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

51 Edgard Varèse - Ionisation Points: 467 Votes: 5 #1s: 0

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

Ionisation is scored for some three dozen percussion instruments, of which only three--chimes, celesta,
and piano--are capable of playing notes in the equal-tempered scale. Composition based on the
preeminence of pitch here gives way to a music of timbres and rhythms. As the first of many allpercussion
scores written in this century, Ionisation is remarkably subtle in its use of those instruments.
The form is articulated by changing sonorities--a passage scored only for metal instruments; a fleeting
duet for drums and maracas; a hair-raising moment (the first sustained loud point in the score) when
several players have the same triplet figure (a rhythmic unison); the first high, Morse-code clanging of the
anvils, more than midway through. The grand and sonorous coda is marked by the entrance of the piano,
celesta, and chimes--the three instruments of definite pitch. Varèse once defined his mission as the
"liberation of sound" (just as Schoenberg promised the "emancipation of dissonance.") Ionisation is the
purest demonstration of his success, and of his eventual influence. It is the work of both a pioneer and a
master.

from: http://cso.org/uploadedFiles/1_Tickets_and_Events/Program_Notes/ProgramNotes_Varese_Ionisation.pdf

Recap:

51 edgard varèse - Ionisation
52 Benjamin Britten - Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings
53 Philip Glass - Music in Similar Motion
54 Bela Bartok - Mikrokosmos
55 John Zorn - Cobra
56 Bela Bartok - Concerto for Orchestra
57 Karlheinz Stockhausen - Kreuzspiel
58 Edgard Varese - Density 21.5
59 Louis Andriessen - De Staat
60 Maurice Ravel - Rapsodie espagnole
61 Yamashiro Shoji (with Geinoh Yamashirogumi) - Akira (Original Soundtrack)
62 Bela Bartok - String Quartet no. 4
63 Maurice Ravel - String Quartet in F
64 Benjamin Britten - War Requiem
65 Steve Reich - Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices and Organ
66 Pierre Boulez - le marteau sans maître
67 Brian Eno - Discreet Music
68 John Luther Adams - Become Ocean
69 Jerry Goldsmith - Alien, film score
70 Gustav Mahler - Das Lied von der Erde
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

We're at the halfway mark!

Varèse is the king of the 20th century for me i think, a channel thru which almost everything good and important flows; but i feel like he's under-served in terms of great recordings. anybody got any suggestions?

The 2CD set on decca conducted by Chailly was considered the new benchmark when it came out. I don't have many others besides that, just Boulez. Can't remember how the two Naxos discs were reviewed.

Certainly the more specialized pieces have been recorded a lot on mixed recital discs. There are a lot of density 21.5s and ionisations out there.

Also Robert Craft recorded most of the Varese oeuvre on Columbia in the early 70s and while I haven't listened to it it has a cool ass cover.

think I've got the Chailly, not sure about it tbh

Our #50 might be top 5 if you asked the right composition faculties.

50 Arnold Schoenberg - Pierrot Lunaire Points: 471 Votes: 3 #1s: 0
http://timerime.com/upload/resized/41207/485045/resized_image2_5c8665dc9357c37ffbba275ebf9265a1.jpg

#8 for me. Interesting that it only made three people's ballots.

Should be top 10 but that's true of a lot of things that have already placed!

Definitely the most glaring 'TOO LOW' for me. Even #8 on my ballot was probably too low, listening to Lucy Shelton's recording now. A piece I keep getting more out of. Every aspect of it is so delicious and masterful, simultaneously comic and eerie/deranged. How many innovations go back to this one piece?: the uniquely expressive and dramatic sprechtstimme vocal part, the chamber instrumentation so lovely and effective that "Pierrot ensemble" became a standard type of modern chamber ensemble, obviously the atonal language, but also Schoenberg's fine sensitivity to timbre and dynamics here.

A friend of mine celebrated her 30th birthday by renting out a bar and performing Pierrot Lunaire in it.

Woah.

I know someone who commissioned every composer she could find (a lot because she's a hotshot pianist) to write a short piano piece for her to play on her 30th.

49 Gavin Bryars - Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet Points: 473 Votes: 3 #1s: 0

http://www.paraethos.com/images/aqualung2.jpg

This is where I admit that, as much as I like the idea behind this, and as much as I like Sinking of the Titanic, and as much as I like Frederik's story, this piece has always driven me a bit bonkers, at least the original 25m recording, which is the only one I ever listened to.

I love this piece so much. Guaranteed to unclog even the most stubborn tear ducts, at least for me.

Whoa, I honestly didn't think this would show up over Sinking. I'm not sure Gavin Bryars has two recordings in the top 100 classical works of the 20th century, but I love this piece. And yeah, it should be heard in a big church late at night, pretty drunk and with a pretty person by your side.

