#Contemporary Classical

[womenofnoise]

Kali Malone for Rolling Stone Japan, 2024. Photo by her husband, Stephen O'Malley.

[mikrokosmos]

Arvo Pärt - Da Pacem Domine (2004)

At the risk of sounding too sentimental or hokey, I'll say that in times like these when world news is so distressing, music helps ground me and forget about myself for a while. This is probably part of the appeal for "Holy Minimalism" which despite its name is less of an art movement and more of a marketing tool to categorize the music of some religious composers who work in a neo-tonal style - that is, revisiting traditional tonality and triadic harmonies but through influence from medieval and renaissance traditions as opposed to the classical era. Or that's how I'm using the term "neo-tonal". Regardless, composers like Arvo Pärt have developed their own unique compositional style through this avenue of revisiting the old to create something that is not just individual, but also timeless. It is why this style of spiritual music is attractive to people who are not religious but yearn for the kind of transcendence that religions promise. Maybe it is too cynical to point out the goal of record companies creating a product to fill this void, like every other void in our lives becoming commodified. Especially since that comes from the distributors, not the creators, the composers, musicians, artists, who write or learn or perform this music. They do understand this connection to something real and human, or the intangible transcendence that words can fail to describe and can only be experienced to be understood. Da pace Domine is a setting of a Latin prayer for Peace, and despite having very little harmonic momentum and a steady rhythm, it does not sound or feel like something from the past or something bland and simply put together. It creates its own unique sound world of subtlety that, to me, feels like a snippet of something that could go on forever, that could have started before the first note, and keep going after the last, a glimpse into the infinite that gives me hope for a better more peaceful world.

Da pacem Domine in diebus nostris quia non est alius qui pugnet pro nobis nisi tu Deus noster. Give peace, O Lord in our time because there is no one else who will fight for us if not You, our God.

[nolshru]

rap music is kinda the same as classical music in terms of the image problems, huh? so many are walled off from music that they would probably genuinely enjoy were they not walled off by the class associations from both sides, which really sucks

that's pretty neat to think about

[mon-nid]

[nonstandardrepertoire]

HEY HI EVERYBODY! we're doing an unstaged reading of the first act of my new opera, The Quality of Mercy, this coming May at the National Opera Center! (there will also be a livestream!) a queer Jewish reworking of The Merchant of Venice, The Quality of Mercy is a story of foolish lovers, spiteful jokes, and mystic visitations. tickets (both in-person and livestream) are free, but donations are gratefully accepted to support continued development. it would be lovely to have some of you there!

[jgthirlwell]

Today, October 4 2024, is BANDCAMP FRIDAY, where Bandcamp waives their fees to support artists. Please visit! https://jgthirlwell.bandcamp.com/

The Foetus VEIN shirt!! The classic Wiseblood T-shirt! Venture Bros on vinyl and CD! Xordox on CD!! Thirlwell’s ‘Blue Eyes” and ‘Imponderable’ soundtracks!! Art prints!! The Thirlwell / Steensland album on vinyl and CD!!! Foetus THAW and NAIL t-shirts! Foetus ACHE reissue on white vinyl!! Manorexia CDs!! Obscure downloads!!! and much more.

Listen and browse! Immerse yourself in a cavalcade of thrillingly intense and genre-blurring, mind-bending music as an tonic for your weary spirit in these toxic times ! It’s like drugs without the overdosing or the prison time! Furthermore, direct artist-to-listener transactions are the best way to support the music you love. Merci beaucoup, we love you!

jgthirlwell/bandcamp

[sleepynoonradio]

"Remember Me" is out!

This is what I needed the tidal tables for :) A new orchestral track, inspired by the wonderful novel "The Invisible Live of Addie LaRue" by V. E. Schwab. Somehow this one was very difficult, took about 5 months (!) start to finish. I even managed to complete two other tracks while contemplating giving up on this one. Luckily I didn't, and in the end I'm quite happy with the result, and a nice metaphor for the video.

[yongzs1218]

Atonal composition exercise 無調性作曲練習

Introduction to Post-Tonal Theory: Chapter 2 Exercises—Composition I. Compose a continuation of the first 2 measures from Arnold Schönberg’s “Three Piano Pieces, Op. 11, No. 1���

Pitch-Class Sets: Prime Form of Set Class: sc(014)

Instrument: Exakt Lite (FM Synthesizer)

《後調性理論導論》第2章：習題—作曲1. 續寫 阿诺·荀白克《三首鋼琴曲，作品11》第1首的前2小節

音級集合：集合級基本型 ：sc(014)

樂器：Exakt Lite（FM合成器）

[musicollage]

Jessica Moss — Entanglement. 2018 : Constellation.

