Le Sacre du printemps.

 

I'll concede this in the sense that its history, reputation and influence add up to a phenomenon that hardly any work could live up to. No need to worry about that while listening, though. Sacre may not have a lot to say, but it says it effectively.

 

Stairway to Heaven, by Led Zeppelin. It just never did anything for me. Edit: Followed closely by Bruckner's 9th symphony.

 

^ OK, along those lines: Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Apart from the title tune and A Day in the Life I never felt there was much there.

 

I think West Side Story is overrated. The music is great, and I love Bernstein's orchestral suite. There's not much in the story-line or the lyrics, though. The lyricist, Stephen Sondheim, has discussed how the lyrics don't reflect the thinking of a bunch of tough street kids, and I think it's all really thin with characters that lack any real depth. Case in point: Tony's running, dancing, and skipping, through the mean streets of New York City singing "Maria, Maria, Maria" and he just met girl that day! I think musicals such as Fiddler on the Roof by Bock and Harnick, or Chess by Tim Rice and members of ABBA do a better job of exploring the human condition.

 

"Tony's running, dancing, and skipping, through the mean streets of New York City singing "Maria, Maria, Maria" and he just met girl that day!"

Well, yeah, that's the genre. Most musicals tend to have the characters singing and dancing. Aside from musicals that take place in nightclubs, cabarets, and theatres, the singing is a characteristic of musicals.

Here - off the top of my head:

Guys and Dolls: Tough gangsters and gamblers dancing and singing
South Pacific: Tough American sailors singing and dancing
Hamilton: Rebellious American founding fathers singing and dancing
Evita: Ruthless Argentinian politicians and generals singing and dancing
Oklahoma!: Tough ranchers and farmers singing and dancing
Oliver!: Orphans and pickpockets singing and dancing

Fiddler on the Roof: Russian peasants singing and dancing

Many musicals have plots or subplots that revolve around people falling in love and singing about it: South Pacific ("Some Enchanted Evening"), Brigadoon ("The Heather on the Hill"), Les Miserables ("In My Life", "On My Own"), Aladdin ("A Whole New World"), She Loves Me ("She Loves Me"). Ten Minutes Ago from Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella.

For Tony in WSS to dance and sing through the tough streets of NYC is a metaphor for the passion, love, and joy he feels inside, just like the orphans in Oliver! singing Food Glorious Food after being served gruel once again. These examples, as well as yours about Fiddler and Chess, are all ways of exploring the human condition through playacting, song, and dance.

 

No particular order:

Holst - The Planets
Hanson - Symphony no. 2
Satie - Gymnopedies
Vivaldi - The Four Seasons
Dvorak - Symphony no. 9 (except for the beautiful second movement...)

Numerous pieces by Bernstein and Gershwin

If we're including film scores then they probably replace every work on this list.

 

Take out the Satie they don't belong in this pile of rubbish! My sincere apologies, Erik.

 

Fantasia on Greensleeves
Bolero
Canon in D
1812 Overture

And if I include non-classical music, almost every song on the top 40.

 

None of the above are masterpieces by any stretch of the imagination, but are they overrated? Perhaps they are overplayed or over-recorded, but has anyone who holds credentials and is respected as a scholar of music ever claimed that these works are anything more than fun and entertaining?

 

Coltrane's Love Supreme, Davis' Kind of Blue, second Fluteman's Stairway to Heaven, Radiohead's OK Computer or Kid A.

 

Where's the "dislike" button?

 

Yeah, that Miles guy and his buddies Bill Evans and Coltrane are nothing to write home about. And those Stravinsky ballets? I can't be bothered.

 

More like Miles and Coltrane did better stuff than those albums in my view, as in Bitches Brew and Blue Train / Giant Steps.

 

What is the most overrated work in all of music?

That "Happy Birthday" song.

Every time I hear it, someone's getting up in age.

 

4"33" Gage and Xenakis - ST/4

 

4"33" must be the correct call here.
This is a piece with no intrinsic musical content. Perhaps it was a joke played on elements of the musical establishment; perhaps it's something that a teenager might think was profound at about the same age as they think about questions like where did everything come from, etc.

It's fine that it exists as a provocative little piece of mischief. However, if it is given status as a great (or even good, or even average) piece of music, then that is an over-rating of the highest order.

