Classical music that is close to "ambient"

I saw a bullshit compilation called 'Best of Classical Chill Out' on Amazon today. It looked terrible, but it made me think how much I love classical music (contemporary and "early", in most cases) that might be considered indistinguishable from what some call "ambient". Not too interested in defining what that term means, more in getting to subjective responses that might yield further interesting listening.

Morton Feldman, Harold Budd, some Robert Ashley for starters. Loads of Cage things. Luc Ferrari's 'Presque Rien'. 18th century harp music with the volume at 8 o'clock.

Any takers?

Morton Feldman

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wLexITh2OA

Maybe not closely related to thread topic, but I've been wondering a bunch lately about whether certain kinds of electronica have replaced classical music for a certain group of music listeners (not that they were listening to classical before and have now switched to electronica, but that they are the kind of listeners that in the early 20th might've been listening to Schoenberg but in early 21st are listening to, idk, maybe Talabot?) I guess for me the connection is two-fold; stylistically both can be very stately, distant, emotional in a less expressive more subtle way, very distant from folk vernacular, classist in a sort of high-brow fashion -- and, personally, while I've loved examples of both classical and electronica, I've never really connected with either in a particular consistent way.

idk, i'm not writing a serious thesis here, just a rumination. anyone else have any ideas about this? (also, isn't there a lot of crossover at a certain point? i do remember hearing a lecture at IASPM about crossover between serious electronic artists and classical idiom, and maybe alex ross touches on this in his history once or twice iirc?)

How about Steve Reich's 'Music for 18 Musicians'? Depends on what you define as ambient. If we're talking spacey, arhythmic with little dynamic range, then Gustav Holst's 'Neptune: The Mystic'
Would fit the bill. If we're talking Musique Concrete, Stockhausen's 'Gesang der Junglinge'.

xpost I've always been under the impression that classical musicians and composers still largely pride themselves on instrumental performance and the ability to recreate a composition in a live setting. In general classical music has trended towards music getting more complex and harder to play; even the sparse stuff tends to be full of meticulous rhythms and to require familiarity with the full range of the instrument and extended techniques. Whereas the most stately/distant/highbrow electronic music nowadays is all laptop-based.

mahler malmsteen

Definitely Erik Satie:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-Xm7s9eGxU

Johann johannsson

John Luther Adams :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6wX1c-Zk9Q

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRZLxxR23K4

the Adagio from Mahler's 9th Symphony
final movement - Louange à l'Immortalité de Jésus - from Messiaen's Quatuor pour la fin du temps
most Ingram Marshall stuff that I've heard

Big Feldman fan here already. And...

"In 2000, Eberhard Blum, Nils Vigeland, and Jan Williams came together once more as “The Feldman Soloists” to perform Crippled Symmetry, the trio Feldman composed for them, on the 25th anniversary celebration of the festival he founded. The recording of this concert is now finally available on CD, and is destined to become the reference release of this work."

http://frozenreeds.com/?p=21

John Adams - Shaker Loops (Especially Lightning Over Water)
Paul Dresher
Tony Conrad and the microtonalists basically own this thread

What about Ingram Marshall? Anyone got any recommendations for a jumping-in point?

album on New Albion with "Fog Tropes", "Gradual Requiem" and "Gambuh I" on it is great

Ta!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rC5UEZuFMXE

I don't really think of Tony Conrad as "classical" tbh