Best Composer ever

[ThaSchwab]

1. Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky
2. Antonín Leopold Dvořák
3. Ludwig van Beethoven
4. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
5. Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev

My top five.

[Maksymilian]

Right now Shostakovich, but my favourite often alternates between him and Mahler, because they are both completely amazing
I also like Sibelius. He's great.

[dionis]

Well, I couldn't say I like Bach. I can just say that I listen to his recordings 97% of time. And maybe that I have become something within Bach. But my favorite would be Enigma. Yes, Max Reger, too, rules. Can't find the time though to listen to his music..

[kevalkeval1993]

It's definitely a case of the favourite composer not necessarily being the greatest composer. For me the greatest composer who has ever lives is Bach. He never sacrificed form for emotion. His music is so wonderfuly precise and everything fits perfectly together.

However, he may be the greatest composer in my opinion, but he isn't my favourite. I much prefer the Romantic composers, especailly Fauré, Ravel and Chopin. They did what Bach never did: sacrificed form for emotion. Their music speaks to me more so than Bach's. I still love Bach but not as much as I love my Romantics!

[perlnerd666]

Someones needs to mention Haydn!!!
Greatest:
1. Beethoven
2. Bach
3. Brahms
4. Stravinsky
5. Haydn
Most influential:
1. Wagner
2. Beethoven
3. Schonberg
4. Bach
5. Handel/Vivaldi (but only on the baroque)
Favorites:
1. Brahms
2. Haydn/Stravinsky
3. Beethoven
4. Bach
5. Schubert
6. Elliot Carter
7. Varese
8. Mozart
...
3,000,000. Mahler
Oh, I think I just got massacred by a crowd of fanboys! [/list][/list]

[Yagan Kiely]

Most influential:

Schubert should go in there, as should Berlioz. Whether or whether not Berlioz was a bad composer... (which I am inclined he is), his orchestration was very influential. Schubert's tonality also strongly influenced Wagner.

Oh, I think I just got massacred by a crowd of fanboys! Wink [/list][/list]

I think we'd prefer to torture you a bit first.

Just don't bash R.Strauss and I will forgive you.

[perlnerd666]

Uh-oh...Nah, Don Quixote is nice.

[pml]

Hi Yagan,

perhaps you should listen to Les Troyens or Benvenuto Cellini before reciting the clichéd academic prejudice against Berlioz as you just did. Berlioz is still performed so sparingly (aside from some overtures and the Symphonie fantastique, which though an astonishing work for a 27-year old is in many ways immature) that there is still quite an unbalanced perception of his work.

I'm currently listening to the Chasse royale et Orage (Royal Hunt and Storm) from the former work, in the middle of a thunderstorm here in Melbourne: it is really quite apropos! If you're saying Berlioz is a bad composer, then so is Beethoven, Wagner, Mahler, [R] Strauss, Stravinsky, Schönberg... take your pick. Berlioz is maddeningly inconsistent and wrote a number of duds (name a composer who didn't!), but when he's on form he's simply brilliant.

[ThaSchwab]

Uh-oh...Nah, Don Quixote is nice.

Don Juan is better.

[Yagan Kiely]

Berlioz is maddeningly inconsistent and wrote a number of duds (name a composer who didn't!), but when he's on form he's simply brilliant.

I've yet to hear a piece of his that is Musically brilliant. His tonal language is very... simple/immature, and his theme leave little to the imagination and aren't all that memorable either.

reciting the clichéd academic prejudice

I've only heard one lecturer bag him. Apart from that lecturer I was unaware of any cliché, I'm only using my own experience studying his scores/music.

Beethoven, Wagner, Mahler, [R] Strauss, Stravinsky, Schönberg... take your pick.

Beethoven is a bad composer. But he did make quite a few stunning pieces, that's what keeps him in history books. All the other composers you mentioned are actually very consistent with their works.

That said, I do give Berlioz a lot of credit for ignoring the (cliche I know) but soppy style of French music that I've heard since the Baroque. His orchestration, and several other aspects of his works are extremely influential, and he is an important composer at least for those reasons.

[Yagan Kiely]

In terms of R.Strauss, I prefer his Operas (Salome onwards). In regards to specifically tone poems I really enjoy Alpine Symphony,

[Melodia]

Berlioz was partially self taught, so he lacked the flair for 'proper' development that makes his works sound almost bizzare. He was very influential, nonetheless, especially on Liszt and other 'modernists' in the 1800s.

Beethoven is considered the (near) greatest because he knew exactly when to follow the rules and when to break them. It gives his music a certain organicness that even if you don't like it (and not a fan of a lot of his most popular stuff, including the 3rd symphony) it works. To call him a 'bad' composer is just silly, especially as he is the single most influential composer ever after Bach.

Interesting, though, that you dismiss those two, yet put the Alpine Symphony as a favorite. As glorious as it is (easily my favorite piece by him), it's also just as banal as Berlioz in many ways.

[Yagan Kiely]

Interesting, though, that you dismiss those two, yet put the Alpine Symphony as a favorite. As glorious as it is (easily my favorite piece by him), it's also just as banal as Berlioz in many ways.

I don't feel that either are banal actually. Things don't have to be original to be good music. The Alpine Symphony is in no way immature or unmemorable harmonically like almost all of the Berlioz I have heard is.

He was very influential, nonetheless, especially on Liszt and other 'modernists' in the 1800s.

Indeed; Romeo=Tristan.

To call him a 'bad' composer is just silly

Why I feel he is 'bad', is because he has his good pieces (which, bar orchestration, verge on the greatest pieces ever, but they almost have their antithesis in his bad music. To me a composer (once mature) has to write consistently good music (not necessarily great), and this is what turns me off Beethoven. For example, I don't believe his music is bad per se, but if consistency is the key (and it is for me) then Beethoven doesn't get top spot.

[athensnogood]

I struggle, really struggle, to see why Schubert does not feature up there with Bach, Mozart and Beethoven.

In his songs he is unsurpassed, All of them, as brahms would have said. His last piano sonatas pick up where Beethoven left the genre and no one has since written anything that exquisite for the piano - chopin included. His string quintet is the supreme composition in chamber music (or all music) and then there are those other chamber masterpieces, the D minor and G major quartets and the piano trios. The two symphonies reach extreme depths of bitter-sweet emotion while showcasing as skillful an orcherstrator as any - oh yes, no one dares say it, "Schubert the great orcestrator".
His music moved composers such as Schumann, Brahms, Mendelsohn and Liszt in a way we hardly see anywhere else. There is a uniqute term, "schubertian", which applies to those who cherish the uniqueness of the emotional world of this music and there is no comparable term for any other composer. There are no "Beethovenians" or "Mozartians". Perhaps not because they are not as greatly admired but perhaps no other composer has reached the depths of emotion that Schubert has. Watch out how pianists like Brendel, Richter, Schiff look up to Schubert and single him out in a place amongst all composers, the first and the latter happily allowing themselves to be called "schubertians".

He died at the age of 31. Beethoven had, by then, written one symphony, the early quartetts and the "moonlight" would have been the pinnacle of his achievement for the piano. I dont remember who said it but it is apt: Schubert's early death is the worse catastrophy in the history of music. What he did in the very few years he composed is the ultimate achievement, though he never of course saw it as such.

And for those who are impressed by the wonder stories about Mozart, do look up what Schubert wrote in September 1827. Has any person, in any field, achieved so much, in such a short period of time?

[Lyle Neff]

[...] The two symphonies reach extreme depths of bitter-sweet emotion [...]

I was under the impression that Schubert wrote more than two symphonies.