poll to follow
Stravinsky.
boo, and a can make the forum work
“Which is worse?”
For some reason a quote from Douglas Adams comes to mind. Don’t know whether I agree with it or not, but that won’t stop me: “Beethoven tells you what it’s like to be Beethoven and Mozart tells you what it’s like to be human. Bach tells you what it’s like to be the universe.”
Is that true? Maybe. Perhaps it’s subjective. Perhaps this thread appears to present a false dichotomy, though I’m sure Nellie means which do we prefer. Actually that can be a false dichotomy too I guess. Maybe. I think they are both quite good at the music thing.
Chopin, then Bach.
Rite of Spring and The Firebird (my personal favorite), Beethoven trumps all the rest for me. Tchaikovsky over Bach, for that matter, but who the hell can spell his name?
I’ll be Bach…you be Beethoven.
-A. Schwarzenegger
They are all so good that the idea of choosing among them is rather absurd; we do well simply to enjoy the embarrassment of riches they provide. That said, I think Bach is the greatest artist in any medium that I’ve encountered.
Q: Is there anyone who feels that an artist of equal quality and standing was influential during, let’s say, the last half of the 20th century? Stravinsky knocked it out of the park during the first half, no doubt, but I don’t know if there’s really been a composer since then that’s had that unusual mix of creative output, worldwide acknowledgement, absolute critical success, and historical longevity (although it may be too short to tell the latter yet).
I can’t help but feel that if we ever do reach that point, it will be a “pop”-artist. Nothing wrong with that, of course; Beethoven’s early career was basically as a performing pop star. It will just feel odd to me if we don’t see another genius-class orchestral composer to compete with the greats of the genre.
I would say Philip Glass maybe, or John Williams, although he works in film scores. I suppose that operas and ballets were the film scores of yesteryear.
My super-aggressive dog can play the piano a little, he tried to tackle Toccata and Fugue but it turns out that his Bach is worse than his bite.
Those that had talent in that direction either opted for unappealing overly-intellectualized experimentation (later Stravinsky) that few give a damn about (modern orchestral music being worse than modern art, which you can decide on in seconds rather than have to sit through a whole boring performance of, at least), or they got drafted by the movie business, which lacks the purity of the music for its own sake. Movies are popular, but there aren’t a whole lot of classical music radio stations left anymore.
That may have been semi-true in 1960 – there was a period when many classical composers were deliberately snubbing bourgeois middlebrow mainstream culture and experimenting with serialism and all that – but it’s not true in 2011. There are plenty of contemporary composers who are doing distinctly contemporary things that are very listenable. You’ve got people like John Adams (you’re probably familiar with The Chairman Dances from Civ IV; he’s written a lot of excellent music), Arvo Part (try Fratres), Philip Glass (whose piano music I find to be his most interesting stuff), and a whole bunch of others.
They’re not massively popular, because classical music never really has been. Even back in the nineteenth century, Stephen Foster (“Camptown Races,” “Oh Susanna”) was more popular than Wagner. The dominance of pop music isn’t really a new phenomenon; it’s just that more classical music has survived than pop music.
Honestly I find it difficult to keep up with the 300+ years of music in the classical tradition. I consider myself a pretty serious devotee of the genre, but I only have substantial knowledge of music between about 1700 and 1880, and even there I still have huge gaps to contend with (only scratching the surface of Wagner, Verdi, Haydn, and Brahms, for instance). It’ll be years more before I gain a fuller knowledge of Ravel, Debussy, Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Prokofiev, Bartok, Shostakovich, Scriabin, Mahler, and Richard Strauss. And even all that still only takes me up to maybe 1940. And, oh yeah, if I want to explore the wealth of riches prior to Bach and Handel, I can go over the previous couple hundred years and listen to Lully, Rameau, Purcell, Byrd, Palestrina, Tallis, Corelli, et al.
There’s just a lot of music out there. Maybe the new Mozart is working as we speak, but it could take a while for the fact to trickle down to non-critics, even if he is working in a mode that is possible for average classical-music lovers to embrace.
Maybe I just was inflicted with the wrong stuff by Glass, but I had him in mind as one of the guilty parties. To be fair to other viewpoints, my comments weren’t mean to apply universally, just that a great deal of effort has gone into stuff that I don’t find particularly engaging. I can and have listened to latter Stravinsky and appreciated it on a certain level, but it was more something I had to sit through to get to The Firebird (Essa-Peka Salonen conducting the L.A. Philharmonic).
They’re not massively popular, because classical music never really has been. Even back in the nineteenth century, Stephen Foster (“Camptown Races,” “Oh Susanna”) was more popular than Wagner. The dominance of pop music isn’t really a new phenomenon; it’s just that more classical music has survived than pop music.
I don’t think relative popularity matters so much as popularity within classical music itself. That there is more traditional stuff out there isn’t in question so much as can anyone achieve the kind of popularity that one of the bigger names from yesteryear currently has? Without being attached to a movie or game, that is.
Yeah, there’s a lot to absorb if you are a casual listener. I often play a game of trying to pin down an unfamiliar piece to a specific era because I’m not always good enough to pin it down to the specific composer.
Listen to the stuff I linked. I’m curious as to whether you think it is academic/inaccessible.
can anyone achieve the kind of popularity that one of the bigger names from yesteryear currently has? Without being attached to a movie or game, that is.
That’s sort of like asking whether any pop band can be the new Beatles. Well, no. But it’s not like all classical musicians are laboring in equal obscurity – Adams, for instance, is a pretty major figure, with decades of critically-acclaimed work, operas that are regularly produced, new works that are performed in major venues (City Noir was first performed in the televised inaugural concert of the LA Philharmonic’s current musical director), etc.
Does that make him Beethoven famous? No. But I don’t think that’s a meaningful measurement, really.
Ode to Joy vs. Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring? It’s a wash. These are my two favorite composers.
This is actually quite on point.
Bach’s music is probably closest to the “Music is math” paradigm amongst the great classical composers. I’ve heard more than once people saying that he has no heart.