*Show notes:* 0:27 The support of patron *Alice Wyan* _doubled_ the weight of this request! If you want to speed up the process of making certain videos, consider becoming a patron for as little as $2/month. 15:28 Ferneyhough’s “filtering” procedures date back to his 1967 wind sextet _Prometheus,_ another indication of how well-formed his language was, even as a young composer. 28:02 Composers typically use lots of extended techniques in a score, or avoid them altogether, as their occasional inclusion usually sounds “off.” 29:45 Conlon NANcarrow, technically … which means that everyone I’ve ever heard say it in real life has been wrong. 31:43 While Tchaikovsky’s true end will likely never be known, Finnissy believes that news of Tchaikovsky’s sexuality was about to hit the St. Petersburg press, hence the plot of _Shameful Vice._ 34:32 Not to be confused with the _album_ from whence the piece came, also called _City of Glass._ 36:13: The timeline is a little confusing here; _helical_ is listed in various places as a 1975, 1976, 1978, and 1993 composition. I believe that this reflects the various iterations of the score over the years. Dench’s official Web site (link in the sources in the video description) has the date at 1975.
“Sometimes musicians will re-notate Ferneyhough's scores to be more playable. Ferneyhough doesn't like this. This makes Ferneyhough mad. You won't like Ferneyhough when he's mad.”
Being unplayable, or hardly playable, is part of Ferneyhough's aesthetics: the immense effort and neurotic stress that goes with the attempts at performance, is the type of 'expression' that F wants. Of course that is a sign of serious neurosis, being transferred to the players and from there, to the audience.
Out of all the many episodes you have produced this is my favourite Thomas. Your grasp of the combined aesthetics and techniques used of these more modern composers is excellent because you have context reaching back centuries through western music composition. This point of reference adds such depth and clarity, not to mention "context" to this very significant episode. It inspires deep internal pondering about where classical music needs to move toward in order to survive. Wherever that place is I hope it makes one as an appreciator feel as much as think. Bravo Thomas!
thanks so much for this video! it's crazy how much effort was put into this and i am very grateful for the content that you are putting out to a wider audience! please continue doing what you do
For the longest time, I was trying so hard to understand new complexity. After watching this video, I still don’t get it, but I can appreciate it more.
You do get it. There isn't anything to it. It's just Post-Modern humor. The "audience" is the punchline. The *second audience* is a more rarefied group of viewers who watch the first audience, and feel superior to them. In a sense, whether it's putatively "comedy", "painting", "music", or anything else - it's all actually Performance Art. In which you are an unpaid, unaware performer. In a sense, this kind of art achieves the final goals of performance art. It unites the total control of the creator, with the absolute realism of performers who don't know that they are performing.
@@fnamelname9077 I would disagree, I would say it's not making fun of audiences so much as musical systems, or a specific kind of musical system (notation). Also, I would argue that it's more modern than postmodern. But that's just my opinion.
@@insight827 I agree. It's not postmodern at all. It doesn't have any of the qualities (nor the defects) of postmodern music. It is just modernism gone rancid.
@@theangryginger7582 I do use irrational meters in my music sometimes, but that doesn't make it new complexity. My music is FAR from being called new complexity.
This is so densely packed with information that I used the slow playback speed of TH-cam for the first time in my life! The presentation is excellent but give us a moment to breathe. When a key point is made, a pause would be nice to allow to let it sink in. Keep up the good work
I think it gets misguided when novelty is sanctified. At the end of the day, it's a relative property, depending on what you already know. The best music, to me, does not rely on being original, though it might be original incidentally.
I had a really brief interchange with Chris Dench once and i can say he is a lovely soul. The stratification of meaning in his charts is something that is beyond remarkable. It's the Kabbalah of music making.
He certainly seems to be the least up his own backside, his website shows he has a great love of ALL kinds of music far removed from the typical Adornoite dismissal of everything south of Boulez/Carter that seems to pervade the rest of the school.
"And when I emerged from my solitude and crossed over this bridge for the first time, I did not believe my eyes and looked and looked again and said at last: 'That is an ear! An ear as big as a man!' I looked yet more closely: and in fact under the ear there moved something that was pitifully small and meagre and slender. And in truth, the monstrous ear sat upon a little, thin stalk - the stalk, however, was a man! By the use of a magnifying glass one could even discern a little, envious face as well; and one could discern, too, that a turgid little soul was hanging from the stalk. The people told me, however, that the great ear was not merely a man, but a great man, a genius. But I have never believed the people when they talked about great men - and I held to my belief that it was an inverse cripple, who had too little of everything and too much of one thing." Friedrich Nietzsche - Thus Spoke Zarathustra
This was Nietzsche's attempt to attack Wagner, who was indeed a genius. Nietzsche also had ambitions to write music (he had musical talents), but his stuff is unlistenable. They were friends for a short while and N had to thank W for awakening much of N's philosophical ideas. later-on, out of embarrassed revenge, he tried to make Wagner look small.
To paraphrase, I believe it was Gardner Read, "the composer who vaguely notates the possible, or meticulously notates the impossible, then avers that the agonized approximation produced by the performers is exactly what he intended, is guilty of unconscionable sham." :)
49:42 In case anyone was wondering, the "obsession" with the note F apparently refers to a colloquial expression in English that means "nothing" and begins with that letter. This is described in Barrett's thesis.
Incredible work, best of it's kind on youtube! I've learned about new complexity in my musicology classes, but I've learned a lot of new things from this video.
I am new to the channel. I am blown away by the quality! I would just wish you could make a small list of disques that you would recommend. Thanks for your great work!
You should make a video on George Crumb; one of my idols and main sources of inspiration as a composer. He just passed away yesterday I believe, may he rest in peace
The musical irony being that the more complex the musical notation or instructions, the less the performer will be able to have fidelity to them in a concert situation.
Yeah that's not ironic, that's the point of ferneyhough's obsessive notation. He essentially gives the performers the choice of what elements to emphasise because it's impossible to play all of them.
2:05 Hey, to Babbit's credit, he just said he didn't *understand* hip-hop, not that it wasn't a valid form of musical expression. I'd call that a fair take on his part. Most people don't understand HIS music. :P
@@ClassicalNerd Personally I'm more interested in the works he made for the RCA synthesizer than his orchestral work, mostly because I'm hearing some like...almost proto-spectral stuff in there? Like you're bombarded with a bunch of notes and tone clusters, and then ANOTHER bunch of notes and tone clusters with a different synth patch, and at the speed at which it's going, it becomes difficult (for me at least) to tell the tone clusters of the composition from the harmonics making up the waveforms that the synthesizer is producing. I actually tried writing a piece in Sonic Pi (a "live coding" environment) that attempted to use the harmonic series in a similar way, but Sonic Pi tends to burn out between 300-400 BPM.
His electronic work forms some of the best examples of his theories and style. Orchestras just don't have the precision of the RCA. I'll keep my eyes peeled for references to spectral stuff in the literature, but as far as I know he and the spectralists had very little interaction.
@@ClassicalNerd Right, I'm not saying he was part of the movement, I'm just saying that he was blurring the line between tone cluster and timbre (perhaps unintentionally, but it definitely shows up in the resulting audio). Sorry, I'm a Synth Guy, so in my world "spectral" just means "composing with additive synthesis"
I'm not sure how much he intended for timbre and pitch to be conflated, or if that was just the end result of working with pretty rudimentary synthesis technology. It'll be interesting to compare and contrast him with Stockhausen, who was definitely more interested in that kind of thing.
