It's interesting how precisely he wants to notate slight rhythmic deviations, given that the piece is so atmospheric, and depends so much on pedal. It's almost as if Debussy had annotated all the small rubato variations in his pieces.
I'm working on this piece for my entrance exam in piano. I love his music, that's why I chose this piece. But ANYWAY, listening and performing are two different activities, and the problem of "detailed notation" that I felt as a performer is that this piece forces me to think as it is written on the paper, rather than re-imagining the composer's sound. Even Thomas Adès doesn't play as it is written 100% precisely, he knows what he wants, but we don't! The rhythmic notation is just for giving an idea how the layers interact each other, but it's giving me so much information that I can't spend my time to re-imagin the sound beyond the score...
so what you're saying is that there's such a thing as notating TOO MUCH, to the point where it backfires. The detail and complexity meant to help the player achieve a certain sound rather get in the way of said sound. interesting!
@@georgeioan9223 Ades is nowhere near the Ferneyhough/Finnisy in terms of complex notation, and this is already borderline impossible to be played precisely as written, you can just imagine what goes on with Ferneyhough's scores. New school of complexity style notation is inherently anti-performative
@@KinkyLettuce It's only "anti-performative" if you take the goal of performance to be reproducing the score as exactly as possible. (Which, I would argue, is the actual anti-performative stance.)
Ades music often (maybe too often) has the floating quality that necessitates the tuplets on top of tuplets. he is an insanely gifted composer-musician and defies catagorification. Still, Ades, like a lot of modern composers seems overly specific in his notation. But he is a conductor-pianist and knows what he wants; the bizarro meters make it look more complex than it sounds.
Magnifique pièce, complètement rêvée, d'une finesse d'écriture et d'une sensibilité harmonique touchantes au plus haut point. Le temps se dilate, et le temps du rêve n'est jamais trop long... Sidérante finesse de toucher du pianiste/compositeur... La fin est absolument renversante.
For anyone wondering, it's Adès himself playing the piece. It's on the CD *Thomas* *Adès:* *Life* *Story* from 1997. It's beautiful and reminds me quite much of Asyla which shows a wonderful connection also to his violin concerto. Ever since I first heard and saw it performed by the Berliner Philharmoniker on their Trip to Asia I've loved the sound of Asyla, so I really enjoy listening to these connected pieces.
The forte chords that punctuate the beginning pages of Aetheria bring such alarmingly beautiful sonorities to my ear the sort of which I have never even dreamed.
Somehow more compelling when reading the score at the same time. I'm not sure if its because the aesthetic beauty of the score is propping up the music or/and it allows me to see the cogs are working so to speak, but I definitely get more from this piece with the music and score hand-in-hand. Stunning performance.
This is one of my current favorites...Like a combo of Messiaen's piano style and Ligeti's 'arc en ciel' and 'Autumn in Warsaw'...My only quibble is in the notation..the internal' tempi changes aren't very clear using standard notation. Maybe a kind of graphic notation like Lucio Berio used in his solo harp work would work better? or a combination of the two...Standard notation doesn't make this piece's elegant design very clear...But it always comes down to the results!
I won't say "necessary", but I can definitely say that it's rather annoying to notate "5 1/7th-notes" without goofy notation or specifying exact tempi everywhere, so I can understand his decision.
This is anything but pretentious post-modernism. There's a certain beauty to the colors of the music that you just aren't seeing. Just because you don't hear it, it doesn't mean it lacks any beauty or genius.
The same principle as the ordinary signatures. Just as 3/4 means three quarter notes (1/4 of a whole note) in one bar, for 5/20 you have five 1/20 of a whole note in a bar..
An unplayed melody is simply a melody that the performer is supposed to hear in their head while playing the other two staves. The audience will never hear an unplayed melody, unless they are following the score as well. It is a crazy idea, but it is not new. Schumann has an unplayed melody in his Humoreske, op. 20.
Thanks, incipitsify, for uploading this score! Sadly, I'm just not a fan of Thomas Ades. We often here of composers who "water down" their music to appeal to the public. This piece sounds to me like Ades is doing the inverse-- he takes simple ideas and spices them up just for the sake of appealing to intellectuals. This music is like a person who is uncomfortable "being himself." I much prefer Brian Ferneyhough and Elliott Carter-- their music is extremely complex, but somehow it doesn't feel like they are compromising. Even "Star Wars" has its artistic integrity; this music is way overdone. incipitsify, I am still going to "like" this video as gratitude for making this music available.
incipitsify I generally feel the same way about the other pieces I've heard. Ades has a lot of amazing moments though. His G major arpeggio in this piece at 6:00 is just blooms out of nowhere and takes my breath away. I like America a Prophecy-- not a fan of Asyla.
