*Classical Composers: The Best

[montevideo]

he he he

a snifty photo of myself in hired dungarees and using a powertool in front of my admiring latino?

maybe i will become GRAND bourgeoise...................and perhaps own some capital/land/business/shares, eh montague....????

as ever out of your depth & grasping for dear life

 

[ernestolynch]

g'wan post that pic of you on the roof!

it makes you look cool and hard...just like that one with the 'power tool'....conjures up visions of you false-miming through assembly hymns....betcha were the only kid in the country who did that!

horny-handed son of toil you.....

 

[pilchardman]

ive just been listening to more ludwig while youse lot have been scrappin. lots f stuff queued up - although montague's stuff sounds a bit goddy to me on first listen - give me ludwig anyday

What about the Bach, man? The Bach!

 

[pilchardman]

as ever out of your depth & grasping for dear life

When he could be diving for pearls. Eh?

 

[montevideo]

ive just been listening to more ludwig while youse lot have been scrappin. lots f stuff queued up - although montague's stuff sounds a bit goddy to me on first listen - give me ludwig anyday

Unfortunately the 'goddy' stuff is the only thing available. He did though 15 operas (including Le Coq d'Or which was banned in tsarist russia), 11 symphonic works &, amongst other things, 2 collections of russian folk songs. Like i say, a bit of a lad.

 

[white rabbit]

God knows, I find reason often enough to sound off on matters I know nothing of.

But, classical composers? No, I really have no clue at all.

Mozart's quite good, isn't he?

 

[pilchardman]

Mozart's quite good, isn't he?

Bit too mannered and frilly for my taste. But many people swear by him.

 

[dormouse]

I swear at him. Got to be Bach, no question. (But none of that Bach-on-a-piano rubbish, I'd rather hear Mozart than that.)

 

[pilchardman]

Hey, wash your mouth out! You instrument primitavist!

Oh, and Glen Gould rules.

 

[han]

I love Bach. I really do. Genius. The Cello suites; the Goldberg Variations, the Well-Tempered Clavier. Utterly fantastic.

Yeees! I voted Bach. Not all my favourite composers are on the list, but if I HAD to choose one, Bach would be the one. His versatility at all different genres is just amazing. Choral works (eg. St. Matthew Passion), piano (eg. the 48 preludes and fugues), his chamber music - he shines at all of them. Spiritually moving, beautiful, simple yet complex, all working like a swiss watch in perfect harmony. Divine. His chord progressions rock my world (man!)

Third, but a close third, would be Debussy's piano works, and Satie's, too. Then maybe Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, or James MacMillan's Seven Last Words From The Cross. Then maybe Tavener and Bartok.

Amen to that! The Rite of Spring is one of the most amazing pieces of classical music in existence, isn't it? Containing one of the most intensely grating yet sublime chords ever, bashing away for 5 minutes. Primal stuff.

I'd definitely put Debussy second on my list after Bach. Piano music, string quartet, orchestral works, all wonderful.

And then William Byrd. His masses for 3, 4 and 5 voices are heavenly.

Bach's the man though. The big daddio.

 

[pilchardman]

Bach's the man though. The big daddio.

Totally, dude.

 

[Mation]

Shostakovich, especially the string quartets which are uplifting and terrifying all at once.

Tchaikovsky is pretty fantastic though; a close second. And I've been getting into Shubert lately...

 

[Anna Key]

Ernie - try some of the Baroque Frogs. People like Leclair, Boismortier, Hotteterre and Rameau.

Leclair was such a genius he managed to get himself murdered!

His stuff has all the harmonic and contrapuntal rigour of Bach but none of Bach's ecclesiastical po-facedness. It very, very sexy music. Lush and daring and fantastic to play (God I sound like a wine critic).

Also Telemann is much underrated (he was a favourite of Bach's). His double concerto for Flute and Recorder is incredible.

 

[dormouse]

Oh, and Glen Gould rules.

Would provoke my first ever use of a smilie... if I had a vomiting one... no, really, how can you? I was going to mention him as a prime example of what to avoid at all costs, but mercifully I couldn't remember his name.

Oh and Telemann - yes!!!

And Corelli.

 

[pilchardman]

Oh and Telemann - yes!!!

But only on instruments available at the time, I presume?

 

[Anna Key]

I'm not trying to pick a fight here but Bach is a bit of a churchy bore.

He goes on so. His B Minor Mass, unless performed with tiny forces, boy trebles (and, ideally, altos too) and authentic instruments is the most terrific bum-freezer.

You sit in a draughty church listening to some wobbly woman drone on and think: "I'd rather be at home reading a book or down the pub."

There are so many better baroque composers who wrote secular music. Music which celebrates not just cerebral/intellectual/rational churchy things but physical passion and pleasure and eating and drinking and getting laid.

Bach is so damn precious. And had no sense of humour. He was a dry, ernest, devout Lutheran moralist, knee deep in religious nonsense. Much over-rated. And Leclair is simply a better composer.

 

[Cloo]

Out of that lot, probably Shostakovich for never failing to entertain, move, inform and surprise. Certainly my favourite for orchestral music.

But then I love Bach for choral, Schubert for chamber music, Schumann and Beethoven on piano etc etc.

