Entry posted by Sumiki
340 views
So, folks are posting music in the blogs. I figure that I might as well get in on the action, so I'll be posting my favorite pieces of music semi-intermittently. Might be weekly but iunno - depends on how much interest I can generate with classical stuff.
So! Leo Ornstein. Guy lived a whopping 109 years and produced a number of fantastic compositions. In his early years he was known for popularization of the tone cluster and lived around the time Charles Ives was experimenting with those same techniques. (Neither Ornstein nor Ives get credit for their uses of the tone cluster - that honor goes to Henry Cowell, mainly because he coined the term "tone cluster".)
Ornstein's early works are dissonant, virtuosic, and occasionally violent, making his post-tonal works popular amongst the avant-garde of the time. After composing a number of these works, he took a short break from composition and resumed with less harsh works. Vestiges of the dissonance that epitomized his earlier oeuvre still dot his later compositions, but the older he got the more tonal his language became, much to the disappointment in the avant-garde that had put so much stock in his earlier career.
His only Piano Quintet is brilliant, and the third movement is my favorite. Interesting notations include time signature differences between the strings and piano, tuplets that cross measures, and a plethora of poly rhythmic arpeggiations. It's a highly underrated piece that doesn't get performed nearly as much as it deserves to.
5 Comments
Recommended Comments