I disagree. I think this piece is absolutely beautiful and completely different... which is the key. If the art is not intrinsically different then it has no worth
A whole new world of expression lies in the detail in Ferneyhough... it might have a lack of accessibility to audiences but is that really a problem? It's art for art's sake.
ya but what does "expressive" mean? every fact that can be experienced is expressive, the nature of expressiveness lies within the experience per se if we look at the origin of the word "expression" we will find that it comes from the latin "exprimere" that means simply to press, to impress, to engrave, to leave a sign of something into something else the simple fact you say ferneyhough is not expressive means it is then we can surely discuss about what something is supposed to express in order to be appreciated
As a composer I admire Mr Ades' technique. I am also a British composer and write perhaps more 'tonal' based music-though my own stuff verges on atonality at times. My music can be heard in my videos-it is very varied in style. Looking for professional pianists who might be interested.
You gotta' give the guy credit on this one. It's a beautiful, natural-sounding work which holds together very nicely with its own sure logic. His love for chromatically descending minor chords still sounds fresh (as it did in Living Toys but became rather tiresome in the shamefully effete, and otherwise insupportable Powder Her Face).
What bothers me is those Initiates who understand every detail of this music and can barely restrain their condescdernsion for mere Bach-Bartok-Berg lovers like me- the simple stuff- I listen when I am not thinking of Blatz beer and the Superbowl (harhar I don't know who is in it!). It has some lovely moments , but I keep reading 'like wind chimes'. Entropic music? !00 pianos, 100 monkeys, in a quintillion years a masterpiece will be produced. Ades is skilled enough that we should by now have a hundred piano works to choose from. Etudes. Nocturnes. Sonatas. Fantasias! A concerto or three. Some thirty some years ago I lived in a small town with a small state university. I wrote a parody Phillip Glass piano work for the amusement of my neighbor, who taught piano at the U. (The last measure was notated, 'repeat until the audience becomes uncomfortable'.) She was amused, and inducted me into a prank. 'The New Music Symposium ' at the U, audience of forty or so, earnest avant-garde undergrads and their compositions. She played 'Moto Perpetuo', allegedly by Glass, to fulsome praise by the comp prof, an earnest twenty-something fellow, organizer of that particular goat-roping, who never heard new music he didn't like. On cue, I asked some stupid questions and almost felt ashamed of myself until the prof became... condescending. My friend then exposed the prank. The prof called campus security, who kindly pointed out that the poster said 'Open to the public'. I intuited that perhaps my friend (a pretty woman in her forties) had perhaps dallied with the prof who had moved on to graze on undergraduates, for which he was fired a year or two later. Has anybody out there heard of Sorabji?
It would be unbelievably difficult for a person who is not the composer to decipher this score from its obsessive, obscure and unnecessarily complex notation. Without the score, the listener gets the impression of gentle randomness, like wind chimes, punctuated with pleasant, non-functional major triads. But without the obsessive, detailed score, the composer will less likely be taken seriously. That's the reality of the classical composition world today - some talent, mixed with a lot of snake oil. I'll end my remarks by saying I think the piece is "not bad".
Non-functional in that they do not adhere to voice-leading or harmonic progressions. They "just are". I agree with several commentators; the notation could have been greatly simplified to make the pianist's job easier. But the way it's notated makes it look serious and important.
You misunderstand the whole point of the way he's written it... he wants the complexity to give it a different expression.... Is it really so difficult to understand? In the process of trying to play whats written Ades gets the pianist to make a very different and novel music
I think I showed Tom Feinberg's music around this time. He did a couple of his songs with Valdine Anderson as a result. Stanchinsky, Roslavets likewise.
Thought the unplayed melody was pretentious at first - still think it is a little pretentious, but the actual purpose of notating the unplayed melody was to outline the shape of the melody that is being "traced", as though roughly sketched, through the undulating, shimmering parts actually played. Quite clever, and frankly, something that should seem quite obvious in retrospect; it's an advancement of the hardly-voiced melody idea created in the past with challenging accents (often in the midst of vicious or worse, marshmallow-like runs); here it is the suggestion of the melody by the general contour of the notes that is notated. Like reconstructing a dream...
@@toothlesstoe the general ambience and calm of the pieces such as 2 and 3 remind me of the calm yet ornamented slow sections of oiseaux tristes and then you've got the beautiful flowing melody at the end fairly reminiscent of jeux/barque but much calmer
The over-differentiation of the notation merely results in an effect of randomness in which durations don't matter. Also the pitches don't matter: anything can follow anything else. The slow descending lines in the harmonic background are supposed to give form to the notes but do not make the piece meaningful. It's clever on the surface but there is nothing underneath and sounds like a mannerist imitation of modernism.
Good point. My question with this type of music has always been...why go to the trouble to write it down? Any pianist could improvise something that would be sonically no different.
He grows rich off the conspicuous consumers of culture in Britain. and as is typical of British music, as with British wine, this does not travel well. But most of those who can afford tickets to the Proms could not tell a prelude from a quaalude.
All these supposed 'intellectuals' leaving comments, stating they fully understand the artistry and (mathematical) complexity of this piece Don't lie to me, you know it's weird... This type of performance certainly isn't really my everyday tune, nor is it yours.
