I’ve been trying to put together a personal list of best composers. Has anybody else done this?
I realize that such a list is rather subjective, but I suspect that there would be a lot of overlap.
Here’s mine–
Mozart (For reasons that I trust are self-evident.)
Handel (All those wonderful, glorious oratorios.)
Beethoven (Largely because of his symphonies.)
Vivaldi (The Four Seasons, and similar works.)
Johann Sebastian Bach (He did many things, and did them very well.)
There are several others not far behind these–Haydn, for instance, would certainly be in the top 10. Then there’s Brahms, Mendelssohn, Liszt, Chopin, etc., etc.–far too many to name. But the five on this list were special–they distilled Beauty into its purest form.
If I could somehow distill it down to a list of five (which I can’t) that list would definitely have to include Wagner. To put Handel before Bach is, IMHO, blasphemy - Bach is far more prolific, innovative and inspired. To my ears, Handel sort of starts to repeat himself a bit. Same with Haydn, he might have been very important at the time, but his music is just a bit simplistic for my taste.
Some other romantic composers might include Brahms or Bruckner, though maybe not in the top five.
I’m not an expert on classical music in any sense but here are my top 5 favorites (the top 3 are easy for me, the last 2 are more difficult and far less objective):
The 1992 work was written by a former newspaperman who received a tape deck for Christmas in 1985, had difficulty finding an entry point into classical music, and then made the whole thing into a research project. He ended up constructing The List, of which the reader was encouraged to create variants:
Composers are grouped into 4 levels
[ul]
[li]Immortals[/li][li]Demigods[/li][li]Composers of Genius[/li][li]Artists of a High Order[/li][/ul] “This is done partly for fun and partly because some readers may find it more convenient to listen, familiarize and collect by groups instead of one by one.” Goulding lists 3 Immortals, 7 Demigods, 10 Composers of Genius and 30 additional Artists of a High Order. Then he lists some rules, eg:
“It is not permitted to remove from Immortal status Mr. Bach or Messrs. Mozart and Beethoven.”
The other 3 rules delineate acceptable promotions and demotions.
Snobbish? Sure. But also fun. For ignoramuses such as myself the book was invaluable.
I’ll list his next 7:
4. Wagner (Greatest Dramatic Composer)
5. Haydn (A Near Immortal; “Father” of the Symphony and String Quartet)
6. Brahms (Purist Romantic Symphonist)
7. Schubert (Classical/Romantic Lyrical Genius of Piano and Melody)
8. Schumann (Quintessential Romanticist)
9. Handel (Baroque Melodist)
10. Tchaikovksy (Russia’s Top Composer, Master of Melody)
My favorites are Beethoven, Bach, Schumann, Liszt, and Chopin. For “best,” I would have to put Mozart up there, but, for whatever reason, I just don’t connect to his work.
For me, Mozart is the most overrated composer. He is good, but not fantastic.
Bach is the most underrated.
Bach
Beethoven
Stravinsky
Copeland
Mahler
Brahms
To be honest, I listen to more John Williams than Mozart. Mozart does have some very nice stuff, but he just has way too much ‘average’ stuff.
I don’t know about that. Bach is pretty well-rated by everybody from classical to jazz to pop musicians. I mean, almost every list in this thread has him ranked, with many #1s.
I have to throw in a word for Anonymous. For sheer volume of repertoire, not to mention variety of styles, Anon. seems to be the most versatile and enduring composer of all time.
For me, there is no question about Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms in the top five. The only question is who should be the fifth.
I have a tremendous love for the music of Josquin des Prez, and so I’ll throw him in as a possibility. I’d love to live to see his music rescued from the ghetto of ‘early music’, and just performed under the heading of ‘beautiful music’. Not sure it will ever happen.
Mahler is another possibility, for the sheer scale and grandeur of his compositions.
I’d also like to throw in a thought for Debussy. It’s one thing to expand the possibilities that your predecessors laid out; it’s quite another to rewrite the rule book completely.
I’m not sure I’ll ever settle in my mind who should get that last mention.
You’re obviously a fan of Baroque music. Much of my favorite vocal music comes from the Baroque period, but if you’re talking about purely instrumental music, it took later generations of composers to figure out some of the ways of making instrumental music really interesting. So, my own Top Five (or Ten or whatever) would definitely leave off Vivaldi, and probably Handel as well—nothing against them, I’d just want to make room for some other composers, like maybe Haydn, Dvorak, Schumann, Prokofiev, Mahler… But it would be difficult to narrow it down to just five.
I think that generally Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart are the three giants (and I am certainly not clearing my own path by stating so).
Beyond that, there are numerous people who create works of depth, beauty, insight, and innovation, and all are ‘great’ in their own ways. I love the ponderous sonority of a Sibelius symphony, the expressive emotion of a Chopin nocturne (which are the most beautiful poetry ever to come through the piano, IMO), the delicate paintings of Debussy . . . who is the best? It is impossible to rank them against each other. It’s like asking which is the best color, or which is the best musical key, or which tree is the greatest tree.
Incidentally, I have always liked this quote by Douglas Adams:
“Beethoven tells you what it’s like to be Beethoven and Mozart tells you what it’s like to be human. Bach tells you what it’s like to be the universe.”
