Composers you don't like

[Karl Henning]

Questions of getting the music aside . . . .

[Elnimio]

Karlheinz Stockhausen
John Cage
Pierre Boulez



Aside from the fact I highly dislike their music and their "artistic approach", they all strike me as terrible people, particularly Stockhausen and Boulez.

[Mirror Image]

Karlheinz Stockhausen
John Cage
Pierre Boulez



Aside from the fact I highly dislike their music and their "artistic approach", they all strike me as terrible people, particularly Stockhausen and Boulez.

It will be interesting to read some of the responses to your post, especially James about Stockhausen and Boulez. I personally can't stand these three composers' music, but I like Boulez's conducting. That's about it. As far as these composer's opinions and world views, I could careless. I know Boulez has had some nasty views in his younger days especially in regard to one of my favorite 20th Century French composers, Henri Dutilleux who, IMHO, is the finer composer.

[Lethevich]

Cage seems like a pretty cool guy based on his interview/dialogue manuscripts.

I find it hard to dislike composers personally, as they tend to be intelligent enough to be rational with their opinions, even when I disagree with them, rather than outright moronic. There were a lot of people from the early 20th century who tend to be mentioned as "nasty", but I feel these reflect the wider culture of the time, and are not the dominant factor in the personalities of the composers in question anyway (Orff refusing to write a work to replace Mendelssohn's Midsummer Night's Dream speaks far more clearly to me than his other collaborations). Pfitzner wasn't all bad, he was just a reactionary and perhaps inward and negative person.

The only borderline composer (he arranged editions and maybe other stuff) I can think of as applicable here is Thomas Beecham, whose personality is anathema to me - he seems very much the oily, razzle-dazzle, abusive type.

[TheGSMoeller]

Carlo Gesualdo, who would like a murderer?
Although it was an act of passion...hmm, I'm torn now. 

[Cato]

Carlo Gesualdo, who would like a murderer?
Although it was an act of passion...hmm, I'm torn now. 

Not that Redemption is possible through composing music, but consider...

http://www.youtube.com/v/v/I_MmCv08PVE

[TheGSMoeller]

Not that Redemption is possible through composing music, but consider...

http://www.youtube.com/v/v/I_MmCv08PVE

Beautiful, thanks for sharing. I love Gesualdo's music, so sublime.
And truthfully, I'm not one to have his opinions skewed by a composer's personal endeavors.

[Cato]

Oh Yeah?!  Well I don't like YOU!

[Lethevich]

Oh, wait. Saul.

[Karl Henning]

(* chortle *)

[springrite]

If you knew them as neighbors, more than half of the composers whose music you love may be insufferable people in real like you couldn't stand.

Percy Grainger, what a great (though possibly wasted) talent, but one of the few people you can call motherxxxxer and it's not an insult but a mere statement of fact;

Boulez, as mentioned above. But I love Cage, as a person more than as a composer even;

Bruno Walter, such a "nice" person but so terribly conceited;

Maazel may be a living musician/composer who fit the word a..h.... better than anyone I know. What a terrible terrible human being!

[Brian]

Maazel may be a living musician/composer who fit the word a..h.... better than anyone I know. What a terrible terrible human being!

Hmm, this is news to me.

I don't think I could have been friends with Liszt.

[Elnimio]

Also, from what I've read, Edgar Varese was quite detestable as well.

[Mirror Image]

Brahms was an a------ but it doesn't keep me from enjoying his music of course. I didn't like his attitude at all. Mahler seemed like he would have been one as well.

[snyprrr]

I frankly can't think of ANY Composers (Liszt?) I'd want to go to a Bible Study with!

[Winky Willy]

Musically, I despise the idiotic pseudo-intellectualism of Stockhausen and Cage and most of their New Age aleatoric bibble babble. Schoenberg and the entire movement he began I also consider to be bad music which I hate, but I have an enormous amount of respect for the man as a musical intellect. I am opposed to all who try to impose some non-musical "system" and ignore beauty in order to use it. Ugliness is what I hate.

[starrynight]

If you knew them as neighbors, more than half of the composers whose music you love may be insufferable people in real like you couldn't stand.

And of course we don't know any of the composers we like in real life (or most of us don't), so all we are going by are other people's opinions which have been passed down to us.  They may be biased and are certainly only the personal experience of someone else. 

It's hard to know for absolute certain whether we would have got on well enough personally with a particular composer or not.  And of course it's a two way thing, not just whether you like them but whether they like you.    Would a composer like you idolising them (or just find you another annoying groupie), would you accept some more annoying personal characteristics more easily if you loved their music?  I think the music and person are definitely separate in a way.  Also I think we probably enjoy the position of being able to enjoy the music without having to have the complication of a personal relationship with the composer. 

Of course music would be a common point of discussion.  Though Mozart, I remember reading, got a bit tired of musicians coming to see him.

And of course with composers of the past maybe we need to remember the past is a foreign country.  Music somehow transcends that and probably makes us forget that going back in time will send us to a different culture which may be harder to understand and the people more difficult to get as well.

[The new erato]

Just to present an opposite view I've always considered Robert Schumann a very nice man in a world of conceited men with inflated ego's.

[Christo]

What a terrible terrible human being!

Perhaps a more fitting title for this thread.

[Cato]

Also, from what I've read, Edgar Varese was quite detestable as well.

Sez you!