Listening to Les Tendres Plaintes

I labeled this "reception history" even though it isn't quite that. Think of it as the first draft of a reception history. That term, by the way, refers to a way of doing musicology where you examine the history of how a piece or a style or a composer was received by audiences over time. It can be quite interesting. But it does raise the problem of understanding how people listen.

I've listened to a piece by Rameau, Les Tendres Plaintes, a few times recently for different reasons: it is on a recent CD of Grigory Sokolov, there are a couple of clips of it on YouTube and I was sharing them with a couple of friends and I just transcribed it for violin and guitar to see what that would sound like. So I noticed a couple of things about how I listen to it. By that I basically mean my moment to moment reactions which vary from occasion to occasion, of course.

Here is the clip I have watched the most:

Now I will try to do a kind of stream-of-consciousness account of my reactions:

...those trills! and then how silvery the ring of the melody...
...the trills in the melody and the accompaniment are offset, intentionally kept unaligned.
(there are actually several different kinds of ornaments I am calling "trills" here: Rameau has a table in the front of his book naming and describing them: the cadence is a trill from the note above and the pincé is to the note below. We tend to call them a trill and a mordent respectively. There is also a cadence apuyée, where the first note is held longer and the double cadence which is a cadence that ends with a turn.)
...he does just a hint of notes inégales in the bass line that connects the first two phrases...
...when he gets to the descending sequence that begins the 1re Reprise, it is so lovely that I just start swaying my head from side to side...
..that A major chord that ends the 1re Reprise is always a surprise... the piece is in D minor, but the 1re Reprise is in A minor...
...he handles the refrain so differently the second time: a crisper inégale in the bass with an added cadence...
...the 2de Reprise (in F major) is almost whimsical, but at the same time wistful...
...the last refrain is even more beautiful... the high A in the second phrase is I think the most delicate note I have ever heard from a piano--it is like a guitar harmonic or an orchestral bell hit with a feather...

Let me show you the score I have been looking at. These two pages are from Rameau's Pièces de clavecin avec une méthode by which he means that he has an explanatory preface about how to play them. The table of ornaments is from there:

And here is the score to Les Tendres Plaintes:

Click to enlarge

This is a very simple piece, of course. Just that theme in D minor which has two eight-measure phrases, the first ending on the dominant and the second on the tonic. Then another two phrases in A minor, then the theme again followed by the second reprise (or episode) in F major but this time both phrases end on the tonic, and finally the theme again. You just should bear in mind that Jean-Philippe Rameau literally wrote the book on harmony--it was his Traité de L'Harmonie of 1722 that formalized the theory of tonal harmony and the basic principles are still followed today.

Here is a portrait of Rameau done in 1760:

It's Canonic: 20th Century, first half

I took a 20th century music history course as an undergraduate, which means that it was a long time ago. I remember the professor complaining that he had been teaching the course for years and years and every year it got harder, because the century was longer. Heh! That was in 1975. Well now the century is complete and those great revolutionary works of the early part have already had their centenaries: pieces like the Rite of Spring (1913) by Stravinsky and the Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune of Debussy ... oops! That was written and premiered in 1894 so not even 20th century. But we, or at least I, think of Debussy as being an inherently 20th century composer even though he was only one, strictly speaking, for the last 18 years of his life (1862 - 1918). Just sticking to pieces composed in the 20th century by Debussy, we could pick instead La Mer, completed in 1905.

But if we do stick to the 20th century, then the later music of Mahler also qualifies. Part of the 20th century canon should include the symphonies from No. 5 on as well as Das Lied von der Erde.

All of these are orchestral pieces (sometimes with voices), so let's stick with works for orchestra and do chamber music, solo music (largely for piano) and opera in separate posts. Another piece by Stravinsky that fits is the Symphony of Psalms from 1930, one of those brilliant commissions by the Russian conductor Serge Koussevitzky for the Boston Symphony. Another one was the Turangalîla-Symphonie by Messiaen, completed in 1948, also for the Boston Symphony.

Great German orchestral works might include the Violin Concerto by Arnold Schoenberg and the Violin Concerto by Alban Berg. A lot of their most important works are chamber or vocal music, so not included here.

