20th century classical music

[Voidoid Surrealist]

Well it looks like evryone here beat me to naming most of my favorite modern composers, but here are a few more:

Aaron Copland
Charles Ives
William Schuman
Roy Harris
Roger Sessions
Dmitri Shostakovich
Peter Mennin
Alan Hovhaness
Vincent Persichetti
Howard Hanson
Walter Piston

Also, you MUST hear Messiaen's Turangalila! Probably my all time favorite symphony. Great use of the Ondes Martenot.

[dystonia_ek]

Penderecki
Ligeti
Xenakis
Part
Gorecki
Dockstader
Karkowski
Furudate
Rabe
Bianchi

[SparkySpark]

Bela Bartok's 4th string quartet might please you as well.

my favourite

Hi Pantie,
Glad to hear that!
Actually I've written some comments in an essay about this quartet, but unfortunately it's in Swedish so I cannot post it for you. I call it one of the first pieces written in "metamorphosis technique", where small "cells" of music, i.e., short themes or fragments, are repeated and used in various ways. This method has since been used almost exclusively by Northern composers, such as Wirén, von Koch, Karkoff, and Carlstedt (Sweden) and Holmboe and Bentzon (Denmark).

If you want to experiment with this quartet, and you have in on CD, progam it the following way:
5th movement
2nd movement
3rd movement
4th movement
1st movement.

Being raised in the pop music tradition, I find this order more pleasing and easier to "comprehend". (If you feel experiementing with your "baby" cruel, don't do it. )

Another interesting thing about this quartet is that if the main theme is transposed to a minor, the retrograde (backwards) of the theme is b-a-c-h! I don't know if this was intentional, I just found it out by accident.

All the best,
Sp-Sp