5 Worst Composers Ever!!

[DavidW]

When you get the chance ' would you mind cross posting on my new live vs recordings thread?

[Superhorn]

 Another composer whose music I find trying to listen to is Delius, even though I love Elgar, Vaughn Williams, Britten,  Tippett , Walton and other British music .
  Yes, it's very pretty, but it's monotonously languorous in mood and cloyingly sweet harmonically. It's rather like being forced to consume a large bowl of treacle. And every work of his sounds the same. The same old cloying harmonies and monotonous mood. It sounds like the sentimental music for some 1930s English film.

[Bulldog]

OK, you've proved me wrong. What are your personal preferences? And what experiences would you draw upon to justify your preferences?

My preference is recorded music.  I've been to dozens of live performances over the years, and I always tend to lose focus and feel distant from the soul of the music.  The same thing happens with live sports events as well.  My wife and I still attend about 2 live concerts each year.  However, being 61 years old, I'm skeptical the situation will change.

Three years ago, we vacationed in Europe and attended operas in Poland and Budapest as well as a solo Mozart piano recital in Salzburg.  The change in location didn't make any difference.

[Dana]

How unusual! Why do you think that is?

[Bulldog]

How unusual! Why do you think that is?

I don't concentrate well in group settings.

[Ugh]

Tugging on the thread of live vs. Memorex.

It's not hard to think of advantages and disadvantages of both. I'd've never gotten to hear most of the music I like most without recordings, but live there are some subtle things that to me seem to account for a lot. Being able to see the musicians interact, esp. in chamber music offers something to the music that you can't get from the record (a little related to the McGurk Effect, maybe, which is an extreme case of how we tend to trust vision over hearing).

Another issue with recordings (and I think of this esp with listening to the heavily spliced Stravinsky-Craft_John McClure recordings) is that a recordings are like hamburger -- how many different cows (and god knows what sort of processing) make up one burger. Rests are a convenient place to edit is at a rest between passages, but rests are musically important.  In a live performance, how a musician breaks that silence (the millisecond timing, the dynamics, the tempo after the pause) offers a lot of thrills (re: Wee Bits thread), but if an editor is cutting  and pasting different takes, that overall sense of flow is too often lost. It makes me think of trying to make smooth lines in a graphics program by pasting together arc fragments. Hard to make a picture as convincing as drawing freehand.

And so often (taking the McCraftinsky recordings as an example) you will find all sort of onerous touch-ups, dubbings, mismatches, repeats provided by using the same piece of tape twice, and in some cases. transplants of other recordings (how did passages from Klemperer's Pulcinella Suite recording end up in the "Stravinsky" recording?) or substitutions using other performers (e.g., The Flood,  Mass, Jeu de Cartes -- just to make a record.

The end product may have the fewest bobbles, but you are left with a collage that is missing something about a sense of timing and sweep and overall shape, an absence I think is felt but difficult to identify, but may be that counterpart to that equally hard-to-put-your-finger-on attraction of a concert recording.
'

Apropos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MWHO_y2Fu4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWQKyek3IGo&feature=related

[offbeat]

Another composer whose music I find trying to listen to is Delius, even though I love Elgar, Vaughn Williams, Britten,  Tippett , Walton and other British music .
  Yes, it's very pretty, but it's monotonously languorous in mood and cloyingly sweet harmonically. It's rather like being forced to consume a large bowl of treacle. And every work of his sounds the same. The same old cloying harmonies and monotonous mood. It sounds like the sentimental music for some 1930s English film.

Hi Superhorn - Re Delius im a great fan of his although i can see yr argument has valid points - i suppose listening to something like 'The first cookoo in spring' it does tend to meander without purpose with sentimentality. But cant agree about all his music sounding the same - some works like North Country Sketches, Song of the High Hills Appalachia have great feel for nature and would not say was cloying in any way - Sorry to say i like some of his cloying works too - however maybe he is just one of those composers you love or hate 

[snyprrr]

ok, I've got it.

THE WORST... WORST COMPOSER EVER... IS...



RICHARD NANES


All I remember is that this guy had a spot in the classical section, and I don't know what he sounds like, but I can guess. Yes, no,... or indifferent???

[snyprrr]

Haha, once again, embarassed to find my last comment, haha.

[Superhorn]

  For me it would be in no particular order:  John Cage,  Antonio Vivaldi,

   Fredrick Delius, Francis Poulenc, Charles Gounod.

    Dishonorable mention: Darius Milhaud.  Virgil Thomson. Philip Glass.

   

[vandermolen]

Ah...when in doubt, start some trouble!

1) Philip Glass
2) Terry Riley
3)
4) anyone influenced by Richard Strauss (Strauss waltzes incl. by default)
5) H. Gorecki (Sym No.3 and Harpsichord Cto. notwithstanding)

There...I feel better now...and you?