The 20th century saw the growing importance of composers from outside the core nations of Italy, France and Germany, who had dominated music for so many centuries. Foremost among these are Bela Bartók whose Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta (1936) is one of the loveliest in the first half of the century. Another great piece from that decade is Shostakovich's Symphony No. 5, written in 1937. While we are visiting Russia, we could include Prokofiev's Classical Symphony (1917) and Piano Concerto No. 2 (1923).

While we are talking about piano concertos, there were some great ones written in the 20th century such as the three by Bartók (all good, but let's pick the Piano Concerto No. 3 from 1945).

Also part of the 20th century canon would be some music by Charles Ives. I would pick the Three Places in New England (Orchestral Set No. 1) from 1914 rather than one of his symphonies.

You might have noticed that all these works are from the first half of the century. I will do the second half in another post. That will be the really difficult one because there is so much to sift through and the really important pieces have probably not all surfaced yet. It really takes about a hundred years for what is essential to become clear. Semi-clear, at least!

Ok that's a rough try at a list of the core canonic pieces of 20th century orchestral music up to 1950. Now, as is traditional on the internet, you can all weigh in in the comments and tell me about all the ones I missed. Of course, some of those were intentional.

Let me muse for a moment on how I approached this. It was largely intuitive: I did not pore through long lists of 20th century works and then hone it down. Instead I just thought about what orchestral pieces from the first half of the century really stick in your mind--which ones are really essential. I'm sure I missed some important ones, so here is your chance to remind me.

Just picking a couple from the list for our envoi today, here are first, Bartók's Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta. This is from the Deutsche Grammophon box of Boulez conducting Bartók:

And next, Charles Ives' Three Places in New England. This is the BBC National Orchestra of Wales conducted by Nicholas Collon:

UPDATE: A frequent commentator helps me out by mentioning Sibelius. I'm pretty sure I was thinking of him but got distracted somehow. But yes, some of the finest orchestral works of the first half of the 20th century are the symphonies of Jean Sibelius. The Symphony No. 2 was written in 1902, so everything from then on qualifies and I would include all of them. I have never been as fond of the tone poems like Finlandia and Tapiola, but that might just be me. This reminds me of another omission: the tone poems of Richard Strauss of which we might want to include Also sprach Zarathustra.

Friday Miscellanea

Here is a short documentary in French about the Georgian pianist Khatia Buniatishvili who seems to be living in Paris these days. Never mind if you don't speak French, the music (and the visuals) come across anyway:

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Speaking of visuals, here is something you don't see too often--or ever: a composer posing naked onstage while a string quartet premieres his latest work:

Only in Australia, you say? That's composer Andrew Batt-Rawden re-enacting his appearance at the concert. Let's let reporter Amanda Hooten tell the story:

I was in the audience for the Australian Art Quartet's Butt-naked Salon concert at Sydney's Yellow House. As the show began, the quartet came in and sat down. Nearby, multidisciplinary artist Clementine Robertson was lying motionless on a dais with vials of beetroot juice dripping all over her. Then, in the silence, Batt-Rawden entered wearing a fluffy bathrobe, à la Muhammad Ali. With him came Archibald Prize-winning artist Wendy Sharpe. Batt-Rawden walked to a low white box, took off his robe, climbed onto the box, and struck a pose. The quartet played, Robertson dripped, and Batt-Rawden stood starkers while Sharpe painted him onto the walls.

* * *

And on the instrumental front, the Strad reports that a violin made from one of Winston Churchill's cigar boxes is to be auctioned off:

A 1950s violin crafted from one of Winston Churchill’s cigar boxes is to be offered for sale this October in London by Ingles & Hayday.

The 1956 fiddle ‘in a rustic style’ was made by self-taught English maker and former master saddler William Robinson, who spent his childhood converting empty boxes into violins, according to the auctioneers. The instrument was played by Yehudi Menuhin in a radio broadcast to America in April 1958, and is expected to fetch between £500 and £1,000. It is branded ‘Made in Havana – Cuba’, and on the back, ‘Selección Privada, Fabrica Tabacos Don Joaquin, Habana’.

Here's a case where the aroma of the instrument might be better than the sound.

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The problem of the intersection of identity politics and aesthetics is hardly a new one, and the classic response is age-old as well. But rarely has it been put better than by J. R. R. Tolkien in his letter replying to a German publisher in 1938 who, as part of the process of arranging to publish a German translation of The Hobbit, inquired as to the ethnic background of the author. Was he German? Did he have any Jewish blood?

