August Surprise Work Of The Month

:trp::trp::trp:

Here we go! Pick a composer from the list, and we'll post a video by the composer with the most votes at poll closing time. This month, it's modern (contemporary) composers!

:clap::clap::clap:

Nice collection. I went for the probably least accessible, Xenakis.

Yes, these are all nice guys. Well, all but one.

But they are all guys. And they're all dead, but one. Not sure I like being "contemporary" with dead guys! Am sure I like chicks... would like chicks on the list. (I wonder what Pauline Oliveros or Sofia Gubaidulina would think about being called "chicks"? I need to work on that whole diction thing, I guess...)

OK, enough silliness. I'll vote for the Pole. Even things out a bit. (If Art Rock hadn't beat me to it, I'd have voted for Xenakis as the most important on the list.)

Oops. Two of them are still alive.

My apologies to the other Pole on the list.

Well, I think they're all nice guys.

I was wondering if I would have to defend my choices here, and it seems I do. That's fine.

Just to elaborate, out of the five composers listed, two are still alive (Pärt and Penderecki,) two are only recently deceased (very recently relative to the span of classical music; Berio d. 2001 and Xenakis d. 2003.) Lutoslawski died in 1994.

A lot of your more recent stuff is simply not available on video for free, and most of it not at all. So looking for them at youtube produced slim pickings indeed. Even Gubaidulina, arguably the most famous contemporary woman composer, has only her Viola Concerto posted at youtube. Pretty good too, played by Yuri Bashmet. The reason I didn`t include her was that I posted other stuff about her elsewhere on the forum recently, and I try (try, I said ) not to harp overly much about one composer to the exclusion of others. If someone has the time to scour the internet for videos of performances of extremely recent classical works, feel free to start a new thread listing them; I for one would love to see what one could come up with. And I'm not just being facetious.

Btw, the videos I have chosen to represent each of the composers (yes, they're already picked) are of their most current works, or at least from among the most current I could find.

All that said, I personally don't see what's wrong with listing dead composers. Actually, I don't see what difference it makes to the music if the composer is dead or alive. The composers are still considered contemporary, or modern relative to other eras, and so is their music.

So in summation, hey, cut me a little slack! :grin: And I hope you don't mind being contemporary with recently deceased composers.

PS some guy, just curious, how come you choose your vote to even things out?

rojo said:

Well, I think they're all nice guys.

I was wondering if I would have to defend my choices here, and it seems I do. That's fine.

Click to expand...

Ack! You don't have to justify anything! It's a great list and nothing but kudos to you for doing all this work for us!!

Besides, you already know that in my eyes you can do no wrong. Well, maybe a little, but nothing unforgivably wrong, that's my point! And I was only referring to the latter half of Mr. Penderecki, from the Christmas symphony on, after he'd turned to the dark side. Before that, nothing to complain about, for sure.

As for justfying my vote, well, it's this way. Xenakis is big. Huge. In a well ordered world, he would get many, many votes. But Lutoslawski is very fine, and I wanted--this not being a well ordered world at all, you see--to make sure that he got at least some recognition for his fineness. He used to come out to L.A. back in the day, he and Berio and Ligeti. We tried never to miss any of those concerts. That's where I first met Cage, at the west coast premiere of Renga, with Apartment House 1776. Chatted a bit. Played a couple games of chess. The sweetest man I've ever met.

Ah nostalgia. I can get it about things that happened last week, too...

Thanks some guy Actually, I probably should have posted all that info in the first place...

If you call the men guys, then you might want to call the women dolls. But I'm not sure they would like that any better than chicks. Well, maybe, who knows. I guess you can always play it safe by using these terms: women, females or ladies. Actually, I say chicks sometimes too...

Penderecki turned to the dark side? I was not aware; do tell me more.

Your vote justification makes good sense to me. Sounds like you've been hobnobbing with the biggies; Cage does come off as a sweetie in the videos I've seen of him.

Well, this was a difficult choice as I haven't delved much into this genre of music. I tend to lean towards the "different" in many things, so I cast my vote for Xenakis.

rojo said:

Penderecki turned to the dark side? I was not aware; do tell me more.

Click to expand...

Well, doll,* this is definitely a matter of interpretation. Many might opine that he turned away from the dark side! But what I meant, and what all of us who enjoyed his music felt, was that with the second symphony he abandoned all his good avant garde values and went backwards into tonality. Not that there's anything wrong with tonality per se, but moving that direction after having been a notable presence in exploring new ways of making sounds, well, it was a big disappointment for us at best and a betrayal of us at worst. (No, I'm not at all sure that artists owe their publics anything.)

But we still had Ligeti and Lachenmann and Oliveros and such like. And a continually refreshed (and refreshing) pool of new talents who kept creating new worlds of sound. Hundreds, thousands, of people. You rarely find anyone who even cares about Penderecki's volte-face any more.

Now, if Yasutoshi Yoshida were to start writing pretty waltzes...!

*tee hee!!

don't know

I don't know any of them. Sorry!
judy tooley

some guy said:

Well, doll,* this is definitely a matter of interpretation. Many might opine that he turned away from the dark side! But what I meant, and what all of us who enjoyed his music felt, was that with the second symphony he abandoned all his good avant garde values and went backwards into tonality. Not that there's anything wrong with tonality per se, but moving that direction after having been a notable presence in exploring new ways of making sounds, well, it was a big disappointment for us at best and a betrayal of us at worst. (No, I'm not at all sure that artists owe their publics anything.)

But we still had Ligeti and Lachenmann and Oliveros and such like. And a continually refreshed (and refreshing) pool of new talents who kept creating new worlds of sound. Hundreds, thousands, of people. You rarely find anyone who even cares about Penderecki's volte-face any more.

Now, if Yasutoshi Yoshida were to start writing pretty waltzes...!

*tee hee!!

Click to expand...

:grin:

Hmm, interesting. Well, I guess one can't blame a composer for wanting to use more than just one compositional 'language', even if he or she chooses to use Latin. Haw. :grin:

I like pretty waltzes. And unpretty ones too.

This is nice; all the composers have at least one vote apiece. *sigh*

Well well, I'm not sure who broke the tie, but this month's winner is-

:trp::trp::trp: [SIZE=-1]KRZYSZTOF [/SIZE]PENDERECKI :trp::trp::trp:

This month's poll has been our best ever participation-wise! Thanks to all who voted and made this event such a smashing success! :clap::clap::clap:

Penderecki fans rejoice! This month we provide a Penderecki extravaganza; not one, but three videos featuring the composer's works!

The first is of the world premiere of his work, Sextet (2000). I'm posting the third of a series of eight videos on this work; parts 1 and 2 are rehearsals and interesting comments by the famous players involved, including Rostropovich. The actual concert performance begins with this video-

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eKTazKUPUg[/youtube]

The next video is of his Viola Concerto (1983). The rest of the performance of this work is available at youtube as well-

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljoJt_hc1Vc[/youtube]

The final video is my personal favourite; Capriccio for Oboe and Eleven String Instruments (1964)-

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrU6yuER0Ug[/youtube]

Enjoy! I'll be back later to post more info on these videos; feel free to post any info or thoughts as well!

I was hoping for the violin concerto video.Anne-Sophie Mutter soloist with the Symphonieorchester des Mitteldeutschen Rundfunks conducted by Mariss Jansons.
These pieces are very fine too and they will get me through.

That would have been a good choice as well, Kromme. Glad you like these ones too though.

(Say, were you the one who voted for Penderecki? You don't have to say if you don't want to.)