Pieces that shouldn't have been composed?

[pies]

a

[zp3929]

isnt getting emotions running the point of a troll?

but anyway i do have to agree with islamy, even though i absolutly adore almost everything by balakirev.

Zac

[thalbergmad]

Pictures at an Exhibition - Mussorgsky

Boring theme which is repeated god knows how many times, surrounded by undescriptive, uninteresting music.

If anything in the history of music was ever labelled incorrectly, it is this obnoxious piece. "Graffiti on a toilet door" would have been a more appropriate title.

Also, complete works of Schumann, 99.9% of Sorabji and anything written in the last 30 years.

Good idea pies. I like threads like this.

Thal

[G.W.K]

isnt getting emotions running the point of a troll?

Hinting at something here?

I agree with thal on Schumann. I would mention another but no doubt I'd start a fight...LOL

G.W.K

[faulty_damper]

Fully agree with Islamey.  95% of the notes could be abolished and you'd get better music.

Also agree with the works of Schumann - a lot of superfluous writing without any inspiration.

[pies]

a

[retrouvailles]

Carter's Retrouvailles - 1.5 minutes of uselessness

Hey, hey, hey now. The piece isn't that great, but it isn't awful. Surely, if you want to abolish a piece by Carter, it should be his Holiday Overture. Now that piece is 9 minutes and 45 seconds of uselessness. It's the single piece written by Carter with the least amount of mental thought process.

[fast_forward]

I don't think that any piece shouldn't be composed. Without them, we wouldn't know what not to compose. And much stuff happens to be on the way to better stuff.
And without Islamey, we probably wouldn't have Scarbo.

But more to the point of the topic, I'd have to say many of Haydn's works should never have been composed. Some stuff of Brahms and Liszt and other romantics I could do without. Too much romanticism can really wreck a piece. And perhaps the Waltz Strauss (Johann? not Richard...)

4'33" can be taken out too, though the philosophy behind it is interesting. (I wonder if people actually pay money to buy the score...)

[mikey6]

you must be joking! Ok then...
Any salon music (Herz, Pixis etc)- pitiful dribble for the uneducated!
Any modern music including all atonal music!

[G.W.K]

you must be joking! Ok then...
Any salon music (Herz, Pixis etc)- pitiful dribble for the uneducated!
Any modern music including all atonal music!

There is some quite good "modern" music out there today...just not the stuff that sounds like a cat being neautered without anaesthetic.

G.W.K

[ronde_des_sylphes]

A fair number of Mozart piano sonatas. Tedious, predictable cadences; banal melodies over an oh-so-imaginative Alberti bass. Obviously only written for cash, and there is much more invention in Haydn.

Fur Elise.

Liszt's Liebestraume no.3, just about as kitschy as a serious composer ever achieved.

[thalbergmad]

Well, between all of us we have not got a great deal left.

Thal

[zp3929]

at least most of the romantics havent been touched

[thalbergmad]

Apart from Schumann & Herz, the latter being the superior musician.

Thal

[healdie]

most of stuff by Liszt his tone preludes and tones poems are real snooze fests

alot of the Rossini overtures are boring with mindless repeats and then he just writes exactly the same thing in another key

I gotta disagree with you all about Schumann though his piano concerto is one of my faves

also disagree about the Atonal stuff I am not a fan of all of it i struggle with alot of the very modern stuff (maxwell davies, Boulez ETC) bit i do enjoy the music fo the second Vienese school (Schoenberg, Berg, Webern)

oh and anything by Vivaldi as well

[imbetter]

mostly everything by mozart

[general disarray]

Lots of New Complexity stuff (not all of it).  Andrew Violette wrote a nice, succinct criticism about Ferneyhough/extreme complexity:

I love this quote.  I had a friend, a doctoral candidate in composition, who wrote a  symphony as a put-on to enter a competition in Brazil.  He purposely designed the score to be almost undecipherable and submitted the damn thing to the judges in Rio -- HE FRIGGIN' WON FIRST PRIZE!!

He went down to Rio to hear the performance and I asked him what it sounded like.  He laughed and said, "just like I intended -- like a traffic jam."

I second thal's disgust with "Pictures."  What a boring piece of bilge that is!  

[db05]

I don't mind those pieces mentioned above be composed... Even the best composers have flubs. What baffles me is that why pianists still continue to play them!!

[thalbergmad]

MONEY

[communist]

John Cage 4'33

[mikey6]

This is really an infuriating thread!  so I guess Pies achieved his aim!

[healdie]

John Cage 4'33

I'd struggle to even call this a piece
and i'm surprised G.W.K hasn't mentioned Rachmaninov

[G.W.K]

and i'm surprised G.W.K hasn't mentioned Rachmaninov

Here we go again...LOL

I left a clue:

I would mention another but no doubt I'd start a fight...LOL

G.W.K

[richard black]

Andrew Lloyd Webber's Requiem.

[argerichfan]

Andrew Lloyd Webber's Requiem.

Bingo.

[tanman]

I like this thread! 

thank you pies for starting this thread!   

[mikey6]

Andrew Lloyd Webber

[indutrial]

I wish Metallica's and Guns and Roses' entire original catalogues would simply go back to the abyss, along with all the other shittastic rock music bilge and horrible rap/pop/country music that has perpetuated the widespread dumbing-down of musical sensibilities on this planet. If classical musicians weren't so heavily alienated from the public, b.s. like Cage's would probably not be looked upon as whatever kind of cultural oasis that it appears to be to susceptible musicians.