25 July 1938

20 Northmoor Road, Oxford

Dear Sirs,

Thank you for your letter. I regret that I am not clear as to what you intend by arisch. I am not of Aryan extraction: that is Indo-Iranian; as far as I am aware none of my ancestors spoke Hindustani, Persian, Gypsy, or any related dialects. But if I am to understand that you are enquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people. My great-great-grandfather came to England in the eighteenth century from Germany: the main part of my descent is therefore purely English, and I am an English subject — which should be sufficient. I have been accustomed, nonetheless, to regard my German name with pride, and continued to do so throughout the period of the late regrettable war, in which I served in the English army. I cannot, however, forbear to comment that if impertinent and irrelevant inquiries of this sort are to become the rule in matters of literature, then the time is not far distant when a German name will no longer be a source of pride.

Your enquiry is doubtless made in order to comply with the laws of your own country, but that this should be held to apply to the subjects of another state would be improper, even if it had (as it has not) any bearing whatsoever on the merits of my work or its sustainability for publication, of which you appear to have satisfied yourselves without reference to my Abstammung.

I trust you will find this reply satisfactory, and

remain yours faithfully,

J. R. R. Tolkien

Yes indeedy, the inquiry as to an artist's ethnic (or other) identity is indeed impertinent and irrelevant.

* * *

The prize for The Least Gracious Comment on Bob Dylan's Nobel Prize goes to, and why am I not surprised, Norman Lebrecht:

They couldn’t find a writer so a musician was the next-best thing? Or was the committee just looking to big itself up with a blaze of celebrity? For lyrics written half a century ago and known the world over?

And if literary merit of lyrics had anything to do with it, shouldn’t Leonard Cohen take precedence?

Much as we love Bob Dylan, this gives no cause for cheer.

For further entertainment, the fifty comments are worth a look.

* * *

The New York Times has a story on the fascinating and growing field of forensic musicology. I used to tell people that I was a forensic musicologist, but I meant it as a joke: "this man was obviously killed with a violin bow, re-haired by the Viennese bow-re-hairer Herr Helmut Schmidt-Wolfenbüttel."

Peter Oxendale, a onetime glam rocker (“We all have skeletons,” he says), is perhaps the world’s leading forensic musicologist, the person musicians call when they believe someone has ripped off their work. In a penthouse overlooking the English Channel, he analyzes songs, everything from pop hits to classical pieces, until he is sure there has been an infringement, or not.

* * *

I'm not sure precisely why, but every time I read something that is intellectually opaque and hopelessly confused it is at NewMusicBox. The latest is about A Universal Music and I wish I knew what they were talking about:

Prior to this lesson, I was fervently driven by a personal mission to express the hybridity of my biology and experience as a half-Indian/half-Euro-American person within my music. The search for stylistic confluence manifested itself in numerous trips to study in India and four recordings of original music that explored Indian concepts, environments, and sounds within my jazz quartet.

I'm not trying to be difficult, honestly, this paragraph is not ripped bleeding from a context which would explain it. Go read the whole thing to be sure. Here is some more:

As I ruminated on my Banff experience, I began to understand that the idea of musical genre is an illusion that ignores the plurality of ideas, experiences, and sounds that exist within a community. When a sonic experience is reduced to a category, we establish boundaries that inhibit creativity with notions of stylistic correctness. This approach creates myriad problems that throw into question the objectivity that is inherently placed on genre.

What could it possibly mean to "express the hybridity of one's biology"? What is "stylistic confluence"? There are problems of agency and abstraction in this: "the idea of musical genre is an illusion that ignores the plurality of ideas..." How can an "idea" ignore anything? Does anyone, when listening to a minuet or allemande or symphony or polka, "reduce it to a category?" How would that work? How does "genre" have objectivity inherently placed on it? How do you train your mind to think in this bizarre way? You got me.

* * *

A really appropriate envoi for today would be some transcendently cool tune by Bob Dylan, but I just put up a bunch yesterday, plus the really good Dylan tracks are mostly not available on YouTube. So in honor of J. R. R. Tolkien, here is Galadriel's song of Eldamar, sung by Signe Asmussen in the original Elvish:

Bob Dylan: Nobel Laureate in Literature

I don't write too many posts that respond to the news of the day, but this deserves one. The Nobel Prize in Literature in 2016 has just been awarded to Bob Dylan and I can't think of a more deserving recipient. Here is the story at Yahoo:

US music legend Bob Dylan won the Nobel Literature Prize on Thursday, the first songwriter to win the prestigious award in a decision that stunned prize watchers.

