Bracket contest! Submit your entries below!

[liszt-and-the-galops]

We have made it through round 1, the first half of the tournament. The time has come to make the brackets.
How to make your brackets:
1. Go to https://challonge.com/mm24bypianostreet
2. Click "make a prediction."
3. Drag and drop the pieces you think will win each matchup to the next round.
4. Once you've filled out your bracket, scroll down and select a winner between your two finalists.
5. Title your bracket. Make sure it includes your pianostreet username!
            5.1. If you don't a pianostreet account, you can just leave it untitled.
6. Input your email and submit your bracket.
Note: You don't need a pianostreet account or a challonge account to make a bracket on challonge.

Bracket submission closes Wednesday, March 27, at 12:00 pm in US Eastern Time.

[liszt-and-the-galops]

My bracket:


One more thing...
I've been wanting to give non-members the chance to vote. As is, only people who make a pianostreet account can vote. Do you guys know of any free polling sites that we could use?

[transitional]

Images aren't working, but that might just be me.

[liszt-and-the-galops]

Images aren't working, but that might just be me.

If your referring to the bracket I put up, try this:
https://challonge.com/mm24bypianostreet
It also allows you to input a prediction. If you can't read a certain piece because the name doesn't fit on your display, hover over the match and click the magnifying glass.
I chose printyourbrackets as the primary bracket system because it was easier for me to work with, but if it just doesn't function for this purpose, we can switch to Challonge.

[gasplamey]

Indeed. The infernal image does not load for me!

[gasplamey]

I chose Islamey 1st, Mazeppa 2nd, Ballade no. 1 beats Toccata op. 7...

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What have you done?

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What have you done?

I didn't pick my opinions, I picked what I thought would win. And there is a lot of Ballade 1 = really difficult believers on this site so I feel it will be a tough matchup. We'll just have to watch it play out and see what really happens.

[liszt-and-the-galops]

I didn't pick my opinions, I picked what I thought would win. And there is a lot of "Ballade 1 really difficult" believers on this site so I feel it will be a tough matchup. We'll just have to watch it play out and see what really happens.

Didn't know that. I guessed it would almost go out to Hamelin Cadenza because the Ballade survived by A SINGLE VOTE against WINTER WIND.
Longer pieces in general are doing less well. Longer pieces have lost to shorter ones 7 times out of 16. Of the 9 wins, iirc 4 were closely contested.
I chose Feux Follets as beating Islamey because you guys chose Feux Follets to beat Scarbo.
Scarbo>Islamey, Feux Follets>Scarbo, so Feux Follets>Islamey.
Basically, we now live in a world Feux Follets is harder than anything ever written under 30 minutes.
We've messed up so badly already lol.

[gasplamey]

I didn't pick my opinions, I picked what I thought would win. And there is a lot of Ballade 1 = really difficult believers on this site so I feel it will be a tough matchup. We'll just have to watch it play out and see what really happens.

What would your opinions be?

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What would your opinions be?

I think Toccata is harder, but Ballade #1 will pull off a win by 1 vote or it will be a tie. We'll see though, as this is clearly a pretty unpopular prediction. But why not go ask the person that put Petrushka 2 winning what their motives were?

[gasplamey]

Didn't know that. I guessed it would almost go out to Hamelin Cadenza because the Ballade survived by A SINGLE VOTE against WINTER WIND.
Longer pieces in general are doing less well. Longer pieces have lost to shorter ones 7 times out of 16. Of the 9 wins, iirc 4 were closely contested.
I chose Feux Follets as beating Islamey because you guys chose Feux Follets to beat Scarbo.
Scarbo>Islamey, Feux Follets>Scarbo, so Feux Follets>Islamey.
Basically, we now live in a world Feux Follets is harder than anything ever written under 30 minutes.
We've messed up so badly already lol.

1. Such a mess indeed.
2. The average human attention span is less than that of a goldfish, which explains why shorter pieces are doing better than longer ones.
3. It doesn't matter if all the easiest pieces beat all the hardest ones; Feux Follets vs. Scarbo is the biggest upset of your tournament.

[liszt-and-the-galops]

I think Toccata is harder, but Ballade #1 will pull off a win by 1 vote or it will be a tie. We'll see though, as this is clearly a pretty unpopular prediction. But why not go ask the person that put Petrushka 2 winning what their motives were?

They might have picked their bracket randomly. If you click into it, you'll see they have Mazeppa ahead of GGC, Petrushka mvt. 3 beating Feux Follets but losing to La Campanella, while mvt. 1 beats Ballade no. 4.
If there was any logic behind it, I'd guess they saw Traum's video title for Petrushka mvt. 2 claiming it was the hardest thing ever written and took it as fact rather than clickbait. IDK though; they probably aren't a member on pianostreet.

