Apart from clearthinking's personal favorite could we provide short examples of your champion's works? Drill down to 3-8 minute segments that illustrate their genius and inspiration. (Brahms appears in need of an overhaul, another separate thread perhaps?)
Good grief Schubert, everyone knows the world’s greatest sporting event is the Tour de France. Sheesh! But what do you expect from a guy so lost he doesn’t know the world football championship isn't a "cup" it's called the Super Bowl. Probably thinking of the one little kids play at, the one where everyone runs around maybe every once in a while somehow a point gets scored, or not, no one cares, everyone gets a participation trophy. Please if you are determined to be hopeless at least be like the others and stick with audiophile hopelessness, okay?
Who did everything well? For my money Mozart and Haydn were the only two who wrote well no matter the genre whether it was chamber, orchestral, opera, church music etc. Haydn's opera's aren't well known as they were written for Esterhazy rather than the stages of Vienna. Bach is Bach, no opera's but I have to say the oratorios and the 200+ cantata's probably make up for it. Music for theatre or stage is where Beethoven and Schubert come up short for me, but I love them just the same. Surprised at no mention of Berlioz or better still, Purcell. Good call on Monteverdi, whoever it was who added him.
I rank composers and other artists strictly on subjective, not objective criteria. I don't care how influential, prolific or technically adept they might be. Do they penetrate past your intellect? Do they find and occupy the core of your being? Do they deliver the goods?
An interesting discussion, and revealing to me in terms of one specific composer: Richard Wagner. I think I saw Wagner’s name mentioned once, as a "candidate" for inclusion in the top five. Nobody dared to put him on their list.
Which is odd. Everyone with an interest in music of any kind should at least read a review of Wagnerism, Alex Ross’s vast 2020 book (it runs over 750 pages!) This isn’t a biography or analysis of the German composer’s music but an investigation of his influence on most intellectual aspects of human existence. Not just Art, of course—the subtitle of Ross’s book is "Art and Politics in the Shadow of Music." But an astounding array of great non-musicans including writers, poets, visual artists, dancers, filmmakers, and architects all incorporated Wagner’s approach to creating their own work. And they all regarded him highly not because of some theoretical "advance" he was responsible for but because of the effect Wagner’s music had on them. So, Friedrich Nietzsche, Thomas Mann, James Joyce, WEB Du Bois, Theodor Herzl, Willa Cather, Isadora Duncan, JRR Tolkein, Anselm Kiefer, dozens of film composers, and so many others were all committed Wagnerians.
But though the operas are as popular as ever onstage and on recordings, Wagnerism has declined sharply since the 1940s, thanks to an association with totalitarianism that won’t be vanishing soon, if ever. Listeners are less likely to admit to loving his music, which is as intoxicating as Tchaikovsky, as lyrical as Schubert, as dramatic as Beethoven, and as spiritual as Bach for fear that it marks them as a fascist or bigot. The fact that Wagner’s music continues to powerfully endure despite all its "baggage", even if it’s no longer a kind of religion, tells us something.
Right, just because he , the worlds most famous German wrote more anti-semetic pages than music which helped Hitler greatly is no reason to be upset. With the Ring calling back to the real German religion was a great idea as well.
I do like some Wagner quite a lot, but I just can't put him among my favorites. Part of the problem for me is that his stuff just goes on too long. Eventually, a sameness creeps in. There's also a pomposity that can rub me the wrong way. Yeah, I do have my share of Wagner on the shelf. But apart from the Siegfried Idyll and the first side of Die Meistersinger I probably haven't put any Wagner on the stereo this century.
Slightly off-topic, but I picked up Britten and others thanks to KDFC which also does a great job of showcasing diversity in classical music, from modern Women composers to fantastic movie and game scores.
One can certainly dislike Wagner -- much of his music occupies a psychological/emotional space that many can find uncomfortable. We are each entitled to our preferences. But I think it's far more likely that Wagner is generally underrated than overrated.
This is because many people come to Wagner's operas with so much extra-musical baggage -- based on mostly his despicable anti-Semitism, and his posthumous adoration by Hitler -- that it's difficult for him to get a fresh hearing.
But Wagner's music can be surpassingly beautiful (e.g., the love theme from Tristan and Isolde), or tremendously exciting (e.g., the storm scene from Die Walkure).
As a musical dramatist, Wagner arguably has no peers. The Ring cycle is one of the great family dramas, a work that profoundly welds terrific music with penetrating psychology --in my view, just a notch below the works of Shakespeare and Tolstoy.
For those unfamiliar with Wagner's work (apart from the Ride of Valkyries, used in the film Apocalypse Now and too many commercials), I suggest you try conductor Georg Solti's recording of Wagner's Ring -- a fabulous sonic feast, and one of the greatest recordings ever made.
Gee., why would anyone be upset about a man who played a major part in killing at least 6 million men . women and CHILDREN .
Surely knowing incest is A-OK is far more important than a few million children being burn to death .
Wagner was/ is just one of the most evil persons who ever walked , but surpasses Bach in your mind, ok .
With Easter near, Bach’s Passions are played all over the Western World. This year I must remember the death of Christ is not as relevant as Wagner’s homage to incest .
To put him in the class of the Bard is beyond belief .
It is often hard to ignore the historical context of any artist, so I can understand why Wagner is so reviled. But, if one can just isolate the music, and how he melded the music to the drama, he is quite an important artist. I don't think gg107 said that he was as great as Bach, merely that he has been under-appreciated. If I were to attach the same kind of historic responsibility to the Passion plays of Bach and the B Minor mass, in comparing Bach and Wagner, I would have to conclude that the Nazi body count is pretty paltry compared to that of Christianity.
I read through the responses the other day and refrained from responding. The pandemic and a new CD player with a good DAC encouraged me to listen to and expand my music collection. I soon began to focus on classical music and to appreciate Mozart more than ever. I sometimes try to listen to the other greats, especially Beethoven, but keep coming back to Mozart, especially his chamber music, to the extent that I sometimes need to take a break from his intensity.
Today I came across this, which, I feel, makes much of what I read the other day somewhat irrelevant:
"As with all great artists, Mozart expressed not only the soul, the taste and the aroma of his epoch but also the spiritual world of man--man for all ages, in all the complexity of his desires, his struggles and ambivalence. Some of us, who only identify in Mozart a certain aristocratic refinement, may find these words strange. Often we meet with a condescending attitude towards him, to his music, reminiscent of the chiming of bells in a music box! 'It's very nice but not for me," say such people, 'Give me passion--Beethoven, Brahms, tragic, monumental...." Such comments only reveal one thing: these people don't know Mozart." --L Bernstein
Apropos of the above comment, most musicians I know feel that way about Mozart. There’s just magic. An epithet I once made up: ”Mozart tickles the soul”
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