4 strange composers

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posters on this forum have been very diligent in uncovering strange musicians (who may/may not be aspie) of the present day, but it is less commonly known that even the conservative field of what we call today "classical music" has its fascinating outsiders.

Harry Partch invented his own scale, & built his own instruments to play it:
http://www.harrypartch.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Partch
"Delusion of the Fury" is probably his masterpiece.

Olivier Messiaen combined bird song & non-Western musics for his unorthodox, Christian musical explorations:
http://www.oliviermessiaen.org/messiaen2index.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivier_Messiaen
Highlights for me are "Et Exspecto Resurrectionem Mortuorum" & "Turangalila"...& of course "Quatuor pour la Fin du Temps" which has a whole legend attached to it (it was composed in a concentration camp, using only the instruments available, including a piano with keys missing--so he excluded those notes) i find irresistable.

Alexander Scriabin wanted to unite all the senses in his ambitious compositions:
http://www.scriabinsociety.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Scriabin
I like his famous "Poem of Ecstasy"...his chamber music is cherished by piano enthusiasts.

Conlon Nancarrow wrote compositions for keyboard that no human could play, so he programmed player-pianos to do them:
http://conlonnancarrow.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conlon_Nancarrow
This doesn't sound quite so weird to us in the 21c as it did in the 1940s-1950s--!

There are a number of Youtube entries for each of them.

I don't make any claims vis a vis their typicality, but it always seems to be (this may just be my prejudice) that there is a limit to how outrageous a neurotypical will let themselves be, whereas the truly extreme will "follow their bliss" even to the point of unintelligibility by others.

Hope somebody else likes these...& any others?

I'm surprised you didn't mention John Cage...definitely one of the strangest composers out there lol. He's a bit out there for me, but I guess some people are into that sort of thing.

20th Century art music was fraught by composers trying to liberate musical elements that composers from the Renaissance through Impressionism had largely taken for granted. After Beethoven's symphonies and Wagner's operas, there really wasn't much left in trying to press forward. Exposure to middle and far eastern cultures inspired composers to consider different models of tonality including microtonality and other tuning systems beyond 12-tone equal temperament. Schoenberg liberated the dissonance. Cage explored silence. Riley abandoned formal music conventions in favor of repetition, consonant harmonies, improvisation, and gradual evolution of musical process. There's not much weird about 20th century and contemporary composers. They were just doing what composers did back then.

Let's also not forget Gil Mellé, who was a pioneer in electronic music, not only in the composition thereof, but also in making instruments. -- He was the man who was responsible for the soundtrack of 'The Andromeda Strain' .

I'm not so sure I'd count Mellé. His music figures too much in the commercial mainstream.

Maybe, but at the same time, 'Andromeda Strain' was not mainstream, in the same way that Lou Reed is considered mainstream, but 'Metal Machine Music' was nothing of the sort.

Don't forget Satie and Bartok.
Also Stockhausen!

Sorry, but I have to completely disagree here. "Andromeda Strain" was a commercial film (Universal Pictures). I don't care how unusual the soundtrack is, it is still aimed squarely at a mass audience. That puts it in the mainstream commercial arena. Same goes for the Beatle's Sgt. Pepper's and White album. "Revolution #9" and other tape tricks the Beatles used had been around since the 1940s. They were nothing new. They were just borrowed from Pierre Schaeffer. And the "Andromeda Strain" didn't really make any new contributions, either. "Forbidden Planet" (MGM, 1956) is probably the best film to bring electronic music into the mainstream (all electronic, Louis and Bebe Barron), and electronic instruments had already been utilized in commercial releases long before that. (On a side note: the Barrons actually had an influence on John Cage's work. It's also interesting to note that Bebe Barron studied composition with Riegger and Cowell) I just can't justify classifying Mellé as all that unusual given such a long line of predecessors well before the 1970s.