2. The average human attention span is less than that of a goldfish, which explains why shorter pieces are doing better than longer ones.

In that case, K. 141 (the shortest piece remaining) will sweep the tournament .

3. It doesn't matter if all the easiest pieces beat all the hardest ones; Feux Follets vs. Scarbo is the biggest upset of your tournament.

You can say that again...
I had Scarbo winning the whole thing in my first bracket, and that was one of 2 predictions I made for round 1 that I got wrong. (The other one was Wilde Jagd vs. Friska, where I had the etude winning.)

Update: It appears the La Campanella fanboys have arrived.
also WHAT THE **** WAS THAT LAST BRACKET?!?!?!?!?!?!

Feux D'artifice beats Toccata op. 7
K. 141 in the semifinals
Friska beats Mazeppa
Feux D'artifice beats Ballade #1
La Campanella wins everything

WHAT. THE. F---.

[gasplamey]

They might have picked their bracket randomly. If you click into it, you'll see they have Mazeppa ahead of GGC, Petrushka mvt. 3 beating Feux Follets but losing to La Campanella, while mvt. 1 beats Ballade no. 4.
If there was any logic behind it, I'd guess they saw Traum's video title for Petrushka mvt. 2 claiming it was the hardest thing ever written and took it as fact rather than clickbait. IDK though; they probably aren't a member on pianostreet.In that case, K. 141 (the shortest piece remaining) will sweep the tournament .You can say that again...
I had Scarbo winning the whole thing in my first bracket, and that was one of 2 predictions I made for round 1 that I got wrong. (The other one was Wilde Jagd vs. Friska, where I had the etude winning.)

Update: It appears the La Campanella fanboys have arrived.
also WHAT THE **** WAS THAT LAST BRACKET?!?!?!?!?!?! WHAT. THE. F---.

The piano is strong in those fanb-



Whoever made that bracket:

[liszt-and-the-galops]

Both of the last 2 brackets were trolls lmao.

[gasplamey]

I think Toccata is harder, but Ballade #1 will pull off a win by 1 vote or it will be a tie. We'll see though, as this is clearly a pretty unpopular prediction. But why not go ask the person that put Petrushka 2 winning what their motives were?

I second the idea that it was a troll.
The current opinion on Ballade 1 v. Toccata is 11-2 Toccata, with 1 bracket, made by the idiotic user named "mintycinimon," idiotically thinking that neither will advance past the first round. They also have K 141 and Petrushka 1 in the finals.

[liszt-and-the-galops]

I second the idea that it was a troll.
The current opinion on Ballade 1 v. Toccata is 11-2 Toccata, with 1 bracket, made by the idiotic user named "mintycinimon," idiotically thinking that neither will advance past the first round. They also have K 141 and Petrushka 1 in the finals.

Noticed that as well.
lmao.
That bracket was one of the funniest things I ever saw.

[gasplamey]

The newest entries are mostly memes.
One was even a "meme bracket."
Another was the worst picks possible in his opinion.
I do not approve of ruining this very serious, completely objective tournament.

[liszt-and-the-galops]

We just broke 30 entries, so I'm going to start keeping a running tally of the brackets that predicted which songs would win which matchups in an excel sheet. This should be fun...

[liszt-and-the-galops]

Okay, finished that excel sheet. A few interesting takeaways (as of 34 entries):
     The 2 pieces that are most likely to advance to round 1 are Mazeppa and Grand Galop Chromatique.
     La Campanella is getting memed on. No, seriously. It has the highest % of picks for the title (21.88% of brackets chose La Campanella as the winner), the 2nd highest % of picks for a finalist (25%), and is 4th highest for semifinal picks (37.5%).
     Grand Galop Chromatique has the best average ranking (87.5% chose GGC to advance to round 2, more than half believe GGC will be in the semis, more than a third believe GGC will be in the finals, and 1/8th picked GGC as the eventual winner).
     GGC is also #1 in nearly all categories, except for championship, in which they are tied for #2.
    Speaking of #2 in the championship, that group also includes Feux Follets, Islamey, and Petrushka mvt. 3.
     Friska is the only piece that no one has picked to make the semifinals, and is last in all metrics I used.
     The only pieces that no one has chosen as the eventual winner are Friska, K. 141, and Feux D'artifice.
     There is exactly 1 bracket where Double Thirds made it past the 2nd round, and that bracket is also the only one that has it winning the whole tournament.
     In all instances where Petrushka mvt. 3 was chosen for the finals, it won.
     Grand Galop Chromatique, Toccata op. 7, Islamey, La Campanella, and Feux Follets are all above average in all the categories I measured. Mark them as favorites.
     Ballade no. 1 and Mazeppa are at or above average in all categories as of right now. Put them in the dark horse category!
     GGC and Islamey in particular are strong favorites, as they are in the top 5 in every metric I used.

