Most difficult pieces?

[greg]

What do you mean by "layers of structure"?

yeah, to me it doesn't sound like anything different compared to other music.

[mikkeljs]

Do you think, difficult is following along with complexity?

I still have never figured out, since complex music can be very different and perhabs complexity does not alone decide our gates into pieces.

Personally I think Mozarts music is among the most complex compositions, since they are so intuitively written, free in a way that is rarely allowed.

Same with Ives. Tried to analyse some of his music and found it much more complicated than Schoenberg or Webern for instance. Ives´s "surrealistic" flash does not work in the same way as other kinds of clear characters in music usually does, since there is a very important different:
1) A musical character in fx Mussorgsky or Beethoven are expressing the musical idea.
2) Ives´s circus band show in the middle of a serious long atonal piece is only a midway station in a piece that is very messy and vierd, and it serve the listener opposite, because it leads her/him on a sideway.   

[71 dB]

What do you mean by "layers of structure"?

Simple structures create little more complex structures and these create more complex structures...

You can pay attention to the simple structures or the complex ones.

[karlhenning]

(* whistles nonchalantly *)

[greg]

well, complexity is one part relative, and the other part quantity.

Relative complexity may mean reading a score and just feeling like your lost at understanding such a piece. Right now, that's how it is while I'm studying Berg's 3 Orchestral Pieces, but the more i look at it and the more familiar i get with it, the less complex it seems......

When I mention "Quantity", i just mean stuff like amount of notes, vertically or horizontally. A page with 20 staves is much more complex when hardly any of the instruments are playing the same thing, versus when one giant chord is played.

Also, there is complexity in performance, etc.

I really think there should be more words for the word "complexity", or at least different terms used.

[Ten thumbs]

Fortunately there is no correlation between difficulty and quality!

[Bonehelm]

Simple structures create little more complex structures and these create more complex structures...

You can pay attention to the simple structures or the complex ones.

Absolute BS. You don't know what you're talking about and neither do any of us. You're just making no sense at all.

[Haffner]

(* whistles nonchalantly *)

_{^{Listens, then picks up the tune...}}

[Haffner]

Absolute BS. You don't know what you're talking about and neither do any of us.

Really?

[m_gigena]

Relative complexity may mean reading a score and just feeling like your lost at understanding such a piece.

As with Roslavets?

At 40, (Marc André Hamelin) has made a career of playing the seemingly unplayable. He can unleash maelstroms of sound with astounding poise and precision. So his account of first laying eyes on the Étude No. 1 by Nikolai Roslavets sticks in the ear: ''It was one of the few times that I have ever looked at printed music and been genuinely scared.''

[m_gigena]

_{^{Listens, then picks up the tune...}}

_{^{Works the tune to a new layer.}}

[Haffner]

_{^{Works the tune to a new layer.}}

_{^{Harmonizing with Manuel...}}

[Bonehelm]

Really?

[Joe_Campbell]

As with Roslavets?

At 40, (Marc André Hamelin) has made a career of playing the seemingly unplayable. He can unleash maelstroms of sound with astounding poise and precision. So his account of first laying eyes on the Étude No. 1 by Nikolai Roslavets sticks in the ear: ''It was one of the few times that I have ever looked at printed music and been genuinely scared.''

You may find it interesting that he completely renotated this and his other two etudes for ease of playing. It(they?) was originally written on 4 staves.

But you may already know this:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A0DE4DA1238F937A15750C0A9649C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all
Is that where you got your quote?

[EmpNapoleon]

Every piece I love is most difficult.  I want to achieve the level of listening where I hear new things in a recording I've heard a hundred times.  I also want to eventually hear  new pieces carefully, without that "getting to know the piece" time.  Impossible, I think.

A piece can be difficult to understand, compose, and perform, too.  Or, perhaps a "difficult" piece is just "bad" music.  Obscurity for the sake of ambiguity.

Who is the most complex basketball player? 

[greg]

Who is the most complex basketball player? 

um, probably a point guard that does a lot of scoring. Not only do they have to direct plays, but scoring as well..... and if they steal a lot, that's a bonus. I'm not sure about including a center as a more complex basketball player, though, probably the littler guys.

[karlhenning]

Who is the most complex basketball player? 

Elgar?

[Israfel the Black]

Tchaikovsky, Piano Concerto No. 1. I consider his music to be among the most approachable of his contemporaties, and yet, there are still moments, such as his Piano Concerto No. 1, which weren't immediate. In that famous piece, the opening two-minutes excite, only to level off soon thereafter.

Strange. The Piano Concerto No. 1 is like an endless attack of melody on the ears. Too easy to listen to.

[some guy]

_{^{Harmonizing with Manuel...}}

Adding a circus march out of nowhere in a completely different key.

Oh, sorry. Too late?

[m_gigena]