Wherein We Elect Our Favourite Classical Compositions of… the 1950s

Honourable mentions

Alan Hovhaness – Symphony No. 2, ‘Mysterious Mountain’, Op. 132 (1955)
Aram Khachaturian – Spartacus (1954)
Benjamin Britten – The Prince of the Pagodas, Op. 57 (1956)
Benjamin Britten – Nocturne, Op. 60 (1958)
Bohuslav Martinů – Symphony No. 6 (1951-1953)
Earle Brown – December 1952 (1952)
Elliott Carter – Sonata for Flute, Oboe, Cello and Harpsichord (1952)
Florent Schmitt – Symphony No. 2, Op. 137 (1957)
Francis Poulenc – Stabat Mater (1950)
Galina Ustvolskaya – Piano Sonata No. 3 (1952)
George Enescu – String Quartet No. 2 in G major, Op. 22/2 (1950-1952)
George Enescu – Vox maris, Op. 31 (1929-1954)
Goffredo Petrassi – Concerto for Orchestra No. 4 (1954)
Goffredo Petrassi – Concerto for Orchestra No. 5 (1955)
Goffredo Petrassi – Concerto for Orchestra No. 6 (1957)
Henri Dutilleux – Symphony No. 1 (1951)
Igor Stravinsky – The Rake’s Progress (1951)
Igor Stravinsky – Movements for Piano and Orchestra (1958-1959)
John Cage – Six Melodies (1950)
Karlheinz Stockhausen – Klavierstücke I-IV (1952)
Karlheinz Stockhausen – Klavierstücke V-X (1954)
Leonard Bernstein – West Side Story (1957)
Lou Harrison – Concerto for Violin and Percussion Orchestra (1959)
Maurice Ohana – Llanto por Ignacio Sánchez Mejías (1950)
Milton Babbitt – String Quartet No. 2 (1954)
Olivier Messiaen – Livre d’orgue (1951-1952)
Olivier Messiaen – Oiseaux exotiques (1955-1956)
Per Nørgård – Symphony No. 1, ‘Sinfonia austera’ (1953-1955)
Ralph Vaughan Williams – Symphony No. 7, ‘Sinfonia antartica’ (1949-1952)
Sergei Prokofiev – Symphony No. 7 in C-sharp minor, Op. 131 (1952)

Apologies for the brutal culling. I had to discard some personal favourites in the process.

Interesting: why did you choose the third Boulez sonata?

Incredible list, though!

I'm quite fond of its serene open-endedness.

I think I even prefer it to Barraqué's far more admired entry in the genre.

shostakovich 10 or enescu chamber symphony or...could it be scelsi??

Oh man. West Side Story :)

I only included it in the 'Honourable mentions' for fearing of getting lynched. There is no music I hate more in the world than musicals, it's fucking visceral.

oh right rvw8 is the extremely me-core one, it's probably that

shostakovich #10 is a towering classic, gonna give a few others a fair shake tho.

i went for shostakovich since i won't be able to vote for him next decade thanks to (redacted)

Late Shostakovich is best Shostakovich though.

I'd say 'Symphonic Dances from West Side Story' is amazing and non-musically, but that's from 61 :)

Elliott Carter – String Quartet No. 2 (1959)
Iannis Xenakis – Pithoprakta (1955-1956)
Karlheinz Stockhausen – Kreuzspiel (1951)
Karlheinz Stockhausen – Gesang der Jünglinge (1955-1956)
Pierre Boulez – Le Marteau sans maître (1953-1955)
Reginald Smith Brindle – El Polifemo de Oro (1956)

My current short list before going back and listening/relistening to anything. Music of Changes, 4'33", and December 1952 are also really important but rn it seems almost nihilistic to vote for one of them.

Carter wrote his 1st SQ 'in the undisturbed quiet of the Arizona desert' so that would be my self-quarantine pick, if I were to decide based on such criteria.

Curious why there's no Feldman.

His 50s material is… ok. Don't worry, he'll start popping up soon (-ish).

I'm carefully considering whether I can vote for 4'33" non-ironically, and will hold my vote until I can decide.

Been listening to an old LP of Durations and I see now it's from 1960.

(Feldman)

Agon vs Turn of the Screw vs Catalogue d’Oiseaux vs DSCH 10 for me

I’ve never heard Enescu’s Chamber Symphony - is it really better than Vox Maris???

I’d say so. Probably his most self-consciously ‘modernist’ piece.

had to be us highball for me

having said that a lot of this is stuff i just don't know, i'm really digging this ohana rn

I fucking love Ohana, please explore his oeuvre ASAP imo

Jon otm, Ohana ROOLZ. Start with Les enregistrements Erato if you can find it.

His 10-string guitar pieces are tops.

Any favourite recordings?

Oh! I probably should have requested/lobbied for Babbitt's SQ #2.

