Who's your favorite classical composer?

[CubsFan1982]

I'm listening to Beethoven's 9th symphony right now. He's one of my faves. What about you?

edit: added Mahler by popular demand :D

[Jack Rabbit]

1. Beethoven

He picks you up, shakes you around and lets you know you've been listening to some music.

[Ron Green]

2. Mozart's the guy. The pinnacle. The case can be made that anything else

is either not fully formed or somehow degenerate. (Although there's lots of great music by most of those listed, IMHO.)

[jdots]

3. Ya da Buskin he likes Wagner.

[regnaD kciN]

4. Beethoven was the "greatest," IMHO...

...but "favorite" is a very individual matter, and probably many people have a few who are not among the biggest-name composers.

For example, while I'd pick Beethoven from that list, my "favorites" on an emotional level would probably be Anton Dvorak, Gustav Mahler (who probably should have been on the list) and Ralph Vaughan Williams.

[MuseRider]

6. Absolutely Mahler

should have been on that list. It is so hard, they are all so great in their own way.

[MuseRider]

5. Strauss baby!

He wrote some awesome music and the best wind parts ever. I live to play Strauss.

[tuckessee]

7. JS Bach is #1.

IMHO all the best composers come from the Baroque period.

Even if no more music had been made after that era we'd still be a musically blessed planet.

[Floogeldy]

8. Bach. See Fugue in G Minor for violin.

:)

[Jamastiene]

9. Mozart

is cool.

[Rabrrrrrr]

10. I can't believe anyone is picking Mozart

Come on, people - yes, he was genius. Yes, he is to be admired.

But ultimately, his music is nothing but the necessary transition between the excellence of the Baroque period and the excellent of the Romantic period. The Classical period just doesn't have as much importance on its own, except as the neccesary joiner betwen the other two incredible periods.

The only viable answers in this poll are Bach, Beethoven, and Mahler.

[Ron Green]

11. You forgot Max Reger!

[Rabrrrrrr]

13. I'm not familiar with him

Who is he? When was he?

[Ron Green]

14. I was kidding...he wrote some degenerate and overblown stuff in the early

19th Century, I believe. I was just ribbin' you about putting Mahler up there with those other guys.

[Rabrrrrrr]

16. Oh, you bastard!! You Mahler despiser!! DEGENERATE!!

No, I honor the others by including them with Mahler.

Mahler is the god of composition, the pinnacle, the most important composer of all time, quite possibly even until today.

[Ron Green]

18. Hee hee --- I used to like him too, even played the "Resurrection"

symphony in an orchestra. I still can listen to him, but I've just grown up a lot in the past 30 years or so. Mozart is the ultimate for me, as far as a sit-down string band goes.

[Squeech]

34. Hogwash

First of all, the Classical period does too have importance-- it represents the primacy of formal structure (sonata form, Haydn's rules for the concerto and the symphony) over Baroque's emphasis on counterpoint and the coming Romantic emphasis on emotion.

Secondly, given that, it is definitely fair game to argue for Mozart as the greatest composer ever, since he took Haydn's skeletal forms and showed how they could be humanized. Beethoven couldn't have done what he did without Mozart. (Contemporary critiques of Beethoven's first symphony accused him of having too much unrestrained passion, as well as too much woodwind.)

Thirdly, it's as much a fallacy to speak of historical necessity in aesthetics as in politics. Music no more *needed* to pass through what we call in retrospect the Baroque, Classical and Romantic eras than workers *needed* to rise up, cast off the decadent capitalists and usher in the dictatorship of the proletariat, within which the state would wither away (if I remember my Marx correctly). The only way to reasonably impose a necessity on music is to say that the patrons demanded a certain style, which I'm sure they did, especially in the Baroque era when they were all-powerful.

