So you’re having an existential crisis. Naturally, the first thing you do is ask yourself, “what music should I listen to while I ponder the absurdity of my existence?”

This isn’t just melancholia – there’s plenty of music for that. And the catch-all-word “sad” simply doesn’t cover it. Maybe there’s an intense longing in your heart, but your head tells you that your longing will not be satisfied. You tried praying to God, even though Nietzsche told you God was dead. And other people are no help at all.

Don’t settle for second-rate despondent ditties – you’ve tried the rest, now try the best – Anton Webern‘s expressionism.

Webern was a member of the Second Viennese School and a student of its founder, Arnold Schoenberg. They was a group of Germanic composers in the early 20th century who worked valiantly to break away from traditional systems of tonality. Webern stands out among his fellow composers because his compositions were ultra-organized; because of this, Webern, not Schoenberg, became the inspiration for serial music movement. Serialists used mathematical structures to create pieces that left no room for foolish human errors such as emotion. Boulez, one of the champions of serialism, criticized Schoenberg for allowing a little humanity (IE romantic tendencies) into his music, whereas Webern’s is cold, stark, and empty – just like life!

If one-and-a-half minutes isn’t long enough to cover your crisis, the whole six-movement suite can be heard here.

As an organist, and a masochist, I love the music of Max Reger – he penned one of my favorite organ works. His music is often so complex and busy that it was said that, instead of writing black notes on white paper, he would start with black paper and just while out the parts without notes.

In the realm of composers, though, he’s probably on the C-list, so many people haven’t heard of him unless you’ve encountered his music – and if you have, you either love it or hate it. Consequentially, there are some truly scathing famous criticisms of Reger’s music (all taken here from Nicolas Slonimsky‘s Lexicon of Musical Invective):

“This Reger is a sarcastic, churlish fellow, bitter and pedantic and rude. He is a sort of musical Cyclops, a strong, ugly creature bulging with knotty and unshapely muscles, an ogre of composition. In listening to these works … one is perforce reminded of the photograph of Reger … that shows something that is like a swollen, myopic beetle with thick lips and sullen expression, crouching on an organ-bench. There is something repulsive as well as pedantic in this art. His works … are like mathematical problems and solutions, sheer brain-spun and unlyrical.” – Paul Rosenfeld, Musical Portraits

“Reger’s [String] Quartet … looks like music, it sounds like music, it might even taste like music; yet it remains, stubbornly, not music. … Reger might be epitomized as a composer whose name is the same either forward or backward, and whose music, curiously, often displays the same characteristic.” – Irving Kolodin, New York Sun

“[Reger’s ‘100th Psalm’] is enough to split the roof of the theater with the skull of the audience.” – Pall Mall Gazette

Reger, however, had the last laugh, with this popular quote which he sent to one of his critics:

“I am sitting in the smallest room of my house. I have your review before me. In a moment it will be behind me!”

Sergei Diaghilev, head of the Ballet Russes (a French organization, despite its name and artistic director), is responsible for the creation of the finest works of the early 20th century. While the most famous production is no doubt Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, you can read the list of other works which the company commissioned here – and it’s pretty amazing.

One of those works is The Three Cornered Hat by Manuel de Falla. The music, derived from traditional Spanish dances, is nothing groundbreaking. However, being composed just after the end of World War I in 1919, it does demonstrate how the conflict triggered a sudden return to a more conservative musical style. (More proof of this can be seen in Stravinsky; he caused quite a ruckus with The Rite in 1913, but composed the docile, neoclassical Pulcinella in 1920.)