Rather condescending of you. I find my tastes becoming simpler as I grow old (Not that I've made peace with Phillip Glass, God forbid.). Ades coaxes beautiful sonorities out of the piano, and then overwhelms them with clutter and vine. The score and the performance are not one work of art, but two. A skill for which Ades has little use is that of knowing what notes to leave out. Woe betide the composer who must be a genius in every bar! Does he not trust his materials?
@@ericbenjamin2908 A computer program can string a bunch of notes together without one ounce of musicianship. This is an easy task if a program is not constrained to making it engage human emotions. So yeah, when computer programs (or people born with near zero sense of emotions) start paying money to "listen" to this stuff or to commission new works, then fine; but for now and the near future, the majority of music will need to engage the human mind and soul.
@@ericbenjamin2908 It's like writing a short story by stringing a bunch of words together to make a pattern which has no recognizable meaning to humans; throwing words and sounds on paper hoping it magical unlocks the human mind. Hey maybe the Voice from the movie Dune is a thing in the future; but we are not close to that and for sure it would not be 12-tone, 19-tone, 24-tone, etc or whatever academic music is being generated today.
***** Looks like it's only available in sheet music format, sorry. Purchase score at Faber Music here: www.fabermusic.com/repertoire/traced-overhead-2708/products
Four criticisms, then. Clever - neither here nor there. Cambridge - who cares? Esoteric - whatever else might be said of this music I don't think it can be called that. All depends on the listener's experience, I suppose, but what I mean is: esoteric by the standards of Britney Spears, maybe, but not those of say Machaut or Dufay. Shite - matter of opinion, but like others here I find it beautiful.
Notre société tombe dans la décadence la plus complète, depuis l'avènement du non-art contemporain, les pseudos-artistes du 21ème siècle se permettent de faire passer des suites pseudo-aléatoires de notes pour des œuvres d'art majeures de leur temps. Et quiconque ne reconnaîtrait pas là un trait de génie serait considéré comme un inculte. Il s'agit réellement d'une forme de masturbation intellectuelle, qui a commencé avec le free-jazz et toutes ces nullités d'art de "performance". Tel le second principe de la thermodynamique, les arts vont de déstructuration en déstructuration, si bien qu'un jour il n'y aura plus qu'à composer une fonction d'onde aléatoire, et cela sera vu comme une révolution artistique sans précédent. Lorsque l'on regardera ces "oeuvres" dans les siècles à venir, on comparera alors ces années de disettes intellectuelles à celle du haut moyen âge.
peut etre que tu trouve ça decadent, mais personnellement, j'ai adoré cette pièce, pleine de vie et de couleur, contrairement à des boulez et compagnie. Tout les artistes contemporains ne sont pas a mettre dans le même panier. Certain font de la daube certes, mais d'autre font du très bon travail.
Oui, évidemment, si on ose dire qu'on ne reconnaît aucune structure, tout de suite on est taxé d'ignorant. C'est la même chose avec l'art abstrait. Il faut faire comme tout ces gens snob dans les musées, qui pensent être touchés au plus profond de leur âme devant une toile maculée de merde de pigeon. Mais notre époque change, et je parie que les élites de demain n'écouteront plus cette musique.
benjaminpicard Meanderings which almost nobody can follow or connect with do not become important and meaningful because they originate in the mind of a bright chap who plays the piano very well.
The only problem I have with this is that it's overly complex. Many of those who have no idea how to read into the music will listen to this and have no appreciation for it because it doesn't sound too great to them. Shame that. Sometimes even the simplest of pieces can be incredibly powerful. Look at the Gymnopedies.
***** I respect this piece. I understand it, but don't like it because it doesn't sound too great to my ears. The person that gave me this understood the music completely and loved it. Someone i've shown this to hated it and thought there was no rhythm what so ever. Don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to sound condescending. I'm not saying that the simple pieces are all they can cope with. All i'm saying is that this piece is complex and not everyone will understand it, whereas simpler pieces can be just as effective and most people will get a feel for it. It's an observation.
Yes, and obviously because you think its too complex, and are very kindly shielding others from engaging with it, It really must be an anathema to all music ? What a fine education you've obviously had....And what a brilliant forum youtube made, that it enables people who don't really care for something to launch attacks on it nevertheless....I guess it works both ways, but WHY waste your time when you could just be listening to something you CAN engage with ?
Trish Ranner Why can't I comment on things I don't like? It's not like i'm preventing other people from watching it. I'm just sharing my opinion. Education doesn't really have much to do with music tastes does it? Despite the obvious trends that you're exposed to through friends, teachers, local area etc. And it enables people who don't really care about something to launch attacks on it? Why does that matter? If people want to complain, they should be able to complain. And then I came onto this video to see if I liked this video. I didn't quite like it, and I didn't dislike it. So I posted my opinion of it and moved on. I'm completely within my rights to do this and waste my time, and I will continue to do this. Just like you're completely within your rights to waste your time replying to my comment. Kay. Does that satisfy you?
I rather concur with Matthew Forbes. Never have got the Cambridge lot at all and I am not homophobic or antisemitic at all. But they do seem to be overly exalted for what they manage to produce.
