All-time Top 10 classical composers (?)

1. J.S.Bach
2. R. Strauss
3. Prokofiev
4. Shostakovich
5. Alban Berg
6. Hindemith
7. Handel
8. Mendelssohn
9. Jakob Obrecht
10. Robert Fayrfax

(Yes, no Beethoven and Mozart)

 

Some interesting choices there. Care to elaborate?

 

Bat:

Well, you are either trying to get a pro-Beethoven and Mozart reply or else you are stating your preferences.

I'm not too familiar with Mozart myself, but I do know Beethoven's oeuvre rather well, and, if only because of his late work (pous 111, 106, 132 and so on), you have to get him up there. More than that, gessing from your list, I think you would just love it.

If it is a statement of preferences, my own is more or less the following, in no particular order.

J.S. Bach, of course.

Dietrich Buxtehude - his organ works are among the best music I ever heard for the instrument.

The same with Vincent Lübeck father.

I enormously like Froberger, and yet I detest Frescobaldi (open to discussion).

Beethoven has a very high place in my Pantheon - chiefly the late one, but I like to get the house all trembling with a nice fiery symphony.

Bruckner makes the grade. The 8th and 9th are just unbeleivable; I'm rather reticent about most Mahler.

António Carreira, Cabezón father, Rodrigues Coelho, all are superlative.

Most of the polyphonists, Dufay, Obrecht, Victoria, Cardoso and I am specially devoted to some works of Ockeghem.

Couperin (François) I rather like, but I might prefer his uncle (Louis).

The there is a wonderful, little known composer, Christoph Bach (JS's uncle) unbeleivably profound and expressive.

Schütz - his Last Words are the most poignant music imaginable, and most of it is plain superb.

Once I was deeply interested by Schubert. I once fell completely in love with Schumann's lieder.

Biber is the master of the beautiful and haunting tune. The same with Purcell.

I almost forgot one of the most important: Nicolas de Grigny: his mass is the best French baroque organ work ever written. It stands the comparison with the very best.

I like the 'clavecinistes' in general, but if I was pressed for a choice I'd say d'Anglebert.

So what about Händel? I like his music, but I think he suffers from the comparison with Bach (here I can sense Tones quietly loading his gun).

Monteverdi is extremely important. And his Vespers are truly astounding.

Well. I could go on... Bartók, some Berg, Wagner, even Vaughan Williams. And I forgot Brahms. Well, the list is endless.

What do I not like? Usually opera. I detest Verdi. I (sorry) also detest Prokofieff. I kind of like to listen to a Puccini aria, but I don't think I would endure an entire record. It tickets were free (or not very expensive), I'd go to the Opera house and listen to his music. Yesterday I enjoyed a bit of Rossini (which I usually bores me stiff).

Now there are loads of music I like and do not like. But saying they are The Best - what is the criterion?

Once a very down to earth man - he was a mason - told me: 'You see, Sir, I hope you understand me. I only like what I like'. I think there is wisdom in his words.

 

I guess what you mean is really "my favourite ten classical composers", because, in any objective assessment, the part played by Beethoven in the history of music cannot be overlooked - after Beethoven, the musical world was never the same, because he espoused the cause of the composer as artist, rather than artisan. If you'd told Bach he was an artist, he would have laughed at you. In addition, Mozart cannot be omitted in any objective assessment - he is one of the few cases in human history where a child prodigy became a fully-blown genius, and his compositional skills pushed at the boundaries of the envelope (the envelope that Beethoven was later to reduce to shreds).

In my top ten, Handel would come much further up the list; he and Bach together were the cumulation of the baroque. No wonder music changed after them; they had basically said it all with respect to that particular style, and Bach's sons among others led the way into the emerging classical (used in the correct musical sense) that was to lead to Haydn.

Many of your others wouldn't make my top ten, and Berg wouldn't be in my top ten thousand (he would still be ahead of Stockhausen (but then, isn't everyone?)). But, we're all different and variety is the spice of life and stuff like that.

 

I think an All-Time Top 10 is by definition an expression of opinion rather than a statement of fact.

As for me, my classical (in the common use sense) knowledge is as yet in its infancy, but there are a few composers that stand out.

One who hasn't been mentioned yet is Vivaldi. IMHO his music is just beauty incarnate. No one does strings like him.

Mendelssohn's another. Really gorgeous melodies and wonderful music overall.

And Chopin. No one does piano like him (well... except maybe good ol' Ludwig Van...)

And of course Beethoven is way up there. Simply stunning stuff.

Oh, and how could I forget Tchaikovsky! Some of my absolute favourite music.

I'm sure there are others but it's late and I'm tired. Think I'll put on Vivaldi's Violin Concertos until I can't keep my eyes open anymore... mmmmm....