5:11 I had the chance to study with Roger Redgate at Goldsmiths. Great to see him on your video ! Although I am not an atonal composer, at all, but It was great to learn loads of new compositional technics and what a breath of fresh air to approach music in such a different way.
I've always looked up to composers like these (especially Ferneyhough, Dench and Finnissy). Their music is sadly very underrated. You did a really good job on the vid! Thank you. If I could make a request, maybe another American composer? (Maybe someone like Frederic Rzewski or John Corigliano?)
Would be great if you also make a guide about reductionist composers and the Wandelweiser movement, a self-organized offshoot of the New York school (John Cage, Morton Feldman) with occasional dashes of everything from Satie to phonography (field recordings) - a low-key alternative to both post-serial/spectral academia and pop minimalism. They are featured proeminently in Jennie Gottschalk's book "Experimental Music Since 1970", but other than that they don't have much institutional power and most of their sparse music is an acquired taste, so despite being active for almost three decades and are regularly being performed and recorded to some critical acclaim (and, in the case of Michael Pisaro-Liu, even a modest popularity), they are still rarely talked about on most discussion forums dedicated to contemporary classical music. I can see why: while retaining an avant-garde edge (sometimes enough to be suspected of hoaxing), at least some compositions have sensuous appeal to listeners (at least it does to me, though I guess I can thank ASD for that), yet they generally tend to be more conceptual (in any case, they like phenomenology) than focused on technicality, and collaborate more often with improvisers or electronic musicians. New Complexity is being fetishized to this date by many in the small crowd of contemporary classical composers and listeners because it appears as the ultimate embodiment of modernist complexity that deserves funding, whereas Wandelweiser ambitions are a little more scalable for the era of downshifting...
I must admit, I am very curious about your book collection there. Is there a possibility for a video covering some of your theory/composition/history books?
Always great. This is a really fascinating one. Thank you so much. You definitely introduced me to multiple things here. In fact, I rely on you for my music education, so keep doing it, haha.
I joined a Facebook group about this subject and abandoned it due to pedantic stench of it all: I am sorry for all the people who still remain there. Ah and congratulations for your video
Awesome! :D Love the way you explain things and will stay tuned for the next videos (: I'd love to see more stuff about composers from the second half of the 20th century on And it would be marvelous to have also videos on composers rooted on the 21st century and on the now! haha
There is so much to read in the scores that reading glasses should perhaps be noted in the very score itself as mandatory equipment while approaching this music. 😀
Valuable resources. For my 2 cents, i'd love to see ones on Ligeti, Grisey, and especially Pierre Schaeffer and in particular his "Traité des objets musicaux" and its outgrowths of spectromorphology and acousmatic musics. Thanks and please keep it up!
I did a video on Ligeti _way_ back in the day (so it kinda sucks compared to what I do today), but it's out there nevertheless. Tenney and Schaeffer have been duly noted at lentovivace.com/classicalnerd.html
Such a great video, it would be nice to see another like this but with maximalism and the similarities and diferences with new complexity (I see that it was already requested one of spectralism so im looking foward to that to) Tks for these videos
"Maximalism" simply isn't an analyzable musical movement in the manner of minimalism, spectralism, or New Complexity. It's a label that's been applied to a wide swath of different composers who have less in common with one another than these five. I will add this as a vote toward a spectralism video, however!
Back in the late 20th century it did seem as though some composers were attempting to win the prize for the most impossible pieces to play. It made them look and feel modern. The resultant music was never popular with avant garde audiences but the scores made great wallpaper. By discarding the traditional concepts of melody, harmony, and meter they attempted to create something that was intellectually impressive but emotionally vacant. Once the performance was over the listener could remember nothing of what they heard. For me, their music was similar to watching fireworks; immediately impressive and impossible to remember. Added to the complexity was a love of dissonance that made every concert akin to riding through a carnival haunted house. For the average listener there is only so much sonic data that you can process at any one time and they violated those boundaries with glee and gay abandon. All their efforts were part of the great questions of the age: what do we mean by the word music? what is its relationship to the human experience? does music have to be beautiful? does it have to be comprehensible? how many performers want to play your music? will anyone pay to hear it?
@@machida5114 When I was young I liked spicy food and angry music. Your tastes mature as you age. Now I want sweet and beautiful. Actually, simple is harder to do than complex.
Fascinating overview of these overlooked composers! Interesting that the Grateful Dead came up (I think during the Chris Dench section): The Dead's charitable foundation (the Rex Foundation) has provided financial support to almost all of the composers in this video.
Fascinating-I see Finnissy listed in 1995 and Dench, Barrett, and possibly Dillon listed in 1994. I suppose Ferneyhough, with his academic jobs, didn't need the money.
Best bus ride video ive ever listened to and watched Wonderful introductory material to a world that used to be so foreign but now seems obvious. Thank you! Also: Neeeeerrrrd :p
New Complexity was named for the English (how simplicist Australian spanked boy(took hundreds of pics way beforethat kind of thing was unquestionable)but now it takes many international diverse international trends. I love this channel ! I go to a lotta used bookstores -how can he afford all those harc covers and mostly how can he understand and have read and thought enough to understand all the issues he brings up . Ferneyhough,Finnisy,Xenakis and Birtwistle ain't easy stuff .Undergrad doesn't cover much about these guys . Wonderful to have his commentary along with the countless pages written on " New Complexity " masters and he spends time in giving us a thorough going over ! Darnstadt? Are they still having courses there I must find out . Manipulating Music ? I like that term. This dude really has reada lot . I want to hear is composition too!
Greetings Thomas, Great work you are doing! I would just like to request that you please consider doing a video on living Latvian composer Peteris Vasks. A truly underrated gem of our time, IMO... I know you have a lot of requests, but I just wanted to add yet another penny to your bucket full of pennies ;) Thank you!
Finissy: ...a series of forms that discard received traditions...Dench: a staggered or simultaneous present consisting of a meta-stacked time. a broad level of self-similarity...Yeah, that's so moving.
Mi profesor de composición estudió con Ferneyhough y él le comentaba que unos alumnos habían creado un software para hacer que sus obras estuvieran escritas de una forma más fácil, él inmediatamente sacó una versión qué el había escrito antes y coincidía con la que el software había escrito, una idea de la nueva complejidad en el Reino Unido era forzar a estudiar a los intérpretes ya que el nivel interpretativo era muy alto y esto hacía que los instrumentistas no estudiaran sus partes y siempre leyeran todo a primera vista, con esta complejidad en la escritura se fuerza a estudiar y descifrar toda obra. Hace poco analizamos Bone Alphabeth y todos sabemos lo compleja que es, un hito para graduarse en el solfeo Ritmic.
Fantastically interesting, and so much work. I shall treat myself to Michael Finnissy's 'History of...' and economise somehow, but for the glory of the internet, I wouldn't have had the joy of your TH-cam work. I wouldn't mind knowing what is round the corner of your bookcase in terms of anything non-musical. Anyway, hope your composing work is going well too. Thanks Thomas!
I feel flooded with this video! I feel like I want to check out everything here. I would love if you would be so kind of you could do a vid on each one of these guys, and maybe 2-5 pieces of each to really get your brain around what these blokes are trying to accomplish! I am a vocalist/Percussionist/and Fretted String player. One thing I am doing this year is listen to Ligeti's Requiem once every day, I want to ''understand'' that work deeply and feel that since it is so dense, it requires many listens to to comprehend it! Thanks for a great video!
Wow! Is it easy to get any or all of these music scores? I would love to get ferneyhough's la tierra est la home score. I have seen a copy of it and it is massive. You probably have a world class score library! Thanks for all the great vids!