I told someone once, at a coffeeshop, that I don't care much for Ades' music. An eavesdropper at the next table gave me a stricken look and said, "But you do realize that he's gay, don't you?" As I tried to understand what he was getting at, rather dumb-founded, his look became accusing, and he turned back to his coffee. The whole situation was as multilayered and puzzling as any of Ades' compositions. But not so wind-chimey.
![Thomas Adès - Living Toys [Score Video]](/img/1.gif)
It's interesting how precisely he wants to notate slight rhythmic deviations, given that the piece is so atmospheric, and depends so much on pedal. It's almost as if Debussy had annotated all the small rubato variations in his pieces.
Perhaps he recorded himself improvising at the piano, and then transcribed it afterwards?
@@jodoinscott Afterwards and backwards.
I'm working on this piece for my entrance exam in piano. I love his music, that's why I chose this piece. But ANYWAY, listening and performing are two different activities, and the problem of "detailed notation" that I felt as a performer is that this piece forces me to think as it is written on the paper, rather than re-imagining the composer's sound. Even Thomas Adès doesn't play as it is written 100% precisely, he knows what he wants, but we don't! The rhythmic notation is just for giving an idea how the layers interact each other, but it's giving me so much information that I can't spend my time to re-imagin the sound beyond the score...
how did your entrance exam go?
so what you're saying is that there's such a thing as notating TOO MUCH, to the point where it backfires. The detail and complexity meant to help the player achieve a certain sound rather get in the way of said sound. interesting!
What kind of school is that?! If you can play this properly you're already a professional player, this is no entry music unless you're ling ling
@@georgeioan9223 Ades is nowhere near the Ferneyhough/Finnisy in terms of complex notation, and this is already borderline impossible to be played precisely as written, you can just imagine what goes on with Ferneyhough's scores.
New school of complexity style notation is inherently anti-performative
@@KinkyLettuce It's only "anti-performative" if you take the goal of performance to be reproducing the score as exactly as possible. (Which, I would argue, is the actual anti-performative stance.)
Ades music often (maybe too often) has the floating quality that necessitates the tuplets on top of tuplets. he is an insanely gifted composer-musician and defies catagorification. Still, Ades, like a lot of modern composers seems overly specific in his notation. But he is a conductor-pianist and knows what he wants; the bizarro meters make it look more complex than it sounds.
9:23 that's the most staves I have ever seen in a two hands piano piece. Truly spectacular.
Godowsky’s passacaglia also has 6 in the fugue
Carlo Landini's Terza Sonata has 12.
@@PaulMLombardi can't find the sheet music...
Check out Synaphai by Xenakis, it has one separate stave for every finger.
introducing: sorabji
Ades- one of the greatest modern composers.
25 years old.. what a beautiful work
The music and performance are brilliant.
I. Sursum (0:21)
II. Aetheria (1:06)
III. Chori (3:20)
Magnifique pièce, complètement rêvée, d'une finesse d'écriture et d'une sensibilité harmonique touchantes au plus haut point. Le temps se dilate, et le temps du rêve n'est jamais trop long... Sidérante finesse de toucher du pianiste/compositeur... La fin est absolument renversante.
Interesting that it begins and ends with the same descending harmonic process (major->minor->suspension->major etc.). Lovely piece!
For anyone wondering, it's Adès himself playing the piece. It's on the CD *Thomas* *Adès:* *Life* *Story* from 1997.
It's beautiful and reminds me quite much of Asyla which shows a wonderful connection also to his violin concerto. Ever since I first heard and saw it performed by the Berliner Philharmoniker on their Trip to Asia I've loved the sound of Asyla, so I really enjoy listening to these connected pieces.
Masterpiece... transcendent in every way. Ades will go down in history as one of the greatest composers of the 21st century, no doubt.
10:48-11:05 is the most wondrous segment of this work.
Very similar to Ligeti's Cordes a Vide ending
you can hear much of this In Seven Days. This is Ades!
This is the sort of contemporary music that really gets me exited! A real inspiration!
The forte chords that punctuate the beginning pages of Aetheria bring such alarmingly beautiful sonorities to my ear the sort of which I have never even dreamed.
Somehow more compelling when reading the score at the same time. I'm not sure if its because the aesthetic beauty of the score is propping up the music or/and it allows me to see the cogs are working so to speak, but I definitely get more from this piece with the music and score hand-in-hand.
Stunning performance.
This is so very beautiful! Thank you for posting ♥
magnificient writing, concept and modern music!
Great work, one of my favourites by Adès.
Why? What do you like about this?
Stunning!
I feel, big rain drops falling onto a xylophone.
It reminds me of after a rainfall, water drips drips drips...
Just listened to the arr. Noncarrow again, now this. And yes, that last minute or so is exquisite.
Mesmerized.
Thomas Ades is a brilliant pianist.
Apparently he's completely self taught and from a very poor background!
ABRSM Grade 18 Sightreading
Save 5/12 and 9/14 for later, how on earth he count 2/6? Click-track?
Anyway great piece
Count two beats of a triplet (as in in the whole bar, if 6/6, would be two crotchet triplets I think)
Absolutely wonderful !!
