Maybe it was Rossini.

 

Even if he was heavy, he could write light music.

Tell me: What is the purpose of this thread??

 

Probably Beethoven.

 

Starting with troll comments could be a good thing, but I was being serious. Who do you think the heaviest 20th or 21st century composer is, in your opinion?

 

They say Prokofiev had really long arms and big hands.

 

Heavy as a Really Heavy Thing? Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Bartok, Shostakovich or somebody else

 

Heavy as a Really Heavy Thing?

I noticed that reference, and you thought you could sneak it in. "I am the coming of a new age"

 

Tell me what heavy constitutes for you, in classical music?

 

Brahms got really fat as he aged but was pretty thin when he started Composing

 

William Howard Taft

 

Especially when he fronted the Supremes.

For "heavy" as in "heavy metal", there's Jón Leifs (e.g. "Hekla").

For "heavy" as in German food, there's Max Reger.

 

Heavy as in serious? I agree, Beethoven. He had to have been one of the first headbangers.

 

In chav London heavy can just me good, or at least it could about five years ago, I've not heard it for a while it's true.

Anyway the heaviest classical composer is Lachenmann

 

Photos of the elder Ralph Vaughan Williams show him as no lightweight. Stravinsky would be a stick figure next to RVW. Copland too.

 

Allan Pettersson

 

Mussorgsky. He was often heavily loaded with booze.

 

He must have been loaded to come up with Ballet of Unhatched Chicks. Many probably got much of their "inspiration" in that state.

 

Perhaps we can collaborate and compose an 'Obesity Symphony' Possible Movement Titles:
I- Ode to a Cheeseburger
II- Andante- Terramisu Rhapsody
III- Scherzo-Racing to the bakery before they sell out of donuts
IV- Rondo Finale-Splitting My Pants as I sit Down at A Weight WAtchers Meeting

 

'Heavy' as in "Whoa man, that was like hev-eee"? If so, I vote for Mahler.

 

I thought you meant in terms of depth. But, in terms of (imposing) physical stature, I'll go with Glazunov (mid-1890s through mid/late 1920s). He really thinned out during his final years due to years of deprivations and ill-health. Rather sad, really.

For a while, Bruckner was rather heavy (1870s through mid-1880s), before illness set in. Borodin too was quite heavy (and Hubert Parry).

 

Harrison Birtwistle really tonked it on over the last thirty years but recent photos seem to show a slimmed-down version. Oliver Knussen - never a man of sylph-like dimensions - is also rather broader in the beam these days, and if Mark Anthony Turnage doesn't watch it he might have to consider entering a doorway sideways on before too long as well..

 

Poor guy who started this thread, it was a legitimate question and the intentional misinterpretation was all too predictable. But it was taken in a good direction all the same.

The symphony of weight gain was another composer's answer to the 'Obesity Symphony'. More programmatic.

Mvt 1: The sedentary life and fine dining
Mvt. 2: Recipes on youtube and ambitions of starting a restaurant
Mvt. 3: Pure eatin', fat over flavor
Mvt. 4: Experimental Psychedelic Pancakes
Mvt. 5: Oh my god I'm so fat!

 

Poor guy who started this thread, it was a legitimate question and the intentional misinterpretation was all too predictable. But it was taken in a good direction all the same.

The symphony of weight gain was another composer's answer to the 'Obesity Symphony'. More programmatic.

Mvt 1: The sedentary life and fine dining
Mvt. 2: Recipes on youtube and ambitions of starting a restaurant
Mvt. 3: Pure eatin', fat over flavor
Mvt. 4: Experimental Psychedelic Pancakes
Mvt. 5: Oh my god I'm so fat!

Thanks for understanding, because the weight of composers REALLY affects their music...

 

No, Johann Sebastian, your butt makes your butt look big.

 

Handel was quite obese in weight. His music was mighty.

 

Handel was so massive that whenever he went to the seashore the tide came in.

 

Damn, either I didn't specify enough (thinking that you'd assume what I was meaning) or you're all trolling. I was meaning heaviest as in, darkest, most aggressive styled composers, building off the developments of Varese, Xenakis, Ligeti, Penderecki etc.

Now that we've cleared that up...

 

Damn, either I didn't specify enough (thinking that you'd assume what I was meaning) or you're all trolling. I was meaning heaviest as in, darkest, most aggressive styled composers, building off the developments of Varese, Xenakis, Ligeti, Penderecki etc.

Now that we've cleared that up...

Have you tried Elliot Carter String Quartets? I first suggested Beethoven because he came out of a period of music that was of the lightest, fluffiest classical elegance, didn't add too many new chords and used the available forms, and he is more intense than most of the 19th century composers that followed him.

 

Heavy as in dark? Shostakovich.

 

Heavy as in (but not limited to) dark, aggressive, violent, shocking. Both in the harmonic sense (really dissonant) and the timbrel (heavy percussion).

 

I love this thread.... And y'all should know why



*AHEM*

Enough said...

:lol:

 

I think Reger qualifies. His music might too.

 

Edgar Varése, no other like him. Not in vain he co- worked with Antonin Artaud (who tought Messiaen's music was too light). Words and music by two truly bombastic artists

 

I agree (though it's Edgard. not Edgar). Arnold Schoenberg was a formidable hombre for abandoning a concept of tonality that had been generally accepted in Western music for centuries, but having done that, he was otherwise quite conservative, clinging to traditional 19th-century classical forms. Charles Ives was one of the earliest to embrace outright dissonance. Your boy Xenakis is also one bad dude. Elliott Carter is indeed a king of dissonance in much but not all of his work. George Rochberg too. I think the Max Reger suggestion was a joke. He's a favorite composer of mine, a neo-Brahmsian with thicker orchestral textures, and yes, distinctly more dissonance than Brahms, but it's hard to see how Brahms could be one's baseline for dissonance.