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

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.

x-post: It probably helps that a lot of my social circle in college consisted of stoners (I wasn't, myself), though maybe that describes most student bodies? A fair amount of acid being taken. So with something like Koyaanisqatsi being new at the time. . .

I remember this girl in 10th grade homeroom who was usually too cool for me being impressed that I had the koyaanisqatsi LP

haha that is awesome

When I was out with a group of friends from college (who mostly fit the description above), we commandeered the TV in a generic pizzeria somewhere in Center City Philadelphia (probably not far from Washington Square, but this was a long time ago so I don't remember that clearly) to watch Koyaanisqatsi. Some other customers said something sarcastic along the lines of: yeah, let's all go back to the stone age. And someone from our group said something like no, we just think it's cool. Which was pretty much the truth, I think, for all of us.

Wait, were they making a sarcastic comment because you were watching a TV in the Internet Age or were they commenting on the environmental message?

They were commenting on the environmental and potential anti-technological/anti-modern interpretation of the movie.

(This was pre-internet, at least in the casual sense, somewhere between 83-87).

I didn't think Philip Glass was cool when I was a kid. He seemed like the kind of music smart, rich white people listened to, and that would show up in pretentious car commercials. It wasn't until I heard Einstein (after already being into krautrock, fusion-era Miles, a little IDM) that he clicked -- not long after, I was reading about chaos theory, fractals, physics. Then of course, I was branching out to the minimalists. It kind of all hit me at once, and never really left.

The quote about Kontakte was from Griffiths, Modern Music and After, 95 ed. btw.

13 Morton Feldman - Rothko Chapel Points: 780 Votes: 7 #1 Votes: 0
http://www.markrothko.org/images/paintings/rothko-chapel.jpg

I had no idea this piece was so beloved.

I thought this would be top 5 for sure.

But then, I feel confident about eight of the top 12. I may just be way way off.

i get the impression it's somehow come to represent feldman at the expense of everything else he did, which is maybe interesting but maybe it's just down to the not so interesting fact that many of the other feldman pieces which have a similar character are a thousand hours long

Doesn't surprise me to see Rothko Chapel this high. I haven't listened to it in ages. I think its popularity might be helped by having a built-in visual equivalent to its aesthetic. (Should probably listen again before saying that.)

i get the impression it's somehow come to represent feldman at the expense of everything else he did

Sounds about right.

My Feldman breakthrough piece was patterns in a chromatic field, bc I saw it performed live

Rothko Chapel is the one Alex Ross is hyping in The Rest is Noise. It's a beautiful piece of music, though quite unlike the longer ones.

Oh, it's a Ross thing? Has there been a lot of ILM discussion about this piece? Honestly, it's not something I've ever seen someone else make a big deal about in a 20th c music history book (1 mention in Griffiths, none in Schwartz/Godfrey, not in NAWM); nor have I ever thought anything by Feldman had the popular/commercial reach of a lot of the composers we're seeing now.

FWIW, I remember Feldman's Rothko Chapel being treated as a very big deal when I used to listen to this sort of music on the radio in the 80s. (Sorry to be a broken record about "back in the 80s.")

I've always liked it -- as mentioned above, I think it offers a lot of what Feldman does in a relatively short time. Also, the contrast between the percussion, voices and viola gives it a lot of color. Something like string quartet #2 (which I think represents Feldman in a purer, albeit starker way) is relentlessly homogenous by comparison.

also shout out to my man William Winant on the recording I have of this!

Rothko Chapel also got recorded on a major label LP relatively early compared to other Feldman things.

On a can/stockhausen type note, mark Hollis was citing Feldman during the time between laughingstock and his solo album, when I was hanging on his every (rare) word. That was the first time I heard abt Feldman

Yay FEldman!

Now let's get some love for Meredith Monk in here.

Dolmen Music placed at 97 fwiw.

xpost I actually sat through For Christian Wolff on Spotify one night, very repetitive but mesmerizing if you're in just the right mood. I don't know if I could say I like it better than Rothko Chapel, but I have more vivid memories of listening to it.

Not my favourite Feldman by any stretch but I think people have touchd on why it's so high here. He's v important to me - hope this isn't his only entry.

Kontakte should've been higher. Can't decide whether it's concerns are v similar to Feldman's or radically opposed, but it's my favourite deconstruction of sound maybe ever.

I liked Glass when I was five:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tam1XY0HGjY

Never cared for anything else of his.

I wish it hadnt been so long since I listened to kontakte, I should have given it a high vote. Listening just now I lived it so much.

Loved

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aa5hjsm4tZY

12 Igor Stravinsky - Petrushka Points: 788 Votes: 6 #1 Votes: 0
http://petrushka.web.unc.edu/files/2014/04/petrushka_0001-1024x523.jpg

11 Bela Bartok - Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta Points: 816 Votes: 6 #1 Votes: 0
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/rFsvgYmSDeM/maxresdefault.jpg

I didn't expect this to place above Concerto for Orchestra or SQ4.

Recap of 11-100:

11 Bela Bartok - Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta
12 Igor Stravinsky - Petrushka
13 Morton Feldman - Rothko Chapel
14 Karlheinz Stockhausen - Kontakte
15 Steve Reich - Drumming
16 Philip Glass - Einstein on the Beach
17 Gyorgy Ligeti - Atmosphères
18 Arvo Pärt - Tabula Rasa
19 Jean Sibelius - Tapiola
20 Steve Reich - Different Trains
21 Claude Debussy - Preludes (Books 1 and 2)
22 Arvo Pärt - Fratres
23 Claude Debussy - Prélude a l'après-midi d'un faune (Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun)
24 Gustav Holst - The Planets
25 Leonard Bernstein et al - West Side Story
26 Gustav Mahler - Symphony no. 6
27 Duke Ellington - The Far East Suite
28 John Cage - 4'33'
29 Philip Glass - Music in 12 Parts
30 Olivier Messiaen - L'Ascension
31 Karlheinz Stockhausen - Stimmung
32 Glenn Branca - Symphony no. 3
33 Igor Stravinsky - Agon
34 Luciano Berio - Sinfonia
35 Alban Berg - Wozzeck
35 Gyorgy Ligeti - Requiem
37 Gyorgy Ligeti - Lux Aeterna
38 Gabriel Fauré - Requiem in D minor
39 Claude Debussy - Nocturnes
40 Claude Debussy - La mer
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

ok, so was worried Petrushka would be the odd one out -- looks like 2 Stravinsky ballets in the top 10 then. Also thinking Music for 18 Musicians, Rhapsody in Blue, In C, Quartet for the End of Time (and maybe Turangalila?), and...?

Pre-emptive thank you so much for running this poll sund4r!!

ha oh yeah and maybe the poll namesake...

Ah yes Dolemn music at 97! Didn't see it, shame I didn't vote would've helped push it up a couple more placed.

Dolmen*

We're in the final stretch now. And the hits keep coming...

10 George Gershwin - Rhapsody in Blue Points: 826 Votes: 8 #1 Votes: 0
http://static.comicvine.com/uploads/original/12/126071/2427124-rhapsody_in_blue_fantasia.jpeg

(You're welcome, Dom!)