POLLERO!: ILM's Top 100 Notated Pieces of Music Since 1890

Totally deserves its iconic status. I forgot to throw it a vote. I always kind of wish it was way longer!

iTunes went right to "Central Park After Dark" after that one. I forget how awesome that is sometimes.

And for his second appearance in the countdown:

76 Steve Reich - Sextet Points: 370 Votes: 4 #1s: 0

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/CiqNG5GHduQ/maxresdefault.jpg

I still have the Another Look at Counterpoint disc in my CD drive because of "Piano Phase" so I can jump to this one. I always mostly thought of this piece as a part of the album more than a standout per se, weirdly, but always a good part of the album that I enjoy?

Listening to persian surgery dervishes rn and not stopping for no reich

I missed that Sextet is actually tied with another piece, one that I hold in pretty high esteem.

76 Iannis Xenakis - Pithoprakta Score: 370 Votes: 4 #1s: 0

http://www.furious.com/perfect/graphics/xenakisdiagram2.jpg

I found Norman Kay's review of the first British performance of this, in the Spring 1967 issue of Tempo:

Throughout the work, Xenakis has reversed the normal procedure; instead
of building his material from separately announced units, he has refined it from a
mobile mass of indeterminate sound. He has confronted the listener with contrasts
of density and of continuity and discontinuity. He has controlled his material by
calculation, rather than by traditional tone-placing. Since Pithoprckta, Xenakis has
moved further along his chosen path, but the later procedures, not excluding the
use of a programmed computer (which after all does nothing but present the
composer with a wider range of choices more quickly than would be possible by
any other means) are all foreshadowed in this early work. So, indeed, are the
problems. By far the largest of these centre on two main points. First: is there a
direct parallel between the behaviour of sub-atomic particles, and the basic mat-
erial of music ? If not, then Xenakis and composers like him are trapped inside a
new pseudo-parallelism not very different in origin from, and much more danger-
ous in results than, the literary parallelism of the nineteenth century; and a
Romanticism which this time reduces the responsibility of the artist very conven-
iently. Second: even granted that a true parallel may be present, is it not impossible
to filter its facts in such a way that the human ear can usefully absorb them
and find them meaningful? Would it not require a kind of aural microscope to
separate the plethora of facts involved, and a kind of computerised memory
storage before they could be related to human experience? Otherwise, is it not
rather like asking a man who has just rammed his head into a brick wall not to feel
any pain, because the wall is really only a shimmering wave of particles ? Are not
our any pain, because the wall is really only a shimmering wave of particles ? Are not
our limitations of sense too great?

Two trombones, xylophone, wood block, 46 strings, each with individual parts, used as percussion, noisemakers, glissando machines, coming together and apart in an emulation of Brownian motion.

Love that critique. I think about the paradoxical Romanticism of the avante garde often.

I wonder what Kay thought the grave dangers were of Xenakis's scientific parallelism.

E.g. the lone wanderer who this time is the only one who dares to abnegate his will!

Xpost to self, and not directed at Xenakis who always sounds fucking great

playing catchup right now. I also have to wash dishes, but luckily I've got the Branca symphony that's loud enough to cut through the running water sound :)

If conductors of major North American orchestras voted in this poll, the next piece might have been a contender for #1. It's also the first entry in our countdown to receive a #1 vote.

I'll give you 10-15m to guess what it is.

btw Rusalka was my #10 but I did my whole ballot from 1-4:30am the night before the original due date so I'm not in a good position to defend it. I really like Dvorak though. I played the very first of his Slavonic Dances in high school and it was the most amazing thing I'd ever heard. The notes in my London recording of Rusalka says Dvorak had always wanted to be know as a composer of operas first and foremost-- I think that's why I gave Rusalka such high standing. I'd love to discuss him more when his 9th symphony places.

Hahaha xpost I bet it's Dvorak's 9th and I'm the #1 vote.

Become Ocean?

I wish I voted :(

Frederik, I wish you handled programming for major North American orchestras. (Including Seattle for that matter.)

Tom OTM:

75 Antonin Dvořák - Symphony no. 9 ('New World') Points: 374 Votes: 4 #1 Votes: 1

http://media.oxfam.org.uk/images/products/HighStDonated/Zoom/hd_100163443_01.jpg?v=1

So Dvořák was basically unknown in his lifetime, right? And then every conductor in America started doing the New World one? I've got a Szell recording with the Cleveland SO and a beat up old LP of Berenstein with the New York Philharmonic, but it's the Szell one I've been listening to since I was 17.

A populist classic and rightly so. Such classic tunes.
xp

permanently ruined for British people of a certain age thanks to a series of 1970s bread commercials

Sund4r otm, this is one of the truly great warhorses.

Great book I read years ago called New World Symphonies about the gradual and very muddled integration of genuinely north american material into the classical lexicon (not just Dvorak, also talks abt Delius, Grainger, Coleridge-Taylor etc). Not academic, super thought provoking.

this

https://www.amazon.com/New-World-Symphonies-American-European/dp/0300072317

NV on the other hand, have you considered loving this piece and never eating bread again?

i am fond of it but it is irrevocably burned into my head as this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Mq59ykPnAE

i love the szell recording a lot but for the playlist i had to take the opportunity to get the Czech Phil with Karel Ancerl in there.

