5 Worst Composers Ever!!

[(poco) Sforzando]

lol  omg too funny

Indeed, especially as Dittersdorf lived entirely within the eighteenth century.

[monafam]

I just happened across this on Wiki...thought it was interesting and applied to some of the earlier discussion (especially on the not liking Góreck, which he is apparently cool with.   ) --

Discussing his audience in a 1994 interview, Górecki said,

I do not choose my listeners. What I mean is, I never write for my listeners. I think about my audience, but I am not writing for them. I have something to tell them, but the audience must also put a certain effort into it. But I never wrote for an audience and never will write for because you have to give the listener something and he has to make an effort in order to understand certain things. If I were thinking of my audience and one likes this, one likes that, one likes another thing, I would never know what to write. Let every listener choose that which interests him. I have nothing against one person liking Mozart or Shostakovich or Leonard Bernstein, but doesn't like Górecki. That's fine with me. I, too, like certain things

[71 dB]

The case against Dittersdorf is made briefly but very well by Edward Lowinsky in his valuable article "On Mozart's Rhythm," where he argues that Dittersdorf tends towards highly regular and reptitious phrase structures; and implicitly by Charles Rosen in "The Classical Style," where he argues that only Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven fully grasped the potential of the classical language. Mr. Gurn seems to argue that Mozart and Haydn were trying to be more "novel," where I would rather say they exploit the classical language with far greater imagination, sensitivity, and skill. In other words, they were more talented.

I see nothing wrong with dipping into Dittersdorf once in a while, and I spent some time today with his 5th quartet in Eb, supposedly one of his most popular works. Dittersdorf actually starts off with a very promising 2-bar idea, which he repeats in sequence. But then his next 4 bars get stalled, especially in bars 7-8 with the weak held whole notes and the cello arpeggiation. And then all he can think to do is literal repetition!

Again, promising ideas surface, such as the dip into G minor for the transitional passage to Bb. But then once he gets there, he gets bogged down in clumsy repeated sequences. It's a case of someone who has some good ideas, but lacks the imagination to see what to do with them. Worse yet is the return of the main material following the development. Dittersdorf here adopts a trick that some lazier and less inventive composers made use of - that is, starting his recapitulation in the subdominant (Ab) so that all he has to do is transpose all the material for it to resolve in the tonic. And this is what he does! Mozart on the other hand almost always (K. 545 is the only exception I know) recapitulates in the tonic, and this forces him to vary and develop the original material as it is being reprised. (Tovey said of an attempt to finish a Mozart fragment - I paraphrase: "the composer writes a very convincing Mozartean development, but he has no idea whatever how to compose a Mozartean recapitulation.")

Dittersdorf's coda for the first movement is quite decent, his middle movement is adequate, and his finale a disaster despite a striking "Gypsy-like" passage that emerges twice if the marked repeat is taken. Part of the problem especially in the finale is contrapuntal: the first violin does almost all the work and there is no interplay among the instruments as distinguishes the quartets of the three greatest masters. Just turn to a masterly movement like the 3rd from LvB's op. 130 to see the difference - an enchanted andante where all four players are absolutely equal and contribute equally to the discussion.

That said, the quartets I've looked at strike me as superior to wretched stuff like the Symphonies on Ovid's Metamorphoses.

http://imslp.info/files/imglnks/usimg/f/f1/IMSLP05906-Dittersdorf_String_Quartet_No.5_in_E_Flat.pdf

I am not musically educated so I don't really understand what you are lecturing here. For me music is not subdominant/tonic recapitulations, it is just sounds. I have read some music theory and I remember reading that notes are dominant, subdominant or tonic but I never understood the meaning of these definitions. Books of music theory never show good examples that even I can understand!

As far as I know, NOBODY has ever said Dittersdorf is better than (or even equal to) Mozart, Beethoven or Haydn. Those composers where geniuses. Dittersdorf was behind but not much. This makes him a GOOD composer, not a bad one. This is my message. Dittersdorf was a good composer. He doesn't belong to a thread about the worst composers ever. If Mozart, Beethoven and Haydn were runners that could run 100 meters in less than 10 seconds then Dittersdorf's time is 10.1 seconds. that doesn't make him the worst runner ever.

[(poco) Sforzando]

I am not musically educated so I don't really understand what you are lecturing here. For me music is not subdominant/tonic recapitulations, it is just sounds. I have read some music theory and I remember reading that notes are dominant, subdominant or tonic but I never understood the meaning of these definitions. Books of music theory never show good examples that even I can understand!

That you are not musically educated does not invalidate my discussion.

As far as I know, NOBODY has ever said Dittersdorf is better than (or even equal to) Mozart, Beethoven or Haydn. Those composers where geniuses. Dittersdorf was behind but not much. This makes him a GOOD composer, not a bad one. This is my message. Dittersdorf was a good composer. He doesn't belong to a thread about the worst composers ever. If Mozart, Beethoven and Haydn were runners that could run 100 meters in less than 10 seconds then Dittersdorf's time is 10.1 seconds. that doesn't make him the worst runner ever.

Well, you called him a Mighty Composer. He's probably not the worst composer, but he's more like someone running hurdles who manages to knock down 3-4 of them getting to the finish line.

[Dana]

I am not musically educated so I don't really understand what you are lecturing here. For me music is not subdominant/tonic recapitulations, it is just sounds.

Why hasn't Cage come up in these discussions yet?

[71 dB]

That you are not musically educated does not invalidate my discussion.

Well, you called him a Mighty Composer. He's probably not the worst composer, but he's more like someone running hurdles who manages to knock down 3-4 of them getting to the finish line.

Joseph-Guy Ropartz is a poor composer in my opinion. 

[monafam]

As far as bad names...this looks pretty bad --

Snót Leifs   (not a composer, but the daughter of one)

[karlhenning]

Joseph-Guy Ropartz is a poor composer in my opinion. 

You just haven't heard enough of his music.

[71 dB]

You just haven't heard enough of his music.

The one disc I bought is quite enough for me. 

[DavidW]

Alright Tapkaara I apologize for heckling you.  No hard feelings man.

[karlhenning]

Mozart bites.

(j/k)

[Dana]

Mozart bites.

STONE THE NON-BELIEVER!!!!!

[DavidW]

Mozart Luchesi bites.

(j/k)

Fixed that for you.

[Tapkaara]

Alright Tapkaara I apologize for heckling you.  No hard feelings man.

No hard feelings at all!

[DavidW]

Cool beans.

[karlhenning]

Fixed that for you.

And quite tidily, too! 

[CD]

I would like to revive this little thread with a funny passage I found yesterday. Anyone dissing Schoenberg, Webern et. al. should take note.

X's Piano Concerto is broken, incoherent, and in at least a dozen instances the entry of the piano is an impertinent intrusion permitted by the composer because the pianist had to be given something to do. Here is X, a most 'advanced' musician, caring nothing for the rules and forms that served his musical forebears; and he wrote a concerto in his earlier days, and instead of withdrawing altogether in later life, he revised it! The themes are without exception orchestral themes; not one has been thought in the piano idiom. They are simply faked, by means of scales and arpeggios, to suit the piano.

Who is X? Tchaikovsky.

[MN Dave]

Tchaikovsky.

He's okay, I guess.

[CD]

I don't care for his music. My point was, something that is now seen as cloying and simplistic by many was once wild and incoherent. Truth is relative. 

[MN Dave]

I don't care for his music. My point was, something that is now seen as cloying and simplistic by many was once wild and incoherent. Truth is relative. 

Yeah, I get it.