"Most Use of Double Sharps/Flats" Award

[alzado]

Can anyone nominate a piece that really goes overboard on use of double accidentals?

Can anyone suggest a composer who really likes to sprinkle them about?

Let me start the ball rolling.  Edward MacDowell uses them not infrequently.  There's one short piece of his -- I THINK it is in Woodland Sketches -- that just riddled with them.  They are limited just to certain specific sections of the piece.  They occur as part of a key change, but I am not musicologist enough to fully understand the theory.  I CAN play them, with practice and patience.  It is more a matter of getting used to them.

But where they DO appear in this piece, they remind me of blackbirds descending on a grain field.

If anyone is interested, ask me and I will dig though my music books and find the piece in question.

[pianistimo]

barber (nocturne, trois pieces)? 

actually, i thought of chopin (any etude) first, but maybe i'm wrong.

[pita bread]

Morel - Etude #2

[timothy42b]

I played a piece written for German wind ensemble once that had a double flat IN THE KEY SIGNATURE! 

That was a first even for that style music, which frequently has 4 to 6 flats standard.  I think they use up the ink budget with the key signature, because they go to great lengths to save ink with multiple repeats, DCs, DSs, codas, etc.  One beer and you can't get through it without getting lost. 

[burstroman]

Alkan liberally sprinkles double sharps and flats throughout his works.

[jas]

Alkan liberally sprinkles double sharps and flats throughout his works.

I haven't seen the scores for any of his music, but I read that he hated enharmonic spelling so much that he sometimes ended up with triple accidentals. Must be great fun to play.

Jas

[g_s_223]

The middle movement, Le Gibet, of Ravel's Gaspard de la Nuit has a key signature of 7 flats I think, and is full of double-flats.

The Barcarolle by Chopin is in F# major and has a multitude of double-sharps.

[ahinton]

Roslavetz?

Best,

Alistair