 

[dormouse]

AnnaKey - not trying to pick a fight here either, especially as I agree about the other composers (I'm definitely not an exclusive Bach fan) but - I just don't find Bach a 'churchy bore', never have. I find him totally satisfying to listen to. I'm no musical expert so I can't explain why, there is just something about his music that seems absolutely right. If I've had a bad or over-busy day, Bach somehow unstresses me, smooths my mind out. Maybe it's the kind of mind I have - perhaps I subconsciously look for a kind of pattern or logical progression and find it in Bach. Whatever it is, it works for me - so on Ernie's desert island, it would have to be Bach!

Of course, 'performed with tiny forces, boy trebles (and, ideally, altos too) and authentic instruments' may be the key point here... don't you think, pilchardman?

 

[ViolentPanda]

Well ern, you asked for specific recommendations, so here's a few (in no particular order of preference):

George Anthiel - Ballet Mecanique
Johann Sebastian Bach - Brandenburg Concertos 1-6.
Hector Berlioz - Symphonie Fantastique
Eliot Carter - Concerto for Oboe
Aaron Copland - Appalachian Spring, Fanfare for the Common Man, Billy the Kid Suite.
Gerald Finzi - Clarinet Concerto (Any version with Thea King soloing)
Charles Ives - Symphonies 1-4, Robert Browning Overture
James Macmillan - Veni, Venu Emmanuel
Gustav Mahler - Kindertotenlieder, Symphony No. 5,
Arvo Part - Tabula Rasa
N.A. Rimsky-Korsakov - Sheherazade
Joaquin Rodrigo - Concierto de Aranjuez
Arnold Schoenberg - Verklarte Nacht
Jean Sibelius - Finlandia
Igor Stravinsky - Rite of Spring, The Firebird
Ralph Vaughan-Williams - Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis

Just a few to be going on with!

 

[tom796]

Rachmaninov's Piano Concertos are bloody brilliant...

He had huuuuuge hands.

 

[pilchardman]

Of course, 'performed with tiny forces, boy trebles (and, ideally, altos too) and authentic instruments' may be the key point here... don't you think, pilchardman?

I like the B Minor mass, even with a modern orchestra. But I prefer his single instrument works. I mean everything he did was genius, but single instrument stuff is at the peak.

I'm looking for a recording of his Cello Suites on rock guitar. Overdriven Strat through Marshall 30th Anniversary head would be nice. Or maybe the Anna Magdalena Notebooks on Hammond organ or Moog. You ever come across anything like that, dormouse?

 

[pilchardman]

Arnold Schoenberg - Verklarte Nacht

That would be an excellent place to start Schoenberg. Good call.

 

[dormouse]

I'm looking for a recording of his Cello Suites on rock guitar. Overdriven Strat through Marshall 30th Anniversary head would be nice. Or maybe the Anna Magdalena Notebooks on Hammond organ or Moog. You ever come across anything like that, dormouse?

Dammit, you've seen right through me. And I thought I was putting up such a good smokescreen, too...

 

[Barking_Mad]

Tchaivoksky by a country mile. Power, emotion, pathos, he had the lot. Pure genuis to be able to hear all that in his head and write the music.

 

[Dr. Christmas]

Anything by:

Sibelius

Rautavaara

Bach

Mozart

Arvo Part

Francis George Scott (Scots composer from the 20s/30s)

Anything by Thomas Ades (one of England's bright young things composer wise now)

Debussy's Images for Piano

But of all these i voted for 'other' in favour of Sibelius (historical) and Rautavaara (contemporary)

 

[ernestolynch]

Which ones shall i start off with (tchaikovsky)? I like big epic symphonies like Beethoven's ninth and that...

 

[Dr. Christmas]

Sibelius 'Finlandia' and 'Karelia Suite'- the foprmer particualrly a noisy emotive nine minute riot. (out of my choice).

Don't know much about tchaikovsky (yet)

 

[Mrs Magpie]

Dmitri Shostakovich would be my 'if you could only take one composer to your desert island' but I also love Handel, Byrd, Palestrina, some not too twiddly Mozart, Verdi, Berlioz, Gluck, Bach, Purcell, Mulet, Charpentier....I could be here all night thinking of composers whose stuff I love.......I don't much care for Haydn....very twee and harmonically pretty boring........

 

[Ace]

Classicism vs Romanticism

Handel and Bach vs The Rest.

It comes as no surprise to me that our favourite taff soviet romantic is a Beethoven fan. Beethoven, like Hegel, the history man. The dedication of the Eroica to the republicanising armies of the French dwarf.

Personally I cannot abide anything by the mad Krut before the late quartets, whose meditation on death and mortality in its tentative introspection is truly sublime.

Must it be. It must be...

But to choose!

Its too cruel a choice. Particularly when one is only on ones first St Emillion!!!!

I will have to hedge my bets and go for the Bach/Mozart package. Bach for spirituality, for bringing the movement of the comos into musical form. Mozart for the beauty and vitality of human, all too human, life.

Au revoir!

 

[dormouse]

The dedication of the Eroica to the republicanising armies of the French dwarf.

Soon changed his mind about that though!

Of course there's also the 5th - entirely made up of French revolutionary songs.