Comparing Composers

[Scarpia]

Scarpia - Good response.  Speaking for myself, I do think greatness features a varying combination of the traits you list.  Because the people on this forum align in many (not all) aesthetic norms, there is a consensus on whether artists qualify under your criteria.  The problem is that all of the judgements rely heavily on the weight of authority and popularity.  I fear that objective musical greatness then is the sum total of a cultural subset's group norms, which reflect/inform subjective tastes/judgements in a feedback loop.  So does this greatness exist outside of the group norms?  Probably not. 

As you suggest, there is the possibility that arbitrary social norms have an influence on our judgment on what is great and what is not.  I do not claim that this effect does not exist.  My view depends on an "efficient market" view of music, in which composers who are popular with the establishment but not really so remarkable will loose support, and undiscovered geniuses will gradually find the support they deserve.  This definitely happens at some level; composers that were famous in the past sometimes falter in popularity, and composers such as Mahler, Sibelius, Petterson and others are finding greater and greater enthusiasm with the public.  And now that we have record labels searching archives for undiscovered composers and recording their works, we can confirm that the contemporaries of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, had their moments, but in the long run don't measure up to the ones that transcended their own times.

[Saul]

This thread is about the comparisons of composers as presented by Saul, in his YouTubes of Bach's Double Violin Concerto and Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No. 2.  He liked the Bach the best and I liked the Rachmaninov the best and I provided a YouTube of my favorite Rachmaninov composition Symphonic Dances.   Since no one else presented any YouTubes or even commented on the subject at hand I guess Saul and I are the only ones interested in the actual subject matter. 

Sad to say many posters came here not for the comparisons but to attack the actual meaning of words.

I've had time to sleep on some of the issues brought up and here is my personal opinions.

This idea that any composer is great outside of one's self is high offensive to me and to personal freedom in general.  The musical establishment in proclaiming certain composers as great at the detriment of others is IMHO doing severe damage to the future recruitment of new classical music listeners.  These choices should be made by the listeners NOT the establishment.  Personal opinions of greatness should never be presented as facts.  And no listener should ever be attacked for disagreeing with another listener's ideas of greatness, as greatness in all walks of life differs greatly from person and person.  By hitting people over the head with whom you personally believe is great is bullying and rude in the extreme. 

These are ALL personal opinions and personal observations based on each individual actually listening to music.

Worst
Bad
Poor
Good
Great
Greatest

These can NEVER be universal as claimed by some posters.  By the musical establishment proclaiming certain composers as great based perhaps on technical skill and number of performances or popularity over centuries is wrong.  It should be clearly stated it is ONLY their personal opinion, and that there are hundreds of other deserving composers just as talented and great as the ones the writer is pushing. 

Scarpia gave this definition of why his favorite composers are great "Because they invented new forms of music, imagined harmonies, melodies, and varieties of music that had never been heard before, because they were dominant influences on the music that came after, and above all because they wrote music that continues to excite people hundreds of years after they died."  This defines nearly every single composer (especially modern ones).  They all have their own unique composition style and recognizable sound, most are inventive, most of their new compositions are unlike anything that came before.  And music that people love excites them hundreds of years after the composers are dead.  What I strongly disagree with Scarpia is that this is NOT a constant but varies from listener to listener.  No single human being believes the exact same things are great. 

To use a food metaphor, If I ate a filet mignon and felt it was the greatest tasting steak I had ever consumed I would not expect ever single person to agree with me, especially people who do not like steak.   No because I have known for decades greatness is a highly personal issue and not to be imposed on others.   

Greatness is not a subjective matter, anyone who believes in this is just plain wrong.

Lets forget about music for a second. We have many different kinds of greatness. For example we had great presidents, great educators, great athletes and great intellectual and philosophers, religious leaders and personalities and so on.

Everyone would agree that greatness just exists and has a unanimous appreciation by the vast majority of the world on certain people. Otherwise if we didn't have  'great people' then we are all the same, and there is no one great or small.

Let's check out an example of Greatness let's choose 'Great Presidents'.

No one would say that George Washington was just one regular President. He was great because he was the very first President of the United States, who fought the critical battles and showed remarkable intellect and leadership and was a valiant military leader.

Why then don't we say like Teresa suggests that the Greatness of George Washington is not true but it depends only on her own subjective judgment?

