5 Worst Composers Ever!!

[Cato]

Not liking Mozart is a sign of incredible, monumental shallowness which cannot be respected by any knowledgeable person.  Schoenberg, not so much.   0:)

To quote Bugs Bunny: "Dem's fightin' woids!"   

[ibanezmonster]

I take your point but it did not occur to me in the post.

... do you live in a monastery? ... 

[Geo Dude]

The shallowness resides in the astoundingly comic hubris of "How can he be a great artist? I don't care for his work."

Nail on the head, Karl.

[Madiel]

John Cage was the worst composer.  One time he forgot to compose anything at all. That's just appallingly sloppy.

EDIT: Just imagine being the person who commissioned that one.

Also, does anyone know if it has a dedicatee?  "Hey, yeah, you inspired me to write this piece." I'd slap him.

[Octave]

The shallowness resides in the astoundingly comic hubris of "How can he be a great artist? I don't care for his work."

Well, as a conclusion, sure; but most of the time we end up questioning the value of something, isn't that disaffective moment the initial spur?  I mean, isn't the question you posed a pretty good one?  Of course, I think you mean the question's problematic when it's rhetorical.  One can never know: I just asked two questions in this paragraph that look a little rhetorical but aren't.  At least, I hope not; one can never be sure.  One should never be sure.  Speaking of which....

As for the Cage comment, I knew something was wrong with the anti-Cage people when I noticed that they all seemed to share a kind of commonsensical huffery and virtually-total lack of familiarity with his body of work.  I started to wonder if they knew what 'composition' was or could be.  Also, the worst performances of 4'33" I've seen have been by performers who I suspect also hate Mozart and think they're playing him when really they're just lazily, witlessly sightreading him.  Really, ditto Haydn.  In the case of 4'33", this applies to the complacent, derisive audiences as well, who don't even know when they, themselves, aren't listening.  Mozart, Haydn, Cage....one begins to wonder if the real problem is the same: "We know where the jokes are!  *Yawn*"  Yawn, indeed.  The worst composers are lazy musicans with conservatory pedigree who don't know the difference between waking life and autopilot, as long as they get paid.  House servants.

[Octave]

Not liking Mozart is a sign of incredible, monumental shallowness which cannot be respected by any knowledgeable person.  Schoenberg, not so much.   0:)

Also, as a lover of Mozart's music, I cannot imagine anything worse---that is, less fitting to his music and its apparent personality---than to make it mandatory.  It's a bad enough fate for any great music to become Great®; but for Mozart, mandatory appreciation is like 1.) taking a delicious cool drink of water with a hint of citrus and 2.) waterboarding someone with it.

Edited for brutal-metaphor smoothness.

[Parsifal]

Also, as a lover of Mozart's music, I cannot imagine anything worse---that is, less fitting to his music and its apparent personality---than to make it mandatory.  It's a bad enough fate for any great music to become Great®; but for Mozart, mandatory appreciation is like the difference between enjoying a cool drink of water with a hint of citrus and getting waterboarded.

I can't say that enjoying Mozart's music is mandatory, but I don't think you can claim to be knowledgeable about classical music if you are not, at the very least, familiar with it.  You are missing something important if you can't listen to Brahms, or Mahler, or Stravinsky or Poulenc and recognize where Mozart's work is being channeled, invoked, or perhaps mocked.

[Silk]

I can assure you that quite a number of professional orchestra players detest Mozart. So I don't buy into your opinion. I also endorse Karl's post in reply to you.

Mike

I don't know what an orchestral musician would "detest" Mozart.  Why would you BE a musician if you detested one of the classical masters?  Perhaps it's an affectation or reverse-snobbery.  I don't really go for a lot of Mozart, but "detest" is a bit strong and there are some wonderful works of his out there which have great value.

[Karl Henning]

Also, as a lover of Mozart's music, I cannot imagine anything worse---that is, less fitting to his music and its apparent personality---than to make it mandatory.

As Parsifal observes, this is about the reddest of red herrings we've seen in quite a spell.  For the general public, there is no such thing.

For professional musicians, there can be no question that a familiarity with Mozart's work is necessary.  Imagine a professional clarinetist who didn't know the K.622; he would have to be considered disqualifyingly illiterate, wouldn't he?

