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

10 a day seems fine to me.

I voted, and when the results are done and everybody is posting their ballots, I hope mine prompts a lot of "ugh, I could have done better than that" and boosts turnout in future polls.

Meredith Monk receiving a 2014 National Medal of the Arts and Humanities

Uf, I'm having a hard time with all of these. I already knew serialism, spectralism, opera and some, I guess spiritual?, types of minimalism are not for me. The chants on Dolmen Music just sound really cheesy to me. As opposed to something like Music for 18 Musicians which is crazy beautiful. Will give a shot to all 100 tho.

^^ that

I don't know a lot about this stuff, but I can think of 10 pieces listed in the noms sheet that I like more than others. Hopefully nobody on this board is going to go "ugh, you voted for Mahler? Really?" but even if they do, who gives a shit, really?

(that was an xpost to WilliamC obv)

Spiritual hat minimalism.

I voted for Mahler, lol...

Simmel, what kinds of notated music do you like (other than Reich obv)?

I had at least three maybe four Mahlers on my ballot, I unashamedly profess the Debussy Mahler Sibelius axis as the king shit

We're staying in America, and among my personal favourites, for the next one.

96 John Cage - First Construction in Metal Points: 327 Votes: 3 #1 Votes: 0

http://www.bellperc.com//media/images/hire/thunder.jpg

... Cage moves away from the traditional Western absorption in pitch, to a point where "pure" (i.e. nonpitched) timbre and rhythmic structure dominate his thinking. The First Construction is scored for an ensemble of six percussionists, who perform on such instruments as brake drums, oxen bells, large 'thundersheets' of metal, gongs, Turkish cymbals, and a 'string piano' (that is, the strings of a grand piano struck directly). The entire work is based on units - rhythmic and formal - of sixteen; for eample, there are sixteen sections, each consisting of sixteen measures. These units, at every level, subdivide into the proportions 4-3-2-3-4.

RIYL: rhythmic electronic music

I really like this version.

I had three Mahler pieces on my ballot, I just meant that if you were going to go after populist stuff, Mahler might be a popular choice. He was a great composer, I'm still finding my way through the symphonies.

I had no idea of the existence of this poll. Glad it got made.

btw: Pollero means guy who sells chickens in spanish so I thought this was some sort of cumbia or salsa poll.

I was unfamiliar with Grisey – this is wonderful.

I had no idea of the existence of this poll.

People keep saying this. Ha, I worried that I was plugging it too much!

Didn't know that about the Spanish meaning but it makes sense, ha.

And it was time for a new display name. (Thx, Rudipherous.)

When I was a mod, I wanted to put up a standing message at the top of the boards and new answers pages pointing out which polls were currently running. That got shot down real fast.

Did someone say cumbia?

I think that might be the Cage percussion piece I have been searching for the right version of (i.e., the one that was incorporated into the theme music for a radio show I used to listen to), for decades. Will have to check when I am home.

Next one is sure to be a hit.

95 Gustav Mahler - Symphony no. 3 Points: 328 Votes: 3 #1 Votes: 0

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00008GQTR.01.L.jpg

The Third Symphony arguably takes as its theme the process of Mahler's assimilation while extending the iconoclastic implications of the Second's finale in the half-hour long first movement. Similarly structured around a proliferating march, its progress from D minor to F major is portrayed, in internal score annotations (e.g. ‘Pan schläft’, ‘Die Schlacht beginnt!’), as a battle between the opposed ‘forces’ of the expositional duality: here representing death and winter inertia on the one hand, the awakening ‘life’ forces of Pan on the other. The often deliberately realistic vulgarity of the military-band style orchestration of the march highlights the implicitly subversive origins of its main theme (a student song by Binzer – Wir hatten gebauet ein stattliches Haus – beloved of anti-Habsburg, pan-Germanists in Mahler's student days) and lends an almost concrete political implication to the ‘anarchic’ qualities that outraged the work's more consevative critics.