No one would bet on anything like this. Some people were great, and that is a statement of fact, seeing reality clearly as it is.

If this is so in the case of 'Great presidents' and any other 'Great individuals' why then can't we have a unified consensus about certain composers who did so much for the art of music and touched the hearts of so many millions around the world like no others have ever touched with their art, why then can't we call them 'Greats'?

Leaving the word 'great' when it comes to music and composers lowers the art and the greatness of music in general. Not everything has to go through the needle thin personal analysis of a given composer, and Greatness can't be decided by one person's 'opinion'. It must be supported by many others who share similar interests and posses the more or less the same love of music and the same understanding of music.

[Teresa]

Greatness is not a subjective matter, anyone who believes in this is just plain wrong.

Personal opinion about anyone's greatness is NEVER wrong, not even yours.  It is personal opinion and differs from one person to another, you will never get 100% agreement on the greatness of one single thing in the entire universal.  It's just not possible.

All famous people have supporters and detractors, greatness is in the ears, eyes and minds of the beholder. 

Greatness does not just exist, it is a quality that has to be recognized by actual real people and bestowed on ones whom the individual believes is deserving. 

Using your example of US Presidents, many people believe that Nixon was the worst president ever because of Watergate, others believe he was the best based on his negotiations with China.  Same can be said for JFK, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington all have been called the greatest and the worst presidents. 

No one has to leave the word Great behind, it is personal growth to realize it is wrong and hurtful to impose ONE'S idea of greatness on any other human being.  Allow all humans to think for themselves and make their own decisions about the worthiness of anything and everything.

Greatness can ONLY be decided on an individual basis.  Blindly trusting groupthink is lazy and wrong.

[jowcol]

Ideally "greatness" is objective, although there will always be a subjective component.  I think the most workable definition of greatness in music would involve artistic innovation, perfection of craft, influence on later composers, and durable appreciation by audiences and performers.   Wagner is "great" by any measure, despite commonly perceived weaknesses in his works (mostly connected with libretti).  Satie may or may not be, I can't say.  I'll admit to never having listen to one of his works all the way through.   

Some interesting points here-- innovation and perfection may not always occur together. IMNSHO, Bach would represent perfection-- he took a style of music and basically put it to bed.  Some of the innovators, on the other hand, may not capture perfection.  Mussorgsky would be in ideal candidate for me-- innovative to the extreme, but formal craft is not one of his strong points.

I would have to pose the question, however, that if greatness is objective, how come we cannot agree on what it means?    If it is objective, that means it would need to meet objective criteria that would be evaluated the same by anyone-- such as something you can measure with a ruler, or scale.    If anything, we can expand on what Scarpia has started here,  we can at least define several different dimensions by which it can be measured.

[Teresa]

jowcol I love your signature quote:

"If it sounds good, it is good."
Duke Ellington

I agree totally with the provision that, of course, what sounds good differs from person to person.

[jowcol]

This thread is about the comparisons of composers as presented by Saul, in his YouTubes of Bach's Double Violin Concerto and Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No. 2.  He liked the Bach the best and I liked the Rachmaninov the best and I provided a YouTube of my favorite Rachmaninov composition Symphonic Dances.   Since no one else presented any YouTubes or even commented on the subject at hand I guess Saul and I are the only ones interested in the actual subject matter. 

Although on the whole, I'm violently in agreement with your stance on the subjectiveness of "greatness", "beauty",etc, I'm not sure if copying links from youtube would constitute the only type of comparative musical analysis, or the only way to answer question posed. 

The cultural angle is also interesting.  To many people, all Indian Ragas sound alike, and they wouldn't be able to tell the difference between a Hindustani or Karnatic Raga.  But, to someone from another culture not familiar with our traditions, could they tell the differnce between a Mozart or a Salieri?


It's interesting to see how greatness would apply to someone like Schoenberg, who was first widely reviled, and then overly hyped, and has now settled into a more steady position.  His music has not changed after it was written-- our perceptions have. 

[jowcol]

Greatness is not a subjective matter, anyone who believes in this is just plain wrong.

How does one prove this?  I don't mind being wrong, but if you asked 100 people to list the 5 greatest presidents, you won't get the same answer from each.  Are the 99 that don't agree with you wrong?