Oddly enough, although I generally dislike the music of Richard Strauss , I often like the music of composers who are described as having been influenced by him (Vitezslav Novak for example). So my list of my least favourite composers (not the worst - just my own choice) might be as follows:

Richard Strauss

Gottschalk

Nicholas Maw

Gilbert and Sullivan

Country and Western music

[Lethevich]

A few more for the list:

José Serebrier
Virgil Thomson

Thomson I keep trying to enjoy, but keep finding the music outdated, not neccesseraly in compositional technique (although that is also the case) but in style. The whole "too cool for school" thing consistently being compromised by his urges to produce more engaging music kind of makes his whole aesthetic wishy-washy. He must've been progressive for a while but then became boring. Serebrier produces consistently faceless and drab music (he's better as a conductor, but even in that field it has been talent squandered, given how initially he was viewed as some kind of wunderkind).

[Teresa]

A few more for the list:

José Serebrier
Virgil Thomson

Thomson I keep trying to enjoy, but keep finding the music outdated, not neccesseraly in compositional technique (although that is also the case) but in style. The whole "too cool for school" thing consistently being compromised by his urges to produce more engaging music kind of makes his whole aesthetic wishy-washy. He must've been progressive for a while but then became boring. Serebrier produces consistently faceless and drab music (he's better as a conductor, but even in that field it has been talent squandered, given how initially he was viewed as some kind of wunderkind).

You're the second person to mention Virgil Thomson!  Have you heard "The Plow That Broke The Plains" or "The River"?  Two of my favorite classical works of all time and Virgil Thomson is one of my very favorite composers.   

Also I thought the HDCD of José Serebrier conducting his own orchestral works on Reference Recordings to be quite exciting.  But that is the only Serebrier recording I have ever heard, perhaps some of his other works are drab, I would be curious to know what works so I can avoid them. 

I also do not understand the mention of Ferde Grofé  as he writes the most colorful suites I have ever heard.  His sonic pictures are so REAL, he is an amazing orchestrator, one of the finest ever IMHO.  On the Trail and Cloudburst from The Grand Canyon Suite are such realistic musical pictures that they are true genius!  And he has a dozen more suites that are every bit as grand!

Here is my vote for the 5 worst composers ever:

• Arnold Schoenberg
• Alban Berg
• Anton Webern
• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
• Georg Philipp Telemann
  

[Teresa]

When you rank Mozart so low it means that you are ranking everyone else above him.  Do you actually enjoy Dittersdorf more than Mozart?  Do you enjoy Greg's music more than Mozart (sorry Greg)?    .

I'm not Tapkaara but yes even though I find Dittersdorf a bore I enjoy him much more than Mozart and I enjoy Edvard Grieg's music easily 10,000 times more than Mozart!  Grieg writes very enjoyable, beautiful and exciting music.  I find Mozart to be boring and syrupy-sickly-sweet in the extreme, I have not heard much music as bad as Mozart's!  And I have heard music from over 1,000 composers.  Mozart is way, way overrated, he must have a good publicist.

[abidoful]

uh... worst? I change it little and reply the composers that i feel that are little alien to me
- R. Schumann, there is just something overtly sentimental and pretty  that I really don't swallow
- Hans Pfitzner I can't swallow though i.d tried; too thick and dead
- Erkki Melartin; eclectic if there ever was one; can't get hold of him
- Maybe Mahler, some inner hollowness or even violence or something

It is funny that all of those composers have some works that i love;
- Scumann, piano quintet, especially it's slow movement
- Pfitzner,  violin sonata
- Mahler, the ninth

so go figure

[Teresa]

The idea that Mozart is somehow one of the 5 Worst Composers Ever is bizarre in the extreme.

I do not believe so, out of thousands of composers I've heard, I have not heard a single composer that is worst than Mozart.  Telemann comes close, but IMHO Mozart is the very bottom of the barrel.

[Teresa]

Well, but not Mozart.  You may not like Mozart, you may perhaps even be unable to stand Mozart.  But to say that his music is bad music, casts question on your musical judgment.

I disagree!  I firmly believe that it is GOOD musical judgement to be honest about the talent of composers (especially those of us who have studied musical composition) and to tell the truth about overrated composers.  Mozart is one such composer who has illegitimate undeserved status!  Mozart is a bad composer and his influence after his death held music down for over a century.  Classical music would have been much better if he was never born IMHO.  I know of no composer whose music I hate as much as Mozart's.

[Sergeant Rock]

I know of no composer whose music I hate as much as Mozart's.

Music is Love,
Teresa

Sarge

[jhar26]

I do not believe so, out of thousands of composers I've heard, I have not heard a single composer that is worst than Mozart.

.....except for Schoenberg, Berg and Webern, that is. 

[jowcol]

Mozart is a bad composer and his influence after his death held music down for over a century.  Classical music would have been much better if he was never born IMHO.  I know of no composer whose music I hate as much as Mozart's.

Separated at Birth?

I'm not a Mozart fan particulary, but I can't work up much anger for a composer I don't care for, even if I feel  they are overrated. (Unless we are talking about John Tesh, and then all bets are off!)