It depends on the score. I have access to a the extensive music library of the University at Buffalo, but even they don't have _La terre est un homme_ ... Stony Brook does, though.
@@grantco2 Why? Why show such visceral dislike to a kind of music when it literally does not affect you in any way, if you don't like it, just don't listen to it, simple as that.
• Ferneyhough's _Cassandra's Dream Song_ is easily his most approachable, especially in a live setting. The flute constrains him from doing _too_ much at one time. • Finnissy has some nice moments of relative stasis in parts of the _English Country-Tunes_ and the _Gershwin Arrangements._ I prefer his orchestral music, like _Red Earth._ • Dench's _ik(s)land[s]_ is really gorgeous, and his Piano Sonata is probably the best example of his work in large scale. I'm also fond of his guitar work _severance_ I excerpted here. • Barrett's work with FURT and various iterations of his _codex_ series are worth knowing. Since he's so aligned with improvisation, listening to as many versions as you can find is rewarding. • Dillon is my favorite of the bunch, and he's at his best when he's ethereal and impressionistic. I find his piano music hit-or-miss, but when it's a hit, it's by far my favorite of these composers. I especially love _echo the angelus_ (excerpted here) as well as many moments in _The Book of Elements,_ such as the beginning of Volume IV. Some truly amazing sonorities populate _Pharmakeia_ and his _Stabat Mater Dolorosa._
Excellent work! I had been hoping for a NC essay at some point and this really helped scratch that itch. I can absolutely understand why this type of music isn't up even most people's alleys, but it unfortunately seems there's a lot of open hate not just for NC music, but even people who do enjoy this type of stuff. It seems like you're either either a snooty academic or some idiot who knows nothing about music composition in order to enjoy the likes of these composers. Like damn, I just think this stuff sounds cool, lay off for a bit. The second and third Ferneyhough string quartets and La Terre Est un Homme are irreplaceable in my realm of listening material. If I get the opportunity to so much as have a disastrous read-through session of one of his works for string quartet I will die a happy man.
When you have spent three years studying composition having the disciples of these people essentially deride you as a regressive neanderthal for not seeing the point of writing impossible to play music while name dropping concepts you think make you sound more intellectual than you actually are, then perhaps you will understand a little better.
Excellent video and discussion. I understand that this "impossibly complex" notation means no two performances will ever be the same but my view is 1) So what, why does this even matter...and 2) More conventional notation achieves the same thing anyway. That doesn't mean I don't like some of the New Complexity composers - I find Finnissy's music intriguing and psychologically compelling, whereas I simply cannot abide Ferneyhough.
When the number of words used to describe a piece exceeds the number of notes in that piece the world has gone topsy-turvy. When I was at conservatory, I noticed the musicologists had very little interest in music and great interest in systems.
Absolutely couldn’t agree more. I’m a lowly jazz musician who’s been dragged into the rabbit hole of new complexity by a friend of mine and among the first things he did was hand me a book explaining this music. This music really doesn’t sound or feel very good at all it feels like this is an ego-driven pursuit rather than a musical one
You are a scholar, sir. I appreciated the mention of ars subtilior. I have a recording of the pianist Ian Pace, playing Ferneyhough, Chris Dench, and Richard Barrett. Also Kevin Bowyer on the organ, playing Ferneyhough's Sieben Sterne. Ferneyhough once mentioned in an interview exactly what you relate (more briefly - Ferneyhough will never choose a few words when a couple of thousand will do) - about the impossibility of interpreting the score exactly, and how that challenges both performer and listener. On the radio, I once heard Irvine Arditti playing Intermedio alla ciacona. I bought the score, and it hangs on a wall now, with the title 'Modesty'.
Boros, James. 1994. "Why Complexity? (Part Two) (Guest Editor's Introduction)". Perspectives of New Music 32, no. 1 (Winter): 90-101... So my question is this still the newest model of composing music ?
I would just like briefly to say thank you Classical Nerd for making this video, although I would also have to say that putting these four people together, under the heading of some supposedly shared "style", tends to draw the attention away from the (more important IMO) individuality of their work. Also the use of the "NC" term (I can't bring myself to type it out in full!) draws attention to the way the music is notated, as opposed to the way it sounds and expresses itself, which is another way of saying the same thing, I mean nothing can substitute for the listening experience, and every composition is a new world to explore. To speak for myself: having spent my teenage years learning about music principally through broadcasts and recordings (no TH-cam then of course), nobody ever told me there was such a thing as difficult or inaccessible music, and all these years later I still don't really believe there's such a thing. Maybe this music suggests a level of engagement with sound, structure, ideas and so on that some listeners aren't prepared to give it, in which case I would say to some of the dismissive commentators here: why bother complaining that a creative musician hasn't provided you with the entertainment you want?
"The score/music is fine, the plebs are just too ignorant to understand it." Fairly typical response. If composers wish to spend their time essentially attempting to acoustically re-represent the sounds of 1960s sound labs that is their affair and they have plenty of techniques with which to generate such sonic effects including aleatoric ones. However, to deliberatly set out to fool an audience/listener by letting them think that what the player is playing is what is exactly as written when the latter is deliberatly placed out of the technical bounds of the instrument in question is pure charlatanism. There is meaningful complexity (like Ives, Stockhausen and Zappa) where the complex elements serve an expressive function and there is just complexity for complexities sake. Composers who have wilfully opted out of wishing to engage with both players and audience in a direct way and who seek to hide between sonic and verbal persiflage cannot complain when they get negative feedback. It is not the audiences responsibility if a composer freely chooses to use the most complex means in order to express nothing coherent or meaningful. To pretend that such behaviour constitutes a form of aesthetic significance rather than empty gesturism is also rather cynical.
I have nowhere, here or elsewhere, said or implied that anyone is "too ignorant to understand" the music I'm involved in making. Your insinuation that composers like those discussed in the video have devoted their entire lives to fooling audiences and listeners says a great deal more about you, your lack of respect for your fellow human beings, and indeed your own deep cynicism, than it does about anything else. Most people have better things to do than to poke around on TH-cam slagging off music that offends their overweening sense of being right. Shame on you.
@@richardbarrett2760 Oh come along now, when the Arditti Quartet are obliged to take hours re-composing a string quartet to make it even remotely playable within an ensemble context, and when simple quasi-melodic vocal lines are seemingly (and pointlessly) subdivided and written in a way that would make the opening phrase of "Three Blind Mice" stretch to thirty pages there is definitely a game being played on those performers isn't there? It's almost as if one has a computerised app you feed simple material into and then choose the most impractical and remote version of that phrase it generates. To be fair I do have several of your CDs because I am interested in the aesthetic side of it, it is the posturing, preening attitude tied in with the pretence that producing overwritten gibberish without respect for the poor performers who have to learn a whole new syntax before even being allowed to glimpse the title page is somehow progressive that I have issues with. I recall, when I was a student, there was a chance to have a workshop with John Adams which I jumped at while the people who went around dropping your name (alongside two of the others mentioned here) merely sneered and made fun of the whole idea. I then attended a workshop given by one of the composers mentioned here where he declared Stockhausen used to be alright but retreated into using primary school mathematics. I was not that impressed having recently discovered "Lucifer's Farewell" which I'm sure we can agree is an absolute masterpiece. I tend to think respect is a two way street by the way. I see very little emanating from your (collective) side of the fence . However as long as you continue to bring out CDs I will continue to buy them.
@@egapnala65 You want respect? Then don't come out with insulting nonsense like "there is a game being played on those performers" and "overwritten gibberish".