Lunaire! 🌙🌒🌘
Il y a déjà 48 ans!!!! GOD!
What‘ si new since then?!... GOLD EPOC!
Mistery! Strange! Enigmatic !
Suave! Lightly!
awesome!
Oooh I LOVE this ! 👍 🙂
This is one of my current favorites...Like a combo of Messiaen's piano style and Ligeti's 'arc en ciel' and 'Autumn in Warsaw'...My only quibble is in the notation..the internal' tempi changes aren't very clear using standard notation. Maybe a kind of graphic notation like Lucio Berio used in his solo harp work would work better? or a combination of the two...Standard notation doesn't make this piece's elegant design very clear...But it always comes down to the results!
Did Dave fix the fridge yet Ash, we sent him round and I gave him the fiver!
Beautiful sonorities. Rhythmically the performance deviates from the notation substantially in places...were the irrational time signatures necessary?
I won't say "necessary", but I can definitely say that it's rather annoying to notate "5 1/7th-notes" without goofy notation or specifying exact tempi everywhere, so I can understand his decision.
ending from 10:17 is really nice too
This is anything but pretentious post-modernism. There's a certain beauty to the colors of the music that you just aren't seeing.
Just because you don't hear it, it doesn't mean it lacks any beauty or genius.
so sweet ...
Still here
I like your video very much. It's really great. I'll keep an eye on your channel. I am your fan and I will support you.
Beautiful music! (alsow interpretation!!) I have never heard so interesting and pretty dialogue with Chopin ( the final passage of piece ).
Brilliant.
what a piece
how the heck does 5/20 and other weird time signature work???
The same principle as the ordinary signatures. Just as 3/4 means three quarter notes (1/4 of a whole note) in one bar, for 5/20 you have five 1/20 of a whole note in a bar..
how do you notate it?
Renji Mao In Sibelius you can use customised time signatures
incipitsify Start with 1 and repeatedly divide by two and tell me how you reach 20.
comprehensiveboy You don't divide by 2's. You divide by 20 then times 5 to get the duration of the bar.
I Iove it...more intuition than intellect I figure
beautiful!
Can anyone explain to me what the "Unplayed Melody" at 1:54 means?
I think the unplayed melody is the notes that have to be brought out in the 16th note passage below it.
An unplayed melody is simply a melody that the performer is supposed to hear in their head while playing the other two staves. The audience will never hear an unplayed melody, unless they are following the score as well. It is a crazy idea, but it is not new. Schumann has an unplayed melody in his Humoreske, op. 20.
This is listening music. It is not designed to be danced. The notation is very impressive and makes great wrapping paper.
In the score ~ 7:10. Wait. How many hands does Adès have?
...2?
Don't forget to count the one with which hed pats himself on the back.
Don't even get me started about 9:24😂
Afraid I wouldn't pay to hear this notwithstanding it has merit
10:50
first movement is really nice
I made some chromatic wind chimes, 6 octaves, not yet perfected. The wind is simply the most skilled improviser I have ever heard!
00:21 I. Sursum
01:07 II. Aetheria
Thanks, incipitsify, for uploading this score! Sadly, I'm just not a fan of Thomas Ades. We often here of composers who "water down" their music to appeal to the public. This piece sounds to me like Ades is doing the inverse-- he takes simple ideas and spices them up just for the sake of appealing to intellectuals. This music is like a person who is uncomfortable "being himself." I much prefer Brian Ferneyhough and Elliott Carter-- their music is extremely complex, but somehow it doesn't feel like they are compromising. Even "Star Wars" has its artistic integrity; this music is way overdone.
incipitsify, I am still going to "like" this video as gratitude for making this music available.
I have never thought of it that way, but now you said it I think that's how I feel as well. What do you think of his other works?
incipitsify I generally feel the same way about the other pieces I've heard. Ades has a lot of amazing moments though. His G major arpeggio in this piece at 6:00 is just blooms out of nowhere and takes my breath away. I like America a Prophecy-- not a fan of Asyla.
I disagree. I think this piece is absolutely beautiful and completely different... which is the key. If the art is not intrinsically different then it has no worth
A whole new world of expression lies in the detail in Ferneyhough... it might have a lack of accessibility to audiences but is that really a problem? It's art for art's sake.
ya but what does "expressive" mean? every fact that can be experienced is expressive, the nature of expressiveness lies within the experience per se
if we look at the origin of the word "expression" we will find that it comes from the latin "exprimere" that means simply to press, to impress, to engrave, to leave a sign of something into something else
the simple fact you say ferneyhough is not expressive means it is
then we can surely discuss about what something is supposed to express in order to be appreciated
10:33 Brad Mehldau much? He improvizes that though...
wowwwww!!!!!!!
As a composer I admire Mr Ades' technique. I am also a British composer and write perhaps more 'tonal' based music-though my own stuff verges on atonality at times. My music can be heard in my videos-it is very varied in style. Looking for professional pianists who might be interested.
