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

yes, thank you

anyone who wants to put a Spotify list together, well I've got this bookmarked so plz post

Jon's been working hard on the playlist: https://open.spotify.com/user/1213493496/playlist/1gdrjEQPZiP44ODeNysAyS

And you're welcome! Thanks to everyone who participated! And definitely to Jon for the playlist.

Just completed playlist 10 seconds ago.

If I get really bored at work maybe I'll make an alternate cut using different recordings of the pieces.

Great poll, with extremely interesting absences! I bewail the non-placement of crumb, saariaho, koechlin and Ohana especially. (Well, I thought crumb had a chance at least)

ILX likes minimalists and massive totemic modernism!

Excellent poll - I have a lot of listening to do. Thanks for running it, Sund4r.

Thanks for the poll. As far as I know I've never heard any of Turangalilla before. Checking it out now (on a first inattentive listen). I doubt I will force myself to listen to everything in the playlist, but there are quite a few pieces I intend to check out. Definitely more interested in Sibelius than I was previously, thanks to what I've heard so far.

Wasn't Turangalilla someone's ILX handle or at least display name? That was where I first saw "Turangalilla" at all (that I can recall). Of course, for all I know I might have heard some of it at some point. (WXPN did used to play a lot of Messiaen.)

It is famously Matt groening's favorite piece of music fwiw

Turangalila was a regular poster around here for years but he left after a clusterfuck

but he left after a clusterfuck

Say no more.

(Oops, thought I was seeing a double "l" in the title.)

Nice list, overall. Glad to see Feldman, Debussy Preludes, Tapiola all placing highly. Surprised at relatively little Ravel. Missing the piano concertos, La valse, piano trio, Gaspard, and his masterpiece Daphnis & Chloe.

Shostakovich and Prokofiev probably hurt by vote-splitting. A lot was nominated, and a lot more didn't even get nominated. (Including DSCH's Symphony 10, which is a little surprising.) And neither of them have a well-acknowledged masterwork to rally around, though this didn't hurt Sibelius. Same goes for Strauss, who probably didn't even come close to the list I guess? Maybe Salome could have made it. Four Last Songs was on my ballot in the top ten. I think he might be sorta out of fashion these days?

Not many Brits. Britten, Holst, Bryars, Eno...that's it I guess. Not too surprising, but Elgar, Vaughan Williams, Delius, Walton all left out.

I voted delius very high (song of the high hills)

Crazy that turn of the screw got in but Peter grimes didn't! I was kind of strategic in my screw vote because I figured grimes was a shoo-in and didn't need me.

I've never really got into Stravinsky (maybe some day), but I'm very happy Turangalîla made it to #2! I had no idea it was so popular, but it deserves it, feels like it has everything that's good and inspiring and moving and freaky about 20th century classical music.

Even at the risk of sounding parochial, I would highly recommend this recent recording of it by the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra (with Angela Hewitt on piano and Valérie Hartmann-Claverie on the ondes Martenot). It's remarkably good, I got the goosebumps when I first listened to it... Certainly better than the "official", Messiaen-approved DG recording from the early '90s.

And yeah, in the end there was only one woman in the top 100, which I find quite disappointing, though not surprising. Not blaming any of you, we already discussed the reason why women are often excluded from the canon upthread.

BALLORO! Post your Top 100 Notated Pieces of Music Since 1890 poll ballots here!

Nothing parochial about recommending recordings on Ondine records. Finnish orchestras are some of the best in the world and they seem to have produced a never ending supply of great conductors to lead them. I almost picked that version of turangalila just based on the people involved.

I have that same recording. It's fantastic. Maybe I'd be parochial for recommending an Angela Hewitt recording?

Missed the last few slots, but thoroughly enjoyed this poll! Think it's the first time I've ever actually matched a #1 on my own ballot. Thanks Sund4r for running!!!

yes thanks v much sund4r, this has been a lot of fun. looking forward to plundering all yr individual lists now...

No prob, everyone. Glad you enjoyed it.

Yeah, big thanks Sund4r!

I wonder how much both Messiaen and Penderecki have benefited recently from Jonny Greenwood's advocacy. Not that I think most of the voters in this poll are Radiohead stans.

Didn't take part, it would probably have killed me, but fascinating stuff.

Pop star advocacy actively turns me off this sstuff

i think jonny greenwood talking about messiaen and penderecki ~15 years ago piqued my interest in them and maybe in modern classical more generally, nice of him to act as a gateway drug for me

same from another angle with sonic youth's goodbye 20th century, as gateway drugs go i chose my teen alt-rock faves well

Jonny Greenwood didn't help me find any composers -- but Stanley Kubrick certainly did.

