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Rules: You can nominate 2 pieces/threads/members per category. You do not have to nominate for every category, but please do so we can have a successful competition. You cannot self-nominate. Please send nominations to MY PM box. Thank you. Format for nomination: Category: Name of Composer: Piece title: Piece Link (on site): Composition Categories: Most Outstanding Composition Top Orchestral Top Incidental (for any type of media, including stage works) Top Chamber Top Band Top Jazz Top Pop/Rock Top Electronic Top Vocal/Choral Top Keyboard Most Underrated Piece Oddest Ensemble Written For Neatest Score Best Recording Thread Categories: Most interesting Thread Funniest Thread Most Controversial Thread Oddest Thread Member Categories: Best Staff Member Best Moderator Best Reviewer Most Disliked Staff Member Best Composer Most Reasonable Member Rookie of the Year Old Timer's award (for the composer who is over 35 who has been around here for a year or more, and is successful on the site) Most Tech Savvy Most Improved Composer Most Annoying Member Most Missed Member Least Missed Member Most Skilled Debater Most Politically Opinionated Member Staff's Pet (or favorite) Staff's Nightmare (or Top Troublemaker)

Totally agree about avoiding Romantic cullbrap when naming; words like 'fate', 'destiny', 'tragic' and the like sound like some lame straight-to-DVD anime series. I hate overtly descriptive titles. If you can describe something adiquately in words, what's the point of writing music about it? Ironic, ambigous or pun titles appeal to me, as do lines of poetry (particularly if you can use ...three dots... which makes it impossible for anyone saying the title to do so correctly), and phrases in German and Scandinavian languages (Italian and French sound to close to the prissy Romanticism slated above). Dig the postmodernism, people. In fact I often don't even name a piece until the dots are finished.

Since there is a large ammount of composers or wanna-be composers I am wondering how really you want to make a resounding impact as a composer throughout 21st Century. I personally am considered as an established composer in my Slovenia. Maybe sounds bold, but I believe I might be in top 10 at the moment. Still, I am interested to have a bigger international success. I am lucky to enjoy some of it, especially with my chamber opus for wind instruments - my compositions such as Yearning for flute quartet, Trio for flute, clarinet and bassoon, The Bird Tango for piccolos and piano have had a solid reputation abroad. In my country, I am experiencing a new commission boom - I'll be busy throught 2013. A new composition for choir, a new composition for wind quintet, three new short pieces for different winds with piano, a new composition for flute and cello... Please don't consider me a loudmouth or over self-esteemed. :) I am just telling the facts about my current composing career. Still, most of compositions are actually written without getting paid, but that's mostly OK, as long as performers do not expect me to pay them for their performances of my music. :) My ambitions for the future: to compose the largest number of symphonies in Slovenia. The record is, of course, a magic number of nine, created by Blaz Arnic. Still, I only have two and a half completed so far... :) And my ambition is also to have as many fans of my music as it is actually possible, since I am not a young pop music upstart (like Justin Bieber) and I am actually an "invisible" composer of so much hated modern classical music... Thanks for your replies, looking forward to read them! :shifty:

Don't worry, people here on this site love you more than they do love me, I guess. ;)

I am glad that you cannot self-nominate. :)

This isn't really a very good question. Plenty of composers had steady, even dull, periods in their lives and still managed to write servicible music or even some masterpieces - Bach's cantata cycles spring to mind. I don't generally buy the idea that outside events trigger great compositions by themselves though. A momentus occasion does not provide any of the technical aspects of a composition or work as a substitute for prior knowledge. 'Inspiration' is, in practical terms, a knowledge of pre-existing sounds and ideas that the composer can recall and modify to create new work. The idea of anybody experiencing something and then suddenly being able to write a whole piece at a stroke is nonsense. In my experience, composers actually carry a repositary of partially-formed ideas around with them and the event simply provides the trigger to dig one out and refine it or apply other ideas to it. That's why training and technical knowledge are so important as they increase a composer's ability to handle material and see original ways to use it. Ravel's law is completely correct about the difference between wanting to say something and actually having something to say. If the latter is the case, 'inspiration' as defined by either of us won't be an obstacle.

In all honesty, though, just as professional sports players can go through slumps and still play the game, a composer can have dead periods and still be a composer. This was known to have happened to many composers as well.