Modern Classical Composers
Henryk Mikołaj Górecki
(Wikipedia entry)
(IPA: ˈxɛnrɨk mʲiˈkɔwaj guˈrɛ͡tski, born December 6, 1933 in Czernica, Poland) is a Polish composer of classical music. Górecki's early work in the late 1950s and 1960s was characterised by a dissonant modernism influenced by Nono, Stockhausen and his contemporaries Penderecki and Serocki. In the mid 1970s he moved towards a 'pure' sacred minimalist sound, encapsulated by the 1976 Symphony No. 3. Gorecki has since progressed through several distinct styles, from the reverence of Beatus Vir (1979), to the meditative Miserere (1981), to the spiritualism of Good Night (1990).
Works to check out
Symphony No. 3 (Opus 36), Symphony of Sorrowful Songs (Polish: Symfonia pieśni żałosnych)
György Sándor Ligeti
(Wikipedia entry)
(IPA: [ˈɟørɟ ˈliɡɛti]; May 28, 1923–June 12, 2006) was a Jewish Hungarian composer born in Romania who later became an Austrian citizen. Many of his works are well known in classical music circles, but among the general public, he is probably best known for his opera Le Grand Macabre and the various pieces which feature prominently in the Stanley Kubrick films 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Shining, and Eyes Wide Shut.
Arvo Pärt
(Wikipedia entry)
(born September 11, 1935 in Paide), (IPA: ˈɑr̺vɔ ˈpær̺t) is an Estonian composer, often identified with the school of minimalism and more specifically, that of "mystic minimalism" or "sacred minimalism". He is considered a pioneer of this style, along with contemporaries Henryk Górecki and John Tavener. Arvo Pärt is best known for his choral works.
Works to check out
Da pacem Domine (2004)
Parts:
Da pacem Domine
In diebus nostris
Quia non est alius
Qui pugnet pro nobis
Nisi tu Deus noster
CD ECM New Series 1930 (476 3048): The Hilliard Ensemble: Sarah Leonard (soprano), David James (counter-tenor), Rogers Covey-Crump (tenor), Stephen Harrold (tenor), Gordon Jones (baritone)
also check out his 'Fratres' and Te Deum
Krzysztof Penderecki
(Wikipedia entry)
(IPA: [ˈkʂɨʂtɔf pɛndɛrˈɛ͡tski], born November 23, 1933 in Dębica) is a Polish composer and conductor of classical music.
Dmitri Shostakovich
(Wikipedia entry)
listen (help·info) (Russian: Дми́трий Дми́триевич Шостако́вич, Dmitrij Dmitrievič Šostakovič) (September 25 [O.S. September 12] 1906–August 9, 1975) was a Russian composer of the Soviet period.
Samuel Osborne Barber II
(March 9, 1910 – January 23, 1981) was an American composer of classical music ranging from orchestral, to opera, choral, and piano music. His Adagio for Strings became his most famous composition and can be heard in films such as Sicko, Platoon, The Elephant Man, El Norte, Amélie, Lorenzo's Oil and Reconstruction.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/91/Samuel_Barber.jpg
Olivier Messiaen
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Olivier Messiaen (IPA: [mɛsjɑ̃]; December 10, 1908 – April 27, 1992) was a French composer, organist, and ornithologist. He entered the Paris Conservatoire at the age of 11, and numbered Paul Dukas, Maurice Emmanuel, Charles-Marie Widor and Marcel Dupré among his teachers. He was appointed organist at the church of La Trinité in Paris in 1931, a post he held until his death. On the fall of France in 1940 Messiaen was made a prisoner of war, and while incarcerated he composed his Quatuor pour la fin du temps ("Quartet for the end of time") for the four available instruments, piano, violin, cello, and clarinet. The piece was first performed by Messiaen and fellow prisoners to an audience of inmates and prison guards. Messiaen was appointed professor of harmony soon after his release in 1941, and professor of composition in 1966 at the Paris Conservatoire, positions he held until his retirement in 1978. His many distinguished pupils included Pierre Boulez, Yvonne Loriod (who later became Messiaen's second wife), Karlheinz Stockhausen, Iannis Xenakis and George Benjamin.
Messiaen's music is rhythmically complex (he was interested in rhythms from ancient Greek and from Hindu sources), and is harmonically and melodically based on modes of limited transposition, which were Messiaen's own innovation. Many of his compositions depict what he termed "the marvellous aspects of the faith", drawing on his unshakeable Roman Catholicism. He travelled widely, and he wrote works inspired by such diverse influences as Japanese music, the landscape of Bryce Canyon in Utah, and the life of St. Francis of Assisi. Messiaen experienced a mild form of synaesthesia manifested as a perception of colours when he heard certain harmonies, particularly harmonies built from his modes, and he used combinations of these colours in his compositions. For a short period Messiaen experimented with "total serialism", in which field he is often cited as an innovator. His style absorbed many exotic musical influences such as Indonesian gamelan (tuned percussion often features prominently in his orchestral works), and he also championed the ondes Martenot.
Messiaen found birdsong fascinating; he believed birds to be the greatest musicians and considered himself as much an ornithologist as a composer. He notated birdsongs worldwide, and he incorporated birdsong transcriptions into a majority of his music. His innovative use of colour, his personal conception of the relationship between time and music, his use of birdsong, and his intent to express profound religious ideas, all combine to make it almost impossible to mistake a composition by Messiaen for the work of any other western composer.
Steve Reich
Encyclopedia
- This article is about the American composer. For information on the U.S. soldier killed in Afghanistan, see Steve Reich (Army).
-
Steve Reich (born
Stephen Michael Reich,
October 3,
1936) is an
American composer. Reich is known as one of the pioneers of
minimalism, although he sometimes deviates from a purely minimalist style. Ideas Reich has developed include using
tape loops to create
phasing patterns (such as in his first works,
It's Gonna Rain,
Come Out,
Drumming); and using processes to create and explore musical concepts (
Pendulum Music,
Four Organs). These compositions, marked by their use of repetitive figures and phasing effects, have been a major influence in contemporary American music as well as
contemporary music as a whole;
The Guardian has described Reich as one of the few composers to have "altered the direction of musical history".
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