20th Century Composers---
 

Who are some of your favorites? I get into both the abstract and strange stuff and the more melodic structured stuff, but lately I have been really into Robert Ashley and Lubomyr Melnyk.

These are sort of in order of how much I love them...

John Cage (I know it may be a cliche, but the man is so brilliant, I can't help it, I LOVE his compositions)
Harry Partch
Sun Ra
Iannis Xenakis
Pierre Schaeffer
Karlheinz Stockhausen
Pauline Oliveros
La Monte Young
Tony Conrad
Arvo Part
Olivier Messiaen
Luc Ferarri
Gyorgi Ligeti
Ennio Morricone
Ornette Coleman (and I am talking specifically about his compositions for strings rather than his jazz improvisations, though I love those too)
Edgard Varese
Igor Stravinsky
Bela Bartok
Charles Ives
Carl Stalling
Terry Riley
Walter/Wendy Carlos
John Zorn
Jonn Oswald
Lauie Anderson
Robert Ashley (totally concur with you on him)
Lou Reed (I can't ignore Metal Machine Music as a brilliant twentieth century "composition")
Astor Piazzolla
Steve Reich
Kurt Weill
Phillip Glass

the list goes on...

earlier in the evening i listened to strumming music by charlemagne palestine. brilliant stuff.

Indeed.

Pauline Oliveiros

Albert Ayler
Sun Ra
Steve Reich
John Cage (apparently, cliche? FUCK THAT, dude is a god damn genius)
Bela Bartok (incredible stuff)
Glenn Gould (has some really, really, really cool compositions for his piano, but beyond that, his string compositions are magnificent)
Yoko Ono (she can't be left out, I don't care.)
Philip Glass
Karlheinz Stockhausen
Hugh LeCaine
Pierre Schaeffer
The BBC Radiophonic Workshop (Thank-you, Hip Priest!)
Aphex Twin/Richard D. James (I am counting him as a composer because, well, he is. The man is a fucking aural genius)

I'm probably forgetting a bunch... but oh well, Dead-Air already covered most of my picks haha.

BUT: Last, and probably my favourite... Weasel Walter. Say what you will (you really shouldn't). He is a god. 'Nuff said.

Indeed! No list for me, most of the ones I like get covered by other posters pretty quickly. I really wouldn't put Lou Reed in a list of modern composers, not just because he isn't, but also because Metal Machine Music is not a 'composed piece of music', and certainly not enough to gain the 'composer' in question such a tag. I love it and all, but John Cale (a trained composer) said that to make something like that you just have to listen to shortwave radio out of tune and record the results onto tape. He might have been bitching, but there is some truth in there. Oh, I forgot to mention how much I love Luciano Berio's music.

Yet un-mentioned: Horatiu Radelescu, Iannis Xenakis, Kaija Sariaaho, Lutoslawski, Morton Feldman, Cornelius Cardew, Conlan Noncarrow, Schoenberg (really, you shouldn't forget him for any reason), Matsudaira, Toru Takemitsu, Takehisa Kosugi, Alban Berg (broaches 19th/20th century), Debussy (same), George Gershwin (mysteriously, I think he's utterly brilliant)...

There are others I've inevitably forgotten.

i just bought xenakis and messian. both are fantastic. i really like varese, cage, stravinsky, copland, shoshtokovich.
i need to buy shoenberg too...

at the moment my favourites are webern, cardew, terry riley, pauline oliveros and nam june paik.

Oh yes, Terry Riley.

Well, you're probably a bigger VU fan than me, so I know you're not dissing him. Nonetheless, now that it's been vindicated by a touring string ensemble playing Metal Machine Music, I think the validity of it as a real electronic music composition stands pretty clear to anyone that wants to see it. Cale's comments could easily be applied to 2/3s of the electronic music composers, so yeah it does sound like the classic case of a classically trained musician being pissed off by less academic musicians using technological short cuts. The argument is worthwhile in that it creates a couple different schools of music that both produce great work. Cale, however, is ever the reactionary (which doesn't take away from my loving a great deal of his music). I remember a Melody Maker interview where he summed up hip hop music in the single word of "rubbish". Right now I'm listening to Dalek who combine hip hop with post-MMM type noise, and I'm sure he'd hate it.

Well, I did mention Xenakis actually. My list is just personal favorites, there are plenty of other who are arguably more historically significant than some of the ones I listed. Particularly as I'm biased towards electronic and experimental/avant garde and less toward neo-classicism, though there's some incredibly great music to come out of both. Schoenberg (and I'm not claiming he's neo-classic at all since he invented the twelve tone scale!), while not somebody I've listened to as much personally, certainly is a majorly important influence on all of music to come afterward. Even those who rejected his innovations still had to react to them.

You make a good point as usual, but John Cale is far from being a reactionary. He's a huge fan of Dr Dre and he certainly is not the type afraid to use technology in his music. Listen to Hobo Sapiens (almost entirely an electronic record) alone, and you'll get what I mean. He likes some daft stuff like Beck though, the old bugger.

