Thread: Over Rated Top 50 Composers: Your Humble Opinion

Originally Posted by emiellucifuge

In the end nothing you have said is really valid. There are and will continue to be scores of people deeply moved by Wagners dramas; he is and will continue to be discussed in the history and theory books as a composer of great originality, innovation, but also of quality and force; opera houses do and will continue to stage his works, not only because they are artistically valuable, but because they do attract bums to seats (yes, Parsifal was sold out here for nearly all 9 performances).

So you can continue to spout all your biased anecdotal "evidence", but you will achieve nothing.

I said experience, not evidence. But who cares? You should maybe draw some Wagnerites on this forum into line who go too far, have gone too far, but more in the past than now. Making insinuations such as people who do not like Wagner or think he's too long winded (which is the opinion of many classical listeners, a good deal of them), they say these people have ADHD or autism. What an insult, and how crude and primitive. One Wagnerite (not Couchie, I think) who seems to be not so active now said this.

But who cares? I can only go by example. I am not a Bach fanatic yet all classical listeners I have met personally over the years revere him to some degree. Not so with Wagner. But then again, I am 'spouting' bile, not Wagnerites who call the rest of us having ADHD or maybe retardation cos we can't value what they value.

Forget it, just forget it. I'd be surprised if you bought some of your fellow Wagnerites into line, but you won't. You are just as biased as I am, let's face it. I just admit it, you don't. It's the same old story.

The one composer I am positively surprised to see him do quite "highly" in the Top 50 is Vivaldi, at #26 ahead of several Romantic heavy-weights such as Berlioz, Bruckner and Rachmaninoff. Considering how often Antonio's music gets poo-pooed here for being repetitively boring 300 times over for soloist and orchestra, that's an interesting result for one who was in fact, a very original composer.

To me, there are two ways one could judge the greatness of a composer:

1. their purely technical skill
2. their general impact

Other than that, it's hard to make a statement on the quality of a composer other than one that is based entirely on personal preference and taste (nothing wrong with that, of course).

Mozart sure had a great impact on music and on later composers. If nothing else, he helped establish the symphony, the piano sonata and the string quartet as well as the sonata allegro form in general.

But does that say anything about Mozart's ability as a composer? For me, he went several steps back behind Bach in terms of harmonic and counterpuntal complexity. But everyone did, even Beethoven. It wasn't until Wagner that the evolution of music took the Next Big Step.

I'm not sure whether Bruckner, Mahler and Richard Strauss went beyond what Wagner had already achieved. But Schoenberg certainly did. And Wagner and Schoenberg are about equal in terms of the impact they had on the course of music.

If you combine the two criteria, skill and impact, the initial list comes pretty close to the truth. Now, if you only considered the raw technical ability, the sheer craftsmanship, the list would look a lot different.

Originally Posted by HarpsichordConcerto

The one composer I am positively surprised to see him do quite "highly" in the Top 50 is Vivaldi, at #26 ahead of several Romantic heavy-weights such as Berlioz, Bruckner and Rachmaninoff. Considering how often Antonio's music gets poo-pooed here for being repetitively boring 300 times over for soloist and orchestra, that's an interesting result for one who was in fact, a very original composer.

And that's without my votes. I think very highly of Vivaldi. But I guess no surprises of Corelli being forgotten in these games.

Sid, I cannot recall ever seeing someone call someone else a retard, or accusing them of having some mental disease, wagnerite or not. But I hope that I would apply my usual moral standards.

Yes, I am biased. It is impossible to hold an opinion without holding a bias. The quality of art is really a matter of opinion, therefore bias.

You began to make judgements about the financial success and the attendance of Wagner productions, predicting that they would flop. Perhaps they might, but the long history of Wagner performance and successes (how about a 7 year waiting list for Bayreuth tickets?) provide enough examples of the opposite to render the failure of one production in Melbourne insignificant. An insignificance which you unfortunately blew out of proportion.

Originally Posted by HarpsichordConcerto

The one composer I am positively surprised to see him do quite "highly" in the Top 50 is Vivaldi, at #26 ahead of several Romantic heavy-weights such as Berlioz, Bruckner and Rachmaninoff. Considering how often Antonio's music gets poo-pooed here for being repetitively boring 300 times over for soloist and orchestra, that's an interesting result for one who was in fact, a very original composer.

Vivaldi came in at position 20 on DDD's list, 22 in the "Kentucky" list, 30 in the "RBrittain" list last year, but was further down at No 37 in Goulding's list. So I don't think that #26 is all that surprising in this poll. I recall giving Vivaldi some support. Vivaldi, of course, offers a much more accessible alternative form of baroque to the far more rigourous style of Bach, et al, the latter not being to everyone's liking. I've been collecting Vivaldi for many years and now have virtually his entire output, which contains a good number of treasures.