I don't know what an orchestral musician would "detest" Mozart.  Why would you BE a musician if you detested one of the classical masters?  Perhaps it's an affectation or reverse-snobbery.  I don't really go for a lot of Mozart, but "detest" is a bit strong and there are some wonderful works of his out there which have great value.

Well, unfortunately, that is just such a situation where exquisite music can be made to seem a chore; and anyone can learn to detest a chore.

That said, in most cases probably all that is needed is a good "drying-out" period.  I should think that instances where such conditioned detestation is permanent, are rare, indeed.

[Karl Henning]

. . . "How can he be a great artist? I don't care for his work."

. . . I mean, isn't the question you posed a pretty good one?

Divorced from the What does it do for me? narcissism, sure, it can be a perfectly fine question.

So: How can Mozart be a great artist?, back-of-the-envelope edition:

1. Haydn (no slouch, himself) held him in the highest artistic esteem.

2a. He practically invented dramatic ensemble scenes in opera.

2b. His mature operas have never, but never, fallen out of the repertory.

3. His late symphonies have never, but never, fallen out of the repertory.

4a. He composed both the first clarinet concerto, and chamber music with clarinet (the K.581 Quintet) to be universally conceded masterpieces.

4b. The K.581 Quintet became a pop culture trope thanks to the final episode of M*A*S*H.

5. He composed the first (and several) piano concertos which have remained classics in the repertory.

6. He was immortalized in Pushkin's verse-drama, Mozart and Salieri. (We could say that Salieri was also immortalized — as a jealous mediocrity . . . .)

7. When Count Walsegg wanted to have a ghostwritten Requiem, he could afford the best, and so he went to Mozart.

8. For his only full-length opera, whose work did Stravinsky select as a model? (← rhetorical question there)

[Madiel]

9. It was his spirit that Beethoven was supposed to go and receive in 1792. So Count Waldstein, at least, considered Mozart's death to be a great tragedy for the world of music.

[Madiel]

This discussion about Mozart raises in my mind the question: What is the purpose of art?

Is it to primarily to bring pleasure to people?  Or is it primarily to fulfill the need of the artist to create?  I don't have an answer to this question since I am not invested in the answer, but it it may be that depending upon the answer a person has in his mind, it may influence how they appraise various composers' work.

I doubt the answer is one or the other, it's both.  The fact of the matter is that artists need to please the market in some way if they want to eat. To me the best art is usually when the artist finds a way to channel their creative impulses that fulfils whatever requirements or constraints the market is currently putting on them.

[Karl Henning]

This discussion about Mozart raises in my mind the question: What is the purpose of art?

Is it to primarily to bring pleasure to people?  Or is it primarily to fulfill the need of the artist to create?  I don't have an answer to this question since I am not invested in the answer, but it it may be that depending upon the answer a person has in his mind, it may influence how they appraise various composers' work.

Or, as you are an artist yourself, perhaps you are necessarily invested in the answer : )

As ever, the discussible questions of What is the purpose of art? What is "greatness"?

I love how the questions really do not admit of particularly easy answers.  One is tempted to say, of course, art should give pleasure to people! (though then, pleasure is something of a moving target, too, isn't it?)

In the present discussion (or, elsewhere now and again on GMG) there are those who alert us to the fact that they do not take pleasure in Mozart's music.  That, of itself, is simple reportage, inarguable opinion.  But one problem is when that opinion slides into Therefore, Mozart is not great.  Another problem is, well, Mozart's music has given pleasure to thousands, from his own day to now (and likely, forever); so where does Grumpy get off taking his dislike of the music as the determining factor in the question of whether Mozart is great or not?

[Karl Henning]

The fact of the matter is that artists need to please the market in some way if they want to eat.

No. Or (strictly speaking) that is not the fact of the matter for all artists : )

I mean, I eat, but the question of what the market thinks of my music remains unasked, since the market knows nothing of my work.

So perhaps it is a problem, when an artist permits his need to eat, to drive how he makes his art?

[Parsifal]

I doubt the answer is one or the other, it's both.  The fact of the matter is that artists need to please the market in some way if they want to eat. To me the best art is usually when the artist finds a way to channel their creative impulses that fulfils whatever requirements or constraints the market is currently putting on them.

