Top 20 composers

[spaceray]

Originally posted by Sophia:



Please people, music has not ended yet. Berio. Ligeti, Penderecki, Takemitsu, Xenakis, Stockhausen, Varese, Skalkotas, Christou.....etc, etc, etc.

Of these I am most familiar with Luciano Berio who has only recently died,he wrote some very extraordiary music for the voice.

[Gurn Blanston]

My problem (and it IS mine, I admit) is that I feel like modern artists and composers have merely hung some stuff out there to try and force me into composing my own picture or music to fill in the blanks. I feel gypped somehow by this, as I expect to be entertained and/or stimuated by the artist's ideas, not my own, which entertain me endlessly in any case without the lame stimulation provided. Beethoven entertains the hell out of me, and all I have to do is listen. I don't sit and scratch my head after and ask my wife "what the hell was THAT all about". I don't consider myself to be unduly stupid, although perhaps I will be the last to know, but most modernist stuff seems to me a monumental cosmic joke perpetrated on society, and I have thus far managed to avoid buying into it. Hope I can continue to do the same as long as I live. That's my opinion, I may be wrong.
Regards,
Gurn

[This message has been edited by Gurn Blanston (edited September 13, 2003).]

[Peter]

Originally posted by spaceray:
I want to see Pollock and Rembrandt!!!
I want to keep my mind open to new music .
Great composers are writing wonderful new compositions this very morning.They won't make your top twenty list today but who's to say what the future holds for this music.

Who's to say! Well if they become the top 20, others will have to fall in the 'so-called' ranking - so how about Beethoven at no.233 and Harrison Birtwhistle at no.1? If that's the future you can keep it! I'm all for keeping an open mind on all music, but not at the expense of past achievements - what about 16th and 17th century masters? - no one seemed to complain at their absence on any list!

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'Man know thyself'

[Cláudio Coelho]

There is no doubt about the first three But I would also put Beethoven in the first place.I have records of some of Wagner's operas (The Ring, Parsifal, Meistersinger and Tristan)that I hear regularly and have watched representations of the Ring and of The flying Dutchman). I love his music but certainly I would put Haydn and Schubert (or Schubert and Haydn) in 4 and 5 I love also Handels"s music but where to put him in the first 10? Perhaps after Schubert and Haydn.
I would also put Bruckner in the first @0, intead of Stravinsky. Who would agree with me?

Originally posted by Beethoven1:
I bought a book the other day titled: "Classical Music: The 50 Greatest Composers and Their 1,000 Greatest Works," by Phil G. Goulding. It is basically an introduction to classical music. Gould compiles a list of his top 50 composers, which I find very interesting. Here are his top 20:
1. Bach
2. Mozart
3. Beethoven
4. Wagner
5. Haydn
6. Brahms
7. Schubert
8. Schumann
9. Handel (gasp!)
10. Tchaikovsky
11. Mendelssohn
12. Dvorak
13. Liszt
14. Chopin
15. Stravinsky
16. Verdi
17. Mahler
18. Prokofiev
19. Shostakovich
20. R. Strauss

I would put Beethoven #1, but it is hard to argue with the top 3; they are, for the most part, interchangeable. But Handel at #9??? I'm sure Rod will be outraged! And what do you all think of Wagner as high as 4? I am unfamiliar with Wagner's music, so it is hard for me to comment, but it amazes me that he is above Haydn and Handel.
Comments?

[Rod]

Originally posted by Cláudio Coelho:

I love also Handels"s music but where to put him in the first 10?

Put him after Beethoven in your list.

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"If I were but of noble birth..." - Rod Corkin

[Amalie]

Originally posted by Peter:
Who's to say! Well if they become the top 20, others will have to fall in the 'so-called' ranking - so how about Beethoven at no.233 and Harrison Birtwhistle at no.1? If that's the future you can keep it! I'm all for keeping an open mind on all music, but not at the expense of past achievements - what about 16th and 17th century masters? - no one seemed to complain at their absence on any list!

Among 16th century masters, my favourites are; Thomas Tallis, Shephard, fayrfax and Byrd.
17th century - Monteverdi and Purcell.



[This message has been edited by Amalie (edited September 14, 2003).]

[Steppenwolf]

Originally posted by Amalie:
Nietzsche, Wagner's brilliant erstwhile companion identified Beethoven as the first real (Dionysian composer, meaning one who communicated the most profound sublime harmonies which were not simply listned to, but which one became a part of in a kind of great universal community of elevated spirit. Wagner of course was the great realizer of this project in Neitzsche's eyes.