This list is the 💣

Full of impossible choices

Feel like West Side Story shd've made the cut tho

What can I say? I'm an ass and a lost cause.

Feel bad for cutting Babbitt's 2nd SQ at the last minute tho. Sorry anatol.

Turn of the Screw or Déserts or any of the Stockhausens or the Takemitsu or 4’33" or the bird catalogue or jeez I dunno man.

That Barraque is fierce too

Might vote 4'33" on principal but

Speaking of Takemitsu's Requiem, I've always been fond of this anecdote, here retold by Alex Ross:

The work that launched Takemitsu’s international career was the Requiem for Strings, written in 1957. Stravinsky happened to hear it during a trip to Japan; radio engineers played it for the great man by accident, and, when they were about to go back to the intended playlist, he asked them not to stop. Stravinsky praised the composer in interviews, and prizes and commissions from Western groups quickly followed. The Requiem shows Takemitsu’s style in embryo: the first violins begin with a soft, sustained F-sharp; second violins and cellos add a thick chord that consists of E-flat-major and B-flat-major triads superimposed; and the violas play a high phrase that twists slowly in place as harmonies shift underfoot. Peter Burt, in his book “The Music of Toru Takemitsu,” observes that the first few bars vaguely resemble Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for Strings,” and speculates that Barber’s score may have been found in the library of the American Civil Information and Education unit in Tokyo.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/02/05/toward-silence

Nag! Nag! Nag! is missed.

^ yeh

xp love that story

this is hard.

listened to two versions of “music of changes” yesterday (david tudor and herbert henck), can’t decide which made me feel more depressed

Any favourite recordings?

The Graham Anthony Devine album of Ohana guitar music on Naxos Music Library (with Si le jour parait ... and Cadran lumière) is good imo. My 10-string playing friend likes Nicolo Spera's.

XXP: Aw shucks. I needed a nap (or several) after rolling out a ballot-based poll at strange hours this week. :)

My first instinct is actually to opt for Musique funèbre, if only because that (and Lutoslawki generally) was a very early gateway into this sort thing. (Maybe it's unhip, but the importance for me of Naxos CDs selling at 4-for-$20 pre-filesharing cannot be underestimated. LOL. I made low-risk investments in their Quatre Études de rythme and Boulez piano sonatas not long after that, come to think of it!)

The Idil Biret disc of the Boulez sonatas? I often listened to that with a bottle of wine in my first apartment.

Yeah! I shall have to dig it out. It's been a while...

The naxos lutoslawski series was fantastic

:) I was a complete n00b so was lucky to have stumbled on it. I was all "these discs are selling for peanuts in non-specialist suburban stores -- why isn't everyone listening to Lutoslawsli and Messiaen all day? This Lutoslawski fellow should be a household name!" etc. LOL.

Welcome back, NNN!

Re: Boulez's sonatas, I'm fond of Paavali Jumppanen's set, recorded under the composer's supervision (iirc). There are more fiery interpretations, but his approach works wonders for #3 in particular.

^ noted, and placed on a wee playlist:

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4JpYWnZkUNxUZeB0zCkR9U

Nice to have this bonus excuse for (re-)listening once more. There a number of things here I claim to "know" but "heard a few times circa 2003" would be more devastatingly accurate. :)

My typos are getting ridiculous. "cannot be OVER-estimated" is what I meant several posts back. Blimey.

jumppanen hollerin’ with joy what with all these fine recommendations !

Please listen to Julian Bream's recording of "El Polifemo de Oro" btw.

Also managed to miss all of the C20th polls... I'd have broken Metamorphosen's duck in the '40s poll, I think.

I've no bone to pick with the Rum Tum Tugger as long as he remains silent and under (paper) house arrest, i.e. in Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats.

I haven't figured this out yet. I'll never figure this out.

Btw don't forget to request 1960s titles if you suspect I may forget them (not an ill-founded hunch tbh). As always, I'll do my best to include as many as possible.

don't envy you the job of whittling it down to fifty - this is why I suggested five year polls :) I am sitting in a room is probably one of the lucier pieces least likely to qualify for inclusion but it's so beautiful & fragile & unique & perfect, and there aren't many occasions to talk about it so I will at least mention it here

It's a wonderful piece, but I think it would be a better fit for our upcoming electroacoustic/musique concrète/sound art poll (at least I hope it's upcoming – who would be best suited to such a task?).

Does being in lockdown speed up time? Thought I still had ages to decide on a pick here!

xp that poll should def happen! Won't do it alone but would help out tbh.

Heh, I guess it does.

xp my knowledge of the stuff is severely lacking so someone else would definitely have to take over.

Obvious chestnuts:
Berio - Sinfonia
Stockhausen - Stimmung
Riley - In C
Glass - Music in Similar Motion
Ligeti - Atmospheres
Penderecki - Threnody...