I quite we enjoyed Diegem....for what it's worth
You gotta' give the guy credit on this one. It's a beautiful, natural-sounding work which holds together very nicely with its own sure logic. His love for chromatically descending minor chords still sounds fresh (as it did in Living Toys but became rather tiresome in the shamefully effete, and otherwise insupportable Powder Her Face).
What bothers me is those Initiates who understand every detail of this music and can barely restrain their condescdernsion for mere Bach-Bartok-Berg lovers like me- the simple stuff- I listen when I am not thinking of Blatz beer and the Superbowl (harhar I don't know who is in it!). It has some lovely moments , but I keep reading 'like wind chimes'. Entropic music? !00 pianos, 100 monkeys, in a quintillion years a masterpiece will be produced.
Ades is skilled enough that we should by now have a hundred piano works to choose from. Etudes. Nocturnes. Sonatas. Fantasias! A concerto or three.
Some thirty some years ago I lived in a small town with a small state university. I wrote a parody Phillip Glass piano work for the amusement of my neighbor, who taught piano at the U. (The last measure was notated, 'repeat until the audience becomes uncomfortable'.) She was amused, and inducted me into a prank. 'The New Music Symposium ' at the U, audience of forty or so, earnest avant-garde undergrads and their compositions. She played 'Moto Perpetuo', allegedly by Glass, to fulsome praise by the comp prof, an earnest twenty-something fellow, organizer of that particular goat-roping, who never heard new music he didn't like. On cue, I asked some stupid questions and almost felt ashamed of myself until the prof became... condescending.
My friend then exposed the prank. The prof called campus security, who kindly pointed out that the poster said 'Open to the public'. I intuited that perhaps my friend (a pretty woman in her forties) had perhaps dallied with the prof who had moved on to graze on undergraduates, for which he was fired a year or two later.
Has anybody out there heard of Sorabji?
@@georgelastrapes9259 "Has anybody out there heard of Sorabji?" Me :D
I find that most of the music I write tends to be complex. But not like this.
Класс! И в наше время музыку можно писать НОТАМИ! ...и кусочек Шопена в конце!...
Я знаю этого композитора благодаря русскому языку! класс на самом деле
привет из Франции
Looks like my first attempt at using Sibelius.
thelittlegumnut you sir! you have my upvote!
*press X to doubt*
This sounds like actual effort was put into this composition, unlike Finnissy's or Ferneyhough's attempts at trying to sound profound.
@@toothlesstoe come on, ferneyhough is a legend. Have to admit that I do prefer george crumb though.
@@kerserzthescientist8899crumb is miles better than ferneyhough... crumb is a real composer... ferneyhough just puts random notes everywhere...
It would be unbelievably difficult for a person who is not the composer to decipher this score from its obsessive, obscure and unnecessarily complex notation. Without the score, the listener gets the impression of gentle randomness, like wind chimes, punctuated with pleasant, non-functional major triads. But without the obsessive, detailed score, the composer will less likely be taken seriously. That's the reality of the classical composition world today - some talent, mixed with a lot of snake oil. I'll end my remarks by saying I think the piece is "not bad".
I don't think so, quite the opposite
the expression is in the detail... he's found a new way of making music it's so beautiful
N O N - F U N C T I O N A L M A J O R T R I A D S
Non-functional in that they do not adhere to voice-leading or harmonic progressions. They "just are".
I agree with several commentators; the notation could have been greatly simplified to make the pianist's job easier. But the way it's notated makes it look serious and important.
You misunderstand the whole point of the way he's written it... he wants the complexity to give it a different expression.... Is it really so difficult to understand? In the process of trying to play whats written Ades gets the pianist to make a very different and novel music
Reminds me of Sciarrino
Looks twice as hard as Boulez 2, and sounds twice as good.
It's.....pretty.
9:24 ¿En serio? ¿era necesaria esa escritura?
Who is the pianist?
2:20
I hear Feinberg..
I think I showed Tom Feinberg's music around this time. He did a couple of his songs with Valdine Anderson as a result. Stanchinsky, Roslavets likewise.
Thought the unplayed melody was pretentious at first - still think it is a little pretentious, but the actual purpose of notating the unplayed melody was to outline the shape of the melody that is being "traced", as though roughly sketched, through the undulating, shimmering parts actually played. Quite clever, and frankly, something that should seem quite obvious in retrospect; it's an advancement of the hardly-voiced melody idea created in the past with challenging accents (often in the midst of vicious or worse, marshmallow-like runs); here it is the suggestion of the melody by the general contour of the notes that is notated. Like reconstructing a dream...
It reminds me a bit of Ravel...
I don't see how. Have you ever listened to Ravel?
@@toothlesstoe listen to miroirs and say that again
@@Alex-ri7ue
This sounds nothing like Miroirs. Can you explain how this sounds even remotely similar?
@@toothlesstoe the general ambience and calm of the pieces such as 2 and 3 remind me of the calm yet ornamented slow sections of oiseaux tristes and then you've got the beautiful flowing melody at the end fairly reminiscent of jeux/barque but much calmer
@@Alex-ri7ue
Could you provide timestamps?