Dylan, 75, was honoured "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition," the Swedish Academy said.

Bob Dylan is a truly remarkable figure with a unique poetic vision and one that he found the exactly appropriate musical means to convey. Musically he is inspired by the whole sound and texture of American music which he shapes and tailors to fit his lyrical genius. There are so many astonishing lyrics that stick in the mind such as this line from "Visions of Johanna" from the album Blonde on Blonde:

The ghost of electricity howls in the bones of her face

This captures the 60s for me as adroitly as the famous lines from Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge captured the Romantic vision:

A savage place! as holy and enchanted 

As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted 

By woman wailing for her demon-lover!

But for many of Dylan's greatest songs the impact of the lyrics is a cumulative one and you might as well quote a whole stanza:

They're selling postcards of the hanging, they're painting the passports brown

The beauty parlor is filled with sailors, the circus is in town

Here comes the blind commissioner, they've got him in a trance

One hand is tied to the tight-rope walker, the other is in his pants

And the riot squad they're restless, they need somewhere to go

As Lady and I look out tonight, from Desolation Row

I've been more than a fan of Dylan's since the late 1960s and by that I just mean that I went through a real Dylan phase in between my rock bassist phase and my classical guitarist phase when I performed songs by Dylan (and myself). One song I recall performing with pleasure was "John Wesley Harding" from the eponymous album:

John Wesley Harding

Was a friend to the poor

He traveled with a gun in every hand

All along this countryside

He opened a many a door

But he was never known

To hurt an honest man

The Dylanesque line is "He traveled with a gun in every hand."  Not both hands or each hand, but every hand. The last two lines of the stanza also have the Dylan flavour which consists in saying something that is poetically true, but in a different way and one that catches your attention. Let's listen to this song:

We were lucky to find that on YouTube (though cut short) as usually they keep it scrubbed pretty clear of copyright recordings of Bob Dylan. This album was the first he recorded after a serious motorcycle accident and it was both a return to a very simple texture and a lean towards a country music style. The most famous song on that album was "All Along the Watchtower" with its formidably enigmatic lyrics:

"There must be some way out of here" said the joker to the thief

"There's too much confusion", I can't get no relief

Businessmen, they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earth

None of them along the line know what any of it is worth.

"No reason to get excited", the thief he kindly spoke

"There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke

But you and I, we've been through that, and this is not our fate

So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late".

All along the watchtower, princes kept the view

While all the women came and went, barefoot servants, too.

Outside in the distance a wildcat did growl

Two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl.

That's it, that's the whole lyric. We discovered that Bob Dylan is actually a Cylon in the season finale of season three of Battlestar Galactica. It was a remarkably successful way of evoking the birth of a submerged memory by using lyrical fragments from the song as lines of dialogue for the four actors playing mole Cylons. At least it worked really well for me because, just like the characters, I felt more and more a dimly recalled familiarity. The last episode ends with an arrangement of the song by Bear McCreary. Wikipedia has an article on it.

Another song I liked to perform because of the music as much as the lyrics was "Lay Lady, Lay" from Nashville Skyline, Dylan's country album. It is actually the only song from way back then that I still remember all the chords for!

Another extraordinary song from Blonde on Blonde is possibly the longest song Dylan ever wrote: "Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands" which I actually performed in its entirety several times:

Sadly, there is no good version by Dylan on YouTube, so I have put up a good one by Joan Baez.

I have to admit that I have not kept track of all the albums Dylan has released in recent decades, but I think I will start to explore some of them now. Let's end with a couple of his greatest songs, both from Highway 61 Revisited. This is the opening, "Like a Rolling Stone" in a live performance from 1966:

And this is the closing song, "Desolation Row", also in a live performance from 1966:

It's Canonic!

Every other essay you read about the current state of classical music seems to take a swipe at the "Canon". This is defined as the ossified accretion of pieces of classical music by Dead White Guys that orchestras, ensembles and recitalists keep playing despite its elitist lack of diversity. It is as if these much-beloved pieces of classical music are no better than barnacles clinging to the concert hall stage--best if they were scraped off so we can spend more time listening to, well, what? Ah, more compositions by everyone who isn't a Dead White Guy.

