Quiz: Mystery scores

[Luke]

last 2

[Luke]

Oh, the #9 above that Sfz said looked like Debussy but wasn't - well, it looked very like one of the Etudes to me, but I trusted Sfz, he's usually right. But this time he wasn't, it is one of the Etudes (Pour les sonorites opposees). It was bugging me, so I checked!

The Ravel Barque, the Strav Agon and the Ives are the other ones I would have identified straight off, along with the Grieg, the Janacek and this Debussy. The Ades too, once I'd looked at it close up. The Ligeti too, I think. The others I would have had to think about.

Is the #8 above identified? It looks like Ligeti, too. His sense of humour all over it. In fact I'm pretty sure it must be Artikulation. No?

[EigenUser]

Oh, the #9 above that Sfz said looked like Debussy but wasn't - well, it looked very like one of the Etudes to me, but I trusted Sfz, he's usually right. But this time he wasn't, it is one of the Etudes (Pour les sonorites opposees). It was bugging me, so I checked!

The Ravel Barque, the Strav Agon and the Ives are the other ones I would have identified straight off, along with the Grieg, the Janacek and this Debussy. The Ades too, once I'd looked at it close up. The Ligeti too, I think. The others I would have had to think about.

Is the #8 above identified? It looks like Ligeti, too. His sense of humour all over it. In fact I'm pretty sure it must be Artikulation. No?

#8 isn't Artikulation, as I've seen the score. I'll have to look into your new posts and get back!

Schoenberg's own, or Greissle's?

I'm pretty sure it is Schoenberg's. I came across it in the library in my university as a part of a huge multi-volume hardbound Schoenberg scores they seem to have recently acquired. I was trying to find the score for the original and ended up finding this one first.

Well, hullo, Luke! Long time.

There was a lot more energy on the old thread, which I have to say was the best experience I've ever had on this board. As for EigenUser's 4 and 9, I can't place the exact pieces, but 4 looks like Bartok and 9 Stravinsky, and that's the best I can do. Maybe someone should tally the whole lot and see what's yet unidentified. (Not that I couldn't do it, but laziness gets the better of me.)

9 is Stravinsky, but 4 is not Bartok.

[Luke]

#8 isn't Artikulation, as I've seen the score.

Me too - I assumed it might be another rendering! But it is Ligeti?

edit - now fairly sure it can't be Ligeti! 

[EigenUser]

Me too - I assumed it might be another rendering! But it is Ligeti?

edit - now fairly sure it can't be Ligeti! 

Yeah, the Ligeti is only 2 or 3 minutes or so and this has time markings far past that. I didn't think of that myself, but I assume that is what you are referring to.

[amw]

Cool, activity! I might post some more now...

Oh, the #9 above that Sfz said looked like Debussy but wasn't - well, it looked very like one of the Etudes to me, but I trusted Sfz, he's usually right. But this time he wasn't, it is one of the Etudes (Pour les sonorites opposees). It was bugging me, so I checked!

Indeed. Still the only one of the Etudes I can play.

The Ravel Barque, the Strav Agon and the Ives are the other ones I would have identified straight off, along with the Grieg, the Janacek and this Debussy. The Ades too, once I'd looked at it close up. The Ligeti too, I think. The others I would have had to think about.

Is the #8 above identified? It looks like Ligeti, too. His sense of humour all over it. In fact I'm pretty sure it must be Artikulation. No?

No. It's Berio, in fact - Visage. Ligeti was not the only one to prepare "scores" for electronic pieces during that period. And my unidentified #6 on page one is the middle movement from Sibelius's sonatina in F-sharp minor.

Now onto the guessing!

Luke #1 seems so familiar but I am clueless. Flute, harp, string trio and... voice? (I can't imagine what else it would be) is a unique enough combo that it should be recogniseable.

Luke #2 is the last four bars of what would later become Symphonies of Wind Instruments, Stravinsky's Tombeau de Debussy (?) published 1918.

#4 is Dussek's Execution of Marie Antoinette piece, whatever it's called. Op. 23. That's the part where Marie gets executed.

I think #7 is Satie, but around the 2/4 bar I start becoming less sure of it. Typesetting doesn't help.

The rest don't look familiar at this stage, though they do look interesting.

[kishnevi]

No. 6 (if I have the numbering correct) is Bach's Magnificat (the "Sicut locutus").
Know this solely because I was one of the baritones in a college performance.

[amw]

Once again I don't know how easy these will be, though at least two of them should be readily identified

#10


#11


#12


#13


#14

[Luke]

I've had 3 hours sleep and now need to set of for work, so no chance to look at these new ones yet. Some of them seem familiar...ish, but I can't identify them straightaway. (is 12 Sorabji? it half-looks like him...)

Re the Berio, funnily enough, I considered him, and even that very piece, and in fact nearly played it through to check last night, but I was getting so tired that I didn't bother! Darn it! The German is a nice red herring, pointing one Stockhausen- and Ligeti-wards, but Berio used it too, and this sort of UE look reminds one of him too. Plus, the humour one can see in it, which I connected with Ligeti - it belongs to Luciano too.

My #2 is the Stravinsky, correct
My #4 is the Dussek - well done, that's a harder one!
#7 isn't Satie - but you're not far off.

[Maciek]

EigenUser, isn't yours no. 4 a film score? Like perhaps Herrmann's Psycho?

[EigenUser]

Once again I don't know how easy these will be, though at least two of them should be readily identified

I think that #10 is Dutilleux's Ainsi de la Nuit.

EigenUser, isn't yours no. 4 a film score? Like perhaps Herrmann's Psycho?

THANK YOU MACIEK! Now, anyone care to guess which scene?

