps Ben Johnston’s Seventh String Quartet. Perhaps Feldman’s For Samuel Beckett and definitely Cage’s Williams Mix. Stockhausen Carré, or Kontrapunkte, or Punkte, possibly Mantra (if the class is patient). And Gesang der Jünglinge, of course–or a bit of Kontakte (and, for comparison, Sirius–passages in it are incredibly beautiful). Something by Barraqué–perhaps Concerto for clar,, vibes, and ensemble, or one movement from the Piano Sonata. More recent: Barrett’s Dark Ages and Mahnkopf’s Medusa.
Nono sofferte onde serene
Berio alleluja III? Points on a Curve to Find (or chemins II or Eindrücke, or possibly the Concerto for Two pianos and orchestra)
Ligeti, first two movements of Requiem (San Francisco Polyphony for comparison).
Or maby it is the I-cannot-compose-traditional-music-and-am-glad-I-can-just-bundle-together-some-atonal-notes-and-call-it-legitimate music?
Or is it the leftist freedom-mistaken-for-arbitrary-whim, everything-goes, everything-is-allowed, there-are-no-rules music?
Or is it the (almost right-wing like) I-assert-my-superiority-with-ultra-complex-sheetmusic-that-the-performer-will-struggle-to-realize music?
Or is it the elimination-of-humanity-by-construction music?
Or is it the elimination-of-humanity-and-the-absolute-as-well,-by-making-a-guessing-game-Aleatoric-out-of-it music?
But is there some common definition that summarizes it all? Maby: “Music that is just crap”, so that New Music is the collective term form all the various facets of crappiness in music?
Or is it the reflective mirror of a society that is obsessed with the “outside” of things, as opposed to the inner values and the inner self? i.e. a music that wants to go beyond the human.
…Beyond the human… (***)
*** Beware of New Music, that claims it’s interested in the inner values of the performer. You can pretty quickly see it’s a scam… by likening the score to rules for throwing rubbish into a bin. No matter how much feeling and pathos, you as a performer are giving in, alas… you’ll still just be throwing rubbish into a bin.
And is this New Music “experiment” ended yet? No, to most people not at all. So they’re still busy deluding themselves.
But for myself, I dare say: yes, and what a failure it is!
I suppose people living in modern concrete jungles… — thousands of them sticking together, such that they start to dislike and distrust everyone else, trusting only the system… and the supposed freedoms it grants them… , trusting in technology, progression, and advancement … (while their souls continue to rot) — …
need a fitting music.
New Music fits the bill. Lovely.
(the original comment was)
So youre interested in post-1945 New Music?
What the hell is this: New Music???
Is that crappy atonal I-dont-give-a-shit-about-my-audience music?
Is it the youre-not-smart-enough-to-understand-or-appreciate-my-genius-creation music?
Is it the Ill-break-with-all-tradition-and-explore-extremes-that-no-one-thought possible music?