I have a different view of the canon. As far as I can see it consists of pieces that have an aesthetic quality that appeals to the listener. There are actually quite a few different "canons" if by that we simply mean lists of pieces that people like to hear. The audience for the Canon by Pachelbel is rather different from the audience for the Hammerklavier Sonata by Beethoven which is different again from the audience for the lute songs of John Dowland and different again from the audience for the music of John Cage. But each of these works is part of a different canon. We might label them as Mainstream Classical, Serious Listener Classical, Early Music Classical and Avant-Garde Classical respectively.

What I'm wondering is if my readers would be interesting in doing an exploration with me of these different kinds of canons? I think they are always in a state of flux and it might be nice to check in and see what the content is at the moment. For example, from our perspective, what would be included in the canon of 20th Century Masterpieces? Is Paul Hindemith still on the list? Where would Henri Dutilleux fall these days? How about John Cage?

But while there is certainly a lot of debate about the 20th century, we might be able to find some controversy even in earlier times. Just how good is the music of Henrich Biber? C. P. E. Bach? This would be a great opportunity for my readers to make suggestions both about different eras and canons and to start some arguments for and against different composers. The reward for this is the potential discovery of some wonderful music we weren't aware of (and maybe some wonderful performers as well).

So leave me a comment! Perhaps we can all distract ourselves from the US election campaign and other horrifying world events!

To whet your appetite, here are some of the those lute songs by John Dowland. These are five songs recorded at Wigmore Hall, London in July 2013 by Iestyn Davies, countertenor and Thomas Dunford, lute:

A Heartfelt One Hundred

All too often, I suppose, I have fun mocking the puffery, pomposity and ideological bias of writing about music. So, time to make amends and point you to some well-done and sincere music criticism. Fiona Maddocks is a classical music critic and she has written a book assembling a list of personally heartfelt pieces of music that is just what it purports to be. She offers a brief introduction at The Guardian: Fiona Maddocks: music to carry you through.

In compiling the list for this book, I had one rule: the music comes first. I resist the idea of expecting music to feed or prompt an emotional state, so I tried to turn the matter on its head. Why do I want to listen to a particular work at any given moment? What is the imperative? Beethoven’s “Hammerklavier” Sonata was the name of the first piece I wrote down. Soon I had a couple of hundred absolute dead certainties and a mild sense of panic.

Yep, the music comes first. The selection of pieces in the article begins with Lonely Child by Claude Vivier, possibly the only Canadian composer to have real recognition outside Canada.

The next is a piece by Gustav Holst, not the well-known The Planets, but the single-movement Egdon Heath:

Which, in its dark atmospheric gloom reminds me of Shostakovich. Next is the motet Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied (BWV 225) by Bach:

Fiona Maddocks recounts the lovely anecdote that I have mentioned here about when Mozart heard this music:

Bach wrote the motet as part of the Lutheran liturgy for New Year’s Day 1724, his first at the Thomaskirche, Leipzig. Years later, in 1789, it left an indelible impression on Mozart. He heard it in Bach’s church and was overwhelmed. According to a witness: “Hardly had the choir sung a few bars when Mozart sat up startled; a few measures more and he called out: ‘What is this?’… As it finished he cried out, full of joy, ‘Now there is something one can learn from!’”

You bet! I'll put up another from this fascinating list, the Symphony in E minor by Florence Price. This is one of those pieces that Blogger won't embed so you will have to follow the link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jgJ1OkjnaI

This reminds me of Dvorak and is both more charming and more well-written than a lot of American symphonic music from this era. Fiona Maddocks mentions that the composer was both black and female, but I'm not sure that matters in the least. Another woman composer on the list is Lili Boulanger, sister of Nadia, who died tragically young. This is the Vieille prière bouddhique (1917). Again, Blogger won't embed. What do they have against women composers?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xF9SltYJAT8

This is also interesting, though perhaps a good deal less interesting than, say the music of Debussy from the same time. Fiona Maddocks' list continues with some well-known pieces like Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra and Mozart's Requiem alongside much less-known ones like Dowland's Flow My Tears and Elliot Carter's Dialogues II (2012) from towards the end of his life. Let's have a listen to that one:

Hmm, well that sounds pretty much like everything else I have ever heard by Elliot Carter (and a host of other high modernists). These dissonances and rhythmic dislocations always seem, to me, to have exactly the same aesthetic effect. What do you think?