On another note, I don't agree that Cage's '4'33' should have NOT been composed. I think it should NOT be performed and that the score (yes there is one) should absolutely not be sold for profit (f**king C.F. Peters sells f**king 4'33 t-shirts  ).

The Andrew Violette quote was interesting, but for me, the jury is still out on almost all of his compositions.

[minor9th]

Rap should never have been invented. I seriously blame it for a lot of society's problems: gang violence, general ignorance, misogyny, increased drug sales, lack of respect for life, etc., etc. I realize all rap does not promote such negativity, but a lot of it does. Ever heard of a drive-by shooting at a piano recital?

[Petter]

Music conventions must not be changed! It leads to lawlessnes in art and anarchy in society! Ban the frygian mode!

[pianowolfi]

Rap should never have been invented. I seriously blame it for a lot of society's problems: gang violence, general ignorance, misogyny, increased drug sales, lack of respect for life, etc., etc. I realize all rap does not promote such negativity, but a lot of it does. Ever heard of a drive-by shooting at a piano recital?

I don't agree though I don't like most of rap. It's a symptom and not a cause. How many real crimes have been avoided through this musical valve? Rap per se is a style like others and has it's place.

[indutrial]

My issue is not so much with any given genre but with the entire situation surrounding 'popular music', which is basically music that serves only to (a.) induce purely escapist entertainment and (b.) cause people to spend money, be it on the band, the cross-marketed clothes, or the tour sponsers. I grew up as a rock musician and still play in a couple of prog-rock/avant-esque groups and the outer rock scene I deal with on a tangential basis, as a whole, is rotten to the core. The music is buried under Everest-sized heaps of b.s. related to publicity, magazines, club promoters, and a million other grubbing little hands that have never touched an instrument. Bands end up spending almost all of their time touring in direct competition with countless other acts and the artistry gets pushed way back on the shelf.

A fundamental requirement of music should be some level of disconnection with the social anxiety and economic tooling that corrupts the worst kind of musics - American Idol tat, gangster rap about using triple-beam scales and driving around in Hummers with Tec-9s, pithy country-pop songs, and genre-tailored rock songs with lots of long hair, eyeliner, and no melody whatsoever.

I've always maintained that auditing this and that part of classical music is almost missing the point. The other genres are responsible for dumping the most garbage in people's ears. Even if somebody's listening to bad classical music, it's still a miraculous leap beyond the tastes of the average 14-40 American dumbshit who's buying Avril Lavigne, Green Day and 3 Doors Down records at Target and Best Buy.

[quirky]

All of the late Liszt works, the most boring pieces known to man.

Schoenbergs 6 Little Piano Pieces (how controversial...) and most of the music of Boulez and Stockhausen.

I agree that most of Schumann's music is ridiculously boring

[healdie]

I disagree about the Schoenberg he is one of the most influential composers of the 20th century and without any of his groundbreaking works modern music would sound very different
but I suppose from a pianistic point of view they pose many challenges (Schoenberg not a great pianist) so therefore they feel very uncomfortable to play

and I suppose you just don't have then interlectual capacity to understand Schumann  (Joke before you scream)

[Petter]

[G.W.K]

Rap should never have been invented. I seriously blame it for a lot of society's problems: gang violence, general ignorance, misogyny, increased drug sales, lack of respect for life, etc., etc. I realize all rap does not promote such negativity, but a lot of it does. Ever heard of a drive-by shooting at a piano recital?

I agree. All this modern "music" as people call it: rap, dance, rave, those high-pitched people that sound like gerbals-on-helium and noises that are so bad that banging on a bin-lid sounds more musical is so pointless.

I don't understand why people get a perfectly good song and murder it by altering so the singers sound as if they have been sucking helium and instead of songs ending after 4 minutes, they're sped up so they finish in 50 seconds.

G.W.K

[communist]

i would like rap if they made an effort to give it structure and sometimes tried to write a song longer than 3 minutes

[minor9th]

OMG...Rodrigo must be spinning in his grave!

[communist]

Chopin should have never went near a composition sheet

[Petter]

Interesting artistery.

[communist]

petter stop spamming lol

[argerichfan]

Chopin should have never went near a composition sheet

You're a joke, as is your sig. 

How old are you, 12? 

[pianoperformer]

Chopin should have never went near a composition sheet

 

That hurts.

[minor9th]

Chopin should have never went near a composition sheet

You should at least use proper grammar when making idiotic statements.

[pies]

a

[healdie]

I'm not a big fan of Chopin but I don't think he shouldn't have composed.  Chopin (and Romantic stuff in general) was an inevitable, necessary evil.  Thankfully, that period is over.

Hear hear I too am not a Chopin fan but I don't think i would go as far to say it should never have been composed and I agree with alot of you about most of the romantic period (Mendelssohn, Rossini, Chopin, Liszt etc) is a steamy pile of rubbish but I do enjoy alot of good Romantic stuff Mahler, Bruckner, Wagner Etc

[communist]

You're a joke, as is your sig. 

How old are you, 12? 

i did not know you would take so personally if i insulted Chopin and by the way i am not twelve and i do not see whats wrong with my sig.

and i should be aloud to state my opinion without such criticism (pretty ironic due to my name)

[G.W.K]

i did not know you would take so personally if i insulted Chopin...

Welcome to my world when I insulted Rachmaninoff.

G.W.K

[communist]

Welcome to my world when I insulted Rachmaninoff.

G.W.K

know i know how you feel 

[pies]

Alkan op 39 no 1 - Comme le Vent.  I can stand intensely dissonant new complexity crap but I can't listen to more than a few seconds of this.  It's like nails on a chalkboard.