A Newbie Question About Modern Music

[haydnguy]

After listening to music from the Baroque, Classical, Romantic periods, and some Early Music for awhile now, I can truly say that I enjoy music from all these periods.The barrier to entry, in terms of time listening and reading was not as great as first imagined for any of these periods.

My question is that having not listened to any Modern music except brief exerts here and there, I'm wondering if it will be more difficult to enjoy Modern music.

The reason I ask that is that in each of these prior periods there seemed to be something a newbie could pretty quickly appreciate without knowing a lot about music. In Bach's Well Tempered Clavier, for instance there is a beauty that is immediately recognizable as well as an "orderliness". In Classical, there is a variety of music that seems to offer something to everyone. I latched on to Haydn's String Quartets early because they were lively and many had what I thought was a "catchy tune". The Romantic period also offers a variety such as Chopin that many people enjoy the beauty of immediately.

Modern music, however, seems at first hearing to be much more difficult to grasp. While a musicologist, I'm sure, can appreciate much of what he or she here's in Modern music, there doesn't seem to be much that the ear immediately "enjoys" or anything to latch onto quickly like there does in the others.

I was wondering if any Modern music lovers could give a newbie some hints on how to start into the Modern area, and if you feel that my first impressions are legit.

Thanks.

[Alpha Centauri]

The thing about "modern music" - well, let's say "the music of the C20th", because some of that is 100 years old now! - is the great diversity it expresses. Composers no longer felt obliged to write according to the traditions of the past - and there was a huge explosion of creative energy, not all of which was necessarily harnessed in productive or logical ways.

Here are a couple of strands in the development of music in the C20th which you might find much more listenable than is conventionally expected.

STRAVINSKY was a completely individual voice, and there is no-one and nothing quite like him. He was especially interested in taking the forms and styles of music and culture of the past, and "re-inventing" it (you might call this a "post-modernist" approach, but at the time it was termed "neo-classicism", which makes it sound unduly severe - it's not). If I were recommending where to kick-in, I would jump straight into his big ballet scores. THE RITE OF SPRING (aka LE SACRE DU PRINTEMPS), PETRUSHKA, and THE FIREBIRD are all superb pieces, and although their harmonic and melodic vocabulary is new, they aren't a world away from big ballet scores of the C19th (such as Tchaikovsky's - a major influence on Stravinsky) in their effect. (Tchaikovsky's "modernism" was especially noticeable in the stories which he set - SWAN LAKE is like a Tim Burton nightmare, a girl who's been locked inside an animal's body by a mad scientist??). I would personally get them on DVD in staged ballet performances, and then you get the full idea of what Stravinsky was aiming at. You could well claim that THE RITE OF SPRING was the first "modern" piece of music - it caused riots at the premiere.

SHOSTAKOVICH. Now don't furl your brow at the sound of his name. For some reason he has become symbolic with being "difficult", but in fact his music is some of the most melodic, inspiring and uplifting written in the C20th. He's also well aware of his position in a greater continuum of symphonic writers, and he isn't a "big leap" from the C19th symphonists in aural terms... but he rewrites the rules a bit Personally I would leap in and buy the Kirill Kondrashin recording of the complete symphonies, which has been recently re-released on Melodiya - 11 cds, in critically acclaimed performances. A bit of investment at around $65, but it's the most important symphonic music of the C20th. Once you have the box, you can choose where to start!! I wouldn't necessarily say "in numerical order". My favourite is No#14, the only "chamber" symphony in the series - do make sure you've got the text of the words with you, they're important!! Many people like No #4 and its companion piece, the symphonic ode "October". No #15 is a strange piece with an apparently "jokey" approach that conceals hidden depths - he was dying when he wrote it. If you are ready for the BIG emotional roller-coaster, then try his masterpiece, LADY MACBETH OF MTSENSK - the opera banned by the soviet authorities, allegedly on Stalin's personal orders (probably not only because of the music, but the "Natural Born Killers" plot). Astounding stuff - try to get a DVD, rather than a CD, and turn the subtitles on.

JANACEK is - for my money - the most important opera composer of the C20th. A strange and rather reclusive man, his early works had failed, and he had effectively given up composition entirely by the age of 50. He then met a married young girl during a spa-resort holiday, and although she spurned his advances, didn't understand or like his music, and was only semi-literate, she inspired him to write the greatest operas of the first half of the C20th. Almost all his operas feature "her", under different names and characters, as the innocent angel who is persecuted by the world around her. Please, please, get these on DVD and watch the operas - don't just listen to the music alone! Especially worth trying are JENUFA (a girl has an illegitimate child - her mother is so ashamed she steals the child at night and claims it "got lost" - but she's drowned the kid. Eventually the body is found). KATYA KABANOVA (a similar kind of story, based on a classical Russian novel). The "heavy" one if you're ready for it is FROM THE HOUSE OF THE DEAD - a dramatisation of the time spent in a Siberian Prison Camp by the author Dostoevsky, who had been accused of political subversion. Frankly I don't like the Chereau/Boulez production which is on DVD (it misrepresents the piece and sets it in a soviet-era gulag - a huge mistake). But there isn't really a better one on DVD.

BENJAMIN BRITTEN. Sorry to recommend opera again, but these are classics. The tragedy to get is PETER GRIMES, but don't start with that. Instead try to find the Robert Carsen production of A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM, and be enchanted and delighted with one of the most joyous works of the C20th Once again - as with Stravinsky and Shostakovich - the idea of "revisiting" the styles of older music in loving pastiche raises its head Here's the finale, which is written as a kind of spoof of Donizetti and Rossini (the "joke" being that "she" is in drag, and can't sing a single note in tune).

