Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Is there any good music being composed this day and age?

I've always preferred Bach, Beethoven and Beer.

Ravel and Debussy are more late Romantic than modern. And they say you're supposed to listen for a mood instead of a melody or a key.

I basically hate all pop music. I've tried to like it, but I generally agree with the first poster, it has a pathetic lack of complexity (most of it). I suppose there is some more complex pop or rock or alt music being written than the bland crap, but none of it interests me.

I like listening to new classical music, although I don't really like things like "prepared pianos." I like new music made with the old standbys: pianos, orchestras, traditional instruments. I did not like Theofanidis's 'Birichino' even though I know many in the Cliburn thread seemed to like it. I think repeated hearings of a new work, a good quality work, should make it sound more intriguing, but after 12 performances I didn't want to hear it anymore.

I like listening to atonal stuff, or partially tonal stuff - I'm opening to hearing any "classical" music from Bach to the present, whether tonal or atonal. I don't like Gregorian chants.

What are you opinions of composers like Mychael Danna and others creating film music? Do you consider this music pop and simplistic?

Idk about late romantic, but I agree about mood vs. key (though in some pieces such as L'isle Joyeuse or Le Tombeau de Couperin, there are definitely keys).

Picking up on the idea of film music, what do you think of these?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hFO9sA7LsA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qte_Ne5mpJk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oag1Dfa1e_E

Yes and no.

In terms of music being composed for others to play (in the form of sheet music), then I think the number of composers working in that medium and the number of performers interested in new works is at an all-time low. Also, tools like Musescore have made it so easy for people to disseminate their work, that quality control is also at an all-time low. Very few amateur scores are edited and checked by a third party, and many people producing scores can't even play their own music.

But...in terms of music being composed for digital media, I think there's a lot of great work going on. Film, video game, and performing musicians continue to make a lot of really interesting stuff. (Although again, quality control is an issue and makes it difficult to find the good stuff, since amateurs flood the market with garbage and record labels flood the market with formulaic pop trash.)

All pleasant enough and typical of film music - just different enough to make you say "where did I hear that before" without being a direct copy of something else. I'm curious as to the advanced musically educated viewpoint. To me, who's only at the point of reading basic key changes, melodies and harmonic progressions, they seem a fusion of a number of genres and often overly dependent on existing classical or folk tunes. But when I review the sheets some seem closer to classical/romantic styles than anything else being created today. There are often interesting progressions and key changes. And there are a few composers creating truly new pieces. Not many though.

I am curious why you think the numbers of composers writing notated music for others to play is at an all-time low. My impression (but it's only an impression) is that the number is considerably higher now that it was for most of the 20th century. If you look at the composer listings at places like NewMusicBox, or at publishers like Boosey or Schott, it seems like there is a huge number of composers currently active.

Tararex: Media music, and especially film music is dominated by the dreaded "temp track". While making the movie, or animation short, or game, or ad, or whatever, they put on the music they WOULD like to have, but is too expensive to license. So they approach the composer and ask him to compose a track very close, but not too close to the "temp(orary) track"! So a lot of things you hear in films, games and general media, or direct offspring of other works of music, better known...

There are plenty, with the advent of youtube and such like a lot of the great ones get lost in the noise.

You have to judge music on it's own terms. It is unfair to dismiss popular music as lacking complexity. Sure, it may not be as complex HARMONICALLY as Beethoven sonatas, but it is complex in other ways, ways you are clearly not listening for or used to appreciating. Melody, harmony and structure are not the only musical factors there are to be explored. Also, it is a fallacy to equate complexity with quality. Some of the simplest music is the most beautiful.

Yes...one example from an endless list:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITbcJMKVmts

And for an example to disprove non classical music lacks complexity just listen to almost any Sondheim song.

I'm just talking about solo piano. Very few composers seem to write much for solo piano. There may be more composers active, but a lot of their work seems to be for larger ensembles and on commission, etc...

The only American composers writing much for piano seems to be Lowell Liebermann and Judith Lang Zaimont. Other composers just don't seem as interested in solo piano. (Either that or I haven't been able to discover them yet...)