Why then don't we say like Teresa suggests that the Greatness of George Washington is not true but it depends only on her own subjective judgment?

That's not what she said at all.  She said the everyone would have a different perception of his greatness.  Which I would agree with.

Greatness can't be decided by one person's 'opinion'.

I strongly agree.  I also would take this further to say the Greatness cannot be decided for all time and people-- historical evaluations of many of our heroes change over time.  Its a constantly evolving process.

[Scarpia]

I would have to pose the question, however, that if greatness is objective, how come we cannot agree on what it means?    If it is objective, that means it would need to meet objective criteria that would be evaluated the same by anyone-- such as something you can measure with a ruler, or scale.    If anything, we can expand on what Scarpia has started here,  we can at least define several different dimensions by which it can be measured.

There may be people who refuse to believe that 1 + 1 = 2.  (And I think there may be some such people participating on this board.)  That does not mean that 1 + 1 = 2 is not an objective fact.   

I think if you went to a place and spoke to people who have actually studied music successfully you could get 99.9% to agree that Beethoven is a "great" composer.   You may not be able to reach consensus on whether Mendelssohn, or Dukas, or Hindemith are really great composers, but there would be a core group of composers that any educated person would agree are "great."  That is as close to objective as human beings can normally get, except in questions of arithmetic.

[jowcol]

jowcol I love your signature quote:

"If it sounds good, it is good."
Duke Ellington

I agree totally with the provision that, of course, what sounds good differs from person to person.

Ellington said this in the fact that he hated categories and artificial barriers in music, such as the ongoing debate between jazz and "serious" music, since be believed that all great music (oops-- the "g word") was beyond category.

[jowcol]

There may be people who refuse to believe that 1 + 1 = 2.  (And I think there may be some such people participating on this board.)  That does not mean that 1 + 1 = 2 is not an objective fact.   

I think if you went to a place and spoke to people who have actually studied music successfully you could get 99.9% to agree that Beethoven is a "great" composer.   You may not be able to reach consensus on whether Mendelssohn, or Dukas, or Hindemith are really great composers, but there would be a core group of composers that any educated person would agree are "great."  That is as close to objective as human beings can normally get, except in questions of arithmetic.

I'd certainly agree with the notion of what statisticians would call a "central" tendency, and that if a group of knowledgeable people compiled their top-10 lists, you'd see some names appearing frequently.  But I also think that the list of top 10s would change over time.  Stravinsky found it fashionable to bash Beethoven in the 20s, and later had much good to say about him.  I would certainly give him credit for knowing something about music-- but if his initial assessment was subjective, why did he change it mind later?

[Saul]

There may be people who refuse to believe that 1 + 1 = 2.  (And I think there may be some such people participating on this board.)  That does not mean that 1 + 1 = 2 is not an objective fact.   

I think if you went to a place and spoke to people who have actually studied music successfully you could get 99.9% to agree that Beethoven is a "great" composer.   You may not be able to reach consensus on whether Mendelssohn, or Dukas, or Hindemith are really great composers, but there would be a core group of composers that any educated person would agree are "great."  That is as close to objective as human beings can normally get, except in questions of arithmetic.

Even Wagner didn't let his Anti Semitism blur reality when it came to greatness in music, this famous passage heard by all serious music lovers was made by non other then Richard Wagner on Mendelssohn:

"The Greatest specifically musical genius the world has had since Mozart".

This is from someone that wrote a book about Music and Jews.

Some facts are not a matter of 'opinion' , Wagner was not saying his 'personal opinion' but he was reading the hand on the wall, that in fact Mendelssohn was one of the Greatest ever.

Anyone who says otherwise, anyone, is making an error, the same goes for Mozart, anyone who says that he was not a Great Composer, doesn't know what he is talking about when it comes to classical music.

If anyone wants to prove to me that he or she has no knowledge or understanding of classical music then let them say  that Mendelssohn, Mozart or Beethoven or Bach were not great composers, you don't need to say anything else, this will be just enough.

[Mirror Image]

If anyone wants to prove to me that he or she has no knowledge or understanding of classical music then let them say  that Mendelssohn, Mozart or Beethoven or Bach were not great composers, you don't need to say anything else, this will be just enough.

