beautiful. Rest in peace, dear Steven. I spent the most fantastic four years in Ithaca, thanks for being such a role model. Love the form of the piece, the ''Symphony-in-three-mvts'' simplicity, wonderful drive and rhythm.
Got that jazzy Bernstein feeling in places...I like the continual changes and it's mysterious driving quality...very abstract in some ways but so centered and focused. The metric changes are musically meaningful generally speaking and not just a means of creating difficulty. He brings it home well in the final minute.
I would imagine they're using a C trumpet (it is what is specified in the score). Using a Bb trumpet would seem like a nightmare, especially with some of the cross-partial slurs, though that's all I own...
If you did not know the author and the title of the work, then you can safely decide that this is one of the sections of Witold Lutoslavsky's Symphony No. 2. It's strange! And Lyutoslavsky is equal in melody and harmony and in presentation! And even there are direct quotes.
The piece is fine, I guess, but the composer's comments... goodness me. Managed to badmouth modernism and minimalism at the same time, while claiming to take from both. Bit too pretentious for my taste, really.
I thought it was funny he was throwing shade in the composer's note, hard to be annoyed at him when I kind of agree haha... On a more serious note, I do think his criticisms are understandable. Modernism was a rejection of its predecessors, minimalism was a rejection of modernism in a way, and now Stucky rejected the components of those movements he didn't like.
@@Cmaj7 That's the thing, modernism was NOT the rejection of its predecessors that kind of shade paints it to be. Dodecaphonic serialism is essentially a neoclassic movement, and the generalized serialism of the 50s and 60s built upon that. For the other post-war movements, sure, you won't find melodies in Scelsi and in (most of) 60s Ligeti, but that's a positive choice, not a prohibition. And the simplified harmonies of early minimalism are a feature, not a bug: the immersion in long, slowly-evolving time works better that way. If you don't want that immersion and "just" the drive of regular rhythm then sure, go for more complex harmonies. I mean, it worked for John Philip Sousa. ;)
@@GuilhermeCarvalhoComposer Yeah I do agree with you generally. There is a problem with describing a movement as vague as modernism in a short composer's note. Compare Babbitt's point of view with (young) Boulez's. Just personally, I don't like early minimalism, but I love the music that evolved from it: Louis Andriessen, John Adams, and of course, this piece. A lot of good music came out of perceiving "features" as "bugs". It's part of the development of music in general. So my opinion at the end of the day really is that I'm fine with this kind of viewpoint.
Additional notes from the composer: "The juxtaposition and transcribing of contrasting super-tonal sounds dominates much of my work, and I have an avid interest in mixing the 20th-century with the developmental, the melodic with the quasi-popular, and the intellectual with the multimedia. I was first introduced to the concept of 'passively-12-tone element-concertos' last year, and it has allowed me a greater depth of resonances, especially whilst presenting the ultimate pitch-class. Any composer who cannot grasp the notion of 'contemporary passive-sketch-instruments', or who senses semantically instead of mixing actively, is of little worth. It is always crucial to oppose a sense of 'instrumentations of noise', never more so than today. Recently, I have started to embrace counterpoints as a strongly-literal alternative to established forms of non-technical framework-chordophones, which has made my work non-semantically orchestral. I spent the bulk of my composition degree triadically writing virtuosic interval-music, a most rewarding (if operatic) pursuit."
Thanks for posting. This is an interesting piece by a fine composer. In 1913 Stravinsky wrote an orchestral work against which all subsequent music is compared. In most cases Stravinsky is the winner because his music has so many memorable moments and amazing effects that stand the test of time.
@@toothlesstoe Between Firebird, Petrushka, and Sacre we have three masterpieces that linger in our mind as we experience other music, just the same way that Bach and Mozart set a standard of excellence that few have matched, including me.
@@andrewpetersen5272 There's not a clear line between the avant-garde and non-avant-garde, there's degrees. The most clearly avant-garde would be music that removes melody and rhythm, that becomes a single ever-shifting mass (Ligeti, Scelsi, the Spectralists proper) and music that is made up of short gestures rather than melodic lines, which relies more on atmosphere and texture rather than narrative (lots of music, especially percussion-heavy, colorful music, Maderna for example). And most that incorporate electronic sounds, though not all. This Stucky piece is what I would call "synthetic." It takes up avant-garde ideas but focuses more on clarity and structure than more extreme works. Schnittke, Zimmermann, Norgard, and some Rochberg are some good examples of synthetic music.