Those are the things I found most interesting. If there's anything else you want to know, reply to this post!
 

[gasplamey]

Okay, finished that excel sheet. A few interesting takeaways (as of 34 entries):
     The 2 pieces that are most likely to advance to round 1 are Mazeppa and Grand Galop Chromatique.
     La Campanella is getting memed on. No, seriously. It has the highest % of picks for the title (21.88% of brackets chose La Campanella as the winner), the 2nd highest % of picks for a finalist (25%), and is 4th highest for semifinal picks (37.5%).
     Grand Galop Chromatique has the best average ranking (87.5% chose GGC to advance to round 2, more than half believe GGC will be in the semis, more than a third believe GGC will be in the finals, and 1/8th picked GGC as the eventual winner).
     GGC is also #1 in nearly all categories, except for championship, in which they are tied for #2.
    Speaking of #2 in the championship, that group also includes Feux Follets, Islamey, and Petrushka mvt. 3.
     Friska is the only piece that no one has picked to make the semifinals, and is last in all metrics I used.
     The only pieces that no one has chosen as the eventual winner are Friska, K. 141, and Feux D'artifice.
     There is exactly 1 bracket where Double Thirds made it past the 2nd round, and that bracket is also the only one that has it winning the whole tournament.
     In all instances where Petrushka mvt. 3 was chosen for the finals, it won.
     Grand Galop Chromatique, Toccata op. 7, Islamey, La Campanella, and Feux Follets are all above average in all the categories I measured. Mark them as favorites.
     Ballade no. 1 and Mazeppa are at or above average in all categories as of right now. Put them in the dark horse category!
     GGC and Islamey in particular are strong favorites, as they are in the top 5 in every metric I used.

Those are the things I found most interesting. If there's anything else you want to know, reply to this post!
 

1. Naturally Grand Galop would defeat K. 141 and Mazeppa to Friska.
2. Fanboys.
3. Grand Galop being in the top 3 wouldn't surprise me...
4. but #1 in most categories is impressive.
5. I'm starting to get the feeling that the audiences is full of Liszt-lovers.
6. Nevermind.
7. So the rest of the bracket is just going to be Liszt and Chopin, with a miniscule amount of others left.
8. Someone really likes Double Thirds.
9. I don't have anything to say for this one.
10. 3/5 of the "favorites" are by Liszt.
11. Mazeppa, in the dark HORSE category? Was that not obvious?
12. Good for me; those were my two finalists!

For the extra question, I'm curious what pieces have the hardest schedules and which ones have the easiest.

[liszt-and-the-galops]

1. Naturally Grand Galop would defeat K. 141 and Mazeppa to Friska.

What I'm more curious about is why 3 of the contrarians did that (one was trying to make as bad a bracket as possible, so he's excused).

2. Fanboys.

Less "fanboy", more "I've seen this at the top of every lis(z)t, and this version is even harder, so obviously it's #1."
Because of that, I'm going to say that there will be no perfect brackets left after match 11.

3. Grand Galop being in the top 3 wouldn't surprise me...
4. but #1 in most categories is impressive.

Honestly, it's kind of reasonable. It sounds amazing and looks absurd. It can be summarized as a fusion between La Campanella and Chromatic with some added bravura, two pieces that are both extremely difficult.

5. I'm starting to get the feeling that the audiences is full of Liszt-lovers.
6. Nevermind.

Just because Friska isn't doing well doesn't mean the audience isn't full of "Liszt-lovers." One of the recent brackets (at time of this writing) exclusively picked the Liszt piece when available lol.

7. So the rest of the bracket is just going to be Liszt and Chopin, with a miniscule amount of others left.

Rachmaninoff, Mussorgsky, and Ravel are already gone. Scarlatti, Balakirev, and Schumann all have just 1 piece left. The only non-Chopin/Liszt composer that has more pieces is Stravinsky, and all 3 of his are in tough matchups.

8. Someone really likes Double Thirds.

Clearly.

10. 3/5 of the "favorites" are by Liszt.

Lisztomania.

11. Mazeppa, in the dark HORSE category? Was that not obvious?

Yes, yes.

For the extra question, I'm curious what pieces have the hardest schedules and which ones have the easiest.

I'll get to work on that right away.

