First, the statistics: 48 people voted for a total of 135 pieces by 64
composers. 34 pieces received more than one vote, leaving 101, or 75% of
the total, with a single vote each.
It will come as no surprise to anyone that a certain work by Igor
Stravinsky is the clear, not to say the outRITE winner of the poll. By
an enormous margin, MCML members (and their friends and relations) have
voted "The Rite of Spring" to be the piece that best typifies twentieth
century classical music. Several people indicated that they were taking
the Rite winning for granted, so left it out of their lists in order to get
something else in - therefore its true position in the poll is even more
dominating than it appears. Perhaps more interesting is the fact that only
one other Stravinsky piece gained more than one vote (Petrushka with 2).
By contrast, Shostakovich has no fewer than five pieces with more than one
vote (and Bartok has three). Overall, Shostakovich emerges clearly as the
composer who dominates the twentieth century musical landscape - he has
more pieces in the poll than anyone else, and they cover a huge range -
symphonies, an opera, solo piano, string quartets, chamber music. He only
misses out on a concerto, and I would suggest that a good case could be
made for the 2nd cello concerto. I find it curiously satisfying that a
man who spent his life under one of the most oppressive regimes of the
century should emerge from this poll with such stature. I am delighted
to acknowledge Dmitri Shostakovich as the MCML Composer of the Century,
despite certain recent threads! After the Rite come a few surprises for
me. When I first thought up this poll, Britten's War Requiem never
occurred to me as a possible high scorer (much as I love it). But it
became evident early on that it was going to be very near the top. I also
love Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde, but I have trouble seeing what is so
distinctively twentieth-century about it. Although it was written near
to the end of Mahler's life, it seems to me in many ways to embody more a
late-19th century sensibility than a 20th century one. I was for a long
time undecided between the 9th symphony (3 votes) or the unfinished 10th
(2 votes), but eventually went for the 10th. Schoenberg had to appear
somewhere in the upper regions, but I was surprised that Pierrot Lunaire
did as well as it did - perhaps my personal intense dislike of the
piece biases my judgement here! It's also surprising to me that the
ultra-romantic Verklarte Nacht was Schoenberg's second piece with 2
votes, rather than any more "modernist" part of his output. In fact
I was surprised generally by the number of pieces chosen that have at
least one foot in the late romantics and the nineteenth century. Also
by the number of pieces that I have never heard of, let alone heard.
The list that follows is lifted from the spreadsheet I used to collect the
results. I hope the formatting survives reasonably intact - and it should
look at its best in a fixed-width font, if you are able to use one.
Stravinsky Rite of Spring 25
Britten War Requiem 9
Mahler Das Lied von der Erde 9
Schoenberg Pierrot Lunaire 6
Shostakovich Sym 5 5
Bartok Music for Strings, Perc & Celeste 4
Berg Violin Concerto 4
Berg Wozzeck 4
Debussy La Mer 4
Holst The Planets 4
Shostakovich Sym 13 Babi Yar 4
Shostakovich Sym 8 4
Bartok Concerto for Orchestra 3
Bartok String Quartet 3 3
Gershwin Rhapsody in Blue 3
Mahler Sym 9 3
Shostakovich String Quartet 13 3
Vaughan Williams Sym 5 3