- Peter Franklin

This is where I admit that I can't remember if I've ever listened to this.

xxxxp Sund4r

I have an extremely limited experience with notated music. Basically just a dumbass going through it and drawing some loose pop analogies. So I like parts of baroque that work like jazz (intriguing variations and such) and pop (pretty and intuitive tunes) but dislike those that work like metal ("dark" and pompous, plenty of vocal stuff). The romantic period seems to emphasize the metal tendencies so I'm struggling with it. I can't get into most IDM and ambient music and feel serialism and spectralism, respectively, are their kindered spirits. Love Reich to death but can't get behind Arvo Part and such. There are things I don't think pop music can do better or even do at all cause they are so linked to very specific historical circumstance. Music of the lords if you will. So the regal pomp of Handel or pastoral nostalgia in the Lark Ascending register. Pop doesn't really do stuff like that. Not well at least.

Looking forward to this countdown changing my mind on plenty of this. Or at least giving me more nuance.

This was the first Mahler symphony I got into obsessively. It's still the apotheosis of 'young mahler' for me. I feel like he is summoning the whole bohemian woodlands music tradition here (gm would have been born Czech if he was born in the same place but during the 20c)

Wait am I wrong about that

No, that's correct.

Well, sort of. The Czech Republic has only existed since 1993, so. But where Mahler was born and raised is today located in the Czech Republic, yeah. Nationalities didn't really make sense like that back then. Mahler was a German speaking Jew, and said he felt thrice homeless, as a bohemian amongst austrians, an austrian amongst germans, and a jew in the world.

He was born really close to the dividing, where the jewish community oriented itself towards Vienna or Prague. Imagine Mahler composing in the tradition of Smetana and Dvorak, but, y'know, as originally as Mahler.

I feel the 3rd is where that strain is heard most robustly

Cool, simmel. Ha, I always think of the Cage percussion and prepared piano pieces as forerunners to IDM. The spectralism/ambient thing definitely makes sense, esp if you're talking about something like SAW II or noisier ambient drone.

Btw, a lot of jazz and (mostly pre-rock) pop was eligible for this poll! I was sort of hoping someone would do a ballot that was all Broadway and Tin Pan Alley tunes.

Wow @ 33m-long first movement to Mahler 3. It's good stuff so far, though. We'll sit with this for a while before moving on.

Didn't catch that unfortunately. Dislike Broadway generally but could muster a solid top 20 Tin Pan Alley ballot. Pre-rock pop seems worthy of it's own poll. Anyway, thanks for not laughing off my analogies. Love Mahler!

Did someone say cumbia?

https://youtu.be/OQn61-Q2dwQ

― _Rudipherous

Hahaha but that's POLLERA with an A. You might think it means woman who sells chickens but pollera is actually a traditional one piece dress that is used in latin america.

Oops. Yes, I was hoping it was just the female version.

I'm still a little confused about this pollero/cumbia thing. Are chicken salesmen a common topic for cumbia songs?

This long-ass Mahler symphony is ruling btw. What this sort of thing should be all about, you know?

Goddamn is this poll-running business draining. Gonna be a challenge to make it through 10 days and get a recording done.

Anyway, some spiritual hat minimalism up next.

94 Arvo Pärt - Magnificat Points: 329 Votes: 3 #1 Votes: 0

https://c1.staticflickr.com/3/2925/14070849383_04f4c1b0c3_b.jpg

The quote about First Construction above was from Schwartz and Godfrey btw.

I voted for this! And I've sung this. Love it.

93 Maurice Duruflé - Requiem Points: 332 Votes: 2 #1 Votes: 0

http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Pic-Lib-BIG/Durufle-Maurice-03.jpg

The first composer in this countdown whom I honestly knew nothing about.

