R3OK

Gosh, did he really miss Scelsi...

Now I think back, it's interesting that Service should list Scelsi as someone he could have included, considering his self-selected criteria for including someone in the list were that they should have been born within the last hundred years or composing within the last twenty. Scelsi misses out on both counts (and if Service could somehow have bent his own rules to include Scelsi, I'd have thought Messiaen a much bigger omission).

Clementine Verbiage reviews Gesualdo... I don't think he's used it for a while, but "hugely impressive" is back! 

I'm not sure how enlightening it is to see critics trying to outdo each other in witty putdowns of this book while the author laughs all the way to the bank.

Well, there is that, I guess. But then, if reviewers are being forced to read Dan Brown as a contractual obligation at work (and Brown is going to make his fortune irrespective of what any critic writes), they should be allowed a bit of fun by way of compensation.

So Stockhausen is numereo un!

Who was numero deux? I thought there was 2 composers  left after Schnittke!

3VS

At the start of the series, Tom Service said it would be featuring 52 composers. When he posted the Stockhausen article, he also apparently tweeted that the series had reached its conclusion with the fiftieth entry, and if one looks at the numbered list, Stockhausen is indeed numbered fifty. However, the list seems to have lost Ligeti, who was featured in the late-teens. So, Service said he was doing 52, has done 51, and thinks he's done 50... Your guess is as good as mine, 3VS! 

But, I notice that contributor "stupormundi", mentioned by ...trj... a few weeks ago, has posted on the Stockhausen thread today, so clearly hasn't been entirely hounded out, thankfully.

"Fly will always love you..."

Having a first spin of Georges Lentz's "Ingwe", which arrived in the post today.

Was a bit concerned that it might have got a bit, well, proggy - I mean, an hour-long electric guitar solo?! But I'm half-an-hour in, and I'm thoroughly enjoying it. It's far less noisy than I was expecting (some lovely sustained delicate passages, for instance), and I rather like the way it's balancing the full-on six string chordal stuff with more monodic elements. One could almost see it in the same mould as Alkan's concerto for solo piano - at one and the same time it's soloist and orchestra! And some very interesting sonic effects from the instrument too. Would love to hear this played live...

Swanage

Tom Service has posted an appreciation, though part of it looks like it's written by Clements - there's one sentence (in two halves with a semi-colon) with no less than nine adverbs!