Every March my sports-enthused friends and coworkers go bananas over basketball, and every March I wonder why they've lost their minds over a competition.
That was, until I sat down with WOSU sports reporter Thomas Bradley to make a composers bracket for the Classical 101 March Madness. Now I get it. When you take vastly different competitors whom you know and love, and throw them together to guess who will win, well, it kinda' reminds me of this.
So, in the spirit of competition, I've compiled a list of four periods of music that provide a taste of Western music history with eight composers of various styles and nationalities to go head-to-head. The list obviously isn't comprehensive, but it's a good set of competitors based on their proficiency.
The competition will take place at the same time as the NCAA's March Madness, and in an effort to hold onto some of my sanity, we'll be having a field of 32 composers, rather than the 64 they do in basketball.
(Thomas just told me it's actually 68. And that makes 0 sense to me)
The four "Regions" will be the four periods of music: Baroque, Classical, Romantic and 20th/21st Century.
You can view each of the brackets by clicking the links above. Be sure to fill out your brackets before the tournament starts on Thursday!
You might be asking yourself, "Kylie, how are composers going to play basketball against each other?"
In lieu of basketball games, we'll be actually be doing a voting round. Match the composers against each other. Open an online voting portal, and BAM! Madness!
The first round of voting will open on Thursday, so check back in soon for voting rounds!