Although he was born in 1902 and died in 1986, Maurice Duruflé is not a typical 20th-century musician. Compared with other great composers of his day — Bernstein, Stravinsky, Shostakovich, Britten — he seems strangely out of touch with his times, both in his music and his personality. Duruflé has been described by students, colleagues, and biographers as a reclusive and private person who seemed unusually unsure and timid given his fame. He lived in Paris during one its most chaotic and creative periods, and yet he had no interest in sharing in the salons of the literary and musical elite. Eschewing change, he was a conservative in a radical world. In 1969, for example, on hearing a jazz mass in one of its chapels at Saint Étienne, he expressed his outrage in a loud voice over what he considered to be a scandalous travesty!

His four gregorian motets are great and I voted for them. Ubi Caritas might be the prototype for a lot of shitty music - Morten Lauridsen, Ola Gjeilo, etc - but that doesn't make it any less great. Like, check it out on youtube.

It's looking like most of us are drifting off for the night. I thought the next composer might do even better than he did, owing to the strong avant-metal cru presence in the voter base for this poll, but he still did pretty well for himself.

92 Glenn Branca - Symphony no. 13 ('Hallucination City') Points: 333 Votes: 3 #1 Votes: 0

http://cache3.asset-cache.net/gc/543625625-the-glenn-branca-ensemble-performing-gettyimages.jpg?v=1&c=IWSAsset&k=2&d=X7WJLa88Cweo9HktRLaNXgBZzacLBctF1C%2BJeKCcxSlSU1A3jo026GWAQdQg%2FkbrRnCvC3trKDy%2BzsWL%2FojZ4g%3D%3D

Finally officially released on CD, a contender for my AOTY.

Ha, just realised that it's nearly 3 am in the UK.

(Meant Debussy not Sibelius.)

(Although much of Preludes for Piano is to Romantic for me.)

There was a tie at 199 so here's 1-199. The bottom five or so received one vote each:

1 Igor Stravinsky - Le sacre du printemps (The Rite of Spring) 1502 12 1
2 Olivier Messiaen - Turangalîla-Symphonie 1458 11 1
3 Steve Reich - Music for 18 Musicians 1234 10 0
4 Olivier Messiaen - Quatuor pour le fin de temps 1225 10 0
5 Krzysztof Penderecki - Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima 1060 8 0
6 Henryk Gorecki - Symphony No. 3 'Symphony of Sorrowful Songs' 970 8 0
7 Maurice Ravel - Boléro 949 8 0
8 Igor Stravinsky - Firebird 940 7 0
9 Terry Riley - In C 881 8 0
10 George Gershwin - Rhapsody in Blue 826 8 0
11 Bela Bartok - Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta 816 6 0
12 Igor Stravinsky - Petrushka 788 6 0
13 Morton Feldman - Rothko Chapel 780 7 0
14 Karlheinz Stockhausen - Kontakte 754 6 0
15 Steve Reich - Drumming 741 6 0
16 Philip Glass - Einstein on the Beach 694 5 0
17 Gyorgy Ligeti - Atmosphères 692 5 0
18 Arvo Pärt - Tabula Rasa 682 5 0
19 Jean Sibelius - Tapiola 668 4 0
20 Steve Reich - Different Trains 667 6 0
21 Claude Debussy - Preludes (Books 1 and 2) 663 5 1
22 Arvo Pärt - Fratres 648 5 0
23 Claude Debussy - Prélude a l'après-midi d'un faune (Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun) 636 5 0
24 Gustav Holst - The Planets 632 7 0
25 Leonard Bernstein et al - West Side Story 627 4 0
26 Gustav Mahler - Symphony no. 6 625 5 0
27 Duke Ellington - The Far East Suite 598 5 0
28 John Cage - 4'33' 594 5 1
29 Philip Glass - Music in 12 Parts 594 4 1
30 Olivier Messiaen - L'Ascension 575 5 0
31 Karlheinz Stockhausen - Stimmung 566 6 0
32 Glenn Branca - Symphony no. 3 555 6 0
33 Igor Stravinsky - Agon 539 4 0
34 Luciano Berio - Sinfonia 533 6 0
35 Alban Berg - Wozzeck 522 4 0
35 Gyorgy Ligeti - Requiem 522 4 0
37 Gyorgy Ligeti - Lux Aeterna 517 4 0
38 Gabriel Fauré - Requiem in D minor 516 4 0
39 Claude Debussy - Nocturnes 515 4 0
40 Claude Debussy - La mer 514 3 0
41 Bela Bartok - Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion 511 4 0
42 Arvo Pärt - Cantus in memoriam Benjamin Britten 507 4 0
43 John Cage - Sonatas and Interludes for the Prepared Piano 489 5 1
44 Steve Reich - Tehillim 483 4 0
45 Claude Debussy - Sonata for Flute, Viola, and Harp 483 3 0
46 Jean Sibelius - Symphony no. 6 480 3 0
47 Ennio Morricone - The Good, the Bad and the Ugly 477 4 0
48 Alfred Schnittke - Concerto for Choir 475 4 0
49 Gavin Bryars - Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet 473 3 0
50 Arnold Schoenberg - Pierrot Lunaire 471 3 0
51 edgard varèse - Ionisation 467 5 0
52 Benjamin Britten - Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings 461 3 0
53 Philip Glass - Music in Similar Motion 453 3 0
54 Bela Bartok - Mikrokosmos 452 4 0
55 John Zorn - Cobra 449 4 0
56 Bela Bartok - Concerto for Orchestra 446 3 0
57 Karlheinz Stockhausen - Kreuzspiel 442 4 0
58 Edgard Varese - Density 21.5 439 5 0
59 Louis Andriessen - De Staat 433 4 0
60 Maurice Ravel - Rapsodie espagnole 433 3 0
61 Yamashiro Shoji (with Geinoh Yamashirogumi) - Akira (Original Soundtrack) 429 3 0
62 Bela Bartok - String Quartet no. 4 427 3 0
63 Maurice Ravel - String Quartet in F 412 4 0
64 Benjamin Britten - War Requiem 409 3 0
65 Steve Reich - Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices and Organ 404 4 0
66 Pierre Boulez - le marteau sans maître 399 3 0
67 Brian Eno - Discreet Music 396 3 0
68 John Luther Adams - Become Ocean 395 4 0
69 Jerry Goldsmith - Alien, film score 388 3 0
70 Gustav Mahler - Das Lied von der Erde 388 2 0
71 Igor Stravinsky - Les Noces 381 3 0
72 Claude Debussy - String Quartet in G Minor 380 3 0
73 Gustav Mahler - Symphony no. 9 380 2 1
74 Gavin Bryars - The Sinking of the Titanic 375 3 0
75 Antonin Dvořák - Symphony no. 9 ('New World') 374 4 1
76 Iannis Xenakis - Pithoprakta 370 4 0