I think that Mendelssohn, Mozart, Bach, and Beethoven were great composers, but I'm looking at this from an objective point-of-view and not from a subjective one. I think it's pretty much a universal consensus that these four composers are acknowledged as great composers. My own personal opinion of them however is that I seldom listen to them or really care anything about them. They simply don't do much for me emotionally or intellectually, but I can see the writing on the wall, and I'm quite adamant in my overall opinion that they were great.

You can personally dislike a composer, but that doesn't mean that they weren't great or acknowledged by others to be great. A lot of people hate Bruckner and Mahler, but to say they're terrible is simply letting your own likes/dislikes get in the way of the truth, which is that these two composers were radical and groundbreaking. Maybe you don't "get it," but, again, this doesn't mean that they should be ignored.

[Saul]

I think that Mendelssohn, Mozart, Bach, and Beethoven were great composers, but I'm looking at this from an objective point-of-view and not from a subjective one. I think it's pretty much a universal consensus that these four composers are acknowledged as great composers. My own personal opinion of them however is that I seldom listen to them or really care anything about them. They simply don't do much for me emotionally or intellectually, but I can see the writing on the wall, and I'm quite adamant in my overall opinion that they were great.

A fine post!

[greg]

Elvis is a great rock singer, Beethoven was a great composer.  Greatness exists within the genre.  Some genre's have more potential for greatness.  How many "great" tic-tac-toe players are there?

Fascinating thought. Kinda JDP-ish, but... there maaaay be something to this.

[Saul]

Fascinating thought. Kinda JDP-ish, but... there maaaay be something to this.

Yes it makes much sense, I agree with that.

[Mirror Image]

A fine post!

Thank you!

[Scarpia]

I'd certainly agree with the notion of what statisticians would call a "central" tendency, and that if a group of knowledgeable people compiled their top-10 lists, you'd see some names appearing frequently.  But I also think that the list of top 10s would change over time.  Stravinsky found it fashionable to bash Beethoven in the 20s, and later had much good to say about him.  I would certainly give him credit for knowing something about music-- but if his initial assessment was subjective, why did he change it mind later?

Do you think that Stravinsky seriously thought Beethoven was not a great composer?  He was fed up with German expressionist school of music and wanted to make room for a different kind of music, so he ridiculed Beethoven.  Do you think, at that time, Stravinsky would have seriously advised a student not to bother studying Beethoven? 

[Gurn Blanston]

You can personally dislike a composer, but that doesn't mean that they weren't great or acknowledged by others to be great. A lot of people hate Bruckner and Mahler, but to say they're terrible is simply letting your own likes/dislikes get in the way of the truth, which is that these two composers were radical and groundbreaking. Maybe you don't "get it," but, again, this doesn't mean that they should be ignored.

This is exactly my view of the topic, and IMO, it seems to be where we part ways with the published views of those in the "Mozart was Terrible" camp. It is perfectly acceptable, brave even, to not like Mozart's music. However, his greatness is not dependent on the complete approval of all interested parties in order to be validated. And really, that is what this entire, week-long+ disagreement has been about. Not sure I can figure out why that point is even arguable.



----------------
Now playing:
Andreas Staier - Scarlatti K 264 Sonata E for Clavier - Vivo

[Teresa]

Ellington said this in the fact that he hated categories and artificial barriers in music, such as the ongoing debate between jazz and "serious" music, since be believed that all great music (oops-- the "g word") was beyond category.

I love nearly everything by "Duke" Ellington from Big Band to orchestral works especially Harlem and The River: Suite

I like this quote from Arthur Fiedler who also didn't like divisive categories in music:
"There are only two kinds of music, good music and bad.  If it is good -- I play it."
Arthur Fiedler

I have never held it against Mr. Fiedler that he thought one of my favorite composers, Mahler was boring.  As I have known for four decades it is his opinion and does not affect my enjoyment of Mahler.  If only others would learn this simple truth, their lives would be so much easier and calmer.  Listen to what one likes and forget the rest. 

[Teresa]

Do you think that Stravinsky seriously thought Beethoven was not a great composer?   

Yes I do! You can read about Stravinsky telling Proust how much he hates Beethoven in Book of Musical Anecdotes

Stravinsky is one of my favorite composers and one of my heros!  And yes to me Stravinsky is one of the greatest composers of all time.