Favourite music 1900-1909

Recently on YC I have been turning out to be a bit of a grumpy old man with my negative posts on Yanni etc. (I read a review on one of Yanni's CDs, the reviewer said it sounded like it would 'ooze out of the walls of the elevators descending into hell'), so I decided to be a bit more positive from now on starting with this post. It is the first thread in this series about our favourite music of the twentieth and twenty-first century. The reason why I chose this era in music is because of the huge amount of diversity when it comes to musical styles. There are so many different types of music now that I'm sure we will discover new compositions and composers that we haven't previously heard of.

Anyway this decade (1900-1909) produced some revolutionary ideas by composers looking for new ways of writing music. One of the most famous (and one of my favourite) events was when Schönberg premiered his second string quartet (composed around 1908 I think). The quartet was the first time anyone had bent the rules of dissonance until they actually snapped. The last movement, in addition to being atonal (or pan-tonal, as Schönberg preferred to describe it, saying that it was 'The synthesis of all tonalities'), it was the first to include voices in a form previously meant to be a purely instrumental work with strict instrumentation of two violins, a viola and a cello. An article about the premiere of Schönberg's revolutionary masterpiece appeared in the crime section of the newspaper.

Daphnis and Chloe by Ravel. Started in 1909. great piece!

Yeah that's pretty good too. Did you know that it took him a whole year to write the final four minutes of that ballet score?

I agree with both of you! The 1900-1909 peroid and the 20 years following really were a revolution in the classical music world.

As for a piece :D I've got to go with Schönberg's 1ST string quartet. I really for some reason have always liked listening to it. Not sure why, but it's just a really good piece I think :)

I don't know much about the first. His earlier tonal works seem to be overshadowed by his later, more developed ones.

I know. A lot of people prefer his older string quartets and works, and I do too, but of his early works, the 1st string quartet is my favourite.

I have to say my favourite piece by Schönberg is 'A Survivor from Warsaw' written in 1946

Salome by Richard Strauss (1905)

Great music, great orchestration!

When should I start the thread for 1910-1919?

quickly! I know what I'd vote for :)

Ill probably do it sometime next week when I have the time.

Mahler's Fifth...