Originally Posted by Andreas

To me, there are two ways one could judge the greatness of a composer:

1. their purely technical skill
2. their general impact

Other than that, it's hard to make a statement on the quality of a composer other than one that is based entirely on personal preference and taste (nothing wrong with that, of course).

Mozart sure had a great impact on music and on later composers. If nothing else, he helped establish the symphony, the piano sonata and the string quartet as well as the sonata allegro form in general.

But does that say anything about Mozart's ability as a composer? For me, he went several steps back behind Bach in terms of harmonic and counterpuntal complexity. But everyone did, even Beethoven. It wasn't until Wagner that the evolution of music took the Next Big Step.

I'm not sure whether Bruckner, Mahler and Richard Strauss went beyond what Wagner had already achieved. But Schoenberg certainly did. And Wagner and Schoenberg are about equal in terms of the impact they had on the course of music.

If you combine the two criteria, skill and impact, the initial list comes pretty close to the truth. Now, if you only considered the raw technical ability, the sheer craftsmanship, the list would look a lot different.

This here tells us exactly WHY LIGETI SHOULD BE HIGHER

Originally Posted by Andreas

To me, there are two ways one could judge the greatness of a composer:

1. their purely technical skill
2. their general impact

Other than that, it's hard to make a statement on the quality of a composer other than one that is based entirely on personal preference and taste (nothing wrong with that, of course).

Mozart sure had a great impact on music and on later composers. If nothing else, he helped establish the symphony, the piano sonata and the string quartet as well as the sonata allegro form in general.

But does that say anything about Mozart's ability as a composer? For me, he went several steps back behind Bach in terms of harmonic and counterpuntal complexity. But everyone did, even Beethoven. It wasn't until Wagner that the evolution of music took the Next Big Step.

I'm not sure whether Bruckner, Mahler and Richard Strauss went beyond what Wagner had already achieved. But Schoenberg certainly did. And Wagner and Schoenberg are about equal in terms of the impact they had on the course of music.

If you combine the two criteria, skill and impact, the initial list comes pretty close to the truth. Now, if you only considered the raw technical ability, the sheer craftsmanship, the list would look a lot different.

I think Wagner and Mozart are going to be impossible to compare on "technical skill" as they were trying to achieve completely different things with their music, let alone Schoenberg and the rest given he's in a totally different tonal framework. And influence... Schoenberg was influenced by Wagner was influenced by Beethoven was influenced by Bach... was influenced by.... etc... good luck sorting that out. And who says these criteria are more important that any other... we should judge by how many dedicated societies the composer has I think...

Originally Posted by Andreas

If you combine the two criteria, skill and impact, the initial list comes pretty close to the truth. Now, if you only considered the raw technical ability, the sheer craftsmanship, the list would look a lot different.

So what exactly is your point? You have defined "greatness" in terms acceptable to you, and conclude that the list comes close to the truth based on these considerations. That's all that matters, isn't it? I can't see why you complicate things by picking on just one of the two components of "greatness" and suggesting that the list would appear different if based on that single component "raw technical ability". In any event I find it very odd that you are suggesting that Mozart was significantly less gifted technically than J S Bach, based on the amount/complexity of the counterpoint each of them used. Baroque music and "classical" era music are different in this regard, and you wouldn't expect to see comparable use of counterpoint. By most peoples' reckoning Mozart was not just highly influential but was an extremely well gifted composer technically, which is why he never fails to be among the top 3 in polls.

Originally Posted by Couchie

....And who says these criteria are more important that any other... we should judge by how many dedicated societies the composer has I think...

Do you have any data on the number of societies there are for, say, each of T-C Top 10 composers, and does there exist any information on the number of members each one has? Of course, I know the answer, but I thought I'd give you the chance to flower.

Originally Posted by Very Senior Member

So what exactly is your point? You have defined "greatness" in terms acceptable to you, and conclude that the list comes close to the truth based on these considerations. That's all that matters, isn't it? I can't see why you complicate things by picking on just one of the two components of "greatness" and suggesting that the list would appear different if based on that single component "raw technical ability".

The two criteria I named seem to me among the most objective. Lists like these always seem to claim some degree of objectivity. That is, if they are supposed to be more than just an aggregate of subjective opinions of taste.

I'm not saying that the criteria I named are the only valid ones, not at all. I'd personally rank composers also in terms of their spiritualness, their personality and their inventiveness, for instance.

But no one in this thread had so far indicated any specific criteria for their picks, so I thought I could throw that in.

I agree with you that it is difficult to compare different eras and different styles. To compare Bach's counterpoint to Palestrina's or to Wagner's or Ligeti's. Still, to me, the ability to write elaborate counterpoint is a good and somewhat measurable indicator of a composer's might.

