Posted on 01/09/2011 7:12:24 AM PST by Pharmboy
YOU know that a new year has truly arrived when critics stop issuing all those lists of the best films, books, plays, recordings and whatever of the year gone by. These lists seem to be popular with readers, and they stir up lively reactions.
snip...
Yet in other fields, critics and insiders think bigger. Film institutes periodically issue lists of the greatest films of all time. (“Citizen Kane” seems to have a lock on the top spot.) Rock magazines routinely tally the greatest albums ever. And think of professional tennis, with its system of rankings, telling you exactly which player is No. 1 in the world, or 3, or 59.
snip..
Imagine if we could do the same in classical music, if there were ways to rank pianists, sopranos and, especially, composers. The Top 10 composers of all time. Now that’s the list I have secretly wanted to compile. It would be absurd, of course, but fascinating. My thinking about this was shaken, though, last spring, when Mohammed e-mailed me. That’s Mohammed Rahman, then a freshman at Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan. He was writing a paper on why people have different musical tastes, and he wanted to interview me. His questions were so thoughtful that I met him at a cafe.
Mohammed picked my brain about how my tastes had been formed, about what I looked for in good music. Inevitably we came to the question of how it gets decided that certain music, certain composers are the best. And of course some really are. I’m open-minded but not a radical relativist.
So if you were to try to compile a list of the 10 greatest composers in history, how would you go about it? For me
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Try the Preludium to the E Major Partita for Solo Violin. I meditate to that one.
This is truly an amazing composition, even without considering that Beethoven was deaf when he composed it.
ML/NJ
Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony is the Free Bird of the classical world.
That’s one way to put it.
[what?]
;]
1. Beethoven
2. Mozart
3. Bach
4. Haydn
5.Schubert
6. Wagner
7. Liszt
8.Handel
9, Mussorgsky
10. Michael Praetorius
Aha! I THOUGHT you might be familiar with Bach for solo violin...outstanding stuff! (And “they” say Bach was not melodic).
I also meditate to the Prelude of the G Major Suite for Unaccompanied Cello. It puts me into a nice trance.
My list: In no particular order except that top three or four IMO are the greatest. Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, Handel, Mendelssohn, Haydn, Chopin, Schubert, Brahms,Tchaikovsky.
Thanks...I am unfamiliar with that one but will get it.
A few years back, the Seattle Chamber Music Society's Winter Festival featured Biong Tsang playing all 6 of them in one concert. It was a night to remember.
Bach
Mozart
Schubert
Beethoven
Schumann
Verdi
R. Strauss
Monteverdi
Handel
Poulenc
#11 Barber or Copland
#12 Purcell
Yeah ok for Willie at 10.
Off to Zepplin etc just for fun tonight or maybe Chopin
1. Beethoven
2. Bach
3. Mozart
4. Chopin
5. Verdi
6. Puccini
7. Berlioz
8. Grieg
9. Schubert
10. Borodin
(and that’s just pre 20th century! :-)
That’s a wonderful List too! I love Mahler, Chopin and Rachmaninoff. At the tender age of 45 I can finally play the Prelude in C sharp minor by memory. Started lessons 8 years ago.
Technically?
Wagner, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky ( I just love his piano concertos)
Because they did not have air travel, autos, electricity or the Internet in the 18th century allowed Beethoven's or Bach's genius to develop?
They had their own social networks back then which kept them busy...they had to do much more for themselves in order to have food and clothes. Many of the middle class learned to play instruments and anxiously awaited the latest sheet music of contemporary composers so that they could get together and play them.
Bach worked for the church essentially his whole life, loved his wife and his many children and still put out a cantata per week. Mozart's music came to him essentially "finished" in his head and he needed to find the time to transcribe it; Beethoven worked and re-worked pieces for DECADES.
Musical geniuses are born and the times they are born into mold the music they make; if Bach were born in 1785 rather than 1685 his compositions would have been very different; and perhaps he would not have even been remembered today.
In ancient times, I heard a couple of these suites played on the horn. Beautiful beyond description.
“But for me the proof was the post-heyday work. Plant’s compositional genius really shone since Led Zeplin. His best work, IMHO, and as good as any pop composer’s, better than most.”
Yes, I agree about Plant’s abilities. The qualities you mentioned kept him on top throughout the ‘90’s. When it comes down to it, each member of that band was a prodigy in his own right. Kids today are still trying to model themselves after Page and Bonham on the guitar and drums. Page’s movie scores post Zep were also unbelievably good. None of that trademark “sloppiness” you would hear in the band’s tunes. Truth is, those guys collectively were what made that band and I have always gotten the feeling it never would have gone the way it did without any one of them.
This should probably be a thread of it’s own. LOL!
Gabrieli
Handel
Bach
Hayden
Mozart
Beethoven
From here, only favorites:
Brahms
Tchaikovsky
Dvorak
Strauss - Richard, not the other guy
Lots of others I like - Smetana, Telemann, and yeah, Publius, Wagner - but that'll do for a first cut.
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