Great poll, and no quibbles with the #1. Still haven't got beyond Grisey on the playlist, but have been enjoying that a lot. Thanks, sund4r!

Yeah thanks Sund4r this has been a fun enterprise

Haha I was mentally preparing a hypothetical ballot for this about a week ago (I cant front: Id have prob included some Swearingen!) and both Symphony in Blue and The Planets were both locks. Crazy!

I just thought it was interesting to see two Messiaen pieces in the top 5. He has always been well-regarded but I'm not sure you would have seen that on many lists 20 years ago.

It was also noteworthy to me how poorly the Second Viennese School did. I believe only one Schoenberg piece made it, and only to #50; Berg was represented by one opera at #35; and I think Webern was shut out altogether. Maybe that's more of a thing for theory/comp obsessives?

No, it was definitely surprising. And are Wozzeck and Pierrot Lunaire even serialism? Was there any serialism on the list? I'd have guessed Moses und Aaron and some Webern would have made it at the very least.

It was surprising -- but I guess down to the polling audience again. I know I didn't have much of those guys on my ballot, for the chief reason I simply don't listen to them as much as other stuff. And like Shostakovich, I think if you were polling academics or all classical musicians/composers, they'd have fared much better.

Pierrot is atonal and not serial

(atonal period before he went serial is my favorite schoenberg period)

Wozzeck is serial enough to be called serial iirc

same for Stravinsky's Agon

spectralism is the new serialism

Agon is an amazing piece -- Stravinsky so good at serialism, he made it sound almost tonal.

But I know Messiaen worked in serialism too -- it didn't always sound like Schoenberg and Webern.

yeah it got my highest stravinsky vote, bits from it get stuck in my head all the time.

xpost

messiaen liked game-type systems, he had this weird musical alphabet thing going for awhile

someone asked him if he really thought it was communicable to listeners and he said "c'est un jeu"

Messiaennnnnnnn

liked birds iirc
and jesus

can i just take a moment, for anyone who is diligently making to-listen lists from all this, if you start getting into Messiaen please check out the 20 minute solo piano piece La Roussarolle Effarvette (The Reed Warbler). It's from his massive cycle of ornithological piano works Catalogue D'Oiseaux, and in this piece he 'depicts' an entire 24 hour cycle in the life of a French marsh, it is music to live by.

i didn't nominate it only because it seemed excessive to nominate the entire Catalogue

Not much of a fan of Messiaen myself. That Alex Ross book has probably had some influence?

I wanted to call out a few specific pieces of British choral music that ppl should check out:

https://play.spotify.com/album/42PjwoPOw3UzyXkIvvQQ5b
Frank Martin: Mass for Double Chorus (particularly the "Agnus Dei")

https://play.spotify.com/track/7GJzibotlvYkUM8AP1fau1
Herbert Howells: Take him, Earth, for cherishing (written on the occasion of JFK's assassination)

https://play.spotify.com/track/1VJx0lbD8564c7U3qlrh09
Benjamin Britten: Hymn to St Cecilia (really check all of Britten's choral music, dude was a master)

https://play.spotify.com/track/0LYnJH42w6itoek1vtv5iA
Charles Ives: Psalm 67 (notable mostly because the women are singing in C-major and the men are singing in G-minor)

https://play.spotify.com/album/1MEil2WMsiotndFOFHgqYU (start at track 6)
Herbert Howells: Requiem (this dude is an unsung hero of British choral music in my opinion)

https://play.spotify.com/track/5xndSoWdGIrwcnRHBmt16P
https://play.spotify.com/track/4ltqbRA0cTpY8DkdKNwJmv
https://play.spotify.com/track/2GRTpVUSY5iz4HrQwBDRTf
Ralph Vaughn Williams: Three Shakespeare Songs

Serialism is just a method of organizing pitch and it can sound like a lot of things (including Bill Evans or Blood, Sweat, and Tears). I do think the Second Viennese School had a common aesthetic that is central to some people's conceptions of 20th century music, though. As serialism goes, aside from the pieces that were mentioned, Kreuzspiel is not just serialism but integral serialism: even the accents in the percussion part follow a 12-number pattern. I'm not totally sure about Kontakte: I wanted to say that at least the acoustic parts were written with serial methods but I can find no proof of this and I'm not doing an analysis right now.

Some excellent stuff in this thread, some of which I've heard but quite a fair bit that I haven't. Thanks for this, Sund4r!

(Ives was [fiercely] American btw.)