Interesting though some of the comments are in this thread, it ought to be possible to infer from the actual voting that took place in the top 50 composer poll itself which composers are deemed by individual members to be either under or over rated according to how they voted in the poll.

Assuming everybody who voted in the poll expresses their opinion here in this thread, then if one adds up the opinions in this thread for the composers deemed to be under rated and over-rated it should, mathematically speaking, replicate the rank order of the composers as they appear in the poll, since all of these individual opinions should cancel out in total and we would finish up with the status quo set of ranks.

I accept that in practice there will be a divergence between the sample of members who voted in the top 50 composer poll and those members who now choose to vent their views on the appropriateness of the resulting ranks, in which case the self-cancelling mechanism may not be fully valid. However, provided the two samples of members are large enough and are drawn at random the divergence shouldn’t be large, and hence this discussion is probably not going to shed any interesting new light on the subject of the correct ranking of individual composers, whether it’s for Wagner or anyone else.

Originally Posted by Andreas

The two criteria I named seem to me among the most objective. Lists like these always seem to claim some degree of objectivity. That is, if they are supposed to be more than just an aggregate of subjective opinions of taste. I'm not saying that the criteria I named are the only valid ones, not at all. I'd personally rank composers also in terms of their spiritualness, their personality and their inventiveness, for instance. But no one in this thread had so far indicated any specific criteria for their picks, so I thought I could throw that in. I agree with you that it is difficult to compare different eras and different styles. To compare Bach's counterpoint to Palestrina's or to Wagner's or Ligeti's. Still, to me, the ability to write elaborate counterpoint is a good and somewhat measurable indicator of a composer's might.

I wasn't questioning your two criteria. Based on your criteria, you seemed to accept the ranks of the composers as they are shown in the poll, even though no specific "greatness" criteria were asked to be used when the poll was set up. My question was why you then selected just one of your two criteria to argue that the rank list would be different if based on that alone. I couldn't see the point of this, as it doesn't say anything interesting given that greatness has to be assessed in the round. And besides that, I couldn't see any mileage in your arguing that Mozart is a lessser composer than Bach based on the amount of counterpoint each used. Mozart's music wouldn't have been "classical" if he had simply tried to out-do Bach in this regard. Mozart incorporated other musical features that Bach might have struggled with. The overall result is that Bach was great at baroque, and Mozart great at "classical", and "never the twain shall meet".

Originally Posted by Very Senior Member

Interesting though some of the comments are in this thread, it ought to be possible to infer from the actual voting that took place in the top 50 composer poll itself which composers are deemed by individual members to be either under or over rated according to how they voted in the poll.

Assuming everybody who voted in the poll expresses their opinion here in this thread, then if one adds up the opinions in this thread for the composers deemed to be under rated and over-rated it should, mathematically speaking, replicate the rank order of the composers as they appear in the poll, since all of these individual opinions should cancel out in total and we would finish up with the status quo set of ranks.

I accept that in practice there will be a divergence between the sample of members who voted in the top 50 composer poll and those members who now choose to vent their views on the appropriateness of the resulting ranks, in which case the self-cancelling mechanism may not be fully valid. However, provided the two samples of members are large enough and are drawn at random the divergence shouldn’t be large, and hence this discussion is probably not going to shed any interesting new light on the subject of the correct ranking of individual composers, whether it’s for Wagner or anyone else.

I can only add to this that I very much doubt that more than maybe 15% of the contributors to this forum are really qualified to judge "greatness". Most of us, and I include myself in this, are only qualified to say what we like or don't like. I don't mean that 85% of us are musically ignorant, I'm just saying that our technical knowledge of musical composition is probably rudimentary at best. If a discussion veers toward the technical, most of us will look for authorities to quote rather than venture our toes into the complex world of original analysis.

So, in reality, it seems a bit presumptuous to even have a "Greatest" list. We can really only have "Favorites".

Originally Posted by Very Senior Member

... However, provided the two samples of members are large enough and are drawn at random the divergence shouldn’t be large, and hence this discussion is probably not going to shed any interesting new light on the subject of the correct ranking of individual composers, whether it’s for Wagner or anyone else.

Agree, good points. Although the sample size is not really large enough (and I am not going to attack my own thread / break my own rules as stated in post #1!), it is remarkably consistent in the overall rankings of say the top 10 and top 20 of the list, and even say, Vivaldi whom I mentioned earlier and your quotes of similar results from other type of polls, indicate that despite our smaller TC participation rate here, the list on the whole, I think, is not outrageous. This also comes from the fact that TC tends to have a Romantic bias in its membership preference compared with earlier periods.

The "best" part of this thread though, I admit, is to read who sppears to scream the loudest about any particular composer. Wagner again seems to take the crown.