All this is just my speculation, and I could be totally wrong.

I am glad to hear you remembered the music in Cirque De Soleil in Vegas as my experience was a bit different.
I went to see "Zumanity", an adult side of show of Cirque De Soleil, for mature audience only.
As a musician, I automatically listen to music in shows and movies except for when I went to see this Zumanity. This mature show was a bit too captivating and graphic that I completely forgot to listen to the music during the entire show, . To this day, I have no clue about what music they played during the show,

Frederic Rzewski and William Bolcom, to name a couple more well-known composers. Maybe we need a list.

Is there good music being composed this day?

Absolutely!



As I sit here at my computer with music from my filled-to-the-brim-with-all-genres 80gb iPod playing random selections, I was thinking along these lines. As much as I love classical music, I love popular music as much and, at times, even more deeply because of the connection I feel with the individualistic human voice.

To be sure, there's a lot of bad or musically uninteresting popular music out there, but I think it is wrong to write off popular music as a genre solely on lack of complexity in the classical elements of melody and harmony. Factors beyond what can be found in a score come into play as well: inventive use of instrumentation, timbre and spatial elements (reverb, sense of place, distortion) promiscuous drawing on diverse world traditions, use of unique individual human voices to convey emotion and attitude, accurate and timely evocation of contemporary society, and, most importantly I think, the use of the studio and recording technology as an ever diversifying instrument.

Popular music is as much about performance as it is about composition (and by "performance" I mean not just live performance, but by the sculpting of a song in the recording studio.) Of course, performance is an important creative element in Classical music as well, but generally this is more in the service of some "platonic ideal" of a score or in some effort to get "the composer's intent" than it is in pop.

Taking these elements into account, I would say that a great deal of contemporary popular music is extraordinary and deserves mention alongside the icons of classical music.

Learning to appreciate a style of music that one is not familiar with is sort of like trying to understand poetry in a language one of which one has only a has a "tourist guide book" appreciation. One may be able to puzzle out the words, but the layers of meaning are invisible.

Here's a few examples to that I hope will illustrate some of the artistic possibilities of the strange language contemporary popular music. It would be easy to give examples solely from the Beatles catalog, as they were such innovators in popular music (and, who arguably, influenced classical composers as well, giving an impetus to composers like Phillip Glass or John Adams to turn back towards the tonal tradition), but I'll confine myself to music from the last 20 years, since it is less familiar to people whose world revolves around western Classical, and I expect the OP less familliar with it.

Plus, the Beatles are nearly a half century gone. Things >have< happened in popular music since that time.
I don't expect that everything on this list will be immediately enjoyable by everyone, but I've found a great deal of meaning in these pieces and would defend their right to be appreciated alongside, say, any Shubert Lieder or Beethoven Bagatelle or Strauss tone poem.

Radiohead "Everything in Its Right Place" (1999)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onRk0sjSgFU

This is largely a melody-less and harmony-less song, consisting mainly of a single drone and a very repetitive melismatic melody. In score form this would be a very boring and simple piece indeed. However, listen to the gradual evolution of the electronic instruments as this piece progresses. The keyboard goes through a slow flange shift, the intensity builds as new layers are added, the sonic "space" of the sound exapands, and the vocal performer Thom Yorke, becomes gradually agitated. In a sense, this an electronic "Ravel Bolero".

Rufus Wainwright "Barcelona" (1998)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfFZViMVaRk

This is a lovely episodic song that I think is mostly about the resigned, melancholic vocal performance. It runs through several key signatures and instrumental episodes. Once, again, it builds over the course of the song.

Tom Waits "Chocolate Jesus" (1999)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAIqk5KUBRQ

This extremely simple song is, in this performance, a masterful evocation of attitude, atmosphere, and place, and with extremely funny lyircs to boot. The deliberately lo-fi sounding overdriven harmonica solo adds to the atmosphere.