[caviarsonoro]

A Winged Victory for the Sullen - Our Lord Debussy

"Our Lord Debussy" is a piece that encapsulates the neoclassical and ambient essence of A Winged Victory for the Sullen, built upon expansive harmonies and a progression that evokes solemnity and contemplation. Inspired by Debussy’s work, the composition reinterprets his harmonic sensitivity, transforming it into an ethereal soundscape where music seems to fluctuate between memory and transcendence.

The piano serves as the central axis of the piece, with sustained chords and delicate modulations that create a sense of suspension in time. As it progresses, the strings emerge with a gradual crescendo that deepens the emotional intensity without ever losing its meditative character. The dynamics unfold with subtle refinement, avoiding overload and allowing each note to breathe in its own space.

The combination of electronic and acoustic elements grants the piece a dreamlike and immersive quality. The use of drones and ambient textures reinforces the sense of vastness, while the silences and resonance of the instruments create a tension between the earthly and the celestial. Debussy’s influence is not perceived through direct citations but in the way chords and dissonances unfold organically, guiding the piece without rigid structures.

[haveyouheardthisband]

[dustedmagazine]

Ben Shirken — H.D. Reliquary (29 Speedway)

Photo by Hailey Heaton

New York sound artist Ben Shirken creates fractured scenes for a fragmented world. Repurposing material from his archive — the hard drive reliquary — and bringing in collaborators from the circle of experimental musicians associated with his 29 Speedway label and performance series, Shirken works at the intersection of chamber music and electronic manipulation. Featuring cellists Dorothy Carlos, Aliya Uitan and MIZU, violinist Scott Li, bassist Kevin Eichenberger, trumpeter Ryan Easter and sound artists Pavel Milyakov, Muein and Sarilou, H.D. Reliquary is the aural equivalent of a Joseph Cornell box. Glimmering passages abut broken remnants and besmeared artefacts in a cabinet of psycho-geographical invocations and dream symbolism.

Shirken opens in the haunted playground of “Scattered Cipher.” Shards of controlled feedback, subway rumblings, smudges of strings, a group of children sings a taunting nursery rhyme, malevolent giggles, occult echoes of place and time. Thereafter, Shirken sets his collaborators in atmospheres that counterpoint the delicacy of their playing. On “Take It All” Carlos’ impressionistic cello and Muein’s whispered vocals are enveloped in ambient swells and flickers of digital detritus. Eichenberger’s arco bass underpins a wordless almost operatic voice in a cloud of ash on “Greg’s Thesis” and Li switches between sonorous to irritable on the glacial “Chimera.” MIZU accompanies the sleep talk mutterings of “Surrender Your Will” with long yearning notes and arpeggiated jabs that sparkle amidst the murk. On “Trace,” Easter slurs a trumpet solo into beaming clarity above vague mutterings and liquid washes before a church bell signals collapse. The solo pieces like “Scattered Cipher” follow a dream logic, fractured collages that evoke snatches of memory, momentary emotional tremors and an overworked subconscious cataloguing random files. “Image/Player” for instance bubbles along with snatches of song, laser whips of synth, the beating of the blood and a pan flute perhaps representing the shepherd of thought. The split inferred in the title is echoed in the closing piece “Splinter” with Sarilou adding ethereal vocals and Uitan a droning cello to Shirken’s restless electronics.

Shirken’s work plays as a suite in which motifs and themes orbit in constellations of association. An uncannily evocative work, H.D. Reliquary is an archive full of wonders built from scraps and memory.

Andrew Forell

[thesobsister]

Sofia Gubaidulina, composer, who "explored the tension between the human and the divine, and sought to place her music in the service of religion," died last Thursday, age 93. Her music was often noted for its spiritual, sometimes explicitly liturgical, qualities as well as for the inspiration she drew from sources as diverse as folk musics, Japanese music, the Fibonacci series, and alternate tuning systems.

"To Soviet critics, her microchromatic tunings were 'irresponsible' and Astreia’s improvisations a form of 'hooliganism.' The dark sound palette and mystical spaciousness of her music ran counter to the tuneful optimism favored by Soviet officials. In 1979, Tikhon Khrennikov, the head of the powerful Composer’s Union, added Ms. Gubaidulina to a blacklist."

aav.

(and also a reminder that creativity and authoritarian/totalitarian governments are mortal enemies)

[mikrokosmos]

John Williams

( 8 February 1932 - )

Happy Birthday, John!

[mon-nid]

[nolshru]

there's a very weird thing where even the most harsh and painful things in the most experimental music pales in comparison to the pain that you feel hearing a similarly loud fire alarm or even someone speaking a little to loudly or at too high a pitch

most times where composers try to use sonic pain it just... oddly doesn't work very well, and I'm not really sure why