That was what Nietzsche said in his first book, The Birth of Tragedy. Of course he was later to recant everything he said about Wagner and turn on him. Although his public condemnations of Wagner was largely motivated by personal motives, as in private he suffered from what he saw as a grave personal insult from his former friend. In private he continued to praise Wagner's work, in letters to friends right up until a week before he finally went insane.
Wagnerphobes often quote Nietzche's later anti-Wagnerian diatribes against Wagner, but Nietzsche's private correspondance reveals that he actually never stopped loving the Master's music. He even ended up loving Parsifal (the overture of it, at least), the very opera he had condemned for its Christian themes and 'decadent' ideas about compassion.

[Peter]

Originally posted by Amalie:
Among 16th century masters, my favourites are; Thomas Tallis, Shephard, fayrfax and Byrd.
17th century - Monteverdi and Purcell.

Yes fine choices though I'd include Palestrina. How about going further back to the 12th century and Hildegard von Bingen's beautiful and original chants?

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'Man know thyself'

[Amalie]

Originally posted by Peter:
Yes fine choices though I'd include Palestrina. How about going further back to the 12th century and Hildegard von Bingen's beautiful and original chants?

For shame! I can't believe I forgot to include Palestrina! and Allegri, Miserere, and Lassus, are all my favourites.
It is strange Peter, that you mentioned Hildegard von Bingen as I did actually have her in mind, she has a voice like an angel.
I love her chants.



[This message has been edited by Amalie (edited September 15, 2003).]

[Chaszz]

Originally posted by Amalie:

Yes it is quite true, Nietzsche never ceased to revere Wagner because, he regarded his art of the very highest order that transformed ordinary existence, but he was unenthusiastic to say the least at Wagner's money making and money spending habits which he regarded as irredeemedly bourjeois. The problem was, he saw a big gap between theory and practice in Wagner, and it may be this was motivated by not a little envy as Wagner started to make serious amounts of money. He also objected to Wagner's rather patronizing tone towards him. Again, there are some favourable references to Parsifal by N. but the fact is that he simply did not endorse Wagner's view of art as a kind of alternative religion and saw it in altogether darker almost primeval terms, as you rightly say, with the concept of the Dionysian in his book, the Birth of Tragedy.
It seems to me one of incomparable insights of N. apart from the silliness about the superman was that mankind always strives to surpass itself, and that in metaphysical terms modern man has lost through science, technology, etc. an ancient sense of oneness or Einfuhlung with what one might call the universal mind. Music is of course crucial in this respect, because it is an utterly unique medium which is accessable to all and allows man contact with what Kant called the thing in itself, or was the nearest approach to it. Hence great musicians like Wagner and Beethoven were like high priests of some long lost religion, whose secrets moderm man has lost, secrets as old as the Himalayas.
It is really a reaction to the rather unispiring reality of rational progress and rationalization and industrialization that N. saw all around him in Europe in the 19th century.


[This message has been edited by Amalie (edited September 14, 2003).]

Amalie, sympathy and good luck in dealing with your son's injury.

Supposedly Nietzsche mourned Wagner in his last words on his deathbed.

On the decline of art today, after having seen "The Hours" recently, I've decided that to me, film is the art of our time. I don't even like movies much in general, and there is certainly a lot of adolescent garbage out there aimed at young people, but this movie was a revelation. I don't see that any other art form today could compete with it. I may be wrong, but that is my opinion, as Gurn would say.



[This message has been edited by Chaszz (edited September 15, 2003).]

[Steppenwolf]

Originally posted by Amalie:

... the Birth of Tragedy.
It seems to me one of incomparable insights of N. apart from the silliness about the superman was that mankind always strives to surpass itself, and that in metaphysical terms modern man has lost through science, technology, etc. an ancient sense of oneness or Einfuhlung with what one might call the universal mind. Music is of course crucial in this respect, because it is an utterly unique medium which is accessable to all and allows man contact with what Kant called the thing in itself, or was the nearest approach to it. Hence great musicians like Wagner and Beethoven were like high priests of some long lost religion, whose secrets moderm man has lost, secrets as old as the Himalayas.