I have a good one that I can post later on, but I'm too lazy to get it right now (even though my shelf is 4 feet in front of me right now -- it's a comfortable chair!).

[Maciek]

Now, anyone care to guess which scene?

In my case, that might take a while.



amw, could your no. 11 be Lachenmann?

[(poco) Sforzando]

No. 6 (if I have the numbering correct) is Bach's Magnificat (the "Sicut locutus").
Know this solely because I was one of the baritones in a college performance.

I don't see the Bach anywhere. #6 (if we're referring to Luke's pieces) is from the Offertorium from the Requiem by Pierre de la Rue. (I knew it was a Requiem mass by the text, and since it sure wasn't Verdi, this was the most likely Renaissance candidate. Positive ID.)

Guys, since we have a lot of duplicate numbers by now, it would help it you added your initials to each of your entry numbers.

[(poco) Sforzando]

Once again I don't know how easy these will be, though at least two of them should be readily identified.

Assume that if you think it will be easy, everyone else will find it near impossible, and vice versa.

[(poco) Sforzando]

last 2

No clue, but 14 is clearly quoting the Brahms 3rd piano sonata.

[kishnevi]

I don't see the Bach anywhere. #6 (if we're referring to Luke's pieces) is from the Offertorium from the Requiem by Pierre de la Rue. (I knew it was a Requiem mass by the text, and since it sure wasn't Verdi, this was the most likely Renaissance candidate. Positive ID.)

Guys, since we have a lot of duplicate numbers by now, it would help it you added your initials to each of your entry numbers.

Well, I will be goshdarned.
True, it's been over thirty years since that concert, and I don't have the Bach score handy.....
but the "semini ejus' matches my memory of how Bach wrote that passage. 
I assume there is no possibility of Bach borrowing from de la Rue.   Is the similarity there or is my aural memory worse than I think it is?

[(poco) Sforzando]

Mr Sfz! A pleasure, as always!

I haven't actually looked carefully through the previous page, I just assumed they had all been guessed a long time ago. The Grieg and the Janacek jumped right out at me though, and maybe one or two others. I've just knocked up a few for anyone who wants a go, but I should say I probably won't be able to give this thread quite the time and effort I gave its older brother, although I hope to be proved wrong.

Some of these are very hard, I wouldn't get them myself unless I spent many long hours looking at them. I've put them up because I think they are just interesting pieces. But others are much easier. There is a vague chain of (sometimes very tenuous) associations linking #1 with #2 and #2 with #3 and so on up to about #9. The others are just a random collection, though 14 and 15 are by the same composer, and they are only here because I think they are fun (an odd composer, this one, quite the bare-faced plagiarist!).

Knock 'em dead!

#1 is from Psyché by Manuel de Falla.

[Luke]

Oh, Psycho! I have that score, so if you want to know which section it is I can track it down.

Of mine, the Psyche is correct - one of my favourite pieces by Falla. The tenuous connection to #2 is that Falla also wrote a piece for the Debussy Tombeau from which the Stravinsky comes.

The Pierre de la Rue is also correct*

And yes, my no 14 quotes the Brahms as Sfz spotted. The next page quotes the German Requiem, too.




* Only read further if you want to know my personal reasons for posting this particular page - bear with me on this! One of my 'Desert Island' pieces - and I am not joking about this in the least - is 'Boatwoman Song,' the first track from Canaxis, a 1968 album by Stockhausen pupil Holger Czukay (Czukay made the album by sneaking into KS's studio at night time, and Canaxis itself is often cited as the first use of 'sampling' in popular music, the idea coming directly from Stocky, of course). Czukay went on to become a founder member of the enormously important and influential 'krautrock' band Can. This album and Can's early albums have always impressed me enormously - this is prog rock with all the noodle and excess removed, just a uniquely burning, fiery intensity and huge musicality evident everywhere in the complex, seething mix. But my love of this music is surely also bound up with the fact that I discovered it, through my older brother (Jo Re Mi on this forum) when I was about 15 or so, and it seared itself on my musical make-up. A particularly central memory of mine is sitting in my brother's studenty bedroom on warm summer nights, the windows open to the garden and the fields outside, and hearing this music for the first time. Boatwoman Song was always my favourite, and each time I hear it I am transported back.... It begins with an austere slab of Gothic choral music, whose last few bars are looped and become the background for a field recording of two Vietnamese boatwomen singing. The connections forged between distant time and distant place are haunting, there is a kind of logic to it but goodness knows how. After a while the choir fades out; when it enters again, later, it undergoes a dramatic slippage in pitch which seems to take the track down into ever deeper, more precious areas.

I always wanted to know what was the choral music Czukay had used for this track. According to one way of defining the word and one version of history, this piece is the very first piece of sampled music. I have heard that looped phrase thousands of times in my life, it has become quite important to me - but where, precisely, did it come from? It took quite a bit of tracking down - the sampled passage is the last half a line of my extract from de la Rue's Requiem, (although the de la Rue turns out to be a well-known work to those conversant in this repertoire, which I am not). Annoyingly, now on Youtube I see that there is another video which makes the connection, and so my detective work was a bit wasted!

[Luke]

I was right about that #12 (I'm not sure whose is whose, sorry) - it is Sorabji, as I suspected, from deep into the Opus Clavicembalisticum, pg 153

[amw]

I think that #10 is Dutilleux's Ainsi de la Nuit.

Indeed it is. Last page

amw, could your no. 11 be Lachenmann?

It certainly could.

I was right about that #12 (I'm not sure whose is whose, sorry) - it is Sorabji, as I suspected, from deep into the Opus Clavicembalisticum, pg 153

Yep—climactic chords at the end of the Adagio, one of the few passages that stuck out to me when I first tried to listen to the whole piece.

There's a Sorabji connection with one of the others I posted as well