Thread: Your Top 20 Favorite Classical Composers Of All-Time

Originally Posted by Andre

I'm not competing with you or anyone else here. Again a confrontation, which is not necessary. Obviously you being a musician brings a different perspective to music, but so has my listening to a variety of classical for the past 20 years. It's not about competition or so called credentials, but the perception everyone brings to a piece, whether it's Byrd, Mozart or Varese. This is why I'm an eclectic, a jack of all trades (in the listening & appreciation department anyway), and that's probably not so unusual around here. I think it's healthy to want variety, but if you don't, that's fine. I just think that there are many eclectics like me around here & that's good (actually, I'll start a thread about this)...

Being eclectic doesn't make you right about music.

define good melody

There is no right & wrong here! Just nuances...

Originally Posted by Gangsta Tweety-Bird

define good melody

That rests completely on whoever is listening, but, for me, a good melody lingers in your head for awhile and you're not sure why it's even there to begin with!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=So1cvZztu3s

To me, this is a great tune.

Originally Posted by bdelykleon

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=So1cvZztu3s

To me, this is a great tune.

Here are many great tunes:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yWoV...eature=related

... a couple of words from a philosophical point of view.

Our likes and dislikes are conclusive, positive facts - de gustibus non est disputandum. It means that we cannot justify those subjective facts. If we determine the good melody this way: a melody which seems to somebody good or great, we block the entire discussion. I am not contradicting that subjective factors are playing an important role in the assessment of the melody. However objective factors are equally important and it is just possible to talk about them. Taking objective factors into consideration allows for argumentation which isn't mere repeating that I like this and/or I dislike that. If the melody is written in the major-minor system it must meet different conditions than the pentatonic tune, for instance. Only provided we remember about the objective although not absolute factors it is possible to understand why Stravinsky's opinion on Beethoven isn't only an expression of personal likings of the Russian composer. And Stravinsky claimed that the whole artistic work of Beethoven was a ceaseless fight against the lack of melodic talent. For sure, accepting Stravinsky's view doesn't lead to diminishing Beethoven's genius.

Originally Posted by Mirror Image

Here are many great tunes:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yWoV...eature=related

I don't think Ravel has a great gift for melodies, he is more brilliant in orchestral and melodic color.

Here a great tune:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gA3yuwDq2H4

Originally Posted by bdelykleon

I don't think Ravel has a great gift for melodies, he is more brilliant in orchestral and melodic color.

Here a great tune:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gA3yuwDq2H4

Well that's your opinion. Not many composers are gifted with melody writing. Poulenc, Faure, Saint-Saens, Tchaikovsky were all gifted melody writers.

By the way, that YouTube video you provided was terrible.

Originally Posted by Mirror Image

By the way, that YouTube video you provided was terrible.

Why is it terrible?

Originally Posted by Andre

Well, I don't like your reductionist, black & white argument, but I suppose melody can impede a composer from saying what he/she wants to say if they have other concerns. I can only point you to something like Varese's Offrandes where melody would be out of place, big time. Varese here is not concerned with melody, that would be superficial & ruin the piece. He's more concerned with painting a nightmare world, what the text sung by the soprano is about. The orchestra is treated as a timbral pool, not a source of melody, from which the composer takes elements like colour, rhythm, texture, at will. So not all music has to rely on melody, and in some cases like this, it has nothing to do with melody at all...

If you heard the Varese or even something more radical, like Cage's Sonatas for Prepared Piano, you would get exactly what we're on about...

Andre, this is a very good explanation! - Do you agree with me that even in many of the most classical works the main concern is not the melody? As to whether it can hurt, I think it can happen that it does. I actually wrote something like that with respect to Schumann.

Originally Posted by Efraim

Andre, this is a very good explanation! - Do you agree with me that even in many of the most classical works the main concern is not the melody? As to whether it can hurt, I think it can happen that it does. I actually wrote something like that with respect to Schumann.

Let me say that there's nothing wrong with a piece of music that lacks melody. Go listen to Bartok's "Divertimento." Not a melody to be found in sight.

All I said was there's nothing wrong with composers who used melody to get their point across. Not many composers are gifted melodist, but there's certainly nothing wrong with some big tunes found in a piece.

Andre simply has the wrong impression of what I'm trying to say.

Tchaikovsky
Rachmaninov
Rimsky Korsakov
Mussorgsky
Borodin
Chopin
Berlioz
Beethoven
Brahms
Wagner
Bruckner
Bach
Haydn
Mozart
Schubert
Menelssohn
Dvorak
Sibelius
Richard Strauss
Mahler

My list changes yet again...

1. Ravel
2. Berlioz
3. Bruckner
4. Mahler
5. Vaughan Williams
6. Barber
7. Debussy
8. Bartok
9. Stravinsky
10. Brahms
11. Delius
12. Sibelius
13. Nielsen
14. Langgaard
15. Poulenc
16. Bax
17. Grieg
18. Arnold
19. Liszt
20. De Falla

Just for the record, I think that the works of many C20th composers are quite melodic, even though that might not be the sole or even major thing they're concerned with. Some composers I can think of here are my favourite Varese, as well as others like Martin, Henze, Berg. But I disagree with MI that Bartok's Divertimento lacks melody. Just listen to how he locks you in with that big opening theme! That's very melodic, as are the other movements. He simply uses different rhythms to accompany his melodies. In any case, it's not as radical as those composers above. So I think that our perception of what is melody differs greatly, I think I'm more similar to bdelykleon here...