Benjamin Britten: Peter Grimes: Act III, Scene 2, To hell with all your mercy!
- opera
- English male voice accompanied by an echoing choir and instruments in the beginning, intense and angry; female voice comes in, and male sings again but softer
- generally spare instrumental accompaniment until interlude after dialogue about boat
- becomes a big chorus
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Oliver Messiaen: Quartet for the End of Time: First movement, Liturgie de cristal [NAWM 201]
- quartet for violin, clarinet, violoncello, and piano; translation Crystal Liturgy
- clarinet and violin each play stylized birdcalls–has a pulse but no clear meter
- cello and piano lay out complex patterns of duration and pitch that repeat in cycles: cello constantly repeats a five-note sequence in high harmonics using a pattern of fifteen durations; cycles in piano are a series of twenty-nine chords overlapping a rhythmic pattern of seventeen durations
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George Crumb: Black Angels: Thirteen Images from the Dark Land: Images 4 and 5
- electric string quartet
- explores various unique sounds produced by amplified strings
- includes percussion such as maracas, tam-tams, water-tuned crystal glasses, as well as vocal sounds such as clicking, whistling, whispering, and chanting
- in both images, the first three phrases of Dies irae alternate with contrasting material
A) Image 4: Devil-Music
- intense solo cadenza for first violinist: triple-stopped chords, pizzicato notes plucked by the left hand, and harmonics
B) Image 5: Danse macabre
- alternates material played by the second violin and viola with the phrases of the Dies irae in the first violin and cello
- second violin and viola lines rely heavily on pizzicato and other unusual effects, such as tapping on the viola with knuckles
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Krzysztof Penderecki: Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima [NAWM 208]
- tone poem
- section one is made of high pitched dissonant clusters
- section two is varied texture of multiple sound effects in rapid succession
- section three is sustained tones and quarter-tone clusters linked with glissandos
- section four contains isolated pitches and various sound effects, in canon
- unison sound effects and clusters that lead to the final climactic chord make up section five
- written for 52 strings (24 violins, 10 violas, 10 cellos, and 8 double basses)
- sounds like scary horror movie music
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