@@richardbarrett2760 I am entitled to my opinions on the matter as you are yours. To me a lot of the notation is overwritten gibberish which could be written in other ways incorporating aleatoric means perhaps. In the end its self defeating as nobody who depends on music performance for a living is going to be able to afford the time and patience to translate and render playable whatever insanely impractical irrational playing values are put before them. As for respect i am secure in myself enough not to go around begging for such things. PS Recently got hold of your "Vanity" alongside some Bryn Harrison (who I really like) havent got round to listening to it yet but I will,
Brilliant job describing this "music". These scores look like engineering schematics. For the amount of writing on the page very little is happening with the cello in the example. complex score mechanics and notation, but the musical itself is not sonically all that complex, which would be fine if it was musically interesting and satisfying. I think it is overly intellectualized art...there is a line in conceptual art that gets crossed and it is just complexity that doesn't communicate much but the intellectual process that designed it...this is front and center...what music does for us is forgotten... 19:40 to 19:52. What his aims are for his piece. A lot of jargon and complex sounding but based on the sounds produced, couldn't those sounds have been produced without the schematics? Great overview. PS. I love Ives, but Ives does sound like music.
It is a great shame that the sonic interest and emotional communicativeness of this "music" (if I may borrow your excellent scare-quotes) seem to be in exactly inverse proportion to the amount of cerebration and intellectual effort expended on these scores by the "composers" (those quotes again!) and their hapless interpreters. That said, incoherence can seem extraordinarily like "complexity", and vice versa. Tonal music of the Common Practice period (and beyond) has an audible syntax, even to the habituated but untrained listener; this "music", by contrast, depends on programme notes (and other technical exegesis) to explain the sounds that cannot explain themselves in action.
"A lot of jargon and complex sounding"- - -this strikes me as a bit generalised. I thought Finnissy's String Trio is pretty communicative, to my ears atleast. Likewise, the maelstrom of Ferneyhough's orchestral piece 'La Terre et un Homme" has a searing intensity.
@@MorganHayes_Composer.Pianist I will have to give them a listen. I always feel with the very experimental composers that there are always some works that stand out as successful. But a steady diet of it is like making a diet of hemp rope because it's high in fiber. There's better and more appetizing ways of doing it. The way these composers describe their work is similar to the way post modern writers talk about their fiction. They ascribe all kinds of complex intentions and concepts to it and what people really want in stories is strong characters, some human emotion. I think people want that in their music too. I don't remember which one of the 5 composers reviewed was disappointed and surprised his music didn't catch on with a wider audience. Really? What did he think was going to happen when people heard his tuneless skitterings? The same thing Schoenberg thought about 12 tone music--the public would get used to it, but they did by and large. Despite the brave experiments, the vast ingenuity and even the astonishing successes of composers like Schnittke, Penderecki and Ligeti, composer of the 21st century are going to have to face the music and compose again. Audiences are craving a little less mechanical and a lot more human.
There is more to music than sound. There's movement, energy, performativity, interpretation, etc. These are precisely the things these composers were exploring in their use of notation.
@@mm-dn6oe Not really, the scores are about nailing a performer down so that every breath they take has to be justified. About writing stuff you know to be impossible to play but deriving a sadistic delight in watching performers attempt to jump through your hoops. Taking six months to "learn" a score is a hell of a big demand to place on a professional soloist.Particularly when things like the selective use of aleatoric techniques could achieve pretty much the same sonic effects and cut that time by 3/4s.
Please do a video on Rued Langgaard, Florent Schmitt, Ottorino Respighi, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Henryk Gorecki, Benjamin Britten and Feruccio Busoni.
I only take five requests per person, just because I have so dang many of them active. Langgard, Schmitt, Respighi, Korngold, and Gorecki have been boosted at lentovivace.com/classicalnerd.html
You have done a fanrastuc I wonder if some day someone will do a follow up to my book Primacy of the ear for most of you ,it’ll be too elementary How can educators inspire students to seek out to new directions in all music from Aretha to post Messiaen.and use class time to focus ,enjoy non diatonic sound Gunther Schuller ,george Russell have discussed this for years You put an amazing amount of time and skill to this fine video. We all thank you
*Show notes:*
0:27 The support of patron *Alice Wyan* _doubled_ the weight of this request! If you want to speed up the process of making certain videos, consider becoming a patron for as little as $2/month.
15:28 Ferneyhough’s “filtering” procedures date back to his 1967 wind sextet _Prometheus,_ another indication of how well-formed his language was, even as a young composer.
28:02 Composers typically use lots of extended techniques in a score, or avoid them altogether, as their occasional inclusion usually sounds “off.”
29:45 Conlon NANcarrow, technically … which means that everyone I’ve ever heard say it in real life has been wrong.
31:43 While Tchaikovsky’s true end will likely never be known, Finnissy believes that news of Tchaikovsky’s sexuality was about to hit the St. Petersburg press, hence the plot of _Shameful Vice._
34:32 Not to be confused with the _album_ from whence the piece came, also called _City of Glass._
36:13: The timeline is a little confusing here; _helical_ is listed in various places as a 1975, 1976, 1978, and 1993 composition. I believe that this reflects the various iterations of the score over the years. Dench’s official Web site (link in the sources in the video description) has the date at 1975.
Thanks for reinstating it's the piece and not the album.
hi! thanks a lot for this video. I was wondering where I can find the Finnissy quote about "socially determined" in 29:06
Excellent stuff!
Thank you! That really means a lot.
Man dude youre really out here enriching us for free. Thank you
Agree. Thank you for these videos
I liked this video and would be interested in a similar content about spectralist composers.
Yes! Definitely!
Duly noted: lentovivace.com/classicalnerd.html
Yess, that would be interesting! 😄
Totally! Would be really informative!
Erik has reached his limit of 5 active requests, but George's has been duly noted: lentovivace.com/classicalnerd.html
“Sometimes musicians will re-notate Ferneyhough's scores to be more playable. Ferneyhough doesn't like this. This makes Ferneyhough mad. You won't like Ferneyhough when he's mad.”
brian ferneymad
@@danieltrevino8855 houghs mad
@@jimstantinople lmaoooo
O god. Does he then threaten to play some of his music? I'll be good.
Being unplayable, or hardly playable, is part of Ferneyhough's aesthetics: the immense effort and neurotic stress that goes with the attempts at performance, is the type of 'expression' that F wants. Of course that is a sign of serious neurosis, being transferred to the players and from there, to the audience.
Out of all the many episodes you have produced this is my favourite Thomas. Your grasp of the combined aesthetics and techniques used of these more modern composers is excellent because you have context reaching back centuries through western music composition. This point of reference adds such depth and clarity, not to mention "context" to this very significant episode. It inspires deep internal pondering about where classical music needs to move toward in order to survive. Wherever that place is I hope it makes one as an appreciator feel as much as think. Bravo Thomas!
This is a great survey. I can't say this kind of music does anything for me, but I'm glad to have it explained.
thanks so much for this video! it's crazy how much effort was put into this and i am very grateful for the content that you are putting out to a wider audience! please continue doing what you do
For the longest time, I was trying so hard to understand new complexity. After watching this video, I still don’t get it, but I can appreciate it more.
You do get it. There isn't anything to it. It's just Post-Modern humor.
The "audience" is the punchline. The *second audience* is a more rarefied group of viewers who watch the first audience, and feel superior to them.
In a sense, whether it's putatively "comedy", "painting", "music", or anything else - it's all actually Performance Art. In which you are an unpaid, unaware performer.
In a sense, this kind of art achieves the final goals of performance art. It unites the total control of the creator, with the absolute realism of performers who don't know that they are performing.
