Wherein We Elect Our Favourite Classical Compositions of… the 1960s – Part II (1965-1969)

Honourable Mentions

Cornelius Cardew – The Great Learning (1968-1969)
Dmitri Shostakovich – Seven Songs on Poems by Alexander Blok, Op. 127 (1967)
Dmitri Shostakovich – Violin Concerto No. 2 in C-sharp minor, Op. 129 (1967)
Gustaf Allan Pettersson – Symphony No. 7 (1966-1967)
Gustaf Allan Pettersson – Symphony No. 8 (1968-1969)
Harrison Birtwistle – Punch and Judy (1967)
Horațiu Rădulescu – Credo (1969)
Luciano Berio – Sequenza III (1966)
Luciano Berio – Sequenza IV (1966)
Luciano Berio – Sequenza V (1966)
Luciano Berio – Sequenza VI (1967)
Olivier Messiaen – La Transfiguration de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ (1965-1969)
Peter Maxwell Davies – Missa super L’homme armé (1968)
Ștefan Niculescu – Eteromorfie (1967)
Ștefan Niculescu – Aforisme de Heraclit (1969)
Steve Reich – Piano Phase (1967)
Steve Reich – Violin Phase (1967)
Toru Takemitsu – Arc (1963-1966)
Vagn Holmboe – Symphony No. 9 (1967-1969)

I'm somewhat amazed that there was a need for honourable mentions even after splitting the poll in half.

Btw if you're wondering why the poll is only open for six days, it's because ILX is set on GMT (correct me if I'm wrong).

first instinct is Uaxuctum, but there are a lot here that i don't know

same

I wish to make special pleading for Ginastera’s astonishing Bomarzo opera. Its only recording is on Spotify.

At the same time, this is absolutely the peak of Shostakovich for me. Symphony 14, the 2nd cello concerto, the viola sonata, Jesus god!!!

*violin

Autocorrect caused a bit of a typo btw: it's 'Natura renovatur', not 'renovator'.

The use of percussion in the 2nd cello concerto is so fucking cool

The 14th Symphony was the most Important Musical Work Ever Composed for me as a 19-20 year old closet goth and in some ways still is. Among modern recordings, Theodor Currentzis's with MusicAeterna is a favourite.

And yeah, I love how he deploys percussion in the 2nd Cello Concerto. It foreshadows the enigmatic 15th Symphony.

Y'all have the opportunity to vote for a passion on Good Friday, just pointing it out

heh

'My' Good Friday's next week, so…

Worldes Blis is pretty cool. (PMD is yet another Englishman I've largely neglected.)

Bomarzo sounds amazing so far too. Though I have a terrible track record re persisting with whole operas.

Will be going Berio here (tbc which one) but a further hon. mention to Lutoslawski’s Livre, which was my introduction to his world and a more immediate and playful composition than the second Symphony, very 60s. Otherwise, good choices.

Worldes Blis was in fact begun in 1966 and finished in 1969, so apologies for the blunder. Here's an amusing archival account of its sHoCKiNg premiere:

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/mar/15/from-the-archive-peter-maxwell-davies-worldes-blis-1969

Interesting that Berio and Stockhausen were, by contrast, "highly popular with Promenaders."

Obligatory playlist if anyone is still into that sort of thing: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1q9vSpGhi40RKQAsQ8xUEb (I just started listening earlier, forgetting I'd been in the habit of posting a link!)

sinfonia 4eva

Probably between Sinfonia and Stimmung for me, although the Ligeti Requiem and Lux aeterna and Music in Similar Motion are also strong contenders.

Shout out to November Steps for being one of Takemitsu's first concert works to incorporate traditional Japanese instruments.

On a related note, Wikipedia has come a long way:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/November_Steps

oh shit i didnt see ligeti or takemitsu. this is way harder for me than the previous one

is this around the time many "modernist" composers (or is this postmodernist now) started writing more in a sensual (idk how to describe it technically) kind of way?