Bjork "Cocoon" (2001)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVHpBCjUu8M

More interesting use of electronic instrumentation and an extraordinary vocal performance.

Bjork "Oceania" (2004)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1N2-ZgD7H0

This piece is entirely vocal. All Instruments you hear are created by singers with very little studio tweaking

Here's three very different versions of the song "Such Great Heights" by the Postal Service (2003) These three versions illustrate how an artists personal sonic interpretation is as important as the classical "score" of the song. This song would look horrifically boring as a lead sheet or as sheet music (just a few chords and a very limited melody), but it blossoms when interpreted. The lyrics are strange and seem to fit in with the contemporary, interconnected zeitgeist.

The Original version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wrsZog8qXg

Iron and Wine's Take turns it into a beautiful, downbeat, and melancholy folk song. The "art" of this interpretation is how it contrasts with the original "techy" version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKGHkBComjM

and Ben Folds turns it into a work of performance art a-la mid-20th century avant garde:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmLTlV5Cc9k

My favorite artist from the last decade has been Sufjan Stevens. His album "Illinoise" (2005) is my favorite work of music from the last 20 years, period...

"Come on! Feel the Illinoise!"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmJwraC4p5A

A pseudo-orchestral, multilayered, jaunty, rhythmic, pop song.

Casmir Pulaski Day
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxMYqsvgX8c

Profoundly sad.

"The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades is Out To Get Us!"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBMwwJMkcRA

Episodic, richly orchestrated, employing minimalist-style and fugue-like interludes and then throwing both together in an overwhelming crescendo.

"All Delighted People" (2010)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NW02HUysX3w

An over-the-top (like a typical Hungarian Rhapsody?) pastiche of late 60s and 70s musical styles with, again, rich orchestration.

That's a start. If this list is overwhelming, I'd start with "All Delighted People" and "Oceania". My hope is that something here will pique the curiosity of at least one person who has written off contemporary popular music.

For the first piece, your memories of Mahler may be being tickled perhaps?

I think we need to keep in mind that nothing is truly original. All art draws upon what has come before it. This composer sounded like Mahler sounded like Bruckner sounded like Berlioz sounded like Beethoven sounded like Haydn sounded like Gluck sounded like Couperin and so on.

I'm guessing you haven't listened to many Progressive Rock bands, like Dream Theater. You want complexity, you get it.


Because it has been done very often in the classic-romantic period. I blame the US-American mentality of liking originality, and often dismissing art works just because they are rip-offs. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Oscar Wilde knew it; many people in China know that; but in the US, some people seem to like originality for originality's sake.

I think it might be a bit more complex than that. People who are avid listeners to pop music bring all sorts of associations into their listening- the most salient being their experience of daily life in the contemporary world.

In many cases, popular musicians who draw upon classical modulations in music are seen not as lacking originality, but as being campy or cheesy in much the same way that Beethoven in his later years probably felt that a normal Mozart/Haydn-eque (I64-Trill-V-I) cadence was trite. Today, a harmonic modulation is a well known method of using a crow-bar to get a heightened emotional response out of a listener. It has to be done very well, almost invisibly, to not be jarring. (A great example of modulations done well is the Beatles' "Penny Lane".) I recall hearing Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart" recently, which goes through several key changes, and thinking "This is harmonically adventurous, but is horrible, horrible music." Andrew Lloyd Weber pulls out all the stops when he uses this tool, and the result (to my mind) is nauseating.

I suspect most listeners don't like to be told what they should feel- and a modulation is a blaring sign screaming "feel THIS!". I suspect they'd rather experience music on its own terms more dispassionately or on new and unexpected terms using newer techniques or, most importantly, through the personality of the performer.

Another thing: Contemporary musicians have an extraordinary set of sonic tools at their disposal that past generations could have only dreamed about. I suspect we're still in the early stages of working out the possibilities of these new tools. Complex harmonies are not necessary, and indeed may distract from, the sonic experimentation that is going on. Musicians are learning how to make art with a different set of tools, and listeners find this more interesting than reverting back to 19th century harmonic structures.