Dunc

 

Naturally I meant my 10 current favorites. I'm no expert, there is so much that I have not yet heard, I was just sort of waking this forum up a bit.
It is impossible to make an "objective assessment" of art - the result will always be subjective. Bach is better than Vivaldi - that is another subjective opinion of mine. In my opinion Vivaldi was very talented but not quite ambitious enough - too many easy solutions in his music, but he is very inventive.
Beethoven- lately his middle string quartets deeply disappointed me. Dull. Soon I shall check out his piano variations etc, I hope that they are better.
Berg not in 10000 favorites? I like him, "Lulu" is good background music when studying or reading. (Seriously!)
Buxtehude- I have not yet really 'found' him. His father-in-law Franz Tunder composed fine music - RdS may know Tunder's music well.
I have Isoir's de Grigny recording - good but not special.
Ernst Pepping wrote great music for organ, worth checking out!
So did Mendelssohn.
Puccini is dull and strictly for opera fans.
Scriabin is great.
Purcell has superb viola fantasies.
Dowland's lute music is also superb.
Cesar Franck's three last chorales, great stuff.
For reasons that I do not wholly understand, anything by a living composer is probably awful. All good composers seem to be dead.

 

I've yet to hear any Berg that I like. I'm open to the possibility, but I haven't heard it yet. And all my forays into modern music have been failures (I'm not counting the likes of Bernstein and Britten here as "modern" - I mean "noise to scare the local cats away" as opposed to "music"). I think you really need technical musical knowledge to comprehend it, so that you understand what the composer is intending. It is essentially music of the intellect and I don't have the intellect to comprehend it. My loss, but, hey, just leave me with my cupboard full of Bach cantatas and I'm happy.

 

Try the Berg violin concerto or the Altenberg-Lieder (Abbado recording), or the Hollywood Quartet version of Schoenberg's Transfigured Night for starters - all beautiful music which requires no technical knowledge to appreciate it.

Ross

 

Thanks, Ross and g'day! I may live in Switzerland and have been born in Belfast, but 20 years were spent in Melbourne (which, I think, counts as part of Australia - they gave me the passport anyway, whether out of pity or not I don't know). I'll see if I can find a cheap version of any of those (Naxos, something like that).

 

I've heard the Berg Vln Conc in performance a few times (once with Miss Mutter), and I have to say I'm not entirely convinced. Mutter on DG is supposed to be the definitive version, but it is full price. However, this looks an interesting (and cheap) disc - Hartman and Janacek as well, and Zehetmair normally does really good stuff. (There seems to be a Naxos one as well, but I've never heard of Rebecca Hirsch).

I would actually recommend rather than the Vln Conc trying the Lyric Suite or Lulu Suite first - both to my ears rather more melodic (which I guess is why 'real' modernists just call them oveheated/wrought Mahler).

Verklaerte Nacht is a truly wonderful piece - but it's the other (i.e. pre-'idiocy' ) Schoenberg - so, along with Gurrelieder and Pelleas, really doesn't count in the atonal/serialist hagiography.

Good living composers? OK maybe not true greats, but John Adams, Steve Reich, Philip Glass (at least of the Violin Concerto - Satyagraha is supposed to be good too, but I've not heard it) are all excellent. I've been pretty impressed by most Gyorgy Ligeti (still going at 80) I've heard too - his madcap stuff has an awful lot more about it than most other random walks through notes! Then there also seems to be a big following for Elliot Carter (90-something now), although I've not heard enough of his to comment. Other that that I tend to go for the Finnish/Estonian axis. Rautavaara is excellent (particularly "Cantus Arcticus", "Angels And Visitations", "On the last Frontier", Anadyomene), and I've also loved what little I've heard from Peteris Vasks. Erki-Sven Tuur's Violin Concerto is also pretty impressive (or was that just Ms. van Keulen?). Some of Esa-Pekka Salonen's output is not bad either (although I do find him a bit hit and miss).

My favourite 10?
Can't do a strict order, so in on a more fuzzy ranked basis:
Rank 1: Beethoven;
Rank 2: Wagner; R Strauss; Sibelius; Mahler; Bach ( :yikes: - well he wrote so much you can leave out the most tedious 90% and still have loads to play!)
Rank 3: Adams; about 1/2 Haydn; Poulenc (never heard anything by him I don't like - must check out some more); Stravinsky

but that then leaves out other favourites like Bruckner, Nielsen, Villa-Lobos, Brahms, Rautavaara, Tubin, Rachmaninov, Vivaldi, Prokofiev, ... Mingus ( ), Chopin, Liszt and Scriabin's piano music (none of their orchestral music is a patch on their piano stuff).