74 Gavin Bryars - The Sinking of the Titanic Points: 375 Votes: 3 #1s: 0

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6e/St%C3%B6wer_Titanic.jpg

In The Sinking of the Titanic (1969) - where the essence of the work is its unfulfilled idea, as in the 'conceptual art' of the period, so that the score is a body of verbal instructions - the aim was to recover the sound of the band on the sinking liner playing their hymntune as they went down with their vessel...

Bryar's use of hymns... is devoid of religious meaning. Indeed, all his work questions the assumption of a psychological continuity between an artist's work and his self - hence his penchants for what could not be believed: the sentimental, for the manifestly constructed (as in minimalism), for meaningless coincidence, for fantasy novels.

- Paul Griffiths, Modern Music and After

Did the Eno-produced recording make the Pitchfork top ambient albums list?

The Bryars does remind me (a lot, actually) of Stars of the Lid. Were SotL eligible for this poll?

Also re: Bryars, there's three different recordings of this on Spotify in the US and they're all wildly different lengths. One is one track @ 25 minutes, one is 11 tracks at 61 minutes, one is 15 tracks at 74 minutes. I'm trying out the 61 minute version after listening to most of the 25 minute version, there's less taped stuff so far but it's still mostly similar sounding string loops etc.

I didn't think SotL ever notated anything but maybe I'm wrong? The Bryars has a text score but it's fairly open. I definitely see the comparison (although Bryars obv came earlier).

And we're back to the symphonic canon with:

73 Gustav Mahler - Symphony no. 9 Points: 380 Votes: 2 #1s: 1

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/e7/e2/8a/e7e28a970540431285a31ae8fdd90b6d.jpg

The '75 recording of Sinking... is the classic one, done with Brian Eno (and backed with Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet, which I voted for, on the album). Speaking of programming for orchestras, that's actually my dad's job, and one time his orchestra did Jesus' Blood. The score is literally one line for each instrument, and then instructions as to when to enter and exit. And this score was for three different versions (they played all three at different times one night in a church. It was beautiful! I went there with a girl I liked, and held her hand as she cried. One of the best concerts I've been to :) )

The version of Sinking of the Titanic I put on the playlist is the first one, recorded for eno's label. Spotify also has the second much longer CD era one on Point Records and then a couple of more recent live ones

First movement of mahler's 9th is just the most incredible span of music, goes through my head all the time

Sounds cool, Frederik. I imagine it would be p cool to i) have a Dad who programs for an orchestra ii) have a Dad who knows who Gavin Bryars is iii) have a local orchestra that would play Gavin Bryars.

72 Claude Debussy - String Quartet in G Minor Points: 380 Votes: 3 #1s: 0

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/KNxVfv_1LIA/hqdefault.jpg

I like Debussy and I like string quartets but, somehow, I don't actually know this piece.

And to finish off the night:

71 Igor Stravinsky - Les Noces Points: 381 Votes: 3 #1s: 0

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51gYjmCCRPL._SX379_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

The countdown so far then:

71 Igor Stravinsky - Les Noces
72 Claude Debussy - String Quartet in G Minor
73 Gustav Mahler - Symphony no. 9
74 Gavin Bryars - The Sinking of the Titanic
75 Antonin Dvořák - Symphony no. 9 ('New World')
76 Iannis Xenakis - Pithoprakta
76 Steve Reich - Sextet
78 Charles Ives - The Unanswered Question
79 Jean Sibelius - Symphony No. 4
80 Gustav Mahler - Symphony no. 5
81 Philip Glass - Akhnaten
82 George Gershwin - An American In Paris
83 Antonin Dvořák - Rusalka
84 Steve Reich - Piano Phase
85 Giacomo Puccini - Manon Lescaut
86 Claude Debussy - Etudes
87 Scott Joplin - The Entertainer
88 Luciano Berio - Sequenza III (for female voice)
89 Igor Stravinsky - Symphonies of Wind Instruments
90 Ennio Morricone - For A Few Dollars More, film score
90 Les Baxter - Quiet Village
92 Glenn Branca - Symphony no. 13 ('Hallucination City')
93 Maurice Duruflé - Requiem
94 Arvo Pärt - Magnificat
95 Gustav Mahler - Symphony no. 3
96 John Cage - First Construction in Metal
97 Meredith Monk - Dolmen Music
98 Iannis Xenakis - Metastasis
99 Benjamin Britten - The Turn of the Screw, opera after Henry James
100 Gérard Grisey - Les espaces acoustiques

I want all the magma fans itt to listen to les noces real good.

Ha, I totally see that comparison.

Starting off the fourth day of the countdown, we have a composer we've seen before but he's not here for a symphony this time.

70 Gustav Mahler - Das Lied von der Erde Points: 388 Votes: 2 #1s: 0

http://www.apesound.de/out/pictures/master/product/1/mahlererde.jpg