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

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

So fucking great. I feel like nothing can really prepare you for how these pieces/this instrument actually sound. So colorful. Have people done ballet to these?

It appears so: https://www.nycballet.com/ballets/s/sonatas-and-interludes.aspx

42 Arvo Pärt - Cantus in memoriam Benjamin Britten Points: 507 Votes: 4 #1s: 0
http://assets.londonremembers.com/images/big/46119.jpg?1319382426

gorgeous

And to finish us off for the night, no stranger to the countdown:

41 Bela Bartok - Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion Points: 511 Votes: 4 #1s: 0

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/EsW7p0PVH10/maxresdefault.jpg

I didn't know the Part piece before. It is nice.

Goes down smooth.

Recap:
41 Bela Bartok - Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion
42 Arvo Pärt - Cantus in memoriam Benjamin Britten
43 John Cage - Sonatas and Interludes for the Prepared Piano
44 Steve Reich - Tehillim
45 Claude Debussy - Sonata for Flute, Viola, and Harp
46 Jean Sibelius - Symphony no. 6
47 Ennio Morricone - The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
48 Alfred Schnittke - Concerto for Choir
49 Gavin Bryars - Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet
50 Arnold Schoenberg - Pierrot Lunaire
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

#41, like Pierrot, established a paradigmatic 'band' for 20th century successors. Crumb especially made hay of this instrumentation

I'm finding this playlist useful, though I have no plans to try to listen to it systematically. Even so, there are composers here that I am enjoying somewhat more than I have when I've tried them in the past.

No argument could change my love for Tehillim.

40 Claude Debussy - La mer 514 3 0
http://media.npr.org/assets/img/2012/02/01/The_Great_Wave_off_Kanagawa_wide-71890becdcf93cd06e1ea7fd55db0b7bd00a86ba-s900-c85.jpg

Just listened to this (for the first time, I think!) while making and starting breakfast. I like it obv. A bit more dramatic than I expected. I can see why film composers like it.

The first of two two-fers today:

39 Claude Debussy - Nocturnes Points: 515 Votes: 4 #1s: 0
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/obv33I2Kf10/hqdefault.jpg

I don't have anywhere near the knowledge to have voted in this poll, but I've been lurking and listening. Thank you for putting in the effort, Sund4r, and to everyone who voted, for introducing me to some amazing stuff.

Both La Mer and (especially) the Nocturnes were hugely important for me. In my first college music history class, I remember hearing Debussy and being transfixed. I didn't know music like that existed -- magic, mystic, divine, lustful. They called it "impressionistic", but I didn't (and still don't) really get the tag -- it was way too vague, not addressing the actual emotions the music stirred up in me. What I did know was that all of a sudden, an entire dimension of what music could do was revealed to me, and I'm probably still looking for that feeling in both my own music, and in listening to new things.

Debussy hated the 'impressionist' tag iirc. I think one of my music history profs used the term "Symbolist" instead. "Nuages" is a definitive orchestral Debussy work for me. I only included one piece of his on my ballot, which was unfair to the overwhelming volumes of great music he wrote. (I did rank it very high on my ballot!)

I also listened to Debussy quite a bit in my early to mid-20s so I don't know why I almost never do now, unless there's a teaching reason for it. I think it's because it does feel a bit like Impressionist art to me, if only because of conditioning/received wisdom, and there's only so much washed-out prettiness I need on a regular basis? I realise this doesn't do justice to his expressive range, so I should probably listen more.

Another late 19th century French piece up next, a favourite of singers. (I think it will make a lot of people happy.)

5-10 minutes to guess.

xp
Debussy was such a formative thing for me, it's hard to be objective about his music. I listen to a lot of it in the background now, like comfort music, because I don't have to think about it at all, it's in my bones. I never heard it as washed-out prettiness, because the harmonies in something like the Nuages or Sirenes were so...hmm, what? They had a darkness, a feral quality that he first used explicitly in Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, as far as pagan imagery-- I was drawn to exactly that quality.

You'd see it show up in Stravinsky, Bartok, Ravel (of course), Messiaen -- basically, anyone who followed Debussy's lead in harmonic adventure. It always makes me laugh to read about Debussy as part of the boring classical music canon, because my associations with his music are so subversive, so individual, and strike a lot of the same mental and emotional triggers as, say, black metal or avant prog a la Magma.

these days, i take people who call the classical music canon "boring" about as seriously as i take people who call black and white films boring.

No, you're right, I'm getting more from it, listening now, and I think I have at the times that I listened to him more. xp

I need to sort out my thoughts about this obv.

38 Gabriel Fauré - Requiem in D minor Points: 516 Votes: 4 #1s: 0

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

Debussy was such a formative thing for me, it's hard to be objective about his music. I listen to a lot of it in the background now, like comfort music, because I don't have to think about it at all, it's in my bones. I never heard it as washed-out prettiness, because the harmonies in something like the Nuages or Sirenes were so...hmm, what? They had a darkness, a feral quality that he first used explicitly in Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, as far as pagan imagery-- I was drawn to exactly that quality.

Basically, Dominique otm. The debussian prism is probably more core to my adult (mid 20s and on) inner life than anything else (except maybe Sibelius and late Scott walker). It's a way of receiving and refracting information, almost. My hero forever.

Oh, that would have been my guess! And yay, lovely piece of music, and a joy to sing. I've been thinking a bit of Requiems due to singing Verdi yesterday, and I think part of what I dislike about Verdi is that it sounds communal. It sounds like the entire populace of Italy standing up and celebrating the church. While the music of Fauré (and Duruflé) sounds like a much more personal vision of christianity. I guess a lot of this simply has to do with time, that religion was more in decline as they were made, and Duruflé especially seems to have been as conservative and kinda normative as anyone. But it still has an outsider feel to it, if that makes sense.

Faure requiem never attentively heard by me until this year-- and it is unbelievably great. There's this one sinuous passage that made me want to cheer the first time I heard it. Thx Tuomas for vigorous advocacy of this music (and my version is one of the recordings of the original 'church' arrangement also thx to Tuomas)

, and I think part of what I dislike about Verdi is that it sounds communal. It sounds like the entire populace of Italy standing up and celebrating the church.

Verdi would have been chagrined to hear this, he was bitterly anti-clerical

Verdi would be chagrined to hear a lot of my opinions about him, lol. But holy shit it was fun to sing :)

Hm, the soprano solo in the "Pie Jesu" is legit beautiful.

We're returning to a two-fer from a composer who's more in my wheelhouse, but compromising because we have a couple of religious choral pieces from him.

37 Gyorgy Ligeti - Lux Aeterna Points: 517 Votes: 4 #1s: 0

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/9gKQVrIdw5w/hqdefault.jpg

Could you almost say it's a... Ligeti split?

lol

TIE 35 Gyorgy Ligeti - Requiem Points: 522 Votes: 4 #1s: 0

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/bf/b6/7a/bfb67a7bbefec118609503fc44e637dc.jpg

Has to be one of the most original choral works ever written.

TIE 35 Alban Berg - Wozzeck Points: 522 Votes: 4 #1s: 0

http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2009/June09/Berg_Wozzeck_0184422bc.jpg

I listen to Berg's chamber music a fair bit, and "Lyric Suite" is in my personal pantheon, but I've honestly never listened to all of this.