The 70’s match that description better ime but bits of the late 60’s provide a foretaste, yeah.

damn didn't notice Uaxuctum either prob would have voted for that. totally blew my mind as a classical-averse teen, still does

Hm, "sensual" as in "sound as sound" seems like something that really started taking off in the 60s, I think, with yeah, spectralists expanding on this in 70s? If you meant it more in terms of "more traditionally expressive" or "returning to tonality", I'd definitely say 70s.

The Ligeti pieces I like the most are the ones that are so dominated by their own musical dynamics and logic that the internal physics of the pieces suck you in. I love all the distinctive devices and textures that keep popping up over this period esp with his writing for strings but there is a particular elegance to his single-movement pieces that appeals to my love of concision. There are so many wonderful contrasts of texture and pace and eerie passages of slowly-creeping stillness in the second SQ but it feels just a little rambling and fragmented to me. The cello concerto is amazingly rich, the way the first movement manages to slowly build while deploying these odd little unexpected gestures is so delicately done and the second movement has some deliciously gnarly textures, goes on a weird little jolly excursion and then has that killer raspy, smothered ending. Lux Aeterna is hyper-classic, maybe deployed too well by Kubrick but I think it's an incredible Ligeti got to enjoy such a high profile cultural moment.

Continuum is such an exquisite miniature, boiled down to the most concentrated, potent few minutes in his catalogue. Makes Nancarrow feel a little pointless to me tbh - he is miraculous but always seemed kind of kitsch, makes me think if he was around today he'd be making meme music with 110 views on youtube. Much as I think the requiem is the best timeless ghost music when I get to the unfortunately Italian, flabby third movement I'm aware that I could just be listening to Continuum twice. Ramifications has that maddening build of tension and all those gorgeous overtones but I prefer the way Lontano opens out. It goes in the opposite direction to Continuum with its scale, a terrible gentleness set against an awful, inhuman vastness creating an overwhelming feeling of frailty and sense of bottomless space that inspires a sort of transcendent dread.

Sad to see that A Rainbow in Curved Air is too vibin' for the poll, along the omission of Continuum it sadly offers clear proof of anti-banger bias. Shout out to James Tenney's For Ann (Rising) which is another perfect miniature that I have to play periodically to blast out the cobwebs.

Despite all my love for Ligeti I think I might have to vote the cosmic vedic baby nonsense of Stimmung, because it's so sixties, bc it's so German, bc I want to wander round Aztec ruins w/ Stockhausen, bc there is nothing better than mumbling, bc there is nothing better than overtones, and bc it locks into such a sublime subconscious/background groove which I love to inhabit. There is such supreme confidence and panache to how it's put together one can only say 'fair play Mittwoch!'

xp more the former I think though part of it might be a return to a kind of tonality (not necessarily in a neoromantic sense), putting it even more crudely "it goes down easier" to my ears in the same way something like debussy does (example, late boulez vs early boulez). not better or worse necessarily

ogmor's post is great I wish I had the capacity to describe the music like this

Continuum and Lontano are both brilliant but making room for more than five Ligeti options over a half-decade felt like overkill. As for Riley, I'm not much a stan beyond In C, I'm afraid, so you're certainly right to speak of bias – let the first stone be cast, then. And I'm ideologically pro-banger btw – now if only that title applied to A Rainbow in Curved Air…

Stimmung impressed its proto-New Age transcendentalism upon me after I heard it performed live at a local chapel, but I'm even fonder of Aus den Sieben Tagen's intuitivist mumbo jumbo, which I think is the ultimate encapsulation of what the late 1960s were all about from the perspective of one whose birth was still some ways in the offing.

write-in:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0WVh1D0N50

One for the musique concrète/tape/sound art/EA poll, hence its exclusion.

I love Rainbow in Curved Air but I would probably also include it in the EA poll. Distinguishing notated music from non-notated music on fixed media makes sense to me.

^^^ that too. :)

Lots of things here i've listened to more often, but it's still Uaxuctum

booming ogmor post, yes!

Makes Nancarrow feel a little pointless to me tbh - he is miraculous but always seemed kind of kitsch, makes me think if he was around today he'd be making meme music with 110 views on youtube.

