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

Tbf, the other members of Les Six didn't do so great in this poll either. (I had to Google to remember Auric and Durey.)

I generally vibe very strongly with the French and francophone compositional aesthetic (Debussy, koechlin, Ohana, ravel, Messiaen, Delerue, Desplat all huge for me and saariaho is practically an honorary Gaul) but the Les six moment is a moment which has failed to ignite me

(I tried to consider a devil's advocate position of e.g. "do we also need concern ourselves that there aren't more male flautists?" but then I realised that all of the legendary flautists I can think of are men. So yeah.) As a guitarist, I do tend to think that Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking composers have been somewhat marginalized in the canon as well.

Another poll veteran.

19 Jean Sibelius - Tapiola Points: 668 Votes: 4 #1s: 0
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Yy0_zqEOp4A/hqdefault.jpg

Interesting that this placed higher than those symphonies. Idk if that's due to Alex Ross's efforts or yours, Jon.:P (I would have ranked it higher than those symphonies myself if I included any Sibelius on my ballot.)

My highest ranking Sibelius! Different Trains otoh I never really cared for -- assuming that Music for 18 Musicians is still to come, and really hoping Drumming didn't get shut out of this.

speaking of, 80 years old today!

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/oct/03/steve-reich-80-birthday-best-works-pieces

There will only be one newcomer to the poll today. But he is not up next...

18 Arvo Pärt - Tabula Rasa Points: 682 Votes: 5 #1s: 0
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ea/Wachstafel.jpg

Man, I've just never really connected with this composer at all. His stuff always sounds pleasant when I listen to it but it just sort of washes over me.

I'm taking this poll as a chance to do something about this.

Probably a start to accept "pleasant and washes over you" as a good thing.

maybe try "Sara Was 90 Years Old" which I think is on the Miserere CD? much more sparse and moody

Re Tapiola -- well Sibelius was ruthlessly almost cruelly progressivist with himself when it came to his symphonies and large tone poems -- was not interested in publishing anything unless it took him further into his language -- Tapiola was the final big thing he let out and it sounds it. From that vantage it makes sense it'd beat out his symphonies in the rankings.

However, symphony #5 is very popular and I guess it's still to come?

(If #2 beats everything else by him I'll be a bit downcast. I like it, but it's the only one of his symphonies that to me does not succeed in what it's trying to do)

Shocked to see Different Trains place so high.

17 Gyorgy Ligeti - Atmosphères Points: 692 Votes: 5 #1s: 0
http://5against4.com/images/musicexamples/ligeti_atmospheres_example.jpg

#6 for me

Atmospheres of course a great piece. I actually started recording a cover of the Requiem last year, and the melodic writing on it is very similar to Atmospheres (tho IMO actually harder to perform). What I love about Ligeti was that although he wasn't known primarily as an electronic music composer, he succeeded in the effect of using traditional compositional and performing methods to make music that would probably have been a lot more practical to do electronically. He had an incredible skill -- like you took Stravinsky, and moved his prime from the 1910s to the 1960s.

i have a visceral dislike of arvo part, which is probably quite unreasonable, but considering that i rarely feel such powerfully negative feelings when listening to music i figure i'll embrace the novelty for a while longer

i am listening to an amateur assembled 16 CD box set of almost every Hovhaness symphony which I downloaded off a news group and right now I would vote for Hovhaness over just about anyone btw

I remember an Eastern Orthodox co-worker* loaning me some Pärt and saying something like "I think you'll find him more substantial than Reich," which was probably the worst thing he could say (pitting Pärt against a personal favorite, at least through Tehillim). I've never gotten anywhere with him. I sometimes feel I can't relax enough to enjoy this sort of liturgically oriented music.

*He was fun to talk with since he had a very East European slant on classical music, in addition to being the biggest Neil Young fan I've ever known.

Another heavy hitter:

16 Philip Glass - Einstein on the Beach Points: 694 Votes: 5 #1 Votes: 0
http://www.mybiggayears.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Einstein-Trial.jpeg

has anything rec'd more than 6 votes? Seems crazy not a single piece appeared on even a majority of the ballots

So with Tailleferre sexism has meant she's been performed less and recorded less, which means there's less chances of hearing her music, which in turn means there's less chance of her ever making it into the canon, even among those people (like everyone who voted here surely is) who are not sexist themselves and have nothing against rating women composers.

― Tuomas

ok, i'll admit it- i haven't heard any tailleferre. recommend me some!

man I really should've voted in this

love Einstein

re contemporary female composers, i guess if Gloria Coates and Sofia Gubaidulina were going to appear in this countdown they'd have appeared by now. I'd have thought they both had a shot.

