Sorabji-esque Modern Composers

[zeniyama]

Well, I decided that I wanted to learn some Sorabji, but so far I've only been able to find a handful of pieces by him that I could even think about playing right now, and I can't find any recordings of those ones, anyways. Are there any good modern composers who wrote with the sort of style that Sorabji did without being as scary?

[choliszgetibusselkan]

xenakis and finnissy are a little, no, a lot more random. try them, they lack this one thing that makes me like sorabji though.

ligeti, try ligeti, i think hes the closest avant garde has ever gone to being beautiful.

[jre58591]

Xenakis is not random. There are many mathematical formulae and such behind his music. It can be overwhelming at times, and can sound random, but some of his works are actually really nice to listen to, particularly Keqrops. And if you want someone that is extremely avant garde who is extremely beautiful, try George Crumb, particularly his latter Makrokosmos.

Sorabji is one of a kind, so I'm afraid that there aren't many I could recommend that are like him. I have heard many people try to imitate him, often with poor results. Feinberg is probably the composer I would say is most similar to Sorabji. Szymanowski is another runner up (he is cited as being a major influence in Sorabji's music).

[zeniyama]

One of a kind, eh? Oh well, I suppose there are some things by him that I could pull off...

I've always been a fan of Sorabji's music. I don't know what it is about him, but it's something awesome.

[ijbaros]

Untill I discovered Sorabji, I never had any favourite composer or even favourite style, but when I realized that Sorabji did all those things that I desired the most in composition, I suddently felt that he was a composer meaning something special to me, not just meaning something. He sums up all my ideals in composition, so obviously he is my favourite composer of all times, and that with an objective opinion.

I, too, would love to find other composers who are similar to this very underrated genious. Apart from sound language I know of one other composer, Niels Viggo Bentzon, who reminds me of Sorabji. If Im not mistaken, he wrote more than 1000 opuses including his epic 13 books Tempered Piano collection with preludes and fugues for each key, some extremely primitive, others very dense and wild. His Tempered Piano follows a detailed surreal program note that makes absolutely no "sence". I love so much this explosion of pure creativity that you find in theise 2 composers.

Even though his style is closer to Stravinsky, you might probably love him, if you are into Sorabji.

There is a funny story about Niels Viggo Bentzon having a nervous breakdown from composing 3 notes for the danish railroad signal. It took him apparently several years to complete it, because he was troubled by the practical circumstances with the loudspeakers and sound technicians. In the end the staff of the railroad felt so sorry for him, that they decided to use his "signal" just for his sake. So today every train in Denmark has this quite odd sounding signal.