Thread: hola hello aloha

Originally Posted by orquesta tipica

My favorite composers are a long list, but if a gun was put to my head and I had to name one, I'd say Beethoven, because why not Beethoven? And specifically, his string quartets I admire so much.

Hello

The above snip is just part of your interesting personal introduction, in which you express a wide musical interest.

From my observations of this Forum, I think most of the active posters have fairly wide tastes. However, there does rather seem to be a relatively strong interest on the Romantic era. Once you have had further chance to roam around the Forum you will see what I mean from the kind of topics that tend to come up most often. As regards your first choice of Beethoven, I think several others here (myself included) would entirely agree with you.

A recurring theme on this and one or two other music forums at the present time is "under-rated" or "forgotten" composers. You will see that attitudes here vary from "tough, goodbye" to "it ain't fair, let's bring 'em back". As you may discover, I'm much more in the former category. I think there's more than enough higher quality material available to keep most people happy without worrying about so-called "forgotten" or "under-rated" composers. By all means let niche markets exist, but don't pretend there is some huge injustice inflicted on these lesser composers by some wicked failure of the market, or by other conspiracy. Most of these alleged "forgottens" lived many years ago, several in the 19th C, and there have been several generations of music lovers since then who have had the opportunity to assess their real worth. We occasionally have some lively debates on this subject, that crop up in unexpected threads at times.

A recent new theme is "Composer of the Week". You might want to check that out. It certainly needs more input by way of new candidates for discussion, and a lot more feedback and discussion than the poor number of responses so far (with one or two notable exceptions).

There are a few polls running at the moment. They are merely designed to get an idea of how posters here rank the top pieces, eg symphonies, piano concertos, etc. It's only a bit of fun, and the results are clearly based on a small sample and hence unreliable, but it encourages people to say what they like and to make them think about their own preferences, and they allow a comparison against against other members' opinions. At least the results are by a democratic process, even if the very casual procedures often get into muddles at times.

I don't know whether this is your first experience of a music forum. If it is, don't be surprised to be challenged on your views. The Admin/Mods here are extremely good in my view, and the place runs very well without the constant interventions you can get on some sites.

Anyway, with that I'll leave it.



Topaz

Welcome orquesta tipica!

There's not much I can add to Topaz' thorough introduction to the forum. You seem to have a wide taste and there is indeed room for a wide array of tastes and opinions here. For example, when discussing "forgotten" composers, as mentioned by Topaz above, I myself mostly belong to the opposite "camp", wanting to see many of these composers "brought back", but then again that's the whole idea of a forum like this; the exchange of opinions and knowledge. Sometimes it can get strongly contentious, though of course always in a civil manner. But one thing's for sure: This community is united in the strong interest or passion for classical music, one way or another

With that said, I will be looking forward to see you around and hope you will enjoy being a member here on Talk Classical.

Best regards,
Frederik