Would anyone here like to participate in this?

[Brian]

We know the composer of "Chopsticks?"  How'd I miss that?!

Euphemia Allen: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chopsticks_(waltz)

Her only published work, written at 16. Hard to find more information about her but apparently she lived til her late 80s so I hope she got a lot of royalties from the publication.

[Karl Henning]

Euphemia Allen: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chopsticks_(waltz)

Her only published work, written at 16. Hard to find more information about her but apparently she lived til her late 80s so I hope she got a lot of royalties from the publication.

My hat's off to her. Obviously I'll never write anything half as famous.

[MusicTurner]

My hat's off to her. Obviously I'll never write anything half as famous.

I hadn't really heard of the original, or her, either. Only vaguely remembered a set of piano variations on it, by Lyadov, Cui and others. It's not a work that will cause huge cognitive earthquakes, apparently.

[staxomega]

Thank you so much! I hope they enjoy it and find good things for them there.

If you see any way I can make it potentially more helpful for them -- i.e. changing the visual layout or something, since I'm not good at that kind of thing -- please let me know.

No I don't have any suggestions. Any minor suggestion I could offer would be something that would potentially offend people less (like removing the word "tier") but this starts to get into sillyness territory.

For other point that should give you some consolation if you were planning to do a list from scratch for GMG is these sort of things rely on a large userbase, and GMG is a considerably smaller (one among many things that makes this one of my favorite boards) in order to be meaningful. Otherwise you risk having oddities like that horrendous Sea Symphony ranked fairly high 

As Madiel pointed out, God help a beginner who is most strongly recommended to listen to Beethoven''s Ninth or Wagner's Ring, especially if he's a mature person, ie one whose spare time is usually on rather short supply.


I rarely listen to Mahler (imho Mahler's music is best experienced live) but when I do I listen attentively. Not that I really can stop my mind from wandering, though.

That's funny because to me Mozart's music is of such nature that more often than not an inattentive listening quickly turns into an attentive one, the Divertimenti included.

Fair enough, and a very good point about The Ring, I had not even considered that and it is a justifiable criticism for a new person to see that ranked so high up if they were to listen to this early on in their classical journey.

Re-reading my post apologies Florestan if my post came across as rude. I really do try to come across as cordial as (for me) there is nothing worse than getting an asshole reputation online (or especially so in real life) but I was debating inflation on another board and should have simply terminated discussion when some of the more conspiracy tilted views started to emerge, and I was in a sour mood after that. But then I put on 1.5 discs worth of in the zone, eyes closed listening of Harmonies Poétiques et Religieuses and had a supremely fine Sunday evening after that 

Oooops! Well, I did a page search for Crumb which retrieved nothing, but now that I checked it, I get nothing for Beethoven as well. Probably the page is in a non-searchable format, which is a bug in itself.

Anyway, if Black Angels is appropriate for turning kids into classical music afficionados, then any piece in the 26th Tier should do the trick, right? I mean, their being in that tier means they have a lot in common. And indeed, lo and behold!

The 26th Tier:
Bach: Magnificat in D, BWV 243 [1723, 1733]
Bach: Partitas for Keyboard #1-6, BWV 825-830 (Clavier-Übung I) [1725-30]
Beethoven: Piano Sonata #31 in A-flat, op. 110 [1822]
Crumb: Black Angels (Thirteen Images from the Dark Land) [1970]
Debussy: Images pour orchestre, L 122 [1912]
Górecki: Symphony #3 "Symphony of Sorrowful Songs," op. 36 [1976]
Haydn: Symphony #94 in G "Surprise" [1791]
Mozart: String Quintet #4 in G minor, K. 516 [1787]
Prokofiev: Symphony #1 in D, op. 25 "Classical" [1917]
Rachmaninoff: Symphony #2 in E minor, op. 27 [1907]
Ravel: Le Tombeau de Couperin [1917]

I'm actually pretty surprised by the consistency even going so far down as 26 tiers. That is a very fine list with but a single oddity, the Crumb piece you pointed out. If one listened to everything before that while gaining an appreciation for the work, that is about a half year to a years worth of listening before they'd get to that difficult piece.

I think even larger numbers of people would have needed to be sampled to remove outliers like that.

I'm actually pretty delighted to see the Górecki Symphony 3 break into the top 30 tiers, had I seen this list a couple of years earlier that would have been a piece new to me, that I now think is an extremely fine work.