All that said, I do prefer Bach and Beethoven to everybody else on the list. (Mozart, despite his obvious achievements, was a wanker. Given how phenomenal his ear obviously was, he should have been able to anticipate and subsume Schubert, and maybe even Wagner. Instead he made progress in fits and starts, and filled time by composing a lot of utterly safe and conventional stuff-- and *still* couldn't avoid dying in poverty. What a schmuck.)

But for me, the real achievements take place in the 20th century, when composers start to think seriously about the tone colors you could get from a modern orchestra. Debussy's "La Mer." Stravinsky's seminal ballets. Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra. Schoenberg's Five Pieces. Penderecki's Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima. Edgard Varese's "Ameriques," which as far as I'm concerned is the real successor to "Le Sacre du Printemps." Messiaen's "Et Expecto Resurrectionem Mortuorum." Next to that stuff, the entire 19th century is just one humongous frilly lace doily.

And didn't we have this exact same thread last week?

[Rabrrrrrr]

12. Oh, and let me raise one other point of contention - "Classical" is

a specific period, from about 1750 to 1825.

Granted, in general usage "classical" covers all music of a serious nature, from Bach to Philip Glass, so I really can't fault you for this. I use the word "classical" all the time to mean any music that's serious, in the western tradition.

So, the only true Classical composers you have are Mozart and Beethoven, and only early Beethoven.

[CubsFan1982]

15. Why do you hate America?

You snooty, wine-sipping, French-loving, classical-music-defining limousine liberal! :P

Seriously, thanks for the clarification. :D

[realisticphish]

17. Saint Saens

Danse Macabre is my favorite classical piece (tied, perhaps, with Holst's Planets)

and The Carnival of the Animals is just beautiful

[Rabrrrrrr]

19. OMG! Those are good, but are shit in comparison with ...

the Organ Symphony.

WOW! Now that's music!!

[realisticphish]

21. never heard of it

i'll have to look for it

[Rabrrrrrr]

22. Absolutely!!

It's FANTASTIC!

[realisticphish]

23. so it

is a saint saens piece as well?

[Rabrrrrrr]

24. Well, yes, that was the whole point

you were talking about his music, and so I offered to you my favorite piece by him.

:7

I can't remember if its actually called "The organ symphony", but whatever it is, it's close to that.

[realisticphish]

25. lol sorry

its 3...so sue me

and i assumed so, but...



ok, i have no defense :dunce:

[CanuckAmok]

20. Ah, Ludwig van! More of a pleasure in me gulliver than Gogglygogo or...

...the Heaven Seventeen. Hear angel trumpets and devil trombones... you are invited!

[CubsFan1982]

26. After all this whining about Mahler not being included...

And he's only got one vote?? WTF?! Give the dude some love, guys! :D

[CanuckAmok]

29. "Mahler" and "popular demand" didn't make sense together.

I was going to ask...but I thought, hey, mabe I'm being obtuse...maybe there's more than one Mahler fan in DU...

[Wapsie B]

30. Mahler fan here!

Bruckner needs to be up there as well.

[Seabiscuit]

27. Once you study music, there's no choice other than J.S. Bach.

The real genius who started it all. Without him, everyone else would have been totally lost.

[JVS]

28. Bach pre-dates the classical era

Of course, he is the finest on the list

[TyeDye75]

31. Gioachino Rossini

[tjwmason]

42. He was a fool

Well he wasn't, he was very clever, but not a musical genius.

He took about three pieces of music (not terribly good ones, but very listenable ones), and kept putting them in slightly different orders to make different operas.

J.S.B. is the only choice:

Counterpoint,
His church cantatas (which I cannot abide, but are stunning music),
Counterpoint,
Did I mention counterpoint,
Well-tempered scale structure.

[Rabrrrrrr]

46. Yeah, Rossini and Verdi - people of limited vision

Though I like Rossini. Maybe because he only wrote the same opera three times, instead of 75 or whatever Verdi did.

[FlyByNight]

32. Admittedly, I don't know many but...

from what I've heard, it's Mozart for me. Nothing else quite like it.