This is a bit of a splitting hairs argument - bear in mind Zeitkraker have also transcribed quite a few noise musicians; and, to return with an argument that splits hairs again, electro-acoustic composition is as valid as any other composition, but I would argue it's a distinct modus operandi.

Also, Cale is classically trained, I wouldn't say he's a classically trained composer.

Pointless, pointless post, I'm very sorry.

zorn is pretty brilliant too...

minus a few plus some more.
Yeah good list.

Morton Feldman
Glenn branca
rhys chatham
virgil moorefiled did some cool stuff and wharton tiers

Yeah, " " most people in this thread give/take a few.

Can I be more specific? Thanx.

Cage-Prepared piano stuff.

Shoenberg- String Quartets.

Just for fun, I'd like to mention that theory only goes so far. By using the 12 tone method, Shoenberg was able to find beauty where the traditional scales hid them. By sticking shit in a piano, Cage was able to craft beautiful melodies that are absent on a traditional piano. If Shoenberg sucked, then no theory would make me like him more. Same with Cage. Or any of the others.

Walter De Maria
Ray Johnson
Simone Forti
Dick Higgins

I wouldn't say that I like everything I've heard by by the above, but they deserve a mention too.

Thanks for bringing these out, especially the ones I bolded...

Sounds like Cale has come around a bit since the last time I bothered to read one of his interviews then. Mind that was ages ago, but it just turned me off severely to his opinions at the time. I also saw him live twice around that same time and it was horrible both times. Likely a low point in his career, he was playing in tiny bars so fucked up that he hit his face on the mic stand and didn't seem to notice. Chris Spedding sort of carried him through the first time, and the second time he was opening for Pere Ubu in a Seattle club with no reentry, so I just suffered through the same Neil Diamond wannabe set (seriously he was turning Paris 1919 into the Jazz Singer). Again, I know he's capable of much better, and in fact has done so since, but I was pretty put off back then.

I can't imagine a less appropriate thread to do it, but I gotta defend Beck too. I've seen him twice, both times when I didn't exactly choose too, and each time was completely blown away by his good sense on stage. He's a real showman and yeah the songs only have a smidge of substance, but sometimes charisma and a few hooks is enough.

Can't believe I didn't list Branca, but you always forget somebody major I suppose. Chatham too would be on my list. Since I was doing my own faves rather than historically relevant, I elected to leave off Feldman. I know I'll get into his music more one of these days, because I can see why I should, but I've never connected qute right at the right time so far.

I'm actually not a big Chatham fan. I know it goes against popular consensus to say that, but his stuff just bores me.

Debussy
Ravel
Mahler
Morricone
Tim Buckley (Starsailor is hugely influenced by Ligeti, Xenakis, Varèse, Messiaen and Luciano Berio)
Jean-Claude Vannier and Michel Colombier's work with Serge Gainsbourg
Villa-Lobos

Has anyone else noticed that Zorn is mostly utterly shite, and then mysteriously every now and then he'll produce something achingly beautiful?

I hope no-one's mentioned Zappa yet. Boy, is he ever shit.

Zappa is not a composer,twat.

Fuck off, cuntface.

[For anyone interested, I once had an argument for about an hour that ended in fisticuffs, the subject of which was Zappa - the chap contended that Zappa was 'the best composer of the 20th-century' I pointed out that he was neither a composer nor the best anything (u2, for instance, win the 'most annoying thing ever' award, with the Manic Street Preachers a close second). This is the providence of my statement, which will now, no doubt, dissolve into an insult match between me and that fascist queer].

../

Candy?

I'm going to eat your kidneys.

Was it porky?

Go ahead. Chew the dick if your mouth gets there. Tasty.

You look Welsh.

Bump 'cause that's a good thread

right now i'm listening to a great record called "desert ambulance" by ramon sender & pauline oliveros. it's early electronica, kinda reminiscent of delia derbyshire crossed with sun-ra style moog psych freak outs with sampled accordian ala oliveros. it's beautiful stuff.

Schoenberg
Webern
Berg
Bartok
Debussy
Ravel
Glass
Yoko Ono
Reich
Cage
Maciunas
Stockhausen
Oliveros
Cardew
Branca
Shostakovich
Copland
Bernstein
Sondheim
Gershwin
Penderecki
John Cale
Wolff
Scott Walker (kind of a composer)

I feel like im leaving loads out, add more later when I think of them

alan sondheim... nice!
great poet, fab composer.

Cant let this thread die its too interesting

I heard the premiere of John Adams' Doctor Atomic Symphony. I usually avoid Adams like the plague, but this was pretty outstanding... reminded me of Lutoslawski at his more raucous in some parts (especially what I assume was the third movement).

You can listen to some of the proms (British classical music festival) here.