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

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

Ha, OK, I'll admit to not knowing this particular piece and assuming it was more like a regular lied. Apparently, it is a symphonic composition with two voices.

this mahler lad is pretty popular huh

Early in 1907, Gustav Mahler was given a newly published verse collection of German translations from the Chinese, Hans Bethge’s Die chinesische Flöte, The Chinese Flute. Mahler, distracted and overworked, put the book aside. Late that summer, when he came across the gift again, he was worse than overworked. In July, his daughter Maria, four‑and‑a‑half, had died of scarlet fever and diphtheria, and he had learned that he himself suffered from a severe heart condition. Work pulled him out of despondency. Those melancholy verses spoke to Mahler with singular urgency. He began sketches, and the songs were his chief project for the following summer.

It was clear to him from the beginning that he was writing no ordinary song cycle but something larger and more cohesive, something, in fact, symphonic. Bruno Walter recalled Mahler’s describing the work as “a symphony in songs,” and Mahler did in the end head the score “a symphony for tenor and contralto (or baritone) and orchestra.” Ever since Bruno Walter chose a contralto when he conducted the first performance in 1911, most performances have followed Walter’s lead. But Mahler expressed no clear preference, and in fact when the poems’ speakers are referred to, the references are masculine.

Das Lied von der Erde is not, however, among Mahler’s numbered symphonies. It would be his ninth, but, with Beethoven and Bruckner in mind, he was superstitious about ninth symphonies and convinced that he would not be granted the time to go beyond that freighted number. He thought to put one over on the gods by not assigning a number to the symphony after the Eighth, and when he finished the symphony he called No. 9 he triumphantly told Alma that it was of course “really the Tenth” and that the danger was past. But the gods were not taken in by Mahler’s bookkeeping, and death claimed him as he was at work on the symphony he called No. 10.

From: http://www.keepingscore.org/content/farewell-das-lied-von-der-erde-song-earth-symphony-tenor-and-contralto-or-baritone-and-orc

Das Lied ties for my favorite work by Mahler. Like the ninth, it has one of the most amazing opening passages in classical music -- the cackling main of the orchestra while those flutter tongued flutes smugly gloat in their nest like doves who cherish the certainty of death. And then later in that first song when the poet makes out a gibbering ape down there in the cemetery (eine Affe ist!!!) holy shit.

The closing number has been equaled but never surpassed as a composed simulation of improvisation IMO. Ewig... Ewig...

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

― I wish you could see my home. It's... it's so... exciting (Jon not Jon), Wednesday, September 28, 2016 12:06 PM (two hours ago)

Oh yeah, I can totally get that! Coooool.

for "les noces", the recording i recommend is the pokrovsky. the backing is midi, but it doesn't even matter because the singing is sooooo great.

There are a bunch of great choices for Les noces but I went with Gergiev for sheer oomph

One of the only really shitty ones is Stravinsky's unfortunately. It was sung awkwardly in English and while it was a cool idea to have all the piano parts taken by prominent American composer-pianists, it just sounds flaccid.

I believe this is the second film score to appear in the countdown:

69 Jerry Goldsmith - Alien, film score Points: 388 Votes: 3 #1s: 0

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

Stone cold masterpiece. This was a top 10 vote for me. In some ways Goldsmith's definitive achievement (many would say planet of the apes). The use of blown conches and echoplex are so perfect. Have you ever wanted to hear a cross between Bartok and Tago Mago?

Several years ago, Intrada released a definitive 2CD edition of this which is still in print and would make a fantastic first purchase for someone wanting to start exploring the world of creative film scoring. Spotify doesn't have the Intrada edition but the comparatively brief OST is also superb.

<3 <3 <3

Catching up on some of the symphonies that has been listed so far. Sibelius' 4th was very good, Dvorak was ok I guess :) Not really my thing, but definitely a classic of it's kind. Wondering if there's more Mahler to come, would think the 5th and 9th might be the most popular. I only voted for 2nd. Began a study of all his symphonies last spring, but only made it through the first two. Listening and reading about number 3, so far I miss the, as people say, irony of the first two? It's much more straight in it's nature worship, where the first two, through the use of Frere Jacques and Antonios Fishsermon has a pointed sarcasm to them.

Up next, what I like to think is the most programmed orchestral work in Denmark:)