[Florestan]

Re-reading my post apologies Florestan if my post came across as rude. I really do try to come across as cordial as (for me) there is nothing worse than getting an asshole reputation online (or especially so in real life) but I was debating inflation on another board and should have simply terminated discussion when some of the more conspiracy tilted views started to emerge, and I was in a sour mood after that.

I took absolutely no offense because there was none whatsoever to take. Your post was perfectly civil (as are all your posts) --- so don't worry.

But then I put on 1.5 discs worth of in the zone, eyes closed listening of Harmonies Poétiques et Religieuses and had a supremely fine Sunday evening after that 

An exquisite way to spend away a Sunday evening. indeed. Who played the HPR?

[Jo498]

That Gorecki symphony was in the charts (or at least part of it) in the late 1990s or so.

I still think there is in general nothing wrong with the typical 50-100 pieces included in "Great composer/classics" and they will suffice for most people interested. That fine graining is  way too much effort. Partly because in many cases it doesn't matter. It's totally irrelevant if the first Haydn symphony one encounters is 94, 100, 101, 104 or any other of the ~10 most popular ones. One might get a slightly skewed impression, namely towards the very late pieces and sometimes more picturesque, but it will not be a strong distortion. Similar with the typical 3-5 most popular named Beethoven piano sonatas. Fine-graining them into "tiers" is just not worth the effort.

And afterwards I don't think it's a problem to go first for music similar to what one likes, e.g. the remaining Beethoven sonatas instead of trying a Scriabin or Haydn sonata unless one is making a conscious effort to get a broad overview.
Excluding some "bonbons" and taking only complete works, I struggle to think of any typical "best of x" or "greatest classics" pieces I'd find a totally misguided recommendation.

I'll admit that there might be something to be said for suggesting pieces after ca. 1940 and before ca. 1700 that are usually not covered in intros or more niche. Again, I think it's usually a good rule of thumb to leave them for later and no problem at all (apart from the fact that they are not "hidden", they are just not strongly advertised or highly recommended).

And the other thing is that for the few listeners that are not "captured" by the ~50 typical pieces or by the 100 afterwards there won't be much help from the extreme fine graining either. One can make suggestions if one knows what other kinds of music they like but otherwise e.g. "Black Angels" will have as small a probability to appeal as any other modern or niche piece.

[Karl Henning]

That Gorecki symphony was in the charts (or at least part of it) in the late 1990s or so.

I still think there is in general nothing wrong with the typical 50-100 pieces included in "Great composer/classics" and they will suffice for most people interested. That fine graining is  way too much effort. Partly because in many cases it doesn't matter. It's totally irrelevant if the first Haydn symphony one encounters is 94, 100, 101, 104 or any other of the ~10 most popular ones. One might get a slightly skewed impression, namely towards the very late pieces and sometimes more picturesque, but it will not be a strong distortion. Similar with the typical 3-5 most popular named Beethoven piano sonatas. Fine-graining them into "tiers" is just not worth the effort.

And afterwards I don't think it's a problem to go first for music similar to what one likes, e.g. the remaining Beethoven sonatas instead of trying a Scriabin or Haydn sonata unless one is making a conscious effort to get a broad overview.
Excluding some "bonbons" and taking only complete works, I struggle to think of any typical "best of x" or "greatest classics" pieces I'd find a totally misguided recommendation.

I'll admit that there might be something to be said for suggesting pieces after ca. 1940 and before ca. 1700 that are usually not covered in intros or more niche. Again, I think it's usually a good rule of thumb to leave them for later and no problem at all (apart from the fact that they are not "hidden", they are just not strongly advertised or highly recommended).

And the other thing is that for the few listeners that are not "captured" by the ~50 typical pieces or by the 100 afterwards there won't be much help from the extreme fine graining either. One can make suggestions if one knows what other kinds of music they like but otherwise e.g. "Black Angels" will have as small a probability to appeal as any other modern or niche piece.

All good observations.

[Madiel]

All good observations.

+1

[DavidW]

Could we stop saying that Black Angels doesn't deserve to be on the list or so high?  Neophytes aren't as turned off by modern, baroque, renaissance etc. as people would like to think.  That extremely conservative taste of romantic era orchestral only is learned over time.

