10 ESSENTIAL ATONAL/12-TONE WORKS for BEGINNERS

Comments · 123

• WA

  @Warp75 · 3 years ago

  It’s strange I got into classical music from electronic music so I gravitated to the so called hard stuff.<br>Schoenberg, Berg &amp; Webern gave me so much in return through listening.<br>Definitely worth it

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• RO

  @rogerknox9147 · 3 years ago

  In Canada the CBC Radio used to play works like these in the 1960&apos;s, especially on The New Music with composer hosts Harry Somers and Norma Beecroft. It&apos;s best when you discover these works on your own.

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• OU

  @OuterGalaxyLounge · 3 years ago

  Some kids today may actually have a better embarkation point for atonal than some of us oldsters did, since they have things like industrial, thrash, grindcore and noise rock along with trance, ambient, drone, hard electro and house and other music that has acclimated them to being receptive to it. I like all of these kinds of music, btw, along with most everything else.

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• C.

  @c.j.hellwig7142 · 3 years ago

  When I&apos;m trying to introduce classical music to friends, I&apos;ve actually found that atonal and avant-garde music tends to go over rather well, especially Ligeti. I&apos;ve also had surprising success turning people on to Machaut!

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• DS

  @dsammut8831 · 2 years ago

  Really enjoyed second full visit to this Talk, thank you, Dave

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• WI

  @windowtrimmer8211 · 3 years ago

  Any list with &quot;Agon&quot; on it gets my total approval, whether for a beginner or an expert.

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• JU

  @juniorbaracat9438 · 1 year ago

  Best channel and best person on youtube. Thank you very much, David!

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• PE

  @PedroAlmeidaComposer · 3 years ago

  Great selection and great argument! Come on, someone prove me that A Survivor From Warsaw doesn&apos;t send a chill down any music fan&apos;s spine. And one of my greatest thrills of all time was listening to the most violent bars of Bartók&apos;s Mandarin or Varèse&apos;s rawest glories.

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• MH

  @mhc2231 · 3 years ago (edited)

  I&apos;ll never forget, years ago, on a long distance drive, I was somewhere in Pennsylvania late at night. &nbsp;My wife was asleep in the passenger&apos;s seat and there wasn&apos;t a car in sight. &nbsp;All was perfectly calm and I was listening &nbsp;to a late night classical show on the radio when Lux Aeterna came on. &nbsp;It totally transported me to another dimension. Unbelievable piece of music.<br><br>Thanks for the great list -- again!

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• DE

  @delhatton · 3 years ago

  All are a treat. They sound so familiar in 2022.

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• DE

  @dennischiapello3879 · 3 years ago (edited)

  I always enjoy Agon popping up on your lists from time to time. You once asked for suggestions for your sometimes-series &quot;How It&apos;s Done.&quot; For that, I would highly recommend the Gailliarde from Agon. That is THE most uncanny piece of music and orchestration; I can&apos;t even comprehend how Stravinsky came up with it. <br>Your opera-plot summations are always enjoyably loosey-goosey, but calling Marie in &quot;Wozzeck&quot; a call girl--I didn&apos;t know whether to laugh or cry. Poor Marie! She never gets a break. Keep &apos;em coming, Dave! 😀

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• FA

  @falesch · 3 years ago

  About the Webern, you called it the &quot;...ultimate in serial conceptual brevity.&quot; Isn&apos;t it though! I refer to Webern as the original minimalist.<br><br>David, thanks for this enjoyable talk, which included several of my own modern music favorites. This talk was so well conceived that I think more than a few people will explore some work that they&apos;d otherwise not take a second look at or not even a first glance. I think you did a service to much of the 20th-C avant-garde but also to future musics as well.<br> <br>I wanted to know the premier date of A Survivor from Warsaw, so I looked it up. In so doing, I got a bit of a shock: The dry, dusty, hot little desert town I&apos;ve lived in for three years is Albuquerque NM, where the premier was given by its very own symphony orchestra! In 1948, the population was ~55k with no appreciable metro area (it was 35k at the 1940 census, but grew rapidly after the war). It&apos;s now a medium sized city of 600k with a metro area that makes a 900k total. A Schoenberg premier by the banks of the Rio Grande!

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