I was pleased I made the effort to go see Einstein when it was performed at the Barbican Theatre a few years back. A cute touch was that Knee Play 1 had already partially started before they let the audience in.

that is awesome

has anything rec'd more than 6 votes? Seems crazy not a single piece appeared on even a majority of the ballots

Exactly four pieces appeared on a majority (i.e. 9 or more) of the ballots. Results really were all over the map, as I said.

A contender for ILM's favourite composer, apparently (one of mine obv):

15 Steve Reich - Drumming Points: 741 Votes: 6 #1 Votes: 0

http://www.atodya.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Klotz02_0.jpg

definitely my personal Reich favorite. Endless inspiration, and for my money, no better "get stuff done" minimalism

Drumming is great live, but a bit of a nail-biter. (Please don't screw up!)

yeah that would be my Reich pick too

almost feeling some annoyance at so much reich even though had i voted he'd have been in there a bunch too, but this is the hypocrisy that being a non-voter allows me

I voted for a lot of Reich only because I was familiar with a lot of Reich. I put six of his pieces on my ballot, but the highest placed only at #29 because I figured he had more than a fair chance of placing. There were also a lot of Reich pieces nominated, right? So it's not too surprising I guess.

Oddly enough I didn't vote for Drumming, and I'm a drummer.

My Reich top 3 is probably: 18 Musicians - Tehillim - Electric Counterpoint

I only voted for the first two of those. I haven't listened to this one in ages but I'm putting it on now.

14 Karlheinz Stockhausen - Kontakte Points: 754 Votes: 6 #1 Votes: 0
https://musicacontemporanea.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/score.gif

http://www.trialanderrorcollective.com/uploads/5/6/3/5/56354473/7001338_orig.jpg

My #9.

Two killers in a row there.

Kontakte belongs with Carré in being for four sound sources at compass points, in its slowly changing sonorities, and in its swirling of sounds through space... He draws attention to four criteria that ... presuppose an electronic, analytic experience of sound and correspondingly lend themselves to electronic creativity. For example, two of them are old concerns of his - the composition and 'de-composition' of timbres, the making of scales between pitched tone and noise - that can be more easily and thoroughly pursued in a medium where smooth transitions between dissimilar states can be engineered. A third criterion is the possibility of scales of loudness, which had been a rather unconvincing postulate of total serialism, and which Stockhausen now uses, in a characteristic move from theoretical integrity to display, for illusions of depth. By carefully regulating volume and reverberation, he creates in Kontakte the effect of screens of sound receding from the listener, screens which may be transparent to the ear, or which may be drawn back to reveal others 'behind' them. In this artificial space, as important to the work as the real space between the loudspeakers, sounds may appear to come out of the distance and then, dropping in pitch to imitate the Doppler effect, fly past the listener, irresistibly suggesting the aeroplane engines that stimulated Carré.

But the most significant special feature... is the opportunity it provides to show and use the coherent unity of the three parameters of timbre, pitch, and duration ... their common basis in the phenomenon of vibration... [At one instance, shown below] a complex sound is progressively stripped of its components, each of which appears to float away and degenerate into the basic material from which the work was made: single impulses. Progressive deceleration of the constituents takes them smoothly from the realm of timbre to that of pitched sound and so to that of rhythm.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bJX3kT0qLS4/Vb-9uBds0dI/AAAAAAAAIqM/z8oJKy1s4W8/s1600/KOntakte%2Bsplitting.jpg

God that score clipping is gorgeous to look at

Seems like a tough one to make a recording of.

To what extent are kidstoday aware of the minimalists? In the 80s, I knew a lot of people who were less obsessive about music than I was, who knew about Glass and maybe Reich and others. I get the sense that's less true today. Maybe their work would seem irrelevant and redundant with the enormous explosion of popular electronic music since the early 80s. Einstein on the Beach or Violin Phase (or Come Out to Show Them) really did seem like revelations to me in the early 80s. I am imagining a kidstoday category not at the ILM extreme of musical obsessiveness, but still kind of into music.

I think this is the recording I have. I've actually never seen/listened to the quadrophonic version but it sounds p great in stereo to me.xp

That's the recording I have to. (Well, I'm partial to Wergo anyway.) I wish I could say I love Kontakte.

I think that's the one I have too (it's MP3s which were downloaded off Limewire over a decade ago). Listening now and it's so great.

For the playlist i picked the red fish blue fish version because Steven Schick seems to rule at everything he records.

i may be wrong about kidstoday but i feel reich and glass still have a place as cool and accessible 'classical' stuff, but that's maybe a quite different place to occupy than at the '80s populist peak

stockhausen will always be cool as long as there's kids getting into Can and electric Miles for the first time.