76 Steve Reich - Sextet 370 4 0
78 Charles Ives - The Unanswered Question 368 3 0
79 Jean Sibelius - Symphony No. 4 366 4 0
80 Gustav Mahler - Symphony no. 5 365 4 0
81 Philip Glass - Akhnaten 363 3 0
82 George Gershwin - An American In Paris 361 4 0
83 Antonin Dvořák - Rusalka 356 2 0
84 Steve Reich - Piano Phase 354 4 0
85 Giacomo Puccini - Manon Lescaut 350 2 0
86 Claude Debussy - Etudes 346 2 0
87 Scott Joplin - The Entertainer 345 4 0
88 luciano berio - Sequenza III (for female voice) 342 5 0
89 Igor Stravinsky - Symphonies of Wind Instruments 340 3 0
90 Ennio Morricone - For A Few Dollars More, film score 335 4 0
90 Les Baxter - Quiet Village 335 4 0
92 Glenn Branca - Symphony no. 13 ('Hallucination City') 333 3 0
93 Maurice Duruflé - Requiem 332 2 0
94 Arvo Pärt - Magnificat 329 3 0
95 Gustav Mahler - Symphony no. 3 328 3 0
96 John Cage - First Construction in Metal 327 3 0
97 Meredith Monk - Dolmen Music 323 4 0
98 Iannis Xenakis - Metastasis 322 4 0
99 Benjamin Britten - The Turn of the Screw, opera after Henry James 320 2 0
100 Gérard Grisey - Les espaces acoustiques 318 2 0
101 Maurice Ravel - Gaspard de la nuit 316 3 0
102 Maurice Ravel - Daphnis et Chloe 314 2 0
102 Maurice Ravel - La valse 314 2 0
104 Jean Sibelius - The Tempest, incidental music for the play 310 3 0
105 Aaron Copland - Appalachian Spring 310 2 0
106 Erik Satie - Trois Gnossienes 306 5 0
107 Steve Reich - Four Organs 304 3 0
108 Olivier Messiaen - Trois petites liturgies de la présence divine 300 3 0
109 Scott Joplin - The Maple Leaf Rag 299 3 0
110 Giacomo Puccini - Tosca 299 2 0
110 Percy Grainger - A Lincolnshire Posy 299 2 0
112 Witold Lutoslawski - Symphony no. 3 297 3 0
113 Alban Berg - Lulu 295 3 0
113 Glenn Branca - Symphony no. 6 295 3 0
113 Kurt Weill (with Bertolt Brecht) - Threepenny Opera 295 3 0
116 Per Norgard - Symphony no. 2 294 3 0
117 John Cage - In a Landscape 293 2 0
118 Maurice Ravel - Valses nobles et sentimentales 292 2 0
119 Bela Bartok - Out of Doors (Szabadban), Sz. 81 288 2 0
120 John Tavener - The Protecting Veil 285 3 0
121 Claude Debussy - Pelléas et Mélisande 284 2 0
122 Sergei Prokofiev - Alexander Nevsky 283 3 0
123 Giacomo Puccini - La Boheme 283 2 0
124 Steve Reich - violin phase 282 3 0
125 John Cage - Williams Mix 281 2 0
126 Gabriel Fauré - Piano Trio 279 3 0
127 Henryk Gorecki - Miserere 279 2 0
128 Alfred Schnittke - Concerto Grosso No.1 278 2 0
129 Alice Coltrane - Galaxy in Satchidananda 277 2 0
130 John Adams - Nixon in China 275 3 0
131 Iannis Xenakis - Pléïades 275 2 0
132 Bernard Herrmann - Vertigo, film score 273 4 0
133 Gustav Holst - First Suite in E-flat for Military Band 273 3 0
134 Henry Cowell - The Banshee 265 3 0
135 Harrison Birtwistle - Punch and Judy 265 2 0
135 witold lutosławski - string quartet 265 2 0
137 Owen Pallett - Heartland 264 2 0
138 Howard Shore - The Fellowship of the Ring, film score 263 3 0
139 Gyorgy Ligeti - Violin Concerto 262 2 0
139 John Adams - A Short Ride in a Fast Machine 262 2 0
141 Igor Stravinsky - The Rakes Progress 261 3 0
142 Claude Debussy - Children's Corner 260 2 0
143 Dmitry Shostakovich - Symphony no. 14 (song cycle for two singers and orchestra) 258 2 0
144 Per Norgard - Symphony no. 3 256 2 0
145 Charles Koechlin - The Jungle Book 254 3 0
146 Astor Piazzolla - Libertango 253 2 0
146 John Adams - Harmonium 253 2 0
148 U Totem - One Nail Draws Another 252 2 0
149 Krzysztof Penderecki - Symphony No.1 248 3 0
150 Gil Evans - Sunken Treasure 248 2 0
150 Jean Sibelius - Symphony No. 7 248 2 0
150 Olivier Messiaen - Des canyons aux étoiles 248 2 0
153 Sergei Rachmaninoff - Piano Concertos 1-4 245 2 0
154 Ralph Vaughan Williams - Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis 242 4 0
