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

(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.

Each guitar is strung with two pairs of three strings, tuned an octave apart. (The soprano guitar is tuned to B, the tenor guitar to E, and the alto guitar to G.) The unrecorded Guitars D'Amour, performed at Expo 94 in Seville, Spain, was Branca's first and last piece for guitars in standard tuning. Symphonies No. 8 and 10 featured an octave guitar tuned to E, but covering 3 octaves, with 2 pairs of strings per octave. The bass guitars are in standard tuning, except on the final problem, where all guitars use a microtonal variation of Branca's normal tuning.

In his work with electric guitars, Branca has experiemented with density and volume, and the unpredictable acoustic phenomena generated through sound fields. He has invented new instruments and a compositional system to express his discoveries about the harmonic series.

Branca originally wrote his Symphony No. 13, "Hallucination City," for the year 2000 celebrations in Paris, hoping for an ensemble of 2,000 guitarists. When that performance did not happen, he premiered the work on June 13, 2001 outdoors in front of the World Trade Center in New York City with 100 guitarists. He has recently recorded the work, and last month he performed it at the Montclair State University School of the Arts in New Jersey.

"Structurally, it was perhaps Branca's most impressive work ever, filling out 62 minutes with no movement breaks. It started out purely consonant, repeating simple rising motives," Kyle Gann wrote in his review of the premiere for The Village Voice. "Starting at a deafening level, the work got louder almost throughout, and - after a stasis of a few minutes that could have signaled an ending - suddenly burst into tensely rising chromatic scales."

"It's true that the sheer loudness of Branca's guitar symphonies tends to overwhelm all other considerations," Gann wrote in an essay for American Mavericks. "But it's equally true that his rhythmicized, repetitive conflicts between harmonies preserve the heart of the symphonic tradition, especially if you compare them with Branca's 19th-century symphonic hero, Anton Bruckner."

From: http://www.laphil.com/philpedia/music/symphony-no-13-hallucination-city-for-100-electric-guitars-glenn-branca

We're in for another whiplash change of pace, with a tie for the #90 spot before we call it a night.

TIE 90 Les Baxter - Quiet Village Points: 335 Votes: 4 #1 Votes: 0

http://stagoleeshop.com/images/product_images/original_images/lesbaxter.jpg

90 Ennio Morricone - For A Few Dollars More, film score Points: 335 Votes: 4 #1 Votes: 0

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/eU1oj-gos4k/hqdefault.jpg

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