And since when is Lou Reed mainstream??? Granted, I don't believe Lou Reed belongs in a discussion of classical music. But Reed has always been firmly entrenched in rock and/or folk avant-garde. And I only say THAT because what he and VU did somewhat resembled rock and yet resisted both academic and commercial trends. It can't be mainstream because it isn't ANY stream that I can think of. I find Zappa equally difficult to classify, but I do know that Zappa also worked in classical music towards the end of his life. And Zappa wasn't all THAT unusual, but I give him HUGE creds for adopting digital technology early on and massively exploiting it ("Jazz from Hell"). I kinda tend to group Reed and Zappa in the same category even if they went in opposite directions. It's more a mindset than a genre.

Jandek (Currently listening to him play live in the studio on WFMU)

I'm far from an expert, but it happens that Messiaen was 'Composer of the Week' on our public classical radio station Radio 4 a couple of weeks ago. I find it interesting that Messiaen was also an ornithologist.

Cage was more inteested in chance processes than silence. I mention it just because most people tend to know John Cage only for 4'33", which I think is a bit tragic, because there's so much more to him than that (and even 4'33", although it is completely silent and Cage's experiences with silence strongly influenced it, there are many other ideas behind it, too - like, as always, chance; it's as much a chance piece as it is a silent piece). It's probably my least favourite of all his work, in fact.

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Harry Partch was a genius, no doubt one of the most inventive musicians of the 20th century. I'm currently reading his book "Genesis of a Music"... I haven't read much of it yet; I'm still not past the part where he explores the historical development of music - which is interesting enough, but what I'm really looking forward to is his exposition of his music system and instruments.

If you're into Partch, check out Syzygys - they're heavily influenced by Partch, and use his 43-tone scale, but in a more pop-oriented context:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrA-QzjkEPs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMfeY_J-_5w

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Although rarely "mainstream", Reed's done plenty of more straight rock stuff - Transformer, Coney Island Baby, New Sensations, Legendary Hearts, etc. Most people know about him, plus he's on the radio occasionally. He's definitely mainstream relative to some of the other people mentioned on this thread.

As for Zappa, I'd say his music is very unusual. That's one of the primary things that makes it so attractive to me. I don't really get the Reed/Zappa comparison there - they seem totally different to me. Reed's always been more sloppy/simplistic (neither of which is necessarily a bad thing, and Reed is among the best at those modes)... in terms of his general approach to music, he often reminds me most of Neil Young.

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My point in bringing up Cage was that classical composers seldom seem to know when to shut up or when thinning textures to almost nothingness is allowed. 4'33" was a strong argument for the inescapability of sound and music, and it opens music up for a much needed better definition. It's not so much a composition as it is an opportunity for reflection. Even Cage would say that 4'33" is not a fixed time, much like tempi are often variable in conventional music. As a work of MUSIC, though, I have to agree with you that it's not my favorite of his.

Cage did a lot of stuff, and chance music dominated his later period that he is best known for. Personally, my favorite work of his is "Living Room Music." People tend to forget just how strong his educational background in music composition was and just how accomplished he already was as a composer prior to that period. But most importantly I find Cage so much more human and less pretentious than many of his contemporaries.

While I relate better to Cage, I have to admit I'm envious of Xenakis. Cage's ideas were rooted in eastern philosophy and religion. Xenakis basically did the same thing, just using a mathematical approach. I also enjoy how Xenakis juxtaposed game theory and Greek mythological themes in some of his work. My master's thesis took its inspiration from Webern's invariance, Cage's aleatoric approach, and Xenakis' geometric models and game theory.

I've come a long way since then. Now I compose by first recording my improvisations in real time and then, if necessary, transcribing the work I've already done. One of the most important lessons I've learned about composing atonal music is in order for it to be convincing, there has to be SOME random element involved.

Both Reed and Zappa are so far out on the fringe there's no appropriate label for them. That's all I meant.

The music I associate with Reed is sloppy chaos, like you mentioned, whereas Zappa is tightly organized and deliberate. When I think of a representative Zappa work, "The Black Page" immediately springs to mind. I'm more interested in Zappa for his collaboration with Boulez and (of course) for his Synclavier work.