 

281 concerti later.... :SLEEP:

 

Yes, these are also wonderful pieces. In fact, the whole of Lulu is excellent, although it would probably be too much to ask of someone new to Berg to sit through the entire opera - although having said that, my elderly mother saw the opera recently without any previous experience with Berg and absolutely loved it, so I don't think this music is entirely unapproachable. Incidentally, I don't rate the Mutter performance of the violin concerto - but there are many fine performances (the one you provide a link to would probably be very good) and my personal favourite is the Kyung Wha Chung version.

FWIW, my top 10 composers would probably be:

1. Bach
2. Beethoven
3. Mozart
4. Wagner
5. Schubert
6. Mahler
7. Bruckner
8. Brahms
9. R Strauss
10. Bartok

but then I'd be wondering where to put Dvorak, Haydn, Prokofiev, Chopin, Debussy and a few others who also belong near the top. Maybe there's just a "premiere league" followed by a "second division", and then I remember why I think this kind of ranking - while amusing - is probably not really appropriate to music anyway, since you can't just line up composers on a one-dimensional continuum like golf players after the first round.

Ross

 

So, in my Saturday wandering through Basel, I tried some Berg. I sampled the violin concerto and the Lulu Suite. I found them more melodious and approachable than I feared. However, there's still a fair amount of bird-scaring in there. And more fundamentally, none of them seem to go anywhere. With the likes of Bach, and more especially Beethoven, you always get the feeling of a logical progression (at least until you get to the end, where you have to endure the famous Beethovian boom-BOOM-boom-BOOM-boomBOOMboomBOOMboomBOOMboomBOOM-boom-BOOM-boom-BOOM-boomBOOMboomBOOMboomBOOM and so on for another three million bars). I would listen to such stuff only out of a sense of duty.

Coming home in the car, I caught a bit of a Schoenberg oratorio, "Jacob's ladder" or something like that. Mental note to avoid anything ever written by Schoenberg.

I find your top ten composers list a good one, Ross, except I would tip Bartok and bring in Handel - and move him much farther up the ladder. In my canon, he belongs with Beethoven and Mozart (both of whom were fervent admirers). And I'd just have to find room for Monteverdi!

 

Tones you should really try Verkakte Nacht and Pelleasand Melissande by Schoenberg they are getting close to the pinnacle of post romantic romanticism and are truly wonderful. After this he went all weird and unnecessary, his music became scientific instead of artistic as far as I can see. You really should give them a go. If you ever get the chance to hear Gurrelieder live as well go, it's awe inspiring. It's a shame he got such strange notions.

 

Tones, I've not heard that - apparently it's unfinished - but as it was being written just at the time he was developing serialism, I think you (and the birds) are allowed to be scared by it. The Schoenberg watershed is officially Op 11 (3 orchestral songs, 1908), when he finally left tonality behind - although the last movement of the slightly earlier 2nd quartet (with soprano ) is pretty much there - and had a 13 year or so "expressionist" phase before finally coming up with the dead-end that is serialism The earlier pieces I mentioned above are a completely different tureen of turbot though, and you really must hear Verklaerte Nacht (Op 4, 1903) before writing him off completely. Its style is very much like R.Strauss, but with much more depth (like darling Dickie)

(All this alliteration is apparently associated with an assiduous and avid afternoon's auditioning of Alberich's auric adventures - only 11 hours to go. I did do lots of boring ol' Bach yesterday though).

 

Yes, it's a stunning recording - Zehetmair's finest record must surely be his gorgeous Szymanowski concerti with Rattle though.

tones, you telling me you've never heard Verklaerte Nacht, Pelleas und Melisande or (the biggie, apart from the really silly spoken bit at the end) Gurrelieder? :yikes:

Brahms I think is my all-time favourite composer - as far as I'm concerned he hardly wrote a dull note in his life which is much more than I personally could say for any other composer And the double concerto is amongst my favourite works, certainly well into the top five. I don't think I could genuinely list Beethoven among my favourites - too many of his works I "admire" rather than love. And I really can't listen to Haydn for pleasure

Edit: sorry, it took me ages to compose that post for some reason, and twenty thousand others have chimed in with the same recommendations ahead of me in the meantime. Just goes to show though

 

Hi Tones:

I second the Verklärte Nacht suggestion. Think of the Mahler Adagietto but much more mystical and magic. IMO it is one of the true pinnacles of western music.

I'll lend it to you if you want (in spite of your bashing of Mercedes :inferno.

 

But, Pete, there's so much good stuff to listen to (such as Bach cantatas, like the one playing in the background at the moment, BWV34), that it doesn't leave much time for the Johnny-come-lately pretenders, who have to resort to strange noises to get themselves noticed. No, I confess I haven't had the opportunity, but OK, I'll check it out - gives me an excuse to check out Hug's new premises in Zürich on the way home - if only I can find them...

 

Must be another one...