I found myself nodding in agreement with this.

bc I want to wander round Aztec ruins w/ Stockhausen, bc there is nothing better than mumbling, bc there is nothing better than overtones, and bc it locks into such a sublime subconscious/background groove which I love to inhabit.

and also lots of gleeful horny nonsense about fruity tits and little clits!

Yeah, ha, when I read the translation of the text, I was glad the poetry was in German.

Fucking hell, I forgot Kurtág's The Sayings of P. Bornemisza.

Silent shout out to Mompou's Música callada for its then anachronistic conception of pianistic minimalism: a cycle of fragments inhabiting the same headspace as Saint John of the Cross's poetry, in a downcast musical translation by Fauré (ca. his later years) and Satie (ca. the unfinished Nocturnes in particular), bearing more than a passing resemblance to the quietest sections of Koechlin's Les heures persanes. That Herbert Henck recorded both Música callada and the latter is no accident, drawn as he was to neglected piano works by composers obsessed with empty expanses.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Remembered to vote for once! For Nomos Alpha. If only because that Arditti chamber music thing was another 'gateway' for me in the '90s. Plus it was fun just now! I guess I still get more mileage out of IX's smaller scale stuff.

I couldn't not vote for Shosty's 14th – overwhelming personal significance wins yet again.

Went with Stimmung in the end.

Seeing that most of my faves will garner enough votes, I'm going with Schnittke's String Quartet No. 1, which I love.

I think one of the thing that makes this period so interesting is how the barriers between notated and improvised and electronic music was pushed/blurred through letting performers have more latitude to interpret, introducing more 'fixed' electronic elements or processing tapes, graphical scores and so on, with lots of people working on both sides of the divide. Listening to Cardew's Treatise and struck by how different the versions are, I don't think anyone would guess they were the same piece if they didn't know. Bits of the score look a bit like the diagrams Xenakis made prior to writing out the scores, making it a sort of half-notated piece. A Rainbow In Curved Air has improvised elements but still has more in common with In C than most electro-acoustic music (and I'd say it's closer to semi-improvised psychedelic stuff like Henry Flynt than to Luc Ferrari). Anyway, a great list despite it being an impossible task

first instinct is Uaxuctum, but there are a lot here that i don't know

― fauci wally (voodoo chili),Thursday, April 9, 2020 9:35 AM (six days ago) bookmarkflaglink

and this is what i went with in the end. towering piece, like a portal into the apocalypse.

I couldn't not vote for Shosty's 14th – overwhelming personal significance wins yet again.

― coviderunt omnes (pomenitul),Wednesday, April 15, 2020 8:32 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

and me

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Guess I'll have to actually listen to that piece.

It's a thing!

recommend the Wyttenbach recording

https://www.discogs.com/ko/Giacinto-Scelsi-Quattro-Pezzi-Per-Orchestra-Anahit-Uaxuctum/release/997365

Onwards, fellow travellers:

Wherein We Elect Our Favourite Classical Compositions of… the 1970s – Part I (1970-1974)

Barraque got given a bit of short shrift here. The equal of Boulez's best work to me.

Also Alois' Intercomunicazione is just so fucking good, this performance is from the classic Siegfried Palm album:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-Zg6ALVqJI

I find the literary and philosophical underpinnings of Barraqué's oeuvre more compelling than the music itself (which I nonetheless enjoy), so I didn't consider voting for him over and above the others.

Agree that Intercommunicazione is excellent. Zimmermann is all too undersung – outside of the German-speaking world, at least.

Found a lot of composers that broke through to new expressive fields post-Boulez, Stockhausen. Guys like Barraque, Maderna, Zimmermann...to me there is an exciting history there.

Of course very little of that has ever come to a concert hall in this country.

Early Nono is incredible in that regard as well, especially Il canto sospeso, which I almost voted for in the 1955-1959 poll.

And if it's any comfort, Britain is a paradise for that stuff compared to Canada.

Yeah Nono is like a bridge for those two periods. That he was able to reinvent even further in the late 70s was remarkable.

"Sinfonia" is a banger and Ligeti is on a roll but would have voted "Aus den Sieben Tagen".