@@fnamelname9077 I would disagree, I would say it's not making fun of audiences so much as musical systems, or a specific kind of musical system (notation). Also, I would argue that it's more modern than postmodern. But that's just my opinion.
@@insight827 I agree. It's not postmodern at all. It doesn't have any of the qualities (nor the defects) of postmodern music. It is just modernism gone rancid.
And yet you have an irrational time signature in your pfp...
@@theangryginger7582 I do use irrational meters in my music sometimes, but that doesn't make it new complexity. My music is FAR from being called new complexity.
This is so densely packed with information that I used the slow playback speed of TH-cam for the first time in my life! The presentation is excellent but give us a moment to breathe. When a key point is made, a pause would be nice to allow to let it sink in. Keep up the good work
This video is one of my favourites!!! Great research and structure. Definitely worthy of multiple viewings.
Amazing introduction! Thanks. Chris Dench is a great discovery for me.
Thanks. The potential of music to find new ideas , new ways of looking at things , never seems to end.
Now if only they were "better" ways...
I think it gets misguided when novelty is sanctified. At the end of the day, it's a relative property, depending on what you already know. The best music, to me, does not rely on being original, though it might be original incidentally.
Unfortunately the actual sound is not only highly non-mellifluous it bears an uncanny resemblance to a cacophonous din.
@@molybdaenmornell123hopp5 Correct.
All this complexity is pure bull manure and then some more of the same. 💩💩💩
Thanks classical nerd, there’s not many of us so it’s great to see your videos!
This channel is PURE GOLD.
I had a really brief interchange with Chris Dench once and i can say he is a lovely soul. The stratification of meaning in his charts is something that is beyond remarkable. It's the Kabbalah of music making.
He's a great bloke isn't he?
He certainly seems to be the least up his own backside, his website shows he has a great love of ALL kinds of music far removed from the typical Adornoite dismissal of everything south of Boulez/Carter that seems to pervade the rest of the school.
I’m never going to feel guilty about writing something a bit outlandish for a few bars ever ever again.
"And when I emerged from my solitude and crossed over this bridge for the first time, I did not believe my eyes and looked and looked again and said at last: 'That is an ear! An ear as big as a man!' I looked yet more closely: and in fact under the ear there moved something that was pitifully small and meagre and slender. And in truth, the monstrous ear sat upon a little, thin stalk - the stalk, however, was a man! By the use of a magnifying glass one could even discern a little, envious face as well; and one could discern, too, that a turgid little soul was hanging from the stalk. The people told me, however, that the great ear was not merely a man, but a great man, a genius. But I have never believed the people when they talked about great men - and I held to my belief that it was an inverse cripple, who had too little of everything and too much of one thing."
Friedrich Nietzsche - Thus Spoke Zarathustra
This was Nietzsche's attempt to attack Wagner, who was indeed a genius. Nietzsche also had ambitions to write music (he had musical talents), but his stuff is unlistenable. They were friends for a short while and N had to thank W for awakening much of N's philosophical ideas. later-on, out of embarrassed revenge, he tried to make Wagner look small.
To paraphrase, I believe it was Gardner Read, "the composer who vaguely notates the possible, or meticulously notates the impossible, then avers that the agonized approximation produced by the performers is exactly what he intended, is guilty of unconscionable sham." :)
Really looking forward to watch this! Thank you!
I refer people to the classical Merle Hazard group’s piece “ Gimme some of that old atonal music”. On TH-cam.
A must watch video!
49:42 In case anyone was wondering, the "obsession" with the note F apparently refers to a colloquial expression in English that means "nothing" and begins with that letter. This is described in Barrett's thesis.
explain more? I'm so lost
@@davisatdavis1 the expression is "f$*# all", which means "nothing", and he became obsessed with using the note F as a way of representing that
@@user-uz7gb7gb4vokay gotchu. But how does that make sense in this context?
Incredible work, best of it's kind on youtube! I've learned about new complexity in my musicology classes, but I've learned a lot of new things from this video.
Great work, Thomas!
ofcourse i find a henry cow fan here haha
This is going to be so interesting, thank you!
I am new to the channel. I am blown away by the quality! I would just wish you could make a small list of disques that you would recommend. Thanks for your great work!
Bless you and your work
You should make a video on George Crumb; one of my idols and main sources of inspiration as a composer. He just passed away yesterday I believe, may he rest in peace
Duly noted: lentovivace.com/classicalnerd.html
Great idea !
The musical irony being that the more complex the musical notation or instructions, the less the performer will be able to have fidelity to them in a concert situation.
I think that is the point, for some of these guys.
Yeah that's not ironic, that's the point of ferneyhough's obsessive notation. He essentially gives the performers the choice of what elements to emphasise because it's impossible to play all of them.
2:05 Hey, to Babbit's credit, he just said he didn't *understand* hip-hop, not that it wasn't a valid form of musical expression. I'd call that a fair take on his part. Most people don't understand HIS music. :P
An excellent point! A Babbitt video is in the works, where I hope to take a much deeper dive into this (and much else besides).
@@ClassicalNerd Personally I'm more interested in the works he made for the RCA synthesizer than his orchestral work, mostly because I'm hearing some like...almost proto-spectral stuff in there? Like you're bombarded with a bunch of notes and tone clusters, and then ANOTHER bunch of notes and tone clusters with a different synth patch, and at the speed at which it's going, it becomes difficult (for me at least) to tell the tone clusters of the composition from the harmonics making up the waveforms that the synthesizer is producing. I actually tried writing a piece in Sonic Pi (a "live coding" environment) that attempted to use the harmonic series in a similar way, but Sonic Pi tends to burn out between 300-400 BPM.
His electronic work forms some of the best examples of his theories and style. Orchestras just don't have the precision of the RCA. I'll keep my eyes peeled for references to spectral stuff in the literature, but as far as I know he and the spectralists had very little interaction.
@@ClassicalNerd Right, I'm not saying he was part of the movement, I'm just saying that he was blurring the line between tone cluster and timbre (perhaps unintentionally, but it definitely shows up in the resulting audio).
Sorry, I'm a Synth Guy, so in my world "spectral" just means "composing with additive synthesis"
I'm not sure how much he intended for timbre and pitch to be conflated, or if that was just the end result of working with pretty rudimentary synthesis technology. It'll be interesting to compare and contrast him with Stockhausen, who was definitely more interested in that kind of thing.
oh my goodness. Don't know how i stumbled on this - but it is fantastic content!
5:11 I had the chance to study with Roger Redgate at Goldsmiths. Great to see him on your video ! Although I am not an atonal composer, at all, but It was great to learn loads of new compositional technics and what a breath of fresh air to approach music in such a different way.
Wow, thank you. I learned a lot from this installment.
14:32 love how the most normal thing abt this is the time signatures
really lovely work, this feels like something that can be combed through many times over to find new information without it feeling like work.
Thanks! I was long waiting for this video.
Wow, looking forward to this one!
I've always looked up to composers like these (especially Ferneyhough, Dench and Finnissy). Their music is sadly very underrated. You did a really good job on the vid! Thank you. If I could make a request, maybe another American composer? (Maybe someone like Frederic Rzewski or John Corigliano?)
Duly noted: lentovivace.com/classicalnerd.html
Would be great if you also make a guide about reductionist composers and the Wandelweiser movement, a self-organized offshoot of the New York school (John Cage, Morton Feldman) with occasional dashes of everything from Satie to phonography (field recordings) - a low-key alternative to both post-serial/spectral academia and pop minimalism.