I think the answer is both, in varying degrees.  I think it is an artificial limitation to assume that the need to "please the market" is a purely commercial feature of art.  I find art inherently social.  The desire to affect the thinking of other people, to "put a dent in the universe" (as Steve Jobs put it) is also a legitimate artistic impulse.

[Karl Henning]

I am willing to bet that all artists sincerely wish to find an appreciative audience, but draw the line at doing their art primarily in order to please.  As Karl has said, that is a moving target and the artist will be constantly chasing the flavor of the year.  The hope is, or my hope as an artist, is that what they are doing has qualities which some people will finding pleasing, but they must remain committed to their artistic vision despite the fact that other people will scratch their heads at what they produce.

As Wilde wrote in his preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray:

Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital. When critics disagree, the artist is in accord with himself.

[Madiel]

No. Or (strictly speaking) that is not the fact of the matter for all artists : )

I mean, I eat, but the question of what the market thinks of my music remains unasked, since the market knows nothing of my work.

So perhaps it is a problem, when an artist permits his need to eat, to drive how he makes his art?

Well, I admit I was thinking very much in the frame of the professional composer.  As that is certainly what many of the composers we know about were.  Although quite a few of them were professional performers as much as professional composers, and created works for their own performance.  And some of them had other music-based 'day jobs' that tended to get in the way of their composition.

As I've said, for me it's the quality of the solutions to that 'problem' that are often behind some of the best art. Yes, one way of pleasing the market is to churn out crowd-pleasing dross with no eye on quality or your own sense of satisfaction, but I often think the real greats were the composers who worked out how to produce works of lasting quality within the parameters handed to them.  Whether it's Bach writing different genres for different employers in his career, Haydn figuring out what works for the orchestral players he has to hand at Esterhazy (or figuring out how to give his boss a hint that everyone's tired and wants to go home), or modern composers like my beloved Holmboe writing for particular musicians (question: has anyone else written a symphony to fill a gap on a CD?), I tend to think that good composers often do their best work when there is something they specifically need to achieve rather than being left to wander wherever their artistic whims would take them.  It provides focus, and a fascinating mix of objective and subjective criteria for the work they are creating.

[petrarch]

What is the purpose of art?

At the risk of sounding too pithy: To tickle the imagination. Or, paraphrasing one composer many people love to hate, "To sober and quiet the mind."

[Parsifal]

Well, I admit I was thinking very much in the frame of the professional composer.  As that is certainly what many of the composers we know about were.  Although quite a few of them were professional performers as much as professional composers, and created works for their own performance.  And some of them had other music-based 'day jobs' that tended to get in the way of their composition.

As I've said, for me it's the quality of the solutions to that 'problem' that are often behind some of the best art. Yes, one way of pleasing the market is to churn out crowd-pleasing dross with no eye on quality or your own sense of satisfaction, but I often think the real greats were the composers who worked out how to produce works of lasting quality within the parameters handed to them.  Whether it's Bach writing different genres for different employers in his career, Haydn figuring out what works for the orchestral players he has to hand at Esterhazy (or figuring out how to give his boss a hint that everyone's tired and wants to go home), or modern composers like my beloved Holmboe writing for particular musicians (question: has anyone else written a symphony to fill a gap on a CD?), I tend to think that good composers often do their best work when there is something they specifically need to achieve rather than being left to wander wherever their artistic whims would take them.  It provides focus, and a fascinating mix of objective and subjective criteria for the work they are creating.

Quite true, I'd say.  Creation is always a struggle with constraint, which can take many forms.  What can I do under the constraint that I...have four string instruments to work with...it must be playable by two hands one one keyboard...it takes the form of a passacaglia...Josef Stalin doesn't hate it and send me to the gulag.

[Karl Henning]

Well, I admit I was thinking very much in the frame of the professional composer.

Ouch!

In my frame of reference, professional composer is not narrowly defined as the composer who makes money related to his composition (which largely would include professors of composition in colleges, e.g.), but the composer who, by dint of training, application and talent, composes at a professional level.  I think it is part of the mistake, to attribute to money the power to define who is a composer.