I went for office hours the other day, and my teacher recommended I listen to more of this stuff so I can "get more acquainted with my century's music" and use that knowledge to make my compositions better. So I was just wondering if anyone could give suggestions since I don't really listen to classical music from this time period, (well, unless if a few video game and movie soundtracks count. XD) and don't really know where to start. :sweat:

Here are some things to get you started:

Cowell:
Dynamic Motion: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJ1KxMrhIEY
Four Encores to Dynamic Motion: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntxQHGv6SBs

Stravinsky:
Rite of Spring: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ceglu9msRbo
Pulcinella: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4KYuhfag5I

Ravel:
Jeux d'eau: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJK6yZJ8b5Y
Le tombeau de Couperin, Toccata: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idfdk5nPs-s
Ma mere l'oye, Le jardin feerique: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PiBjMmLpovg

Thumb up for Jeux d'eau. I love that song.

There are so many good (and rubbish) examples of music from this period.

Tan Dun- Paper Concerto http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kH_mDOdDIs
Water Cadenzas http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrYpgRY7s8I

*the paper concerto is amazing but unfortunately there isn't a full video on youtube*

Varese- Ionisation http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TStutMsLX2s

Holst- The Planets http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4oDDmoWf1M

Thomas Ades- Asyla http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRQr33PdyiQ

I think that's a pretty balanced mix of good examples!

Thanks guys. I hope I can get around to understanding all of these in a somewhat decent time. :P

I was listening to rite of spring for pretty much the last 1 or 2 hours, and I honestly don't understand some of the musical things going on, mainly just how all the accidentals make any sense. I'm assuming that rite isn't a tonal piece since there doesn't seem to be a tonal center...am I right? :heh: The random time and key changes also kinda confuse me...lol.

The best way to get to know a piece of music like this is to study the score. If you are not used to such music, it can be difficult to make any sense of it. Also you want the Bernstein recording (also on youtube with score) which is just something else; every little detail has it's own place and it is all so clear.

The Rite was intended to suggest primitivism/savagery; the heavy use of dissonance/polytonality along with the asymmetric rhythms suggest this pretty well. He also uses a lot of forgotten Russian folk material from so long ago that even Russian audiences at the time would not have recognised them. It's a really clever work because it reflects a time and culture where there is no equal tempered 12 note system or western classical rhythmical rules, yet in reflecting this primitive, lawless music, he is using compositional methods more advanced than could be grasped by many at the time: the premier of this piece caused a scandal following which the only performance of it was a 2 piano arrangement played by Stravinsky and Debussy (listen to Debussy's Etude nr 12- it is heavily influenced by Stravinsky).

I knew a little bit of the history behind it already...definitely makes sense that a riot about this piece happened. This must have been the devil's work back in those days. XD

But since this isn't really a tonal piece, (or is it?) how would one go about analyzing the harmony and form? Am I right in assuming you can't really use things like roman numerals and looking for cadences when it comes to pieces like this? :heh:

You can analyse this music in the same way as you would Bach or Beethoven, just bear in mind it can be more complex and take more time.

Also, you are looking at this music in view of getting compositional ideas (I presume), so you don't need to analyse all of it in the greatest detail possible. In my composition classes, we would literally take a page or two of pieces the professor thought were interesting and go deep enough to get a grasp of what was going on- you don't need to go deep enough to write a book on it! Personally, I listen to anything and everything and if there's something I like about it- a chord progression, a rhythmic device, a particular instrumentation, then I will closely analyse it to find out what the composer has done and how I can use it myself, but otherwise there's no point- being able to tell me EXACTLY what Stravinsky does in every bar of the Rite won't convince me that you actually understand the piece.

But how is it the same for things like harmony? Since this piece is somewhat atonal, how can you possibly analyze the harmony with the "normal" way? There isn't really a single tonal center imo for this piece, so I just don't know how to analyze a certain progression or whatnot if there's no actual key it belongs to. Do you just note the name of the chord, or the roman numerals of the key it sounds like its in? Or something else? :heh: (I probably sound like such a noob...lol! xD)

You don't analyze it the "normal" way. My next guess would be that Stravinsky is using set theory for the harmonies in this piece (which I'm not 100% certain of, since I've never actually taken the time to analyze the intro), which I learned in Theory V (20th-Century Techniques). Before I took Theory V this semester, I originally just relied on writing out the names of the triads that I saw, and how they relate to each other through chromatic mediant relationships, common chord tones, etc.

I think the most important thing is to move away from the idea of key in the common sense.

I strongly suggest you drop the Rite of Spring for now and go listen to Ionisation by Varese. It is for percussion ensemble, so will force you to ignore harmony and think more outside the box in terms of how music can be pieced together and understood- the kinds of thought needed for understanding a lot of 20/21st century music.