Also, can't wait to dive into all these works I've never checked out. I mean, I know Schoenberg - we're doing Friede auf Erden this october, and wow! - but never know where to start. Pierrot Lunaire it is.

Oh man, if you've never heard it before, Pierrot is OPO material.

I can see how Jesus' Blood... could seem mawkish and/or irritating but it's one of the pieces of music I remember hearing as a kid, and for some reason the strongest memory it provokes is my granddad dying and so... I ended up not voting for it because I couldn't bear to listen to it again.

Sorry to be a downer

I think I find "Jesus' Blood" a little too sentimental but there are times when sentimental is fine. Pierrot shd've been higher but I didn't vote so there it is

Voted for this. Love the original version, don't care for the Tom Waits version at all, although I guess Waits gave it some traction which is at least partly responsible for it placing above Sinking (which I think is a superior piece)

A friend of mine celebrated her 30th birthday by renting out a bar and performing Pierrot Lunaire in it.

― ¶ (DJP), Friday, September 30, 2016 9:52 AM (forty-three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

That's so cool. Anybody we can hear on record/online?

Sentimentality is fine, even good. I just don't feel like Jesus' Blood goes anywhere. With Reich, all the rhythmic phasing effects give you something to listen for in the repetitions; with early Glass, you've got the additive rhythms. With Sinking of the Titanic, you have the gradual timbral shifts and atmospheric sounds. The gradual introduction of straightforward string and brass harmonizations of a one-line loop over 25 minutes just doesn't seem very interesting to me. I think I might like it as a five-minute piece.

I totally believe that it could work in this situation:

it should be heard in a big church late at night, pretty drunk and with a pretty person by your side.

sund4r I usually listen to the Lucy Shelton recording of Pierrot too, and that's what I've put on the playlist.

(note to listeners: Shelton's recording is a 2fer. She performs the cycle first in German and then in English. The poems are so wonderful that it's well worth also listening to the english one... but not first!)

At 48, one that I didn't know before the discussion thread. It's pretty interesting, though:

48 Alfred Schnittke - Concerto for Choir Points: 475 Votes: 4 #1s: 0

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/M7x2aeKlE_8/maxresdefault.jpg

ok how weird is it that i just clicked on the kate bush thread and this schnittke piece is mentioned there by Michael Jones in the first post I see (he felt one of the kate live interludes reminded him of this pc)

Yay! Did this this spring, so much fun to sing.

That's so cool. Anybody we can hear on record/online?

She didn't record her performance but she does have a website: http://www.thealobo.com/multimedia

i see she's singing the Durufle Requiem in Sarasota in January!

Varese is one of the few legitimate modern classical composers I find really accessible. Maybe that means that he is "lite" too? I think I prefer the older recordings of his works that were my first exposure to his music.

I've never thought of Varèse as lite fwiw.

47 Ennio Morricone - The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Points: 477 Votes: 4 #1s: 0

http://cps-static.rovicorp.com/3/JPG_500/MI0002/774/MI0002774960.jpg?partner=allrovi.com

Dude's second appearance in a countdown of all notated music since 1890, which is p interesting, I have to say.

He is one of most inventive and original composers known to me tbh

There are so many sides to the work he's done in film... Everything from neo-bel-canto to krautrock.

I wish I had nominated his score to The Thing. I don't remember why I pruned it from my noms list.

I prefer Nino Rota, but I am not that familiar with either of them.

i wonder if varèse isn't so much 'lite' as he is fairly easily translatable into and readable through the aesthetics of electronic music etc

morricone POX off top of head

the thing
for a few dollars more
copkiller
oceano
il prato
exorcist ii the heretic
my name is nobody
once upon a time in the west
days of heaven
grand slam

I'm not really saying Varese is lite, but if I like him, it leaves me wondering.

Enjoying Mikrokosmos. If I were ever to study piano, I'd be happy to practice material like this, I think. (Not that drowning-in-the-molten-confection-of-melancholy romantic piano music though.)

i like giu la testa and vergogna schifosi. also his soundtrack to "danger diabolik" which really should get a proper issue one of these days.

It was terribly unjust to stop at listing 10 morricones. Giu la testa rules. I don't know the second one you said but I'll check it out!

My favourite version of the classic notation software, before they made it more like Finale:

46 Jean Sibelius - Symphony no. 6 Points: 480 Votes: 3 #1s: 0

https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&ved=0ahUKEwi5sMHX2LfPAhWCMj4KHYMDBI4QjBwIBA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.suomenrahapaja.fi%2Fproductresources%2Fsource%2Fpic1%2F17984.png&psig=AFQjCNFBEJlY43hleFk2BrFpoQXu7AXvOg&ust=1475345568802157

http://www.suomenrahapaja.fi/productresources/source/pic1/17984.png

http://d29ci68ykuu27r.cloudfront.net/product/Look-Inside/covers/19221755.jpg

Fought the temptation to post a picture of a 1930s Goethe medal