They are featured proeminently in Jennie Gottschalk's book "Experimental Music Since 1970", but other than that they don't have much institutional power and most of their sparse music is an acquired taste, so despite being active for almost three decades and are regularly being performed and recorded to some critical acclaim (and, in the case of Michael Pisaro-Liu, even a modest popularity), they are still rarely talked about on most discussion forums dedicated to contemporary classical music.
I can see why: while retaining an avant-garde edge (sometimes enough to be suspected of hoaxing), at least some compositions have sensuous appeal to listeners (at least it does to me, though I guess I can thank ASD for that), yet they generally tend to be more conceptual (in any case, they like phenomenology) than focused on technicality, and collaborate more often with improvisers or electronic musicians.
New Complexity is being fetishized to this date by many in the small crowd of contemporary classical composers and listeners because it appears as the ultimate embodiment of modernist complexity that deserves funding, whereas Wandelweiser ambitions are a little more scalable for the era of downshifting...
Duly noted: lentovivace.com/classicalnerd.html
Thank you for this. Will seek out this music.
Just read that book!
Fascinating. Thanks for the ferneyhough guidance
I must admit, I am very curious about your book collection there. Is there a possibility for a video covering some of your theory/composition/history books?
I second this notion! Please do showcase your book collection!!
I enjoy finding the books where my library intersects with his.
Always great. This is a really fascinating one. Thank you so much. You definitely introduced me to multiple things here. In fact, I rely on you for my music education, so keep doing it, haha.
I joined a Facebook group about this subject and abandoned it due to pedantic stench of it all: I am sorry for all the people who still remain there.
Ah and congratulations for your video
Truly fantastic scholarship + excellent video and presentation quality = Classical Nerd
Thanks for the awesome videos!
Excellent work as always!! Please do MAXIMALISM next !
Awesome! :D Love the way you explain things and will stay tuned for the next videos (: I'd love to see more stuff about composers from the second half of the 20th century on
And it would be marvelous to have also videos on composers rooted on the 21st century and on the now! haha
I love how all of the new complexity composers are wearing glasses in their pictures.
Ha, nice spot! I hadn't noticed.
There is so much to read in the scores that reading glasses should perhaps be noted in the very score itself as mandatory equipment while approaching this music. 😀
It’s because their bodies are struggling against the constraints placed on their sight by capitalism’s debilitation of human bodily capacities.
Valuable resources. For my 2 cents, i'd love to see ones on Ligeti, Grisey, and especially Pierre Schaeffer and in particular his "Traité des objets musicaux" and its outgrowths of spectromorphology and acousmatic musics. Thanks and please keep it up!
I did a video on Ligeti _way_ back in the day (so it kinda sucks compared to what I do today), but it's out there nevertheless. Tenney and Schaeffer have been duly noted at lentovivace.com/classicalnerd.html
@Damián López-de Jesús I've got way too much on my plate for that, sorry.
Such a great video, it would be nice to see another like this but with maximalism and the similarities and diferences with new complexity
(I see that it was already requested one of spectralism so im looking foward to that to)
Tks for these videos
"Maximalism" simply isn't an analyzable musical movement in the manner of minimalism, spectralism, or New Complexity. It's a label that's been applied to a wide swath of different composers who have less in common with one another than these five.
I will add this as a vote toward a spectralism video, however!
amazing !! thank you so much for this !!
Wow, this is insanely interesting - your output is outstanding
Back in the late 20th century it did seem as though some composers were attempting to win the prize for the most impossible pieces to play. It made them look and feel modern. The resultant music was never popular with avant garde audiences but the scores made great wallpaper. By discarding the traditional concepts of melody, harmony, and meter they attempted to create something that was intellectually impressive but emotionally vacant. Once the performance was over the listener could remember nothing of what they heard. For me, their music was similar to watching fireworks; immediately impressive and impossible to remember. Added to the complexity was a love of dissonance that made every concert akin to riding through a carnival haunted house. For the average listener there is only so much sonic data that you can process at any one time and they violated those boundaries with glee and gay abandon. All their efforts were part of the great questions of the age: what do we mean by the word music? what is its relationship to the human experience? does music have to be beautiful? does it have to be comprehensible? how many performers want to play your music? will anyone pay to hear it?
Beautifully written and well said.
the complexity-fashion works contains a kind of so spicy-delicious dishes for some music foodies.
@@machida5114 When I was young I liked spicy food and angry music. Your tastes mature as you age. Now I want sweet and beautiful. Actually, simple is harder to do than complex.
@@stephenjablonsky1941 an attitude mirrored in the composers themselves. Compare Dillon's 'Spleen' (1980) with his ' echo the angelus' (2016)
Fascinating overview of these overlooked composers! Interesting that the Grateful Dead came up (I think during the Chris Dench section): The Dead's charitable foundation (the Rex Foundation) has provided financial support to almost all of the composers in this video.
Fascinating-I see Finnissy listed in 1995 and Dench, Barrett, and possibly Dillon listed in 1994. I suppose Ferneyhough, with his academic jobs, didn't need the money.
As well as for Havergal Brian.
Time to see if you mention Sorabji…
Edit: 31:18 there it is!
😏
I would love to see more Sorabji ,what a pity that there are a lot of pieces that still need to be played.
@@ClassicalNerd important elements in Finnissy’s style:
(List)
Seems familiar…
(26:50)
tbh I was thinking "Sorabji in there somewhere?" just before he was mentioned.
'Tis a gift to be hyperpanaugmentedpostserialstthroughnotayednewcomplex
'Tis a gift to be free..."
Best bus ride video ive ever listened to and watched
Wonderful introductory material to a world that used to be so foreign but now seems obvious. Thank you!
Also:
Neeeeerrrrd :p
New Complexity was named for the English (how simplicist Australian spanked boy(took hundreds of pics way beforethat kind of thing was unquestionable)but now it takes many international diverse international trends. I love this channel ! I go to a lotta used bookstores -how can he afford all those harc covers and mostly how can he understand and have read and thought enough to understand all the issues he brings up . Ferneyhough,Finnisy,Xenakis and Birtwistle ain't easy stuff .Undergrad doesn't cover much about these guys . Wonderful to have his commentary along with the countless pages written on " New Complexity " masters and he spends time in giving us a thorough going over ! Darnstadt? Are they still having courses there I must find out . Manipulating Music ? I like that term. This dude really has reada lot . I want to hear is composition too!
Another fantastic video Thomas!
Thank you for your channel.
So much Australia! Wasn't expecting my home to come up so much!
Greetings Thomas,
Great work you are doing! I would just like to request that you please consider doing a video on living Latvian composer Peteris Vasks. A truly underrated gem of our time, IMO...
I know you have a lot of requests, but I just wanted to add yet another penny to your bucket full of pennies ;)
Thank you!
your series is excellent, thanks so much!
Finissy: ...a series of forms that discard received traditions...Dench: a staggered or simultaneous present consisting of a meta-stacked time. a broad level of self-similarity...Yeah, that's so moving.
this was excellent. i hadn't really looked into NC beyond ferneyhough and finnissy but dench immediately clicked for me as a kindred spirit.
Very useful and for us in Nigerian art music
I love how a lot of this music sounds!,,,,plus it looks beautiful too!....
Oh my god, I live in Adelaide as a musician, and lemme tell ya, everyone with means moves to Victoria, so Denoh had a truly Adelaide experience
Is Victoria where all the commies are?
Thank you.
