Wherein We Elect Our Favourite Classical Compositions of… the 1950s

Obvious chestnuts:
Berio - Sinfonia
Stockhausen - Stimmung
Riley - In C
Glass - Music in Similar Motion
Ligeti - Atmospheres
Penderecki - Threnody...

Guitar music:
Britten - Nocturnal after John Dowland, op. 70 (Bream recording recommended again)
Stephen Dodgson - Partita
Maurice Ohana - Si le jour parait ...

As far as the actual 50s poll, it probably comes down to Le marteau vs Brindle. I realize the former is the more important and greater work but the personal connection with the latter is strong.

I could check the other thread, but I'm guessing it may have been you that lobbied for inclusion of the Brindle, Sund4r? If so, thanks! Enjoyed it, and there's a fair chance I wouldn't ever know about it otherwise. :)

Yes, glad you liked it.

I may just switch to 5 years for the remaining polls per ogmor's suggestion because my current longlist for the 60s is as excruciating as you'd expect.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Fuck it, I'm voting Scelsi.

Anyone want to rep for Galina Ustvolskaya? Three pieces here and I've heard none before.

They represent a bleaker, starker, less consolatory late Shostakovich avant la lettre (he reportedly told her that she influenced him, not the other way around). For the Grand Duet, try Mstislav Rostropovich and Igor Uriash. The Violin Sonata is well served by Patricia Kopatchinskaja and Markus Hinterhäuser (on an excellent ECM disc). As for the 4th Piano Sonata, I like Ivan Sokolov's take, among many others.

fwiw (nothing as i don't vote in polls lol) a vote for anything also counts as a vote for 4'33", you just assume it's being performed somewhere poorly soundproofed with e.g. zimmerman's canto di sperenza bleeding thru the walls, to be officially part of the cage performance ("noises of your body" etc)

this is canon

nothing as i don't vote in polls lol

C'mon mark, don't be such a hipster.

mark not voting is canon too iirc

Anyway Pom, huge thanks - again - for the recommendations!

Btw are you familiar with this book? Performing Pain: Music and Trauma in Eastern Europe Looks rad!

Agon
Possibly my most listened-to Stravinsky piece

I've got reservations about Stravinsky but Agon is classic af.

Btw are you familiar with this book? Performing Pain: Music and Trauma in Eastern Europe Looks rad!

It does indeed. Thanks for the tip.

why scelsi pom? I assume it's one of the things would especially benefit from a live hearing

I am no closer to working out what to vote for

Rundel's live recording on Mode is quite good, incidentally!

I'm a spectralist stan and hence sympathetic to proto-spectralism. I also worry that no one else will vote for it.

That said, at least ten other works could have won out depending on ineffable fluctuations.

My hopeless anglophilia doesn't always extend to this type of music so Lachrymae and those RVW symphonies are fresh to my ears. (Didn't even realise RVW was still composing this late!) It's all quite... luvly.

I spent an inordinate amount of time with RVW's symphonies in February and have finally come to appreciate their worth, thanks to Haitink's cycle in particular. They're much less stereotypically 'English' than I used to believe, that is to say less reactionary – somewhat in line with Sibelius's own complicated position within 20th century music. I've always loved Britten's Lachrymae, however, especially his later arrangement for viola and string orchestra. Theme and variations in reverse, wherein the borrowed melody is revealed at the very end of the piece, is in fact one of my favourite structural tropes in classical music.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Huh, I thought Shosty's 10th was going to walk this.

Omg sorry Boulez

:(

I had no idea he'd need my help.

D'oh, a long phone call prevented a last minute vote. Maybe imagine that Le Marteau sans maître or Quatre Études de rythm has a "1" against it rather than no votes.

Who voted for the Dallapiccola btw? I'm pleasantly surprised – I almost didn't include because I assumed no one would care.

^Teacher and major influence on Brindle (who got my vote in the end).

D'oh, forgot to vote! Would've gone with Junglinge in the end...

If anyone's interested, I wrote
this about the Brindle piece some years ago, when I still wrote words outside message boards.

Only thing I ever published

Thanks, and bookmarked.

An embarrassment of riches, split in twain:

Wherein We Elect Our Favourite Classical Compositions of… the 1960s – Part I (1960-1964)

today i learned RVW was working on an opera on Thomas the Rhymer at the time of his death

feel pretty robbed tbh!

Really really should have remembered to vote. For Marteau sans maitre.

I’ve just realised that Shostakovich 11 (Year 1905) was omitted even from the Hon mentions. Outrage. I was saving my Shosty vote for that. Harrumph.

Sorry, Shosty may well be my favourite composer on some days but I can’t stomach the 11th and the 12th. God knows I’ve tried.

looove the first movement, can take or leave the rest

i like the 12th

Haha, tbh, rereading my own old paper, I had to review what some of those set theory concepts were. :\

I read as much as I conceivably could of your article, Sund4r, and it reminded me that I am but a rank amateur when it comes to this stuff! I know enough to grasp the overall premise, but your analysis is several magnitudes of complexity and insight beyond my meagre musicological – and mathematical – understanding.

It was more technical/arcane than I remembered tbh. The math that you need to be able to read and apply pitch class set theory is mostly just arithmetic, though, really.