Imaginary Landscape discussion

[Matt Weiner]

Imaginary Landscape discussion

[vinteuil]

I didn't end up writing too much for this (more time-consuming than I expected), but if anyone has feedback about these questions, I'd love to hear it!

Art of Fugue, China, Finland, Franck, St. Matthew Passion, Messiaen, Monteverdi, Pachelbel, Piano Trios, Rameau, Scriabin, Vivaldi, War Requiem, Weddings

[Fado Alexandrino]

I really liked this tournament and would have done better if I wasn't hungry and tired. I didn't like having the non-classical music distribution expanded much from the year before, but other people did, so that's good.

I thought it was harder than IL1, but that's probably because it covers less of what I have done with ensembles, and I was too drained.

Contest between Harmony and Invention and the individual work (Winter, I think? which is what was buzzed in on the first clue) were not mentioned in the Four Seasons answer line. This type of problem may have showed up elsewhere too. Is a 'work' defined as an opus number or equivalent?

The way this tournament complimented IL1 affected the way I buzzed. For example, I heard Handel-y things and remembered Water Music was in IL1, so Fireworks was the only plausible guess.

The tossup on Messiah didn't have the transparency issues the IL1 tossup had.

I thought the "event" tossups was clever but it was limited to a few possibly answer lines, and anything sad was removed from the possible answer lines after an initial clip that's clearly not sad. (Coronations, Weddings, Graduations was unlikely because tossup 1 was Academic Festival Overture)

The Rhine and Turkey tossup ideas were awesome. More of those would have been interesting to hear.

The English Folk Song Suite was a first clue buzzer race by all. At least in Ontario, that's a standard piece in music programs. I think it should have exclusively focused on the slow movement for the first several clues.

The tossup on Copland trolled me because it used a different Simple Gifts clip from the one used in IL1.

I got Mass in B Minor and Bartok String Quartets based off of VCU Open tossups without actually having heard these pieces before, which was cool.

I really liked this event, and do wish to see more in the future.

[Cheynem]

Good fun. The film questions to me were far superior than the previous iteration's; I loved finally being able to buzz on film composers like Goldsmith, Bernstein, and Rozsa, among others.

The Robocop question seemed odd in that the (famous) theme for it was a relatively early clue; I understand everything else was more of a dialogue clue, which I guess makes sense, but it still seemed early for that theme.

[Muriel Axon]

This was fantastic. No complaints.

The one suggestion I have is that instead of answer lines like "Brahms lieder" and "Schubert lieder," you can just have questions on Brahms and Schubert with all the clues coming from lieder. While this could take away a bit of the challenge and thrill of identifying them in early clues without the singer, I think they would play better, as I don't know to what extent people ordinarily consider as a "type" of piece in the vein of a string quartet or symphony.

[Nicklausse/Muse]

I want to apologize for not responding in this thread sooner; there's a duplicate thread.

Joe, I'm glad to hear that you liked the Messiah tossup. Re Folk Song Suite: is there any particular reason you think the third movement is more recognizable than the second? Obviously a buzzer race was not my intention, but for the first clue I tried to find something that didn't immediately pin down Vaughan Williams or Holst and didn't sound folk-y, and something from the third-movement march seemed to do that best. If people generally know the whole piece straight through, they're going to first-line anyway (I will also mention as a point of interest that when the writing team was hashing out difficulty ratings, I thought this was way better-known/easier than the rest of the team did).