Mi profesor de composición estudió con Ferneyhough y él le comentaba que unos alumnos habían creado un software para hacer que sus obras estuvieran escritas de una forma más fácil, él inmediatamente sacó una versión qué el había escrito antes y coincidía con la que el software había escrito, una idea de la nueva complejidad en el Reino Unido era forzar a estudiar a los intérpretes ya que el nivel interpretativo era muy alto y esto hacía que los instrumentistas no estudiaran sus partes y siempre leyeran todo a primera vista, con esta complejidad en la escritura se fuerza a estudiar y descifrar toda obra. Hace poco analizamos Bone Alphabeth y todos sabemos lo compleja que es, un hito para graduarse en el solfeo Ritmic.
Fantastically interesting, and so much work. I shall treat myself to Michael Finnissy's 'History of...' and economise somehow, but for the glory of the internet, I wouldn't have had the joy of your TH-cam work. I wouldn't mind knowing what is round the corner of your bookcase in terms of anything non-musical. Anyway, hope your composing work is going well too. Thanks Thomas!
A bookshelf tour is on the docket for ... some time this year? Probably whenever the semester gets busy and I need an easy video to make.
Love this music.
Superb presentation. Bravo.
outstanding job, thank you!
I feel flooded with this video! I feel like I want to check out everything here. I would love if you would be so kind of you could do a vid on each one of these guys, and maybe 2-5 pieces of each to really get your brain around what these blokes are trying to accomplish! I am a vocalist/Percussionist/and Fretted String player. One thing I am doing this year is listen to Ligeti's Requiem once every day, I want to ''understand'' that work deeply and feel that since it is so dense, it requires many listens to to comprehend it! Thanks for a great video!
There's no way. The research on this video alone took four months.
Wow! Is it easy to get any or all of these music scores? I would love to get ferneyhough's la tierra est la home score. I have seen a copy of it and it is massive. You probably have a world class score library! Thanks for all the great vids!
It depends on the score. I have access to a the extensive music library of the University at Buffalo, but even they don't have _La terre est un homme_ ... Stony Brook does, though.
I've never seen Ferneyhough and Captain Beefheart in the same room.
Excellent survey of a neglected field of music. You certainly know your stuff.
I wonder why this field of music is neglected. (/sarcasm)
@@AndreyRubtsovRU Wish it could simply cease to exist. Even better.
@@grantco2 Why? Why show such visceral dislike to a kind of music when it literally does not affect you in any way, if you don't like it, just don't listen to it, simple as that.
Great video! Can you recommend some of your favorite works by these guys?
• Ferneyhough's _Cassandra's Dream Song_ is easily his most approachable, especially in a live setting. The flute constrains him from doing _too_ much at one time.
• Finnissy has some nice moments of relative stasis in parts of the _English Country-Tunes_ and the _Gershwin Arrangements._ I prefer his orchestral music, like _Red Earth._
• Dench's _ik(s)land[s]_ is really gorgeous, and his Piano Sonata is probably the best example of his work in large scale. I'm also fond of his guitar work _severance_ I excerpted here.
• Barrett's work with FURT and various iterations of his _codex_ series are worth knowing. Since he's so aligned with improvisation, listening to as many versions as you can find is rewarding.
• Dillon is my favorite of the bunch, and he's at his best when he's ethereal and impressionistic. I find his piano music hit-or-miss, but when it's a hit, it's by far my favorite of these composers. I especially love _echo the angelus_ (excerpted here) as well as many moments in _The Book of Elements,_ such as the beginning of Volume IV. Some truly amazing sonorities populate _Pharmakeia_ and his _Stabat Mater Dolorosa._
I'm just impressed you got this number of views for this rather forbidding music - well done
There's a lot of people who want to understand this music, even if it's not to their taste-I was in that camp, prior to researching this video.
Oh man, here we go.
ill take schubert, beethoven, mozart, bach, brahms, chopin. ;)
Jean Sibelius says ":("
Why can't I have both?
so good work... so good performance...
so good comments...
the complexity works contains a kind of so spicy-delicious dishes.
Here's a suggestion. How about a video on Charlemagne Palestine? I've loved his piece Strumming Music ever since I heard it for the first time
Such a brilliant piece!
Please do Mieczyslaw Weinberg. He music deserves way more attention than it currently gets.
My fave
Attended a live performance of him by Argerich, Maisky and Kremer recently. I'd never heard of him before.
Duly noted: lentovivace.com/classicalnerd.html
what a wonderful video!
Thanks 👍 for the informative video sir!
Excellent work! I had been hoping for a NC essay at some point and this really helped scratch that itch. I can absolutely understand why this type of music isn't up even most people's alleys, but it unfortunately seems there's a lot of open hate not just for NC music, but even people who do enjoy this type of stuff. It seems like you're either either a snooty academic or some idiot who knows nothing about music composition in order to enjoy the likes of these composers. Like damn, I just think this stuff sounds cool, lay off for a bit. The second and third Ferneyhough string quartets and La Terre Est un Homme are irreplaceable in my realm of listening material. If I get the opportunity to so much as have a disastrous read-through session of one of his works for string quartet I will die a happy man.
When you have spent three years studying composition having the disciples of these people essentially deride you as a regressive neanderthal for not seeing the point of writing impossible to play music while name dropping concepts you think make you sound more intellectual than you actually are, then perhaps you will understand a little better.
Excellent video and discussion. I understand that this "impossibly complex" notation means no two performances will ever be the same but my view is 1) So what, why does this even matter...and 2) More conventional notation achieves the same thing anyway. That doesn't mean I don't like some of the New Complexity composers - I find Finnissy's music intriguing and psychologically compelling, whereas I simply cannot abide Ferneyhough.
When the number of words used to describe a piece exceeds the number of notes in that piece the world has gone topsy-turvy. When I was at conservatory, I noticed the musicologists had very little interest in music and great interest in systems.
There have been far more words written about many bach pieces than there are notes...
Music is a system
Absolutely couldn’t agree more. I’m a lowly jazz musician who’s been dragged into the rabbit hole of new complexity by a friend of mine and among the first things he did was hand me a book explaining this music.
This music really doesn’t sound or feel very good at all it feels like this is an ego-driven pursuit rather than a musical one
You are a scholar, sir. I appreciated the mention of ars subtilior. I have a recording of the pianist Ian Pace, playing Ferneyhough, Chris Dench, and Richard Barrett. Also Kevin Bowyer on the organ, playing Ferneyhough's Sieben Sterne. Ferneyhough once mentioned in an interview exactly what you relate (more briefly - Ferneyhough will never choose a few words when a couple of thousand will do) - about the impossibility of interpreting the score exactly, and how that challenges both performer and listener. On the radio, I once heard Irvine Arditti playing Intermedio alla ciacona. I bought the score, and it hangs on a wall now, with the title 'Modesty'.
Some heavy lifting on this video - kudos!
I believe it took that long for Bone Alphabet. But, if you can find people who can do it why not compose what is in your ear and mind.
Boros, James. 1994. "Why Complexity? (Part Two) (Guest Editor's Introduction)". Perspectives of New Music 32, no. 1 (Winter): 90-101... So my question is this still the newest model of composing music ?
I don’t intend to watch this video - 3-minutes in and I just want some Bach! - but I dig what you’re up. Keep the faith!
Well, I also have 40 minutes' worth of discussion on him, too: th-cam.com/video/T7UMnvTLads/w-d-xo.html
Truly awesome educational experience!
Thanks!