[Karl Henning]

Could we stop saying that Black Angels doesn't deserve to be on the list or so high?  Neophytes aren't as turned off by modern, baroque, renaissance etc. as people would like to think.  That extremely conservative taste of romantic era orchestral only is learned over time.

Perfectly true!

[foxandpeng]

Could we stop saying that Black Angels doesn't deserve to be on the list or so high?  Neophytes aren't as turned off by modern, baroque, renaissance etc. as people would like to think.  That extremely conservative taste of romantic era orchestral only is learned over time.

Reading this simple and helpful comment prompted me. Not a negative contribution, I hope, but a critical observation, I guess.

I have to say that one of the fundamental issues that I have of whether this project honestly has any meaningful value at all (and certainly the impossibility of any claim for it to be authoritative), emerges from the very nature of establishing a common plumbline or desirable set of values by which to judge what is 'good'. Without getting overly philosophical, we no longer live in a zeitgeist dominated by a single modernist metanarrative that establishes what is intrinsically beautiful or worthy. Societally we are postmodern to the core, suspicious and disbelieving of the idea of a hypothetical idea of 'the good' or 'the great'. Whether that is necessarily the case when we come to the archetypal consumer of art music is another issue, but it is probably true of most 'neophytes'. Nowadays, folk approaching classical music for the first time or with tentative and limited knowledge have a whole world of cultural, ideological and political drivers that will shape what they value, like or endorse. Questions of tonality and Western cultural and structural assumptions are just the tip of a growing iceberg of patriarchal disapproval, racial, gender and sexual representation, and legitimacy/necessity of genre crossover. How on earth do we concretise greatness?

The walls of Western European 'shoulds' and concrete certainties are pretty much collapsed in the face of swathes of society who are moral and artistic relativists, whose primary touchstone for greatness is social validation and current media temperature.

I'm all for lists of personal preferences that are well explained, but ranking composers in a tiered hierarchy without really well defined selection reasons, and an understanding of who is doing the ranking and the criteria they are using to curate those tiers is worse than pointless. I love lists, but something that sets out for me a list of 'The Greatest Classical Music' leaves me colder than a seal's bikini. Why shouldn't Black Angels be top of the list, unless the criteria for judgement are a particular musical form, or conformity to a certain structural or academic standard? My lens for beauty may elevate Orientalism, or express itself in a primal desire for rhythm, or discernible tunes, or emotional immanence. What if those are absent from, or of less importance to, those building the 'official list'? If it is a list created by a community, what else do we learn other than the participants in this single, discrete group have made a particular set of choices? Without an accompanying narrative, we don't know even know why they made those selections.

I find some (admittedly, occasionally unwholesome) reaction against the 'establishment' who want to exercise some form of condescending schooling of what one ought to like. I certainly don't want to conform to conservative, romantic era tastes.

What about 'class' as a factor in quantifying greatness? That is a whole other set of issues...

I do like lists. I like GMG lists. I don't like this list. I do like your right to make it, though

[DavidW]

That is very well said Fox.  I think that is probably why I enjoy reading the responses to MI's recent threads but I didn't enjoy this list at all.  There is a huge difference between sharing personal preferences and arrogantly asserting that our consensus is canon.

[foxandpeng]

That is very well said Fox.  I think that is probably why I enjoy reading the responses to MI's recent threads but I didn't enjoy this list at all.  There is a huge difference between sharing personal preferences and arrogantly asserting that our consensus is canon.

I should be fair to the OP, who said...

"Naturally our list represents the knowledge and tastes of the people who have helped build it. No one claims that it is the single official objective canon of art music!"

Having said that, I still have my stated reservations about the value of such a complex and tiered enterprise. I think there are already lots of informative lists out there already.

I also like this quote from the sig of one of our esteemed members...

'The test of a work of art is, in the end, our affection for it, not our ability to explain why it is good' (Stanley Kubrick).

[Jo498]

Could we stop saying that Black Angels doesn't deserve to be on the list or so high?  Neophytes aren't as turned off by modern, baroque, renaissance etc. as people would like to think.  That extremely conservative taste of romantic era orchestral only is learned over time.

That wasn't the point. The point was that dozens of tiers are not helping much with orientation.
I find Black Angels a gimmicky piece that would not be in top 1000 recommendations and furthermore it requires knowledge of Schubert's Death and Maiden and Renaissance consort music to appreciate the quotes/homages but that's neither here nor there. When I got into classical music it was rather likely that one might encounter this piece because the Kronos quartet became rather popular in the late 80s and early 90s. I remember that I had another disc of them that did contain o.k. music but also a terrible piece by John Zorn with the record player needle being randomly dropped on the record...