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGQfmCGvkck"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGQfmCGvkck[/ame]

[Alpha Centauri]

Originally Posted by haydnguy

While a musicologist, I'm sure, can appreciate much of what he or she here's in Modern music, there doesn't seem to be much that the ear immediately "enjoys" or anything to latch onto quickly like there does in the others.

Whoah!! No modern composers wrote their works for "musicologists"! They were written for audiences!

As soon as we start performing for "musicologists" we might as well give up and go home!

[Florestan]

HG - try these for size. Have you got napster or something where you can listen to stuff free?

Gorecki - symphony no 3.

Shostakovich - symphony no 5.

Pärt - just about anything! Try: Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten; Spiegel im Spiegel; Summa - arrangements for strings and choir; Triodion; Tabula Rasa... You can't go far wrong. There are audio samples at www.arvopart.info

[Despina41]

Originally Posted by Reiner Torheit

Whoah!! No modern composers wrote their works for "musicologists"! They were written for audiences!

As soon as we start performing for "musicologists" we might as well give up and go home!

Don't overestimate the brainpower of musicologists. Many of them don't appreciate music after 1930 either! Maybe music theorists is what you mean? They are the ones who can get a lot out of Boulez and Babbitt,etc..

MODERNISM, is another story, though. There's that whole generation of composers writing in the 1910s-20s whose music is pretty easy"" listening these days. Well, at least compared to what came after it. I agree with RT on Shostakovich, Janacek, Stravinsky, and Britten (although Billy Budd is my favorite Britten opera, but perhaps the idea of all men's voices all the time doesn't appeal?).

I'll add Prokofiev, who's even more accessible than Shostakovich. Maybe check out his Cinderella since you're into ballets these days? The piano concertos are also a lot of fun. I won't mention the amazing Richter recordings of the piano sonatas that are out there.

Poulenc is a lot of fun too, but we've been over that...

Then there's that whole Second Viennese School business. I hear that a lot of people enjoy the Berg violin concerto ("Berg is the Romantic one"), but I can never tell if that's because they just like to watch Anne Sophie Mutter perform it or not. ahem - this is why I proposed a Brahms listening group. Late Brahms will open your ears to the Second Viennese School.

Samuel Barber -- is he even a modernist?! -- was at least born in the twentienth century and wrote some luscious, neo-romantic modal music. But I think there's some movie soundtracks that are harder on the ears than Barber..

Ok, this is all softball stuff.

How about some composers who were born after 1920?

I like Pierre Henry a lot, but you might want to hear some Varese and some other musique concrete before jumping into French electronic music. It's an entirely different aesthetic and deserves its own thread, but once you re-orient your ears to the pure sounds of a sine wave... it's great stuff!

Morton Feldman? Anyone? Anyone?? Triadic Memories...it's easy listening.

In principle I would plug the minimalists, but I'll let someone who likes them do that.

[Florestan]

I have only just noticed that Debussy is included in the examples of modern music in the head for this forum. I suppose he straddles romantic and modern, as do people like Satie and (stylistically) Barber.

Reiner has mentioned Janacek; personally I love the string quartets, and the Glagolitic mass is full of joy.

The following are technically 'modern', though I doubt they represent the sort of idiomatic challenge you are alluding to, HG, but anyway...

With Debussy you really can't go wrong. Where to begin? The string quartet (if only he had written more than one ), Claire de Lune, Prelude to an afternoon on the John, as Despina calls it, Syrinx, the Nocturnes, the piano suite - it's all great.

Some of Satie is really weird but the gnossiennes and ogives are wonderful.

Barber's violin concerto is one of my all time favourites. The Adagio everyone knows. Some of his choral works are absolutely sublime, such as Sure on this Shining Night, The Monk and His Cat, Twelfth Night, Agnus Dei (of course), and To Be Sung Upon the Water.

[Florestan]

Originally Posted by Despina41

Samuel Barber -- is he even a modernist?! -- was at least born in the twentienth century and wrote some luscious, neo-romantic modal music.

Haaaa, you got in there before me . Neo romantic is about right.

But I think there's some movie soundtracks that are harder on the ears than Barber.

More often than not, they ARE Barber.

[micrologus]

Originally Posted by Florestan

HG - try these for size. Have you got napster or something where you can listen to stuff free?

Gorecki - symphony no 3.

Indeed I think you'll like his 3th symphony but try also "Lerchenmusik": Recitatives and Ariosos for clarinet, cello and piano

[micrologus]

Try these:

Jonathan Harvey: Curve with plateaux for cello solo

Preisner's "Requiem for my friend"

[Herzeleide]

I think the triadic harmonies are just as responsible as Ms Mutter.



Here are my choices, in addition to things already mentioned:

Schoenberg - Second String Quartet, Five Orchestral Pieces.

Berg - Lyric Suite, Lulu Symphony.

Webern - Symphony, Variations for Orchestra.

Bartók - Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, Concerto for Orchestra, take your pick of string quartets.

Messiaen - Quartet for the End of Time, Turangalila Symphony (rather helpfully these are often pared together on two discs).

Elliott Carter - Concerto for Orchestra (it's difficult, but well worth the perseverence. I now consider it one of the greatest modernist/twentieth century works).

Boulez - Le marteau sans maître.

Ligeti - Atmosphères, Lontano, Lux Aeterna.

There are plenty of other composers I could mention, but this is a fair place to start. To end, I strongly recommend 'Asyla' by Thomas Adès. It's very recent - 1995 - but is absolutely virtuosic, brilliant, and not too difficult to get 'into'. But if I venture any further we'd be going into 21th century/postmodern territory.