Guitar music:
Britten - Nocturnal after John Dowland, op. 70 (Bream recording recommended again)
Stephen Dodgson - Partita
Maurice Ohana - Si le jour parait ...

As far as the actual 50s poll, it probably comes down to Le marteau vs Brindle. I realize the former is the more important and greater work but the personal connection with the latter is strong.

I could check the other thread, but I'm guessing it may have been you that lobbied for inclusion of the Brindle, Sund4r? If so, thanks! Enjoyed it, and there's a fair chance I wouldn't ever know about it otherwise. :)

Yes, glad you liked it.

I may just switch to 5 years for the remaining polls per ogmor's suggestion because my current longlist for the 60s is as excruciating as you'd expect.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Fuck it, I'm voting Scelsi.

Anyone want to rep for Galina Ustvolskaya? Three pieces here and I've heard none before.

They represent a bleaker, starker, less consolatory late Shostakovich avant la lettre (he reportedly told her that she influenced him, not the other way around). For the Grand Duet, try Mstislav Rostropovich and Igor Uriash. The Violin Sonata is well served by Patricia Kopatchinskaja and Markus Hinterhäuser (on an excellent ECM disc). As for the 4th Piano Sonata, I like Ivan Sokolov's take, among many others.

fwiw (nothing as i don't vote in polls lol) a vote for anything also counts as a vote for 4'33", you just assume it's being performed somewhere poorly soundproofed with e.g. zimmerman's canto di sperenza bleeding thru the walls, to be officially part of the cage performance ("noises of your body" etc)

this is canon

nothing as i don't vote in polls lol

C'mon mark, don't be such a hipster.

mark not voting is canon too iirc

Anyway Pom, huge thanks - again - for the recommendations!

Btw are you familiar with this book? Performing Pain: Music and Trauma in Eastern Europe Looks rad!

Agon
Possibly my most listened-to Stravinsky piece

I've got reservations about Stravinsky but Agon is classic af.

Btw are you familiar with this book? Performing Pain: Music and Trauma in Eastern Europe Looks rad!

It does indeed. Thanks for the tip.

why scelsi pom? I assume it's one of the things would especially benefit from a live hearing

I am no closer to working out what to vote for

Rundel's live recording on Mode is quite good, incidentally!

I'm a spectralist stan and hence sympathetic to proto-spectralism. I also worry that no one else will vote for it.

That said, at least ten other works could have won out depending on ineffable fluctuations.

My hopeless anglophilia doesn't always extend to this type of music so Lachrymae and those RVW symphonies are fresh to my ears. (Didn't even realise RVW was still composing this late!) It's all quite... luvly.

I spent an inordinate amount of time with RVW's symphonies in February and have finally come to appreciate their worth, thanks to Haitink's cycle in particular. They're much less stereotypically 'English' than I used to believe, that is to say less reactionary – somewhat in line with Sibelius's own complicated position within 20th century music. I've always loved Britten's Lachrymae, however, especially his later arrangement for viola and string orchestra. Theme and variations in reverse, wherein the borrowed melody is revealed at the very end of the piece, is in fact one of my favourite structural tropes in classical music.

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

Huh, I thought Shosty's 10th was going to walk this.

Omg sorry Boulez

:(

I had no idea he'd need my help.

D'oh, a long phone call prevented a last minute vote. Maybe imagine that Le Marteau sans maître or Quatre Études de rythm has a "1" against it rather than no votes.

Who voted for the Dallapiccola btw? I'm pleasantly surprised – I almost didn't include because I assumed no one would care.

^Teacher and major influence on Brindle (who got my vote in the end).

D'oh, forgot to vote! Would've gone with Junglinge in the end...

If anyone's interested, I wrote
this about the Brindle piece some years ago, when I still wrote words outside message boards.

Only thing I ever published

Thanks, and bookmarked.

An embarrassment of riches, split in twain:

Wherein We Elect Our Favourite Classical Compositions of… the 1960s – Part I (1960-1964)

today i learned RVW was working on an opera on Thomas the Rhymer at the time of his death

feel pretty robbed tbh!

Really really should have remembered to vote. For Marteau sans maitre.

I’ve just realised that Shostakovich 11 (Year 1905) was omitted even from the Hon mentions. Outrage. I was saving my Shosty vote for that. Harrumph.

Sorry, Shosty may well be my favourite composer on some days but I can’t stomach the 11th and the 12th. God knows I’ve tried.

looove the first movement, can take or leave the rest

i like the 12th

Haha, tbh, rereading my own old paper, I had to review what some of those set theory concepts were. :\

I read as much as I conceivably could of your article, Sund4r, and it reminded me that I am but a rank amateur when it comes to this stuff! I know enough to grasp the overall premise, but your analysis is several magnitudes of complexity and insight beyond my meagre musicological – and mathematical – understanding.

It was more technical/arcane than I remembered tbh. The math that you need to be able to read and apply pitch class set theory is mostly just arithmetic, though, really.