Musicheck

Nico, you calling Ligeti a bad composer is like a first year physics student calling Einstein wrong simply because its too deep for his shallow understanding. Ligeti was a great composer, certainly one of the best few still alive on monday. His music was amazing in that it was both very very deep and acessible to pretty much anyone with an open mind. From Lontano to Le Grand Macabre, every single piece of his involved the utmost in effort. He only wrote what he considered "high quality" music. As a result, his mature works are few in number, but vast in power.

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/pagemusic.cfm?bandID=553199 (I'm not sure whether to put this here or in atonal. It is somewhat modern, but there is certainly a central pitch and a degree of consonance. I've never been told it sounds extremely modern.) I wrote and performed this piece last summer at Interlochen Arts Camp. While it does not reflect my current compositions, it certainly holds a special place for me as one of my first pieces I enjoy. While the beginning noodles around with various themes, the middle and end are extremely motivic. I played piano on the recording and a friend played violin.

Interesting piece. I like your toying with narrative time, its like the musical form of Finnegans Wake. Your harmonies are nice too. This is certainly a counterexample to the silly claim that all serial music is bad. However, I think this pieces seems a bit dry and empty at times. Playing with silence is a perfectly good idea, but I feel like this piece suffers a little bit from being static. You have many beutiful sonorites throughout, but the disconnect between them really breaks any kind of tension and release they could create. Perhaps through usage of more extremes of register (low bass clarinet drones are a personal favorite), dynamics, and tempo you could add some drama to this.

Can't beat Xenakis. mmm gendy3 Nobody else has nearly the understanding he does of the relationship between math and music, and his electronic music is totally unique.

Beautiful piece! Your sonorities are quite stunning and interesting. From the beginning of the piece, the similarities with ligeti's sound mass music struck me. While I don't think I have nearly as much of a grasp of this stuff as you, a couple ideas popped into my head while listening. I think that glissandos could really make this a lot more tense in places. I also think this may fit nicely to be adapted to string orchestra, providing more warmth and depth to the piece, as well as a greater dynamic range. The problem of stasis that several people mention could perhaps be improved with a larger ensemble, since you'd have a wider palette to "paint" with. (Just some thoughts, certainly not definitive criticisms) Overall, this piece is both among the most beutiful and original pieces I've heard on this site. Excellent!

I voted "other" for Berg. I absolutely love wozzeck and lulu.

Derek, perhaps the reason you hate acedemic music so much is that it is, you know, hard to comprehend. Please increase your intelligence before insulting composers who know better than you do.

Interesting piece, Nickhoven. I'm not really sure what to say in terms of comments, since I really respect what you have done so far. Right from the beginning, with your 3.5 beat units in the clarinet and 4 beats in the piano, I was drawn in by your rhythmic and melodic processes. I really like your structure, with the end material being sort of a retrograde inversion of the beginning. The polyrhythms starting in measure 117 are also quite amazing, definatly the climax of the piece. The one comment I have is that, seeing how extremely minimal this is, you could perhaps be even more cheap with your melodic material. The introduction of the new idea in measure 31, for example, I didn't really like. If I were composing this, one of the things I would try for (even though I am sure my final result would not be as excellent as this) would be to stick to developing one melodic line the entire way and make the second half exactly the retrograde inversion of the first, except for maybe moving the clarinet's part to the piano and some of the piano part to the clarinet in the second half. Excellent work!

I think this list is missing a very important choice: Schoenberg. Although many people find his music hard to listen to, his innovation definatly makes him one of the greatest. He was the person that liberated dissonance and broke the constraints of tonality. While many of these other composes have done influential things (beethoven espeically), none have done something so essential to their era as the creation of both acceptance of the taboo and a creation of an entire new system of music. I vote for schoenberg.

In no particular order Classical Bach Beethoven Liszt Mahler Schoenberg Webern Stravinsky Berio Messaien Stockhausen Reich Riley Varese Xenakis Non Classical Richard Devine Autechre Squarepusher Simon Posford Brian Eno Lustmord Infected Mushroom

Extended-Tonal piece for orchestra. It uses some 20th century techniques yet still tries to remain outside the realm of uber-dissonance. exhale.MID

I most certainly see your aversion to current contemporary music, but that does not mean there are no new ideas out there. Seeing your skill with consonance, homophony, and melody, I don't think that that is at all a path for you to follow. Everyone here is equally guilty for not doing something new, since almost everyone (myself included) do not have that sort of talent. I do believe there are new ideas out there. It just takes an excellent composer to find them. I do think tonality in its most conventional form is pretty much done with, but composers have repeatedly found ways to add to it. Especially because of the advent of electronic instruments, there are an infinity of possibilities out there. It just takes a great mind to find them, and I'd say you have the best chance of anyone on this forum of finding them.

Thanks very much for the in depth comments chopin! Couple responses to your comments: There is pedal in the first movement. I guess the midi either killed it or it got lost when you imported it into finale/sibelius. Perhaps I was a bit vague when I said I based everything on a few themes. I meant very very small themes. In the first movement, everything is a development from the original arpeggio and run. I agree the themes, from a melodic viewpoint, are rather weak. Played live, the emphasis is on the dynamics instead of the pitches. In the score (I can give you the .mus file or a pdf if you like) there are dynamic markings in pretty much every measure. Your comment about the left hand I've gotten before, and I definatly think its a valid point. In certain sections, it already takes 2 hand so accompaniment is impossible, but I also think that homophonic writing would bog this piece down and make it lose its flair, while something polyphonic would be rather evil to the pianist seeing how its moderalty hard already. In movement 2, the 3 themes are the pounding directly on the strings, and then the 4 note motive at the beginning of the piece and the upwards right thirds after that. The ending I agree is annoying in the midi form. The repeated octave is meant to be drummed on the strings, which sounds more like a drone than actual notes. What I was planning was a building background of noize while i transitioned into the ostinato that begins movement 3. Again, thanks for the comments and for listening. About tonal music, I do write the occasional tonal piece on occasion, I'll post one later today. Your book metaphor really shed some light on how to think about things as well.

Excellent piece! This is definatly one of the best pieces on the site, and I can't pick out any flaws whatsoever. My only complaint is that it sounds a lot like mozart. Its beutiful music most definatly, but if you could come up with some totally new ideas about composition, I think that would make the difference between you being a "really good composer" and having your name listed as one of the 20th century greats.

Here is a piano suite I wrote between august and the present (october). My goal with the piece was to be extremely cheap and motivic, so all movements derive their pitch material from a maximum of 3 motives. The midi rendering of the second movement has some problems, since there is some extended technique for the piano. The notes hit at 0:16, and those pounded repeatedly between 0:31-0:36 and 1:00-1:04 are supossed to be clusters drummed directly on the strings of the piano instead of played on the keys. If you want an idea of how that would sound, put the damper pedal down on the nearest piano and smack a random bunch of adjacent strings. Overall, I view this piece as a combination of extreme seriousness (the structure) and a joke (certain unexpected happenings at various places to keep an element of suprise.) I hope you enjoy it! Note: The 3 movements are meant to be played without a pause inbetween them, so the "endings" of the first 2 movements are just transitions. suitemovement1.MID suitemovement2.MID suitemovement3.MID