 

All modern music is overrated, 80% of them should be destroyed into oblivion. For ever piece of JS Bach, there are 10 million musical pieces by modern people unnecessary.

 

All modern music is overrated, 80% of them should be destroyed into oblivion. For ever piece of JS Bach, there are 1 million musical pieces by modern people unnecessary.

I hope that you realize that this statement is no more than just your personal opinion.
These value judgments make so little sense and it goes a long way to dismiss all the artistic achievements of the past century as completely superfluous. There is something presumptuous in your words.

By the way,I love Bach and many modern classical music,is there something wrong with me?

 

Symphonie Fantastique. I think, as in the case of the Rite, that most instances of "overrating" occur when historical influence/position and intrinsic quality are conflated. The effect on later composers is a good measure of quality, but it is not the same thing.

 

'Happy birthday to you' is the best selling song of all time!

 

No, that is a true modern mythology.

 

TacoBelle "Canon" -
aaaarrrgghh....

 

Miles Davis was a genius of jazz. While classical music has always been my main forte in music, during the late 1980s, I went through a very pronounced jazz phase that was the only genre to ever rival my interest in classical. I t was in my college years and a little bit beyond, (back when I was trying to be all "hip", "mysterious", and "intellectual"). I was particularly interested in the "classic" jazz musicians such as Dizzy Gillespie, Sun Ra, Charles Mingus, Thelonious Monk, Buddy Rich, The Modern Jazz Quartet, David Brubeck, etc. Miles Davis, of course, is right up there with the best of the best, and it was his sense of shading, color, phrasing, and dynamics, that set him apart, especially in the two albums that have been noted here: Kind of Blue and In a Silent Way. Davis could intuitively play a note that is supposed to be wrong and make it sound right. My favorite is Sketches of Spain that Davis did with Gil Evans.

 

Stravinsky's Rite of Spring is a wonderful piece, and hardly overrated, IMO. The only problem with it is that it's misunderstood as a beginning of the Modern age when it's really an apotheosis. With Rite, Stravinsky took the melding of Debussy's and Rimsky-Korsakov as far as he could go. I remember when I first heard Rite as a teenager on an old LP. Then and there I was captivated and thought that Stravinsky would be my new favorite composer. I couldn't wait to get the record store to buy more Stravinsky. I ended up with a recording of the Violin Concerto, and was completely disappointed. Where were the jagged edges, the primal percussionists, the raw energy? It took me years to enjoy Stravinsky as the master craftsman he was during his Neo-Classical stage and even after he jumped on Arnold Schoenberg's serial bandwagon; because I wanted to hear something else that sounded like Rite, and the closet I got to it was Sensemaya by Silvestre Revueltes.

 

Good comments. But in Petrouchka and Rite, there were many innovative things that heralded the modern era. Dissonance and complex rhythms, of course, but also the effective use of minimalist textures and silences that one rarely if ever encounters in, say, the music of Wagner or Bruckner. I've argued that Stravinsky's ultimate ventures in this direction were l'Histoire du Soldat (imo the ultimate antidote for the grand Wagner opera), Ragtime, the Ebony Concerto and the Octet for winds. It's really these smaller works (and a few others in a similar vein) that most clearly establish the Stravinsky sound, that became a major part of the foundation of modern 20th century music.

 

Mass in B minor

 

Oh no, you must have read this thread's title wrong. It's ... "most overrated work in all of music". Not the "greatest work".

 

Beethoven's 9th, plus anything by Gorecki or Einaudi

(dons tin hat and takes refuge in a slit trench)

 

Beatles except 2-3 songs.
I really can't understand the hype.

 

There are also works that get overly-excessive praise simply because the composers wrote them when they were young. I find the hype around Mendelssohn's octet slightly "irrational" in this regard.
"Conrad Wilson summarizes much of its reception ever since: "Its youthful verve, brilliance and perfection make it one of the miracles of nineteenth-century music.""

