Great composers that are not your cup of tea

[Grazioso]

Chopin. I admire how it's put together, I don't hate it, I don't get bored when I hear it, but I just can't bond with it. Same with Coltrane, which seems even more like blasphemy to me. I love Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, and esp Thelonious Monk, but Coltrane eludes me. 

egbdf

Have you listened to Trane's work from different periods? There's a pretty broad spectrum from his Prestige work and albums with Miles to the Atlantic recordings to the late Impulse work.

[mikkeljs]

I tried hard to find just someone that was not exactly my cup of tea, and I was considering wether I could find myself in the music of Bartok or not, but honestly.....am I the only one that can simply not mention one great composer, that I does not actually love? And don´t blaim me to be uncritical, because I really am a very critical listener!

If any, I would react against non-perfection, but judgering from the little collection of music, that I have been studied to the last note, I recall no pieces, that was not perfect. I remember a recent thread about disliking Debussy where it was explained as the opposition to Beethovens motifical, the most palpable, music. Well, when I listen to Debussy, I find his musical developement not really different from Beethoven, the difference is only relatively. I mean the exciting sound made of contrasts in Debussy can be explained like the other: A contrasting element is a more dramatical progression on a motif, than a non-contrasting. A difference on Beethoven and Debussy, but not neccesarely a difference in definability.

Oh dear, that should perhabs have been posted on the Debussy thread but my conclusion is, that I love everything from Palæstrina to...hmm ok..Cage...    

[71 dB]

Rossini, Verdi, Britten, Sibelius & Bruckner but I don't call them great because they aren't my cup of tea.

[Hector]

Most of the Barock.

Endless notespinning. Who listened to it? Did they employ lackeys to write it all down?

Rachmaninoff.

I've tried. The 2nd Piano Concerto evokes images of middle-aged, middle-class couples not having sex at a railway station as the steam trains pull in and out.

As everybody knows sex wasn't invented until the sixties.

Generally, though, I find something I can like from most composers from 1770 up to the present day.

Even Penderecki, although what, exactly, slips my mind for the moment.

[lukeottevanger]

Rossini, Verdi, Britten, Sibelius & Bruckner but I don't call them great because they aren't my cup of tea.

Here we go again. As we discovered on the Elgar-Berlioz thread, it's really a rather self-centred attitude which refuses to apply the adjective 'great' to anything because one does not personally chime with it, even if the rest of the musical world disagrees! The only 'great composer' I've really not come to grips with, as I said earlier on this thread, is Wolf, but I have absolutely no problem at all recognising him to be that great composer; he obviously is such, in fact. The fault lies with me, and at some point my blind spot will be remedied, as it has in the past with other composers.

On a general note - the ability to understand and love a previously-disliked/unappreciated composer's music is often representative of a stage in one's personal growth, I think - my appreciation for Ives, for instance, which had been at best limited, grew in leaps and bounds simultaneously with my changing and maturing attitudes in other areas of life. So it's important to accept and welcome these developments rather than to shut oneself off from them.

[mahlertitan]

Rossini, Verdi, Britten, Sibelius & Bruckner but I don't call them great because they aren't my cup of tea.

are you sure you that are in the right forum?

[PerfectWagnerite]

Most of the Barock.

Barock? You mean Barock(sic) Obama?

[71 dB]

Here we go again. As we discovered on the Elgar-Berlioz thread, it's really a rather self-centred attitude which refuses to apply the adjective 'great' to anything because one does not personally chime with it, even if the rest of the musical world disagrees! The only 'great composer' I've really not come to grips with, as I said earlier on this thread, is Wolf, but I have absolutely no problem at all recognising him to be that great composer; he obviously is such, in fact. The fault lies with me, and at some point my blind spot will be remedied, as it has in the past with other composers.

On a general note - the ability to understand and love a previously-disliked/unappreciated composer's music is often representative of a stage in one's personal growth, I think - my appreciation for Ives, for instance, which had been at best limited, grew in leaps and bounds simultaneously with my changing and maturing attitudes in other areas of life. So it's important to accept and welcome these developments rather than to shut oneself off from them.

I did like Sibelius long ago before I had really found classical music. When I found Elgar, Nielsen, Saint-Saëns to mention few I noticed that Sibelius' music isn't that remarkable after all. On the contrary, I had learned to expect much more from classical music and Sibelius just didn't meet my expectations anymore.

If someone likes the composers I dislike I envy them. I wish I liked too but Rossini makes me gringe.

are you sure you that are in the right forum?

There isn't such thing as the right forum for me. Or do you know a forum where Bruhns, Elgar, Autechre, DJ Mark Moore and Standfast are all kept in high esteem?

[karlhenning]

When I found Elgar, Nielsen, Saint-Saëns to mention few I noticed that Sibelius' music isn't that remarkable after all.

Oof!  The fact that your own taste has jaded to Sibelius, does not make his work less remarkable, in the first place.

