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

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

When Robert Creeley made a pun on Bartok/bar-talk, did that have any significance related to the composer or was it just Creeley being goofy?

This has been bothering me for decades.

Maybe he was just describing his environment.

Bartok was not particularly bibulous to my knowledge. He was an influential and zealous collector of folk tunes though, which maybe could be called musical 'bar talk'? IDK.

Sibelius 6th - the piece which started my obsession with this composer 20 years ago. My #2 vote on my ballot IIRC; on another day it could have been #1.

Someone described this as Sibelius' one landscape piece which doesn't even have any people in it. I can buy that. It is a wondrous pantheist soundplace. It's based on Dorian mode and influenced by palestrina's church polyphony. I love it fiercely.

ps Sund4r I am learning to notate symphonic music in Notion on ios. Someday I'll make it to Sibelius on desktop... maybe. I keep coming back to my MIDI grids though :/

thx for those Morricone lists, I also love the "Il Gatto" sdtrk and that stunning 2CD comp on Ipecac

Ha, I remember someone once told me a story about telling their music history prof a convoluted joke (that I obv don't remember) involving Bartok smiling at someone on the other side of a bar, i.e. "beaming across the barline". The prof responded "That's not funny! Bartok never smiled!"

Another one I don't seem to know, oddly:

45 Claude Debussy - Sonata for Flute, Viola, and Harp Points: 483 Votes: 3 #1s: 0

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

my favorite piece of chamber music in all the world

i have nothing else to say on the matter

44 Steve Reich - Tehillim Points: 483 Votes: 4 #1s: 0
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-g_G__OziRqk/UNHa_WSxIII/AAAAAAABKew/_HTBWBbtpwM/s1600/reich+portada.PNG

#13 on my ballot. Played the shit out of this album after first hearing it in that class at 19.

My #1 is at 43.

43 John Cage - Sonatas and Interludes for the Prepared Piano Points: 489 Votes: 5 #1s: 1

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

Pretty cool where Stephen Drury demonstrates piano preparations

cool video