My cat played something similar while strolling over the piano the other day!
What a gifted cat! You should record and transcribe it.
Omg I think you are the first man in earth who ever thought of saying this when listening to music that you don't like. D'où you want a medal
No
A fine and sensitive performance. The actual musical ideas are rather ephemeral. The music is most appealing when it sounds like Debussy.
That's like saying that lutefisk is at its best when it tastes like Dover sole.
Solitude
why dont you put in the title the instrumentation ? for piano, for flute ...should be better to search some peaces. thank you
With all my respect to the people's work, stuff like pppp makes me almost feel sick. A bit too much here and there.
It get to pppppp like Ligeti.
Not like pppppp
Based
The over-differentiation of the notation merely results in an effect of randomness in which durations don't matter. Also the pitches don't matter: anything can follow anything else. The slow descending lines in the harmonic background are supposed to give form to the notes but do not make the piece meaningful. It's clever on the surface but there is nothing underneath and sounds like a mannerist imitation of modernism.
Good point. My question with this type of music has always been...why go to the trouble to write it down? Any pianist could improvise something that would be sonically no different.
I don't think Thomas Ades is self-aware enough to ask the question, so no.
But will he ever win a grammy if you can't dance to it?
Does he have/want to win one?
He grows rich off the conspicuous consumers of culture in Britain. and as is typical of British music, as with British wine, this does not travel well. But most of those who can afford tickets to the Proms could not tell a prelude from a quaalude.
2/6 the signature of God
Strange! Enigmatic! Suave! Magic! Celestial!
Über allem Schumann.
I'm sorry,I think this is not so good.
You've changed a lot.
The second movement is a transcription of me dusting the piano.
Well that's amazing maybe you can Show us your Talent per Video?
Trifonov is going to be performing this. But after hearing this, I believe it is merely mental masturbation.
All these supposed 'intellectuals' leaving comments, stating they fully understand the artistry and (mathematical) complexity of this piece
Don't lie to me, you know it's weird... This type of performance certainly isn't really my everyday tune, nor is it yours.
Music is opinion based. If you don't like it that's fine, but don't try to force your opinion on others
Honestly i am sure that *you* Wouldn't even fully understand the artistry of Mozart, Bach, Beethoven and others... (not that i would either)
Rather condescending of you. I find my tastes becoming simpler as I grow old (Not that I've made peace with Phillip Glass, God forbid.).
Ades coaxes beautiful sonorities out of the piano, and then overwhelms them with clutter and vine. The score and the performance are not one work of art, but two.
A skill for which Ades has little use is that of knowing what notes to leave out. Woe betide the composer who must be a genius in every bar! Does he not trust his materials?
Totally agree
sometimes they abuse of dinamics.. most of this cant eve be heard
brilliant ,but sadly. i dont get any emotion/feeling from it
apart from sadness, obviously.
Soulless music is the hip thing in academic circles.
@@angryjalapeno Listening only for emotion is to listen only for something you recognize. Ades has more imagination.
@@ericbenjamin2908 A computer program can string a bunch of notes together without one ounce of musicianship. This is an easy task if a program is not constrained to making it engage human emotions. So yeah, when computer programs (or people born with near zero sense of emotions) start paying money to "listen" to this stuff or to commission new works, then fine; but for now and the near future, the majority of music will need to engage the human mind and soul.
@@ericbenjamin2908 It's like writing a short story by stringing a bunch of words together to make a pattern which has no recognizable meaning to humans; throwing words and sounds on paper hoping it magical unlocks the human mind. Hey maybe the Voice from the movie Dune is a thing in the future; but we are not close to that and for sure it would not be 12-tone, 19-tone, 24-tone, etc or whatever academic music is being generated today.
Clever clever clever Cambridge esoteric shite. I hope this is published on a cardboard roll with perforations. It's all it's good for
***** Looks like it's only available in sheet music format, sorry. Purchase score at Faber Music here: www.fabermusic.com/repertoire/traced-overhead-2708/products
+Matthew Forbes I agree, what crap.
Didn't I?
+Matthew Forbes It's not really THAT clever. It's fairly accessible, immediate music in my opinion.
Four criticisms, then. Clever - neither here nor there. Cambridge - who cares? Esoteric - whatever else might be said of this music I don't think it can be called that. All depends on the listener's experience, I suppose, but what I mean is: esoteric by the standards of Britney Spears, maybe, but not those of say Machaut or Dufay. Shite - matter of opinion, but like others here I find it beautiful.
Notre société tombe dans la décadence la plus complète, depuis l'avènement du non-art contemporain, les pseudos-artistes du 21ème siècle se permettent de faire passer des suites pseudo-aléatoires de notes pour des œuvres d'art majeures de leur temps. Et quiconque ne reconnaîtrait pas là un trait de génie serait considéré comme un inculte.
Il s'agit réellement d'une forme de masturbation intellectuelle, qui a commencé avec le free-jazz et toutes ces nullités d'art de "performance". Tel le second principe de la thermodynamique, les arts vont de déstructuration en déstructuration, si bien qu'un jour il n'y aura plus qu'à composer une fonction d'onde aléatoire, et cela sera vu comme une révolution artistique sans précédent.