Anyway, I came to praise Fiona Maddocks, not blame Elliot Carter! So applause for a fascinating and entirely sincere presentation of a lot of interesting and varied music. You know, that is really what music critics should be doing: introducing us to music they think is good. Not, emphatically, trying to educate us regarding social justice. As she says, "the music comes first."

The World's Most Unlistenable Music?

I was just reading the Wall Street Journal and they had a little video titled The World's Most Undrinkable Wine which I had to look at, of course. These kinds of titles are really just clickbait, but in this case it worked. The wine in question is South Africa's Pinotage which has a smokey character that can be a turnoff depending on how the wine is made. To me, it just sounds interesting and I am going to buy some Pinotage next chance I get as I have never tasted it. I love Lapsang Souchong, which is a very smokey tea. But I will let you watch that video...

I'm not a fan of video clips generally and this is no exception. I usually long for a more intelligent interviewer (or a more intelligent interviewee!). The great thing about the internet is that you can browse over articles to see if they are worth reading much more easily than you can browse through a video. For me, broadcast television is unwatchable because you can't skip ahead.

But back to my title! I stole it, of course, because it makes you want to click on it. But then I started thinking, hmm, what is it that might make some music unlistenable? And for whom? That makes the subject an interesting one.

The most salient reasons why some music might be unlistenable are probably subjective ones. While I believe that there is such a thing as objective aesthetic quality, that is there are some pieces of music that any reasonably educated listener would acknowledge as being of high aesthetic quality and other pieces of which the opposite could be said, sorting this out requires some effort. A lot of the time we tend to listen casually, meaning that we tend to enjoy styles and tunes we are familiar with and enjoy less ones we are not.

So right off the bat, we can say that if you hear a kind of music that is entirely foreign to you, you might find it more or less unlistenable. Here is an example of some traditional Thai music that will be unfamiliar to most people:

Some contemporary music is in a style that most people will find unfamiliar as well. This is a piece for solo guitar by Elliot Carter, Changes (1983):

Some other music might be, to some people, unlistenable because it is overfamiliar or because it is in a style that is crude, excessive or maudlin. Here is "Memory" from Cats by Andrew Lloyd Webber which fulfills at least two of those criteria:

But this doesn't exhaust all the possibilities. What about a piece of music that is in a style that isn't particularly familiar, nor unfamiliar, but that is just very poorly written or performed? Believe it or not, thanks to some clever mathematicians and a TED talk by Scott Rickard, we have an example of what might be the world's ugliest music. This is a clip of the talk in which he explains the piece. The piece itself, which is only a couple of minutes long, begins around the 7:49 mark.

What criteria is Scott using? Basically, the criteria of repetition: musical beauty, he tells us, is based on repetition. His example is the recurring and uniting motif in the Symphony No. 5 of Beethoven:

On the other hand, there are pieces that many would call more beautiful than this piece that use much less repetition. Take the slow movement to Beethoven's Hammerklavier piano sonata, for example:

I think that it would be more accurate to say that we enjoy beauty in music most when we can follow it and repetition is the means that composers use to organize the music so that it can be easily followed.

Scott Rickard only explored one way of creating musical ugliness, that of non-repetitivity. But surely there are others. What about simply ugly sound? There are some sounds that are considered particularly beautiful while others are considered unpleasant and grating. I recall a clarinet player telling me that the most beautiful note he ever heard was sung in a recital by Jessye Norman. This is "When I Am Laid in Earth" by Purcell:

Other times the human voice can produce sounds we do not want to hear.

But what about the composition itself? Is it possible to simply write a bad piece of music? Well, sure. Most composers do, on a regular basis, but they destroy them before they see the light of day! As Schoenberg said to a student once, the eraser end of the pencil is more important than the other end. But can we find any examples of badly written music? That is quite hard, actually, as no-one really wants to put something up on YouTube and label it a "bad" or "poor" musical composition. So we have to dig around a bit. This, for example, is not really bad, or not as bad as it could be. It is just typical of a non-good or mediocre composition:

It just noodles along with no interesting melodies or phrases or rhythms or harmonies. Entirely inspiration-free! It is probably healthy to listen to poor music from time to time to remind ourselves what we are trying to avoid!

Ok, let's end with the most unlistenable music I can find on YouTube. There are lots of possibilities, but this collection of bad auditions from X Factor will provide you with several quite unpleasant experiences: