Hm, if you're really into contemporary music, you will agree with me that Prokoviev was VERY much more a tonal than an atonal composer, in comparison with his contemporaries at least.

My dog, Paco, runs to the bedroom and under the bed whenever I sit down at the piano.

My bunnies love Beethoven.

They don't respond at all to anything else. I don't know what this means.

It means they're choosy little bubbybobs. You should expose them to Bach and Brahms to expand their horizons

Yeah, I know what you mean. I am a composer and study at a conservatory and musch of the music created by my peers and professor are extremely avant garde. I am not totally conservative in my writing but I do think there has to be something memorable to a piece, something that holds it together.

I'll be honest, I can't get into the music of the second vieneese school--Schoenber, Webern, Berg--but I can appreaciate their ideas.

I have to agree with my friend, Claude Debussy, that music should be pleasurable, pleasing to the senses. Not all contemprorary music has to be avante guarde in my opinion. Yes, you should be different, but like I said, something has to hold it together.

Writing a piece of music is like preparing a dinner: You want your guests to leave feeling a little bit hungry. The worst, is whem you are listening to a new work and you are thinking "Is it over yet?" If I really don't care for a piece of new music, I will literarally get sick with a bad headache.

There are great conctempory pieces out there, you just have to keep your ears and eyes open.

P.S. my two parrots do like Weber's Op. 21 becuase of the tone colors.

They are big fans of Bach and any music from the Baroque and Classical eras

When it comes to me and atonal music... at first I hated all of it.

My first composer I ever got into was Rachmaninoff... then I worked backwards all the way to Buxtehude...

But when I first heard a piece by Schoenberg, I hated it immediatly. I still try to listen to him today, but I really can't stand his music.

12 Tone Theory bothers me immensily, because it is litterally just trying to be as random as possible, by making sure that you never favor any one key more than another, so you must make random jumps, abandoning all classical harmonic developmental ideals...

However, when I first an atonal work by Scriabin (the 9th sonata), I hated it. However, as I continued to listen to it, I began to love it. Now, I really enjoy Scriabin's late works, and think them to be just as wonderful to listen to as any other piece of music.

I still can't stand schoenberg, webern, etc.

I always liked Prokofiev, because my first two pieces I ever heard were his Suggestion Diabolique, op. 4, no. 4, and his Toccata in D Minor, op. 11(?). They were able to lead me in gently to his world... and I always loved it.

I would consider myself to be mildly modernist. I do love Scriabin's later works, and have ever written 2 atonal preludes in a style that I feel is similar to his, but still kinda my own thing.

However, I am truely a romantic at heart. I love Scriabin's early works the best, just like I love Rachmaninoff, Chopin, etc.

But I don't like Liszt.
He's far too flashy for my tastes.

--- My rant for the day.

Prokofiev's Toccata was easy for you to listen to? He said himself about it that it was supposed to sound like "carrying 100 china plates and then dropping them all"!

Anyway... I love most atonal stuff, as long as it's written well. For example, George Crumb's "A Little Suite For Christmas" or Corigliano's Etude-Fantasy among others...

It's impossible to have a favourite composer in my opinion... but Prokofiev is as close as it comes for me. What really gets me about his music is that in some places it's so romantic, and then it just morphs into this cataclysmic mess, but you can never quite tell when it happened. The famous 2nd piano concerto is a perfect example of this (especially the 1st movement... the opening is so beautiful, and the end of the cadenza is so huge, monstrous, and ominous). I WILL learn that one day if I die trying hahaha

Anyway what bugs me is when a composer DOES write completely random noise that's not sophisticated at any level, and doesn't have any structure or purpose of any sort, and tries to convince people that it's music... (like when it's written in the score to play the same note over and over for 30 seconds... or to choose 3 random notes and play them in quick succession 5 times or something stupid) That's not music. It's just dumb...

Hmmm... The toccata in d minor was actually one of the first pieces piano pieces I ever heard.

Actually... it was the third keyboard piece I've ever heard... 2nd piano piece.

I had just "discovered" that my favorite halloween music has a name: "Bach's" toccata and fugue in d minor (I don't think Bach wrote it... but that's for another thread...), and I was searching for Toccata in d minor... and I happened to find a recording of Agerich playing Prokofiev's toccata...

At first, I was mildly confused. By my second time listening to it, I loved it.

It builds up very nicely.
And I like the whole "crashing plates" thing... I don't know why.

I like heavy music in general...

Btw... the first piece, prior to the two toccatas... was Rachmaninoff's prelude in C# Minor.
It was also the first piece I ever learned how to play... And when my great-grandmother passed away, my parents suggested that my brother and I leave something in the casket to remind her of us... I chose the sheet music to that piece. That way, when ever I play it, she can remember me.

Sooo... that piece is kinda special to me... although for some reason my skills with it have atrophied after not playing it for a few months...

But I like Prokofiev.

--- RANT #2!!!

I know what you mean.

Liszt haters!

Huh... Corigliano's Etude-Fantasy atonal ??? I find that an eminently melodious work that does not even seem particularly 'contemporary' compared to some things written hald a century earlier.

Ok, I understand pianolady but why the contempory music must atonal and only atonal.
Do you Steve Reich or Gavin Bryars ?
I remember the piece of Bryars 'New York', a very good composition and magnifical harmonies and sound. I will like to listen again !

Chris

Hmmmm... I guess you're right! Not all contemporary music is atonal... ex. Shostakovich.

I really like Shostakovich!

But... unfortunately, our world has been flooded by the "music" of Brittney Spears and the like...
Sadly... that could also be considered "Contemporary music"

I suppose that there are always different methods of expression in different times, but there generally tends to be one view that tends to dominate that time, perhaps stereotypically.

Who, I disagree with that. It's not music... this stuff files under "shit noise", or to coin my favourite phrase once more, poppy drivel. I don't want to go as far as to say that ALl popular music is bad, but the stuff you hear on MTV and TMF is low-life trash.