I'm extremely glad to hear that. I can just about cope with the idea that you might come round to Britten some day, but the idea of a Richard Barrett who likes Poulenc offends my sense of the way the world is and should be more than almost anything else I can think of.

Martle, re Bruckner: I find it helps to think of it as 'modern' - either proto-Robert Simpson or proto-spectralism, whichever of those options makes it more attractive to you.

Every time I see this thread I think: 'I shall not cease from Mental Block.'

The thing is we're all aware that you know Ligeti's music at least as well as anyone else here and if there were anything in it for you to like you'd have found it by now. I find Melodien, the Kammerkonzert, Cello Concerto, Double Concerto and Second String Quartet all beautiful things, and San Francisco Polyphony about the last piece of his that I can "relate to". If I'm to be batting I think I'd better be rather low in the order.

The Horn Trio I find utterly goofy. Who thinks that's actually a good piece?

I can't get excited by anything of Ligeti except perhaps the Poeme Symphonique for 100 metronomes. The very worst has to be Ramifications, though. What's wrong with me? Is it that he took all of Xenakis' ideas and made them into the equivalent of an MC Escher rendition?

Others: Wash yer mouth out w/ soap, Chafers! He's the greatest composer of his generation.

Ligeti: different periods of his output are obviously quite diverse. What does it for me are the piano études and the piano concerto - some of the études I'd number amongst my favourite piano music eg Désordre, Automne à Varsovie, L'escalier du diable. I heard  Pierre-Laurent Aimard play the concerto at Symphony Hall, a performance which completely knocked me out.

I wouldn't say that the horn trio is a favourite though, or even that I know it well. I once helped to set up for a performance of it by Capricorn which was in a hall with totally inadequate lighting - it was no more than a few spotlights borrowed from people's houses. Added to that they were playing from what looked like photocopies of his original manuscript held together with sellotape. I was full of admiration that they managed to put on any sort of a performance.

Edit: oops I've just seen that tinners has completely dismissed the piano concerto - another piece which I like, for him to say everyone else thinks it's dreadful (I can't remember which piece he said this about the other day).

2nd edit: it was the Tippett 4th quartet 

Sorry, you're right hh, I was reading between the lines and I wasn't being entirely serious. He does however say "Perhaps you should try to forget the Piano Concerto exists (just to clarify: I don't think it's that terrible, but I think the world can survive without it)" so he doesn't seem to think that much of it.

I'm not a great fan of Ligeti either, but I do love many of his piano pieces.

Apart from a few pictures, I don't like Escher at all. No wonder the lady from the Escher Museum was acting so unfriendly when I visited the museum in The Hague some while ago.

Nay, Nancarrow is something else. I highly respect Nancarrow. With Ligeti, there's the Nancarrow-influence angle, but also the 'short attention span dramaturgy' angle -- every 'process' in Ligeti goes on for just the 'right' amount of time to hold one's interest rather than for the amount of time the process requires, while CN is happy to let things run to their bitter end. In some Ligeti, this phenomenon is so pronounced that it's downright irritating. The music remains, for example, numbingly confortable (reverse of Pink Floyd intended) for all of e.g., Ramifications, the Requiem, and even Le Grande Macabre. Those are my biggest bugaboos in an oeuvre highly objectionable to begin w/ .

Hmmm. Except in the Piano Etudes, which    just    don't    seem      to        know          when            to                stop.

No?

Oh, I don't have the energy to make it over to the PEDANTRY THREAD ...

Jesus. And now you're turning into amc!