I would just like briefly to say thank you Classical Nerd for making this video, although I would also have to say that putting these four people together, under the heading of some supposedly shared "style", tends to draw the attention away from the (more important IMO) individuality of their work. Also the use of the "NC" term (I can't bring myself to type it out in full!) draws attention to the way the music is notated, as opposed to the way it sounds and expresses itself, which is another way of saying the same thing, I mean nothing can substitute for the listening experience, and every composition is a new world to explore. To speak for myself: having spent my teenage years learning about music principally through broadcasts and recordings (no TH-cam then of course), nobody ever told me there was such a thing as difficult or inaccessible music, and all these years later I still don't really believe there's such a thing. Maybe this music suggests a level of engagement with sound, structure, ideas and so on that some listeners aren't prepared to give it, in which case I would say to some of the dismissive commentators here: why bother complaining that a creative musician hasn't provided you with the entertainment you want?
"The score/music is fine, the plebs are just too ignorant to understand it." Fairly typical response. If composers wish to spend their time essentially attempting to acoustically re-represent the sounds of 1960s sound labs that is their affair and they have plenty of techniques with which to generate such sonic effects including aleatoric ones. However, to deliberatly set out to fool an audience/listener by letting them think that what the player is playing is what is exactly as written when the latter is deliberatly placed out of the technical bounds of the instrument in question is pure charlatanism. There is meaningful complexity (like Ives, Stockhausen and Zappa) where the complex elements serve an expressive function and there is just complexity for complexities sake. Composers who have wilfully opted out of wishing to engage with both players and audience in a direct way and who seek to hide between sonic and verbal persiflage cannot complain when they get negative feedback. It is not the audiences responsibility if a composer freely chooses to use the most complex means in order to express nothing coherent or meaningful. To pretend that such behaviour constitutes a form of aesthetic significance rather than empty gesturism is also rather cynical.
I have nowhere, here or elsewhere, said or implied that anyone is "too ignorant to understand" the music I'm involved in making. Your insinuation that composers like those discussed in the video have devoted their entire lives to fooling audiences and listeners says a great deal more about you, your lack of respect for your fellow human beings, and indeed your own deep cynicism, than it does about anything else. Most people have better things to do than to poke around on TH-cam slagging off music that offends their overweening sense of being right. Shame on you.
@@richardbarrett2760 Oh come along now, when the Arditti Quartet are obliged to take hours re-composing a string quartet to make it even remotely playable within an ensemble context, and when simple quasi-melodic vocal lines are seemingly (and pointlessly) subdivided and written in a way that would make the opening phrase of "Three Blind Mice" stretch to thirty pages there is definitely a game being played on those performers isn't there? It's almost as if one has a computerised app you feed simple material into and then choose the most impractical and remote version of that phrase it generates.
To be fair I do have several of your CDs because I am interested in the aesthetic side of it, it is the posturing, preening attitude tied in with the pretence that producing overwritten gibberish without respect for the poor performers who have to learn a whole new syntax before even being allowed to glimpse the title page is somehow progressive that I have issues with.
I recall, when I was a student, there was a chance to have a workshop with John Adams which I jumped at while the people who went around dropping your name (alongside two of the others mentioned here) merely sneered and made fun of the whole idea. I then attended a workshop given by one of the composers mentioned here where he declared Stockhausen used to be alright but retreated into using primary school mathematics. I was not that impressed having recently discovered "Lucifer's Farewell" which I'm sure we can agree is an absolute masterpiece.
I tend to think respect is a two way street by the way. I see very little emanating from your (collective) side of the fence . However as long as you continue to bring out CDs I will continue to buy them.
@@egapnala65 You want respect? Then don't come out with insulting nonsense like "there is a game being played on those performers" and "overwritten gibberish".
@@richardbarrett2760 I am entitled to my opinions on the matter as you are yours. To me a lot of the notation is overwritten gibberish which could be written in other ways incorporating aleatoric means perhaps. In the end its self defeating as nobody who depends on music performance for a living is going to be able to afford the time and patience to translate and render playable whatever insanely impractical irrational playing values are put before them. As for respect i am secure in myself enough not to go around begging for such things. PS Recently got hold of your "Vanity" alongside some Bryn Harrison (who I really like) havent got round to listening to it yet but I will,
Brilliant job describing this "music". These scores look like engineering schematics. For the amount of writing on the page very little is happening with the cello in the example. complex score mechanics and notation, but the musical itself is not sonically all that complex, which would be fine if it was musically interesting and satisfying.
I think it is overly intellectualized art...there is a line in conceptual art that gets crossed and it is just complexity that doesn't communicate much but the intellectual process that designed it...this is front and center...what music does for us is forgotten... 19:40 to 19:52. What his aims are for his piece. A lot of jargon and complex sounding but based on the sounds produced, couldn't those sounds have been produced without the schematics?
Great overview. PS. I love Ives, but Ives does sound like music.
It is a great shame that the sonic interest and emotional communicativeness of this "music" (if I may borrow your excellent scare-quotes) seem to be in exactly inverse proportion to the amount of cerebration and intellectual effort expended on these scores by the "composers" (those quotes again!) and their hapless interpreters.
That said, incoherence can seem extraordinarily like "complexity", and vice versa. Tonal music of the Common Practice period (and beyond) has an audible syntax, even to the habituated but untrained listener; this "music", by contrast, depends on programme notes (and other technical exegesis) to explain the sounds that cannot explain themselves in action.
"A lot of jargon and complex sounding"- - -this strikes me as a bit generalised.
I thought Finnissy's String Trio is pretty communicative, to my ears atleast. Likewise, the maelstrom of Ferneyhough's orchestral piece 'La Terre et un Homme" has a searing intensity.
@@MorganHayes_Composer.Pianist I will have to give them a listen. I always feel with the very experimental composers that there are always some works that stand out as successful. But a steady diet of it is like making a diet of hemp rope because it's high in fiber. There's better and more appetizing ways of doing it. The way these composers describe their work is similar to the way post modern writers talk about their fiction. They ascribe all kinds of complex intentions and concepts to it and what people really want in stories is strong characters, some human emotion. I think people want that in their music too. I don't remember which one of the 5 composers reviewed was disappointed and surprised his music didn't catch on with a wider audience. Really? What did he think was going to happen when people heard his tuneless skitterings? The same thing Schoenberg thought about 12 tone music--the public would get used to it, but they did by and large. Despite the brave experiments, the vast ingenuity and even the astonishing successes of composers like Schnittke, Penderecki and Ligeti, composer of the 21st century are going to have to face the music and compose again. Audiences are craving a little less mechanical and a lot more human.
There is more to music than sound. There's movement, energy, performativity, interpretation, etc. These are precisely the things these composers were exploring in their use of notation.
@@mm-dn6oe Not really, the scores are about nailing a performer down so that every breath they take has to be justified. About writing stuff you know to be impossible to play but deriving a sadistic delight in watching performers attempt to jump through your hoops. Taking six months to "learn" a score is a hell of a big demand to place on a professional soloist.Particularly when things like the selective use of aleatoric techniques could achieve pretty much the same sonic effects and cut that time by 3/4s.
Please do a video on Rued Langgaard, Florent Schmitt, Ottorino Respighi, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Henryk Gorecki, Benjamin Britten and Feruccio Busoni.
I only take five requests per person, just because I have so dang many of them active. Langgard, Schmitt, Respighi, Korngold, and Gorecki have been boosted at lentovivace.com/classicalnerd.html
@@ClassicalNerd Thank u!
You have done a fanrastuc
I wonder if some day someone will do a follow up to my book Primacy of the ear for most of you ,it’ll be too elementary
How can educators inspire students to seek out to new directions in all music from Aretha to post Messiaen.and use class time to focus ,enjoy non diatonic sound
Gunther Schuller ,george Russell have discussed this for years
You put an amazing amount of time and skill to this fine video. We all thank you