Nietzsche gives a fascinating account of Dionysian culture as practiced in classical Greece at the beggining of Birth of Tragedy. The purpose of Dionysian music was to work the crowd up into an orgiastic frenzy (sometimes even sexual), in which the music would unite the group in a sense of transcendental, ecstatic oneness. It is quite astonishing the more you think about it, and realise that that is exactly what the modern youth 'rave party' culture attempts to achieve. The music however, is to my mind rather tedious, noisy, repetitive rythm, which (unlike Wagner's music) needs to support of drugs (usually ecstacy) to induce the ecstatic, mystical group-consciousness (although Nietzche mentions wine, and also 'potions' being used in Dionysian revelry). Could the rave/dance party culture be the latest incarnation of Dionysius? Being in that age group, I have observed the phenomenon first hand myself, and I think there is definitely something to this. Although to me the whole thing has become quite tired and boring and I long to go to Bayreuth much more than Ibiza!

[Amalie]

Originally posted by Chaszz:
Amalie, sympathy and good luck in dealing with your son's injury.

Supposedly Nietzsche mourned Wagner in his last words on his deathbed.

On the decline of art today, after having seen "The Hours" recently, I've decided that to me, film is the art of our time. I don't even like movies much in general, and there is certainly a lot of adolescent garbage out there aimed at young people, but this movie was a revelation. I don't see that any other art form today could compete with it. I may be wrong, but that is my opinion, as Gurn would say.

[This message has been edited by Chaszz (edited September 15, 2003).]

Thankyou for your message of sympathy Chaszz, fortunately it is not a complictated fracture.

I am not really a film goer myself, but is is good to have some culture now and then.
I am not a particular fan of Virginia Woolf, she was an undoubted stylist in her writing, but really the content I find is so slight and evanescent.
I have recently read an extremely funny book on the Life of George 1V, with his hilarious marriage to Caroline of Brunswick, dealt with at length together with a magnificent portrait of one of Englands finest Dandies, Beau Brummel.
It just seems that now a days we don't produce characters like this.
George the 1V'ths wedding night, which is recounted to a friend later, and is now in the Royal Archives, literally had me in stitches, but it is far too crude to mention here. How the other half lived!!

[This message has been edited by Amalie (edited September 16, 2003).]

[spaceray]

Originally posted by Peter:
so how about Beethoven at no.233 and Harrison Birtwhistle at no.1? If that's the future you can keep it!

Beethoven will prevail,don't worry.Birtwhistle makes his contribution to music ,will anyone know his name in a hundred years. Handel has to keep getting "discovered" But Beethoven above all, without a single doubt from me.

[spaceray]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Amalie:
[B]


I have recently read an extremely funny book on the Life of George 1V, with his hilarious marriage to Caroline of Brunswick, dealt with at length together with a magnificent portrait of one of Englands finest Dandies, Beau Brummel.
It just seems that now a days we don't produce characters like this.
George the 1V'ths wedding night, which is recounted to a friend later, and is now in the Royal Archives, literally had me in stitches, but it is far too crude to mention here. How the other half lived!!


Amalie...don't leave us dangling ..What book is this ? Who wrote it?

[Amalie]

[quote]Originally posted by spaceray:
[b]

Originally posted by Amalie:



I have recently read an extremely funny book on the Life of George 1V, with his hilarious marriage to Caroline of Brunswick, dealt with at length together with a magnificent portrait of one of Englands finest Dandies, Beau Brummel.
It just seems that now a days we don't produce characters like this.
George the 1V'ths wedding night, which is recounted to a friend later, and is now in the Royal Archives, literally had me in stitches, but it is far too crude to mention here. How the other half lived!!


Amalie...don't leave us dangling ..What book is this ? Who wrote it?

Space,
The book is appropriately called, THE PRINCE OF PLEASURE, The prince of Wales and the Making of a Regency. By SAUL DAVID.
A book that you just can't put down.

The Prince Regent a highyl controversial figure, rebelled and schemed against his father, George 111, conducted scandalous liaisons with prostitutes and duchesses.
Yet his participation in public affairs and his passion for the arts often had enduring positive influences.
Rupert Everett brilliantly played the part of George 1V, in the film, The Madness of King George 111.

A favourite character of my husband is Beau Brummell. Who he maintained one of the most extraordinary Englishmen that ever lived. His clothes sense was apparently exquisite, he was said to employ two glove makers, one for the thumbs the other for the palm and fingers. He took a couple of hours every day just dressing and washing and the heir to the throne was utterly mesmerized by Brummells appearance. He fell out with The Prince Regent however, and in a very funny episode made fun of the overweight indulgent Prince. At a party he he ignored the Prince Regent and turned to a friend and pointing and said, Ah! Alvanley, who's your fat friend?

[This message has been edited by Amalie (edited September 18, 2003).]