OK. Time to be even more pedantic (and I'm fairly sure that someone else will come along to beat this).
The first millenium A.D. didn't even start with 1 A.D.
It was a few years later that they decided on the calendar, so we should really say that the first millenium A.D. is considered to start with 1 A.D.
Let alone the fact that they guessed (probably) wrong when Jesus of Nazareth was born, so that it's probably something like 2001 this year...
So maybe that's the problem - we haven't actually heard that much 21st century music because we've only had 3 months of it!

I'll get my coat.

Was a bit surprised by some of the works on your list, actually, Ian.  (Namely, it seems primarily a late-20th century list of composer names (w/ one or two exceptions) -- that list could've been made in the 70s or 80s, but perhaps more on that in another post.)

Here's a very hastily thrown-together list of works from the last 7-8 yrs that I find particularly exceptional, for one reason or another:

I'll start by seconding your vote for DARK MATTER
Beat Furrer:  Aria (1999), FAMA (2005)
Jürg Frey:  Second String Quartet (2000)
Peter Ablinger:  QUADRATUREN V ("MUSIK") (2000); Two Strings and Noise (2004) (which goes down as, by far, the weirdest piece I know)
Benedict Mason:  felt|ebb|thus|brink|here|array|telling (2001)
Stefano Gervasoni:  Godspell (2002)
Pierluigi Billone:  Mani. Giacometti (2000)


There are plenty of others, but that'll do for now.

This list leaves out lots of recent favorites from the middle/end of the last decade (several works by Billone, Bauckholt, Haas, earlier Ablinger, etc., etc.), but, we've already agreed this is an artificial exercise w/ an artificial temporal boundary, so ... there we are.

I was just a bit surprised to see so many names of an older generation, and in several cases, my sense is that the recent works of these composers is somewhat backward-looking and quite a bit less innovative than their earlier (20th C.) work (Dillon & Dusapin, in particular, but also Ferneyhough) or isn't markedly different from the work they were doing 20-40 yrs ago (Lachenmann, Finnissy, Birtwistle, Sciarrino). 

I'll absolutely agree w/ you on the Lachenmann Concertini (which really is quite stunning), but I'm less convinced by the recent Ferneyhough (which seems rather old-fashioned to me in a lot of respects).


Sure. 

I'm actually slightly ambivalent about the Gervasoni, having to do almost entirely w/ objections about the vocal writing and text setting (and, well, actually the text itself).  The instrumental writing, though, is really quite fascinating and was/is unlike anything else I've heard.  On a surface level, it's quite timbrally inventive, but much more to the point, from an orchestrational perspective it really does strike me as quite innovative (something I see in much of Gervasoni's work, along w/ a few others who are loosely affiliated ... Erik Ona, Carola Bauckholt, Caspar Johannes Walter, etc.).  Without going into too much detail, it has for me to do w/ combinations of instrumental timbres/textures and a kind of extension of the 'hyper-instrument' approach to instrumental resources that one sees in the Thurmchen's & elsewhere.

The Mason is stunning on every level.  I haven't heard a more sonically innovative piece in many, many years.  I find the notion of site-specific concert-installations quite interesting (and ripe for further investigation), his approach to instrumentation (including the work w/ newly-invented instruments (mvt. no. 8 "for Metal Tubes With Resonance Holes" is my favorite)) is extremely exciting and unique, plus the extensions and innovations w/ spatialization of instruments, etc., etc. ... but really what it comes down to is the sounds themselves, which I find utterly fascinating.  I also rather like the matter-of-factness of the form of the work as a collection of explorations of a series of timbres that are directly connected to a) their instruments (particularly important w/ the invented instruments) and b) the manner in which those instruments are played (the material w/ which the instruments are bowed/struck/plucked, etc.).

Must check the Mason - like the disc on Bridge quite a lot. "Lighthouses.." wasn't really all that.

Wanted to hear the recent disc you mention but never thought the ideas would come off on CD.

I already took a stab at that once in reply to Ian's question, but ... I'll try again. 

I haven't heard the piece in over a year, so perhaps I'll pull it back out and give it another listen, but what I can say was that it was one of the highlights of Huddersfield '05 for me (I certainly wasn't alone -- perhaps we heard a particularly strong performance of the piece).  As I said earlier, I have some objections to the text, the text setting, and the vocal writing (though wouldn't go nearly so far as to call it "rubbish"), but I found the instrumental writing extremely interesting and exciting, and, in particular, the interaction b/t the rather unique percussion setup (CD cases on plate glass, coke bottles, and the like) and the rest of the ensemble.  (What I found most interesting was the hyper-instrument approach vis a vis timbre/register/texture/dynamics/etc. ... individual sonic events from various instruments combining neither to create polyphonic interactions nor single/singular textures but some sort of hybrid (and, as I said, this is something I see in several of Gervasoni's friends/colleagues as well, whose works I generally enjoy as well).

What didn't you like about it?  Are there other pieces of his that you like, or is this representative of a general dislike of Gervasoni's work?

was developed and improved upon by his disciple Arnold Schoenberg.

Many supposedly wild solo sax pieces inevitably suffer from such comparisons (playing a notated score which consists of the sorts of sounds one might hear in a free improvisation is very different to hearing an improvisation itself); one of the most striking ones, however, I have heard is Volker Heyn's Buon Natale, fratello Fritz!. Amazing stuff.