John Proffitt gave us his rather interesting entry, but quibbled:

>Runners-up (not in the rules, but why not?):

Because there has to be a limit on the number of entries, or some people
will list hundreds while others only give two or three.  And in the
interest of giving every contributor's entry more-or-less equal weighting,
that limit has to be small enough that the great majority of entries will
reach it.  And because of Rule 5.

But I'm completely relaxed about people listing "runners-up" if they want
to. It may give other people ideas for thinking about their own top fives.

John Smyth:

>I would go with the best pieces.

Then go right ahead. I'm eagerly awaiting your nominations!

>"Particular musical nature..." (as opposed to best) sounds kind of loaded,

It wasn't meant to be. I was hoping to get contributors to think beyond the
pieces that are likely to come straight into most people's minds. And it
could well be that the "best" twentieth century pieces owe more to
nineteenth-century musical culture than to the century after. Possibly.

>plus, the phrase has all the warmth of a post-Doctoral research paper.

Oh dear. I feel duly squashed. I hardly dare admit that I was rather
pleased with it.

>Not the way that I would want to be remembered, even if I were one of
>those "particular" composers.

Go on, give the knife another twist while it's in. I can take it . . .

Karl Miller wrote:

>I would be happy to share that list if there is interest.

There certainly would be from me. Must have been a very tricky task!

>It would seem difficult to me to attempt what you are suggesting.

Well, there's no fun in it if it's too easy!

>I would wonder, what is the musical nature of this departing century.

You never know, maybe the accumulated wisdom of the MCML may give a clue to
that?

>If anything I would probably say that Leonard Meyer captured much of that
>idea in his book "Emotion and Meaning in Music." His idea was that Western
>Art Music was approaching a period of stasis...everything and anything goes
>and that there wasn't really anything new left to do.

People are always saying things are finished, there's nothing new left,
it's all been done.  Usually reflects their own lack of imagination and
inability to appreciate innovation, rather than anything real in the world
outside their heads.

>What would be fun would be to ask composers what works of this century
>influenced them the most.

Unfortunately, asking many of them would require the services of a rather
good spiritualist medium.  As far as I know, we don't have one on this
list.  That's probably a good thing, as a lot of our discussions about the
intentions of dead composers would become rather pointless if we could just
ask them.

Thanks to Deryk Barker for his fascinating list - almost as interesting
for his categories as for the works.  And I'm delighted to see Reich's
"Clapping Music" in there!  Mystified by the Gavin Bryars pieces though -
I can just possibly see a case for "Jesus' Blood" as quintessentially
twentieth-century (I certainly can't imagine it in an earlier one!), but
why "Titanic"? Reasons, Deryk?

I hope that, sometime before the end of the year, Deryk will find a way to
trim his list down to just five??

Ian Crisp