Posted on 01/09/2011 7:12:24 AM PST by Pharmboy
YOU know that a new year has truly arrived when critics stop issuing all those lists of the best films, books, plays, recordings and whatever of the year gone by. These lists seem to be popular with readers, and they stir up lively reactions.
snip...
Yet in other fields, critics and insiders think bigger. Film institutes periodically issue lists of the greatest films of all time. (“Citizen Kane” seems to have a lock on the top spot.) Rock magazines routinely tally the greatest albums ever. And think of professional tennis, with its system of rankings, telling you exactly which player is No. 1 in the world, or 3, or 59.
snip..
Imagine if we could do the same in classical music, if there were ways to rank pianists, sopranos and, especially, composers. The Top 10 composers of all time. Now that’s the list I have secretly wanted to compile. It would be absurd, of course, but fascinating. My thinking about this was shaken, though, last spring, when Mohammed e-mailed me. That’s Mohammed Rahman, then a freshman at Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan. He was writing a paper on why people have different musical tastes, and he wanted to interview me. His questions were so thoughtful that I met him at a cafe.
Mohammed picked my brain about how my tastes had been formed, about what I looked for in good music. Inevitably we came to the question of how it gets decided that certain music, certain composers are the best. And of course some really are. I’m open-minded but not a radical relativist.
So if you were to try to compile a list of the 10 greatest composers in history, how would you go about it? For me
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Classical ping...your thought?
/johnny
Beethoven, Mozart and Bach. From there it gets into a more difficult evaluation.
Thanks for the ping!
Sounds like fun!
Classical Music Ping List ping!
If you want on or off this list, let me know via FR e-mail.
Thanks,
sitetest
Paganini...for nothing more than the Caprices.
An interesting topic. I have a different slant as I think so many were extraordinary.
What I really find facinating is that their type of intelligence doesn’t seem to exist anymore. Where is today’s Beethoven? These guys wrote celebrated compositions in DAYS from pen to performance and were unbelieveably prolific in their output (Bach, Beethoven, Telemann, Handel, Donizetti, Mozart). Today is is an endeavor that takes months or years to come out with 1 composition considered noteworthy.
Seems like we are, at best, becoming more distracted or, at worst, losing brainpower or inspiration.
Agreed...and I was thinking of Liszt for the Fantasies.
Holtz - The Planets
Not a single Baroque composer in the mix? No operatic composers? There are probably a couple in there now. This must be classical in the classical sense. Rogers and Hammerstein were pretty good too. I guess I just couldn’t say whose best, if you are listening, best might just be what you are listening to at the time.
Films: John Williams, but many more great ones!
not even close. For starters, Plant was the brains of the outfit.
Now, Lennon - McCartney? Freddie Mercury? Awesome, but probably not top ten of all time.
For me also Wagner and Mahler. Love Beethoven’s chamber music but not his Symphonies (sorry).
Brahms, Faure, Mendelssohn, Frank are also in my favorites.
Haydn? Brahms? Mahler?
Listen to Holst “The Planets.” Then listen to John Williams’ Star Wars soundtrack.
Berlioz , Orff
1. Sibelius
2. Brahms
3. Wagner
4. Frank Zappa
5. Mussorgsky/Rimsky-Korsakov
6. Dave Brubeck
7. Malcolm John “Mac” Rebennack, Jr.
8. George Gershwin
9. Kitaro
10. Alice Cooper <;^))
Paddy Moloney (The Chieftains)
Bach first. What can compare to his Mass in B Minor?
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