155 Elliott Carter - String Quartet No. 1 241 2 0
156 Maurice Ravel - Miroirs 240 2 0
157 Claude Vivier - Lonely Child 236 2 0
157 Gustav Mahler - Symphony no. 7 236 2 0
157 Scott Joplin - Solace 236 2 0
160 Ottorino Respighi - Pines of Rome 235 2 0
161 Olivier Messiaen - Vingt Regards sur L'enfant-Jesus 233 2 0
162 Bernard Herrmann - Psycho, film score 232 2 0
163 Olivier Messiaen - Chronochromie 231 2 0
164 Olivier Messiaen - La Nativité du Seigneur 229 2 0
165 Howard Shore - Crash, film score 228 2 0
166 John Luther Adams - Inuksuit 227 3 0
167 Arnold Schoenberg - Verklarte Nacht 226 4 0
168 Louis Andriessen - Hoketus 226 2 0
169 Gyorgy Ligeti - Lontano 225 3 0
170 Leoš Janáček - Capriccio for Piano (left hand) and Wind Instruments 224 2 0
171 Bela Bartok - String Quartet no. 5 217 2 0
172 Edward Elgar - Cello Concerto 216 3 0
173 Steve Reich - City Life 215 2 0
174 John Cage - credo in us 212 3 0
175 Charles Koechlin - Les Heures Persanes 212 2 0
176 Dmitry Shostakovich - 24 Preludes and Fugues (op. 87) 210 2 0
176 Pauline Oliveros - Six for New Time 210 2 0
178 Bela Bartok - String Quartet no. 3 207 2 0
179 Milton Babbitt - Philomel 206 2 0
180 Edgard Varese - Arcana 202 3 0
181 Ennio Morricone - Once Upon A Time In America, film score 202 2 0
181 Kurt Schwitters - Ursonate 202 2 0
181 Morton Subotnick - Silver Apples of the Moon 202 2 0
181 Peter Warlock - The Curlew 202 2 0
181 Wendy Carlos - Timesteps 202 2 0
181 harrison birtwistle - triumph of time 202 2 0
181 luciano berio - laborintus 2 202 2 0
188 Bela Bartok - Piano Concerto No.2 201 2 0
189 Karlheinz Stockhausen - Mikrophonie II 200 2 0
189 Karlheinz Stockhausen - Prozession 200 2 0
189 Ornette Coleman - Skies of America 200 2 0
189 Steve Reich - phase patterns 200 2 0
189 henryk gorecki - harpsichord concerto 200 2 0
189 ornette coleman - dedication to poets and writers 200 2 0
195 Giuseppe Verdi - Falstaff 200 1 1
195 Jean Sibelius - Finlandia 200 1 1
195 Sofia Gubaidulina - The Canticle of the Sun 200 1 1
198 George Lewis - Homage to Charles Parker 198 1 0
199 Lili Boulanger - Clairières dans le ciel 196 1 0
199 Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov - The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh 196 1 0

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

Just to nitpick, Frank Martin was a francophone Swiss who also lived in Italy, France and the Netherlands.

195 Sofia Gubaidulina - The Canticle of the Sun 200 1 1
199 Lili Boulanger - Clairières dans le ciel 196 1 0

Wow, kinda sad I was the only one to vote for these, didn't expect that... I expected there to be more love for Gubaidulina especially, she's pretty prominent and well recorded.

had a listen to that george lewis piece and nice v v nice

is there a spotify link to this anywhere?

got it, never mind

I haven't gotten around to doing the 101-200 playlist yet btw. Maybe during the holiday lull.

I'm not sure why I was AWOL for this! I remember nominating stuff, The Unanswered Question for one.

I'm never quite sure how popular Messiaen is, but that's a pleasing result on that front.

It looks like, if I'd be paying attention, Daphnis et Chloe, Alexander Nevsky and some Lutoslawski and Koechlin might have just snuck into the 100. :)

I just want to say thank you for this thread to all who participated. I've been making my way through this list and have found so many amazing pieces. Today's discovery: Arvo Part's Fratres, Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten, and Tabula Rasa.

This Sunday's NYT piece on the straightjacketing effect of Rhapsody in Blue over the course of the last 100 years annoyed me but also had some truth to it