[RadicalMom]

33. Rachmaninoff! Then Mahler, then Ravel, then Debussy....

With all the intensely passionate people around here, I would have thought someone would have put Rachmaninoff at the top of the list. For those who haven't experienced his work, run, and listen to it. It speaks to your soul like few other things. Mahler is terrific, of course, and if you listen to the symphonies sequentially, you'll find that they get more intense and darker as they go along, corresponding with events in his life.

[stopbush]

35. What? No French or Italian composers? And where's Bruckner, Sibelius,

Wagner and Verdi, fer Chriss sake!

I can't vote in your poll. Sorry. :)

[ffm172]

36. I picked Mozart

but I also love Bizet. And Mendelssohn and Verdi and and and ....

[Meshuga]

37. Antonio Solieri!

The film/play Amadeus portrays him as a prick. I like the bad guys in movies!

[BlackVelvetElvis]

38. Josef Haydn

Next to JS Bach, possibly the most prolific and hard working composer in western music. I love his life story too, I find it very inspiring.
He also followed the rules of classical formula very strictly so some may be bored with him. However, I love his skill with a melody and orchestration. His music overall is joyous and fun to listen to.
I finally finished collecting all 104 of his symphonies and may start on his string quartets next.

[Sugar Smack]

39. The 2nd movement of Beethoven's 7th

is the most wrenching & beautiful I've thing ever heard. A close second- for pure "JOY" is Mozart's "Marriage of Figaro." I also love Boccherini!!!!!!!


:bounce:

[nytemare]

40. Debussy

I think Mozart and Beethoven may have had more talent/skill, but I like Debussy's music better.

[Lady Freedom]

41. Ludwig Rocks!!!

[tjwmason]

43. Olivier Messiaen

Well I actually voted for the true god of music J.S.B., but Messiaen could kick the arse off just about every other person on the list.

As with Bach he created an entire music structure (modes of limited transposition); and the ethereal nature of his music is litterally beyond this world. I defy anybody to listen to 'Quator pour le fin de temps' (realising that this was written in a Nazi P.o.W. camp), and not acknowledge the existence of the divine.

[Squeech]

45. Yup

The Quatuor pour la Fin du Temps is his best known piece, as much because the story behind it is so heartwrenching as because of its groundbreaking music. (The instrumentation was chosen because that's the talent that was available in the prison camp: clarinet, violin, cello and piano. Nobody had written for that ensemble before-- but Messiaen's Quartet has inspired a bunch of contemporary composers to write for that grouping.)

But listeners who get into the Quartet should check out his other works too. I like the Turangalila Symphony, for very large orchestra including percussion and Ondes Martenot (an early synthesizer); La Nativite du Seigneur, for organ (Messiaen was himself an organist and wrote amazing organ music); Et Expecto Resurrectionem Mortuorum, for wind ensemble (mentioned in my post #34 above); and a three hour plus piano piece called Catalog des Oiseaux, wherein most of the melodic material is adapted from Messiaen's own transcriptions of bird songs :-) (Actually that isn't one of my favorites, but I should have mentioned it in Friday's thread on weird records :D )

And we did too have almost exactly the same thread as this a week or so ago. I felt like I'd better write some new information this time. I can do that because I've been listening to Mozart all day and I'm smarter :think:

[Coventina]

44. I can't believe Mahler has two votes!

I thought everybody hated Mahler?
:shrug:

I voted for ole Ludwig. I really love him more than anyone else.

on edit: typo! :D

[tjdee]

47. The old Ludwig Van--the man was deaf for pete's sake people!

I know this is an opinion poll, and everyone feels differently, but I hope we can all agree that Beethoven is the most talented. :silly:

As Jack Rabbit said, "he picks you up, shakes you around, and lets you know you've been listening to some music."

Right on. Beethoven is the best.

[AwakeAtLast]

48. I voted for Beethoven, but it was hard to choose

I love to listen to Vivaldi on certain days. There are days I could listen to him non-stop.