Musical Madness 2025: Awards, results for all the matches, and the final reveal!

[liszt-and-the-galops]

It’s finally time to reveal the awards and the winner of the final match of MM25!
Before we get to that: I’ve set all of the forms to allow everyone to view the results summary due to my continuous inability to spend 5 minutes on each match editing a screenshot. X(
You can go back to the previous threads and click on the match links to view the full breakdown of the results. Links to every MM25 thread can be found here: https://sites.google.com/view/musicalmadness-ps/tournaments/2025/links

Link to results for the final match: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSewgj8la1-qrQMXHapUYc2UW9TQZB1Wdfo34U-tohmopsFZlg/viewanalytics?usp=form_confirm
Link to the complete bracket (spoilers for final match): https://challonge.com/musicalmadness2025
First: awards voting!
Winner of the Upset Award, with 12 votes (25.5%):
33. S. 140 "La Campanella" beats "Hammerklavier" (mvt. 4)!

In joint second place (6 votes, 12.8%) were:
41. S. 137 "Feux Follets" beats Le Preux, and
54. Chopin's 4th Ballade beats Spanish Rhapsody


Winner of the Cinderella Award:
Saint-Saëns - Op. 111 no. 6 "Toccata d'Aprés le Cinquième Concerto"   (12 votes)

Second and third:
Czerny - Sonata op. 268 (4th mvt.)   (11 votes)
Liszt - S. 137 no. 5 Feux Follets (1837)   (9 votes)


The top three pieces in the Honorable Mentions contest were:
Alkan - Op. 17 Le Preux   (20 votes)
Fauré - Ballade Op. 19   (23 votes)
And the winner:
Beethoven - Sonata no. 29 op. 106 "Hammerklavier" (4th mvt.)   (27 votes, or 67.5%)!


And of course, who was the winner of Musical Madness 2025?
With a final tally of 46 votes (59%) to 32, the second piece to win Musical Madness is…

Czerny - Sonata op. 268 (mvt. 4)!!!!!


Lastly, some extra awards:
Winner of the bracket contest: “Untitled,” with 107 points and 39 correct predictions
Highest-ranked Pianostreet member: “sweet georgia brown,” with 99 points and 43 correct predictions
Highest-ranked Pianostreet commenter: “transitional,” with 82 points and 39 correct predictions
Most correct predictions: “Liszt-and-the-Galops’ prediction,” with 49 correct predictions (77.8%)
Longest perfect bracket: “Liszt-and-the-Galops’ prediction” busted in match #36

Funniest suggestion for improving the tournament: “I disagree.”


Lastly, thanks to everyone who voted in the matches, submitted a bracket, or commented in the threads. The fact that this tournament has now amassed nearly 2,500 votes over its lifespan is downright incredible, and your participation in this project means the world to me. Thank you, and see you next year.

[transitional]

Thanks for this tournament! And it's great seeing the love for the Fauré in the honorable mentions (:

Some of the possible changes that I agree with just for some input:
- Include a more diverse set of composers; there were too many Liszts and Chopins this time around: 100% agree
- Do some play-in matchups like the real MM: Might be kind of fun
- Make every match in the voting forms (except when there's only one match) optional. There have been a few times when I only had time to listen to pieces in one/two matchups and didn't get to vote because of it: Didn't happen to me, but that makes sense.

Other things I kinda want to address:
- Also hold a "May Madness" tournament which is the same bracket as the March tournament but people pick their favorites instead of the most difficult piece: While I would like having a tournament not completely based on difficulty, this kind of goes against the whole point of the tournament so that would need to be in another tournament (no pressure though).
- 1. Allow people to submit two brackets (the real March Madness lets people submit up to 6) 2. Change the font of these forms to Courier New. 3. Allow for pieces longer than 15 minutes: Is this gasplamey 
- Make the nomination round more inclusive by allowing non-PS members to make suggestions: No offense, but is it really that hard to make a pianostreet account? Or is this for online privacy reasons or something? Just wondering because I would love to see more activity on the Musical Madness threads!

"Impossible" lol. I guess I know how to pick a bracket next time. (Hopefully)

[liszt-and-the-galops]

- Make every match in the voting forms (except when there's only one match) optional. There have been a few times when I only had time to listen to pieces in one/two matchups and didn't get to vote because of it: Didn't happen to me, but that makes sense.

I was actually almost going to do that this year, but changed it last-second. I'm definitely doing it for next year.

- Include a more diverse set of composers; there were too many Liszts and Chopins this time around: 100% agree
- Do some play-in matchups like the real MM: Might be kind of fun

First one is definitely planned. Minor spoiler for next year: unless there are some suggestions and/or I find something I definitely need to include, Liszt's roster will be cut roughly in half.
If I can figure out how to make Challonge work for the second one, I'll definitely do it. No promises, though.

- 1. Allow people to submit two brackets (the real March Madness lets people submit up to 6) 2. Change the font of these forms to Courier New. 3. Allow for pieces longer than 15 minutes: Is this gasplamey 

Almost certainly.