Britten Peter Grimes 2
Gorecki Sym 3 2
Mahler Sym 10 2
Messiaen Catalogue des Oiseaux 2
Messiaen Turangalila 2
Messiaen Quartet for the End of Time 2
Rachmaninov Piano Concerto 3 2
Ravel Daphnis & Chloe 2
Ravel Piano Concerto Gm 2
Rodrigo Concierto de Aranjuez 2
Schoenberg Verklarte Nacht 2
Shostakovich Sym 10 2
Sibelius Sym 2 2
Strauss Richard Four Last Songs 2
Stravinsky Petrushka 2
Ustvoltskaya Dies Irae 2
Barber Knoxville, 1915 1
Barber Violin Concerto 1
Bartok Pno Concerto 2 1
Bartok String Quartet 6 1
Bartok Violin Concerto 2 1
Berg Lulu 1
Bernstein West Side Story 1
Birtwistle Mask of Orpheus 1
Bliss Adam Zero ballet 1
Blomdahl Aniara 1
Boulez Le Marteau sans Maitre 1
Boulez Pli selon Pli 1
Britten Spring Symphony 1
Butterworth Six Songs from "Shropshire Lad" 1
Cage 4'33" 1
Cage Sonatas & Intlds for PrepPno 1
Ciurlionis Dans la Foret 1
Ciurlionis La Mer 1
Copland Appalachian Spring 1
Copland Fanfare for the Common Man 1
Copland Rodeo 1
Crumb Ancient Voices of Children 1
Debussy Pelleas & Melisande 1
Debussy Prelude to Afternoon of Faun 1
Debussy Preludes for Solo Piano 1
Dessau In Memoriam Bertold Brecht 1
Eisler Hollywood Songbook 1
Elgar Cello Concerto 1
Frankel Violin Conc. Memory of the 6 million 1
Gershwin Piano Concerto F 1
Gershwin Porgy & Bess 1
Glass Satyagraha 1
Glass Violin Concerto 1
Hartmann Sym 8 1
Hindemith Ludus Tonalis 1
Hindemith Sym Bb 1
Honegger Sym 2 1
Ives Sym 4 1
Ives The Unanswered Question 1
Janacek Cunning Little Vixen 1
Janacek Glagolitic Mass 1
Kancheli Mourned by the Wind 1
Ligeti Atmospheres 1
Lutoslawski Les espaces du sommeil 1
Mahler Sym 6 1
Mahler Sym 8 1
Martin Der Cornet 1
Messiaen St.Francois d'Assise 1
Nielsen Sym 5 1
Part Fratres 1
Part Tabula Rasa 1
Penderecki Threnody for Victims of Hiroshima 1
Petterson Sym 7 1
Prokofiev Alexander Nevsky 1
Prokofiev Piano Concerto 3 1
Prokofiev Sym 1 1
Puccini La Fanciulla del West 1
Puccini Turandot 1
Rachmaninov Sym 2 1
Ravel Bolero 1
Ravel L'Infant & les sortileges 1
Ravel Tombeau de Couperin 1
Reich Different Trains 1
Reich Drumming 1
Respighi Roman Festivals 1
Rozsa Ben Hur 1
Rzewski People United Will Never Be 1
Scelsi Quattro pezzi per orchestra 1
Schmidt Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln 1
Schnittke Cello Concerto 2 1
Schoenberg Opus 11 1
Schoenberg Violin Concerto 1
Shostakovich Lady Macbeth of Mtensk 1
Shostakovich Piano Quintet 1
Shostakovich Preludes & Fugues Op87 1
Shostakovich String Quartet 6 1
Shostakovich Sym 11 1
Shostakovich Sym 15 1
Sibelius Sym 4 1
Sibelius Sym 7 1
Sibelius Tapiola 1
Smyth March of the Women 1
Stockhausen Hymnen 1
Stockhausen Stimmung 1
Strauss Richard Der Rosenkavalier 1
Strauss Richard Elektra 1
Strauss Richard Metamorphosen 1
Stravinsky Firebird 1
Stravinsky Pulcinella 1
Stravinsky Soldier's Tale 1
Tippett Sym 9 1
Varese Arcana 1
Varese Ionisation 1
Varese Poeme electronique 1
Vaughan Williams Job: A Masque for Dancing 1
Vaughan Williams Serenade to Music 1
Vaughan Williams Sym 4 1
Vaughan Williams Sym 6 1
Vierne Meditations sur l'Apocalypse 1
Weill / Brecht Threepenny Opera 1
Williams Music to Star Wars 1
I suppose what emerges most of all from this is the great variety of what
CM people understand as "typical" of the last century. No doubt it will
all look clearer in another 50 years or so.
Perhaps the scale of the response to this poll suggests that I might take
next year, or even longer, off from this self-imposed task. Comments will
be appreciated.
Ian Crisp
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