In the second place, speaking as someone who likes the music of all four composers . . . Elgar, Nielsen & Saint-Saëns all wrote music of a character entirely different to Sibelius.  There is no way in the musical world that knowledge of, or affection for, the music of Elgar, Nielsen & Saint-Saëns makes Sibelius at all "commonplace" or "redundant."

[Hector]

Barock? You mean Barock(sic) Obama?

No, I mean Barock but if you like I'll use the French term: Baroque!

Obama? Isn't he the next President of the good ol' US of A?

And to think that only less than a century ago lynching of Afro-Americans was quite commonplace in parts of America. How civilised you have become and in such a short time, too!

[karlhenning]

Or do you know a forum where Bruhns, Elgar, Autechre, DJ Mark Moore and Standfast are all kept in high esteem?

A lot of us hold Elgar in high esteem.  If you're looking for a forum where no one questions the greatness of every last note of Elgar's . . . well, I wish you all luck!  

[71 dB]

Oof!  The fact that your own taste has jaded to Sibelius, does not make his work less remarkable, in the first place.

I think that Sibelius is very much liked because it's easy music. Same with popular music. Easy to understand and popular but does that make it remerkable music? Of course, Sibelius is 100 more advanced than popular music but still I have always found it easy. How can we say any composer is great when objective measures do not exist?

In the second place, speaking as someone who likes the music of all four composers . . . Elgar, Nielsen & Saint-Saëns all wrote music of a character entirely different to Sibelius.  There is no way in the musical world that knowledge of, or affection for, the music of Elgar, Nielsen & Saint-Saëns makes Sibelius at all "commonplace" or "redundant."

No, Sibelius is far from redundant. He has his own style but I can't help myself suffering from his structural simplicity and clumsyness compared to many other composers. Nielsen uses naive structures too but in order to have humour. He is brilliant in that!

[71 dB]

A lot of us hold Elgar in high esteem.  If you're looking for a forum where no one questions the greatness of every last note of Elgar's . . . well, I wish you all luck!  

Of course many of Elgar's notes can be questioned but the same goes to other composers too. Elgar's Sevillana op. 7 isn't that great but so aren't Beethoven's first 2 symphonies. The critic should be fair.

[karlhenning]

I think that Sibelius is very much liked because it's easy music.

You have a penchant for nonsense, you know.  Sibelius did not write any more easy music, within the context of his entire work, than did (say) Elgar.

[Harry]

I must say my friend that you flabbergast me no end, by your firm convictions, which are your convictions of course, and that is oke with me. Nevertheless I sometimes question your sound judgement. To say you don't like some composers  is one thing, to make comparisons on a technical level is another. And I think that you should stop there, because you are not really equipped to hold your ground in a point to point analysis.
I could say the same of myself my friend, so don't be angry with me.

[71 dB]

You have a penchant for nonsense, you know.  Sibelius did not write any more easy music, within the context of his entire work, than did (say) Elgar.

Funny, I find Elgar's music 10-20 times more complex and sophisticated.

[karlhenning]

Funny, I find Elgar's music 10-20 times more complex and sophisticated.

(a) Funny, how selectively you compare the two composers.

(b) Please spell out for us how you arrived at the mathematical figure "10-20 times" in comparing the "complexity" of the two composers' work.  This is just balderdash which you are offering, to seem more "complex and sophisticated" — a pet hang-up of yours — than the frank, manly statement "I like Elgar's music better than I do Sibelius's."

[karlhenning]

BTW, 71 dB, while Elgar and Sibelius are both great, and I enjoy the work of both . . . I find (and, while I do not in any way rely upon consensus here, I believe you will find that consensus is) that Sibelius is the more uniformly excellent composer of the two.  That does not mean that you are not welcome to enjoy Elgar's music more.  Nor does it mean that Sibelius is a "more popular cmposer," or that he wrote music that was "less complex or sophisticated" than Elgar's.

Also, did you see my reply regarding recordings of Falstaff?

[ EDIT :: added an omitted not ]

[BachQ]

Rachmaninoff 2nd Piano Concerto evokes images of middle-aged, middle-class couples not having sex at a railway station as the steam trains pull in and out.

Such a coincidence!  That very image plagues me whenever I listen to Rach 2 . . . . . . .

[Sergeant Rock]

I believe it was Catison who said, on the old forum, that he tried to like every composer. Me too. I didn't start that way. Forty years ago I definitely had composers I disliked: Mozart, Bruckner, Debussy. But I persisted, reading about and listening to the composers others said were among the greats. I figured I was the problem, not the music. The persistence paid off. Sometimes the revelation came in a blinding flash (Bruckner); sometimes it took serious study (reading Charles Rosen's The Classical Style tuned my ears and finally convinced me Mozart was among the elect); sometimes it took decades listening over and over again to music I really didn't care for until finally I caved in and admitted it wasn't so bad afterall (Debussy).

I'm now in a position to honestly say there isn't a composer, genre, or style of music I can't enjoy.

Sarge