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

Indeed they did not.

Music in Similar Motion by Glass from 1969 is one of my favorites. How Now is also good. I'd need to check on early Reich.

Reich's sixties works are somewhat notable - It's Gonna Rain, Come Out, Piano Phase, abd Pendulum Music. Although I'll admit the Seventies output is better for both Reich and Glass.

I'll probably include the former in Part II. Reich's It's Gonna Rain (1965) and Come Out (1966) are classic, but they fall outside of this series' purview.

My enthusiasm for early minimalism blinded me to the change in convention re: decades. The Sixties were disruptive in many ways...

On an unrelated note, Intolleranza 1960 is actually from 1961. My bad.

Riley's Music from the Gift, which is a mix of group and solo performances from a jazz band and Riley playing around with tape machines, is a nice distinctive early hybrid piece. The DSCH SQ#8 was the last thing I heard live pre-lockdown, felt momentous

The most fitting examples of proto minimalism up to the point these polls have covered are by Bernard Hermann: Psycho, North by Northwest

Also Kind of Blue imo

almost surely one of the shostakovich quartets, though I'm probably selling "In C" short -- every time I hear it, I think, stop having opinions about "In C" and just enjoy this wonderful music that happens to be "In C"

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Shostakovich SQ8, Kontakte, Threnody, Philomel, Atmospheres all so huge. Philomel is actually tempting...

The competition is so strong that I will likely not vote for these but I encourage people to listen to the Britten Nocturnal and the Ohana piece if they want to check out guitar music on this list.

And in the end, Philomel is how I voted, which seems incredible even to me, with this competition. I'll try to say more about why when I'm more awake tomorrow.

The adaptation of ancient myth to the latest technology of the time was really striking, original, and effective imo. Although it is stark, the sound world is immersive, esp on headphones. The way it digs into Philomel's first-person experience of trauma through wordplay and dialogue between the singer (always trapped dead centre), her recorded voice echoing across the soundstage, and the 'pure' panned synthesized sounds is expressive and affecting. It singlehandedly disproves the idea of postwar serialism as dry, heartless academic exercise and I can't think of another piece like it.

That reminds me I have the Bethany Beardslee biog lying around somewhere waiting to be read.

Oh, nice.

I was excited to find this: https://mtosmt.org/issues/mto.11.17.2/mto.11.17.2.adamowicz.html . Hope to have some time to dig in.

I'd love to hear Barbara Hannigan sing it.

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

In an ideal world, every work would get at least one vote, but this'll have to do.

The Babbitt discussion and esp the analytical paper got me thinking about Paul in Santa Cruz. Was sorry to find that he passed last year. He is missed.

Forgot to vote *again*. Maybe imagine a '1' against that Pettersson symphony. (As possibly the most intriguing new-to-me thing with no votes.)

voted terry riley because i’m too lazy to expand my horizons in spite of all pom’s hard work.

I don't blame you, In C is bottomless.

Counterculture ftw:

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

The Babbitt discussion and esp the analytical paper got me thinking about Paul in Santa Cruz. Was sorry to find that he passed last year. He is missed.

Oh man, no way, RIP Paul ;_;

I had no idea. RIP.

I'm listening to this album of his (most of it written after he got sick): https://open.spotify.com/album/5QBA3xpLrdk22dzkxn2J3S?si=Gr7-RRzAST6Dw2XzfiRqmw

(He linked it here when it came out.)

I remember him from my brief stint as a lurker in the early days. RIP.

I had no idea he was a composer – thanks for the link.

Yes, really interesting poster, I had no idea about his life outside ILX.

https://news.ucsc.edu/2019/08/nauert-in-memoriam.html

*sob*

Yeah, simultaneously heartbreaking and amazing.

Listening to this version of In C for the first time. It rocks!: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5MOMckrkn8

The Babbitt discussion and esp the analytical paper got me thinking about Paul in Santa Cruz. Was sorry to find that he passed last year. He is missed.

― Feel a million filaments (Sund4r), Thursday, 9 April 2020 bookmarkflaglink

Very sad to hear this :-( (read an obit just now: https://news.ucsc.edu/2019/08/nauert-in-memoriam.html).

We corresponded a little bit around 2005, he sent me a few CDs (including a piece of his). I was so glad he posted here on various composers just when I was beginning to discover and fall in love with that music for the first time.

Concerto in Slendro and Xenakis' Eonta are wonderful pieces from this period.

The one piece thing that I really love/didn't get a vote is Galina Ustvolskaya's Duet for Violin and Piano (1964). Savage piece.

"Eonta" is fantastic.

Oh wow, I just scrolled back to learn that Paul in SC had passed via this thread. He was a theory prof at UCSC, some of his former students were in The Fucking Champs, Estradasphere & others. RIP Paul.