Lorsque l'on regardera ces "oeuvres" dans les siècles à venir, on comparera alors ces années de disettes intellectuelles à celle du haut moyen âge.
How good that nobody understands french.
Sauf les gens cultivés.
peut etre que tu trouve ça decadent, mais personnellement, j'ai adoré cette pièce, pleine de vie et de couleur, contrairement à des boulez et compagnie. Tout les artistes contemporains ne sont pas a mettre dans le même panier. Certain font de la daube certes, mais d'autre font du très bon travail.
Pseudo-random? Bahaha, you clearly know nothing of interval cycle theory. This piece is as tightly organized as any Beethoven Sonata.
Oui, évidemment, si on ose dire qu'on ne reconnaît aucune structure, tout de suite on est taxé d'ignorant. C'est la même chose avec l'art abstrait.
Il faut faire comme tout ces gens snob dans les musées, qui pensent être touchés au plus profond de leur âme devant une toile maculée de merde de pigeon.
Mais notre époque change, et je parie que les élites de demain n'écouteront plus cette musique.
That piece lasted twelve minutes too long...
My cat could have composed that, prowling up and down the keyboard.....
what an original and hilarious remark...
benjaminpicard Meanderings which almost nobody can follow or connect with do not become important and meaningful because they originate in the mind of a bright chap who plays the piano very well.
comprehensiveboy Yes, they do. They've obviously become important enough for you to feel the need to come about them.
Your cat has incredible talent.
Hacked
The only problem I have with this is that it's overly complex.
Many of those who have no idea how to read into the music will listen to this and have no appreciation for it because it doesn't sound too great to them.
Shame that.
Sometimes even the simplest of pieces can be incredibly powerful. Look at the Gymnopedies.
I have the opposite problem. No matter what Adès tries to do it ends up simplistic and trite.
***** I respect this piece. I understand it, but don't like it because it doesn't sound too great to my ears.
The person that gave me this understood the music completely and loved it.
Someone i've shown this to hated it and thought there was no rhythm what so ever.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to sound condescending. I'm not saying that the simple pieces are all they can cope with.
All i'm saying is that this piece is complex and not everyone will understand it, whereas simpler pieces can be just as effective and most people will get a feel for it. It's an observation.
face palm....
Yes, and obviously because you think its too complex, and are very kindly shielding others from engaging with it, It really must be an anathema to all music ? What a fine education you've obviously had....And what a brilliant forum youtube made, that it enables people who don't really care for something to launch attacks on it nevertheless....I guess it works both ways, but WHY waste your time when you could just be listening to something you CAN engage with ?
Trish Ranner Why can't I comment on things I don't like?
It's not like i'm preventing other people from watching it. I'm just sharing my opinion.
Education doesn't really have much to do with music tastes does it? Despite the obvious trends that you're exposed to through friends, teachers, local area etc.
And it enables people who don't really care about something to launch attacks on it? Why does that matter? If people want to complain, they should be able to complain.
And then I came onto this video to see if I liked this video. I didn't quite like it, and I didn't dislike it. So I posted my opinion of it and moved on.
I'm completely within my rights to do this and waste my time, and I will continue to do this. Just like you're completely within your rights to waste your time replying to my comment.
Kay. Does that satisfy you?
quite boring
@Dhruva Punde To each his own.
Probably.
Is this the worst thing I've ever heard? It's very likely.
Very hard to play, but don't like much...
Did this guy have indigestion when he wrote this rubbish?
Listen to Liberace, if you want to hear real music.
You should try a bit harder not to look like a pathetic toll.
The trolls are really taking a toll on RUclips
Doesn't anybody know anymore what "CUT TO THE CHASE" Means ?
Wtf
I rather concur with Matthew Forbes. Never have got the Cambridge lot at all and I am not homophobic or antisemitic at all. But they do seem to be overly exalted for what they manage to produce.
I told someone once, at a coffeeshop, that I don't care much for Ades' music. An eavesdropper at the next table gave me a stricken look and said, "But you do realize that he's gay, don't you?" As I tried to understand what he was getting at, rather dumb-founded, his look became accusing, and he turned back to his coffee.
The whole situation was as multilayered and puzzling as any of Ades' compositions.
But not so wind-chimey.
No one thinks that you’re homophobic for not liking Thomas ades. Nobody has ever said that not liking Thomas ades was homophobic
Nothing.
....is going on in your mind..... :)
Nothing notable about this chyme is interesting.
I'm proud of you for not trying to say anything
John Appleseed
You have no pride.
***** thank you for understanding
So bad. As always.
that's no sound. just nothing.
Maybe try to turn up your volume...?
Between the pretentious wankery of trying to create something interesting, there's actually some decent music.
We don't need this kind of noisy music!
and who is this 'we' you speak of?
Yawn
We don't need this kind of comment
Define we
Then why are you listening to it?
Lunaire!