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Rachmaninoff, Mussorgsky, and Ravel are already gone. Scarlatti, Balakirev, and Schumann all have just 1 piece left.

People say Rach's stuff is hard, but he didn't write insanely hard stuff, just happened to be really hard because that was how he wrote. But not as much crazy Liszt techniques.

The Mussorgsky pieces are pretty easy compared to all the other competition, for example, Baba Yaga is basically just all octaves.

Surprising how Ravel didn't make it to this round.

Scarlatti, Balakirev, and Schumann only started with one piece, so naturally there's only one place to go - forward.

I think with a lot of the Liszt pieces it's hard to make the technique consistent, and there's all the crazy etudes that add to the liszt ... a lot other transcendental etudes could have made it to this round but that would be way too much Liszt.

[liszt-and-the-galops]

I updated the OP so it links to and explains how to make a bracket on challonge.

Surprising how Ravel didn't make it to this round.

Again, it was voted that Feux Follets is the hardest piece in this tournament. 

[gasplamey]

Now I'm curious what 1st round matchups are the hardest to predict right now.

[liszt-and-the-galops]

Now I'm curious what 1st round matchups are the hardest to predict right now.

If by hardest to predict, you mean most evenly divided...
Feux Follets vs. Petrushka mvt. 3, La Campanella vs. Double Thirds, and Islamey vs. Petrushka mvt. 3 all have .5 in the 90% confidence interval for their vote proportions.
That basically means that we can't be confident in the outcomes of those matches at all. It's fairly easy to predict the rest.
Unfortunately, I also calculated that 22 of the 37 complete brackets chose one of the 6 pieces in those matchups as the eventual winner (7 chose La Campanella, 5 each chose Petrushka mvt. 3 and Islamey, 3 chose Feux Follets, and 1 each chose Petrushka mvt. 2 and Double Thirds).
In other words, the 3 matches that are the hardest to predict in the 2nd round are also going to be the most decisive and (likely,) the biggest bracket busters.

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To whoever decided it with memes, what memes did you use? Obviously this should easily put La Campanella at the top, but:

How did Petrushka 2 beat Islamey? The only thing I can think of there is Traum's video of Petrushka 2 that says "hardest piano piece".

How did Mazeppa beat HR 2 Friska? I know the Friska's easier by a long shot, but it's in more "hardest pieces" votes because of its publicity.

Feux d'artifice? I can't think of many memes, and personally I think the Toccata is harder, but Schumann himself said at the time that it was the hardest piece ever written, if that constitutes as a meme.

Mazeppa vs Galop Chromatique - I would say Mazeppa is stated more because Galop Chromatique doesn't have as much traction as a Liszt piece in general when talking about hardest pieces.

Obviously this is completely subjective, I'm just wondering about some of those decisions even when you're going for "decided by memes".

[liszt-and-the-galops]

There's almost no chance that they have an account on here (most of the brackets don't seem to come from someone who does, based on the lack of a listed username), so allow me to speculate...
Note: I 'm very much detached from pop culture, so my guesses are very likely to be extremely far from the truth.

Feux d'artifice? I can't think of many memes, and personally I think the Toccata is harder, but Schumann himself said at the time that it was the hardest piece ever written, if that constitutes as a meme.

I think this one mostly came down to popularity; Debussy is more known than Schumann.
More popularity, more memes.

How did Petrushka 2 beat Islamey? The only thing I can think of there is Traum's video of Petrushka 2 that says "hardest piano piece".

This one confused me too, so I checked that bracket. Turns out, Islamey was actually in the semis.

How did Mazeppa beat HR 2 Friska? I know the Friska's easier by a long shot, but it's in more "hardest pieces" votes because of its publicity.

I have a hunch that they mostly used an internet search for a lot of these...

Mazeppa vs Galop Chromatique - I would say Mazeppa is stated more because Galop Chromatique doesn't have as much traction as a Liszt piece in general when talking about hardest pieces.

Sure enough, a simple internet search for "Grand Galop Chromatique memes" yields better ones than "Liszt Mazeppa memes"...
vs.

What I find much more hilarious is that the most picked champion is La Campanella, despite the person who tried to make the worst bracket possible being one of those people.

[liszt-and-the-galops]

For the extra question, I'm curious what pieces have the hardest schedules and which ones have the easiest.

After some extensive calculations, I found that, based on the brackets, Grand Galop Chromatique has the easiest schedule, while Double Thirds has the hardest schedule.

[liszt-and-the-galops]

Predictions are CLOSED!
Votes #17 and 18 will begin shortly.
In order to allow more people to participate, I've decided to use google forms (for lack of a better option), with a few non-intrusive anti-spam measures.