[Forster]

If Tchaikovsky is not a first rate composer then who is?

Interesting question...is it a pyramid, with only one composer at the top? Or a table with, say, 5 in each row?

 

[Forster]

He isn't.

He isn't a 2nd rate composer? Or he isn't considered a 2nd rate composer?

 

[Forster]

Though not to the extent of someone like Liszt, I've definitely heard some gentle ridicule of his romantic tendencies over the years and his orchestral works seem to have been eclipsed in prestige as the big Non-Beethoven/Mozart/Brahms symphony guy by first Mahler, then Bruckner.

Not by me though!

Sorry, I realise the post of mine you responded to was poorly constructed. Please see revised version.

 

[Forster]

The point is well taken but I'm not sure I could name 6 "first rate" novelists I'd rank above Dickens. Hell, Tolstoy may be the only one I'd definitively put ahead of Dickens.

As with ranking composers, there is a tendency to default to those with long-established reputations, and to ignore more recent writers who've not yet "stood the test of time" (ugh!) The literary canon tends also to graciously include the odd Irish, Russian and French novelist, but it's those who write in English that dominate. At least, that's what we Anglocentrics think.

The Greatest Books of All Time, as Voted by 125 Famous Authors

Tolstoy holds an 11-point lead over Shakespeare in these literary opinion polls.

www.theatlantic.com

I wonder if an academic in a South American university might have a quite different list.

 

[Forster]

Dickens* wrote stories about small boys facing adversity with a pungent wit so laced with irony as to be almost unreadable.

But that's just my opinion.


[*Previously autocorrected to 'Ducking' ]

 

[Forster]

As "incidental music depicting a battle", I don't see how it doesn't achieve its purpose, objectively.
[...]
Yes, Beethoven himself considered it a "potboiler", but that's probably more because composers starting with Beethoven around his time started to have the notion that a true artist shouldn't strive for mass popularity.


they were all written to achieve different artistic goals, it's still subjective.

What is "Profundity"?--Revisited!

But nobody's asking about them, but about the ones that do. Those who know anything about the ninth at all and who find it a curate's egg are a distinct minority. The question concerned the majority. "Stravinsky was never moved by the choral finale to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, which he...

www.talkclassical.com

Cutting the movie to fit the music? Not quite right, IMO, for either. Not to mention that it's the wrong battle.