I know everyone talks of Mendelssohn's octet as being impressive for the age he was when he wrote it. Sure it is IMPRESSIVE, but I don't think all that highly of passages like this:

( I think he's slightly "overhyped" about his precociousness: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/02/23/the-youngest-master-2 , https://www.classical-scene.com/2009/10/24/1692/ ) sorry, I think it's chatty, and seems to me like a worse version of the finale of Beethoven's C major Razumovsky , -and in terms of expressive dissonance, I find Mozart's works from years 1773~4 more interesting.

K.167:

 

I don't see how one would come to an honest realization of the difference upon hearing a piece. Just the pretentious realization "ah this is popular to some popular names."

How about Chopin's Piano Concertos? Are they objectively superior or subjectively superior? Under the criteria of beauty, or something else?

 

As an analogy, someone could state why the burger at Minetta's Tavern is objectively better than a McDonald's cheeseburger given a list of criteria. That list could even include subjective items, if you so wish. "Yeah, when I eat Minetta's burger, I know it just tastes better. It's a better cut of meat, there's more to it, the flavor profile is superior, etc. But I grew up on McDonald's cheeseburgers, so they're just my favorite." It's like comfort food. Some music can be comfort music, even if a person can say that another work is just by all measurements "better."

It's a wise practice in fact to reflect whence these feelings come, and we do it all the time for many other things. "Yeah, that job over there has better pay, better hours, better working conditions, but I really like my team, so I'm staying here." "Yeah, that model over there has a fitter, leaner figure, more symmetrical features, and is taller and tanner, all of which I like, but I love my spouse more."

Why is art somehow magically different than every other aspect of life?

 

There are actually people who don't like Mozart's Requiem?

 

Certainly the entire opening sequence is masterful and riveting, but I usually lose interest after the Dies Irae. I prefer the Great Mass in C Minor.

 

"Me So Horny." The title says it all.

 

I feel I answered your misrepresentation of these works in my next paragraph above. A lot of people will just never agree with your point even though we may like a lot of Bach. Some of us may even have a Bach or Mozart work in our Top 5 if only we're unbiased in our listening and ranking of other composers. Unfortunately however, people overpraise certain works of Bach, Mozart, as #1 not realizing they have plenty enough of their oeuvre in their top. It's natural to want to diminish other composers more than necessary, there's a reason why certain composers have 1 hit wonders: other composers have much greater works than we account for.

 

I feel I answered your misrepresentation of these works in my next paragraph.

Misrepresentation of what works?

Most people would not say they're 'greater' than their favorite works, sorry. More people would say it's 'good' compared to less popular composers.

"Good compared to less popular composers" is imposing another hierarchy apparently using objective criteria. It's not completely subjective.

It's best not to overpraise one of their works as 'greatest', but rather, more popular to be liked in some capacity by people.

There's a circularity in there. *Why* are they "more popular"? *Why* are the Bach or Mozart masses valued more highly than, say, Bruckner's? Or are Bruckner's of exactly the same "value" or "quality"?

Unfortunately however, people overpraise certain works of Bach, Mozart, as #1 not realizing they have plenty enough of their oeuvre in their top.

Maybe this or the work *is* #1. And maybe the rest of their oeuvre actually *is* greater than the best of the rest. There's no quota system that says we have to include mediocrity just to be fair.

 

There's a circularity in there. *Why* are they "more popular"? *Why* are the Bach or Mozart masses valued more highly than, say, Bruckner's? Or are Bruckner's of exactly the same "value" or "quality"?

I already answered this, but I'll give a clear example. The trends of this forums' listening compared to popular Classical statistics have demonstrated in full to me how underrated certain works by less popular composers are. Incredibly. People will gravitate to the popular first. It turns out the more experienced you are as a listener, the more likely you'd safely say when comparing Mahler to Bach, that the former wrote the greater work, and when comparing Bruckner to Mozart, the former also wrote the greater work. I mean, this is proven... What I don't like is saying these works are objectively greater, or that Bach and Mozart's masses are objectively greater because they're more popular. Every experienced listener, it doesn't matter how experienced you are, has quite different tastes. I feel that a lot of pretentious say certain works are objectively great, for example, those who happen to love the most popular composers the most. I mean, your popular backing fools less people with brains. We will decide for ourselves what's great, as greatness is a relative concept in the mind. To answer your question, is Bach the greatest composer? Yes. To a group of people, sure. Tell me something I will care about with more interest.