The conventional or typical "core recommendations" for newbies or intermediate listeners is by no means only romantic, it would contain Vivaldi, Handel, Bach, maybe even Dowland, Monteverdi or Schütz as well as Debussy and Stravinsky. I don't think it's an underappreciation of Crumb or Reich or Glass if one thinks they can come a bit later...

[staxomega]

I took absolutely no offense because there was none whatsoever to take. Your post was perfectly civil (as are all your posts) --- so don't worry.

Thank you, as are yours 

An exquisite way to spend away a Sunday evening. indeed. Who played the HPR?

Steven Osborne.

[Cato]

Some years ago I shared my living space with someone who previously had little voluntary exposure to classical music.  One evening I came home early from work to find them playing one of my records.  What do you suppose that was?  Moonlight Sonata?  Jupiter Symphony?  Third Brandenburg? 

Nope.  It was Scriabin's 3rd PIANO SONATA, from this recital disc:



Which apparently had become a favourite.

There is no way of knowing what piece of music will strike a chord with someone.  The idea that you have to work up to it by gradual immersion into "the classics" seems like an effective way to put someone off for good.  Particularly if there's thousands of them, stratified into "tiers".

That Scriabin sonata is a marvelous work!

https://www.youtube.com/v/_-dYmAZQobE


[quote}

There is no way of knowing what piece of music will strike a chord with someone.  The idea that you have to work up to it by gradual immersion into "the classics" seems like an effective way to put someone off for good.  Particularly if there's thousands of them, stratified into "tiers".

[/quote]

In another topic, I mentioned that the rather unusual Tempus Omnia Habent by Bernd Alois Zimmermann usually enthused some of my 8th-Grade Latin students.  One year a few girls came back after graduation to ask about it, as they had forgotten the title and the composer, but wanted to hear it again!

So, yes, you never know!

[staxomega]

That Scriabin sonata is a marvelous work!

https://www.youtube.com/v/_-dYmAZQobE


In another topic, I mentioned that the rather unusual Tempus Omnia Habent by Bernd Alois Zimmermann usually enthused some of my 8th-Grade Latin students.  One year a few girls came back after graduation to ask about it, as they had forgotten the title and the composer, but wanted to hear it again!

So, yes, you never know!

One of my favorite piano sonatas. I was recently listening to Block play the second at slower tempi than it's normally played and it was gorgeous. https://youtu.be/mxNWJ7zJh40

I fell in love with Scriabin's Piano Sonata cycle immediately after hearing it. A CD store clerk told me to keep an eye on Horowitz CDs and it was possibly the finest introduction to those pieces.

[coffee]

The OP has said that he listens happily to music, has developed his own tastes, and doesn't need any recommendations from anybody.   Good for him.  But still that's not enough.  Because he feels he's not sufficiently familiar with "the classics".  And therefore, he's not qualified.  So he's asking you to help him, by compiling a list.  Instead of saying "You're fine as you are, just keep listening, and enjoying what you hear."

I just want to pick out this part to clarify what I mean.

Of course I can "just keep ... enjoying what I hear," but that's not the only thing I want to enjoy. I also hope to become better able to participate in certain discourses.

But I do not aspire to become "qualified" because I lack the time and motivation for things like ear training, studying music theory, and closely analyzing a lot of works. I intend to be a mere fan, not someone whose opinions should count for much.

[Florestan]

This statement:

Of course I can "just keep ... enjoying what I hear," but that's not the only thing I want to enjoy. I also hope to become better able to participate in certain discourses.

is mutually contradictory with this one:

I intend to be a mere fan, not someone whose opinions should count for much.

because (1) being a mere fan means exactly "just enjoying what one hears" and (2) being able to participate in discussions means having opinions which should actually count.

[coffee]

This statement:

is mutually contradictory with this one:

because (1) being a mere fan means exactly "just enjoying what one hears" and (2( being able to participate in discussions means having opinions which should actually count.

I enjoy what I hear without ignoring the other aspects of the music, and the discourse I aspire to participate in is not expert-level discussions, but only jolly conversations with other relatively knowledgeably fans.

This seems straightforward to me, but I might not be doing a good job of communicating it.