I always feel that Stanford's music, particularly works like the 5th symphony, could hardly fail to be widely popular if only orchestras would take it up.

Interesting to see the composer is employed writing video game music.

I do think if you wanted to recommend one symphony as an introduction to HB's work, No 5 would be it.

I think a good way to approach this topic is to look at what great composers have done when deliberately trying to write bad music. The best example is Mozart's Musical Joke, where he tries to parody a bad composer of his day. It always amuses me when the finale of that piece is used e.g. for TV theme music as if it was intended to be good music, when in fact it is Mozart's attempt to write something incredibly trite and stupid.

Two other examples are Britten's parody of bad opera in A Midsummer Night's Dream (which must be some the laugh-out-loud funniest music ever written), and Nielsen's 6th Symphony, though Nielsen is rather poor as a parodist, and I'm rather sorry he did that.

Oh that exists! I have seen a score for a concerto for solo vuvuzela.

I don't know, because no-one has defined a standard by which "worst" can be assessed. Unless someone can define what is meant by "the worst piece of music", then no-one can meaningfully nominate a possible candidate. If it is possible to write a worse piece than any previously composed, how would we recognise it as such?

Not just this, but the whole series of CDs of the Gal symphonies paired with standard repertoire works by Schumann or Schubert. That sort of programming is one thing for a concert, where it is argued that a "safe" work is needed to bring in the regular audience, but it makes no sense at all for a CD release, where anyone who wants the Gal will be put off by half the CD wasted, and anyone who wants the Schumann will go to a better-known recording without the Gal on it. Who on earth wants both together?

Curious, that. I like these "dramatic" keys myself, though I could not say I had one favourite any more than I could say I had one favourite colour.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

OK, but my point is, supposing you tried to write the worst piece. How would you set about it, and how would you know if you had succeeded? Unless we can describe that, we don't really know what "worst" means. (This is very Popperian!)

OK, enough Webern-bashing. Now ... five oboe sonatas that changed music. Any starters?

Judging by the track previews, the orchestra was recorded in a swimming pool - I don't see any performers listed.

As I posted in the Requests forum, I have No 4 as well - but no functioning player to play it on *sighs*.

Sorry, I meant No. 1.

I need the benefit of all your expert opinion.

I have several large boxes of old reel-to-reel tapes. They are 1/4" tape, mostly 7" reels, four-track mono. My old tape recorder died ages ago, and while I tried to restore it, the drive belts have decayed into a black gunge which I can't clean off. The tapes date from the 70s and early 80s, and as they have not been rewound for decades, they may be in bad condition.

Each track has 90 minutes of music, and they are full of obscure repertoire. At least what was obscure in the 1970s ... in some cases, things that have since been commercially recorded, in other cases, things that are still rarities. I picked one out at random (the first one that came to hand) and amongst other things, it has:

Roy Harris: Piano Quintet
Roy Harris: Violin Sonata
Joonas Kokkonen: Interludes from the Last Temptations
Aulis Sallinen: Cello Concerto
Easley Blackwood: Symphony no 4 (Chicago SO + Solti!)
Nikos Skalkottas: Symphony

Plus more familar music by Berg, Hummel, Rossini, Villa-Lobos, Sallinen, Englund, Hartmann, Rimsky-Korsakov, and a harp recital.

Most of these will be radio broadcasts from BBC Radio 3. The original sound quality was good, if not hi-fi. Listenable mono without distortion, and better than many of the recordings in the archive here.

So the question is whether it is worth perservering, or whether they are all now likely to be too decayed to be worth keeping? Also, is anyone interested in lending a hand? If someone is set up for converting reel-to-reel tapes, I could post a sample for evaluation.