Your Top 10 Favorite Composers

[Sergeant Rock]

I should watch this, it could illumine the composer for me.

It might...but what is illuminated might not be your cuppa    What surprised me was discovering the Elgar and Delius mutual admiration society. I hadn't known, or imagined, that.

Sarge

[Ken B]

It might...but what is illuminated might not be your cuppa    What surprised me was discovering the Elgar and Delius mutual admiration society. I hadn't known, or imagined, that.

Sarge

It's like learning of the deep respect between Xanax and Ambien.

[Sergeant Rock]

It's like learning of the deep respect between Xanax and Ambien.

I shouldn't laugh, but I am laughing.


Sarge

[André]

At the beginning of the 1900-1910s Beecham went for Delius at the expense Elgar, while Boult did the opposite, championing Elgar (and Vaughan-Williams) at the expense of Delius.

It's like championing one was antithetical to an admiration for the other. Later on, Barbirolli went for all of them, although his Delius was rather scarce.

A generation earlier, Brahms and Brucker were similarly pitted against each other. Luckily, conductors  and audiences have come to embrace both.

The 1968 B&W Ken Russell film on Delius' last years is also a must:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Vyy2SagDwcY

Russell is a controversial but highly original filmmaker, the master of musical biopics (The Music Lovers - about Tchaikovsky, Mahler, etc). This Delius film is very special, with wonderful acting. Delius' house in Gréz-sur-Loing was fuul of paintings from his Paris years: Gauguin and Edvard Munch among others. And of course Jelka Rosen (Mrs Delius), herself a painter of some reknown.

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

New list for today

Boulez
Brett Dean
Wagner
Ives
Oliveros
Mantovani
Coates
Nishimura
Aperghis
Neuwirth

[Madiel]

New list for today

Boulez
Brett Dean
Wagner
Ives
Oliveros
Mantovani
Coates
Nishimura
Aperghis
Neuwirth

Well I recognise over half those names. I guess that's something...

[ritter]

New list for today
...
Wagner
...

Those performnaces of the Ring must really have gotten to you, jessop! Do share your feelings about them with us (if you are so inclined).

Cheers,

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

I am a sometime-Wagnerite

I guess because it is the first time I have ever seen any Wagner on the stage it rekindled my passion for Wagner's music but also made me even more interested in the way he is able to write complex characters faced with complex decisions....

Act 3 of Siegfried has always been a big fat MEH to me because of how Brunnhilde changes after being 'saved' by stupid little Siegfried.

[ahinton]

Coates

Eric or Gloria?

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

Eric or Gloria?

Gloria. I haven't heard anything by Eric Coates apart from one radio tune he did.....I thought he wrote popular music or something? I know very little about him.

[Mirror Image]

I suppose a bit of editing is needed for mine:

Mahler
Shostakovich
Sibelius
Nielsen
Vaughan Williams
Bartók
Prokofiev
Rachmaninov
Dvořák
Martinů

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

As of today:

Boulez
Pintscher
Saariaho
Bruckner
Wagner
Neuwirth
Steen-Andersen
Oliveros
Coates
Cage

[NJ Joe]

Bach
Mozart
Beethoven
Chopin
Brahms
Debussy
Sibelius
Ravel
Bartok
Stravinsky

[Mirror Image]

Bach
Mozart
Beethoven
Chopin
Brahms
Debussy
Sibelius
Ravel
Bartok
Stravinsky

A fine list, Joe. Great stuff.

[Contemporaryclassical]

Webern
Feldman
Dufay
Kurtág
Stravinsky
Brahms
Mahler
Telemann
Monteverdi
Stockhausen

[North Star]

Telemann

That pick rather stands out to me, as the only composer from the time between Brahms and Monteverdi. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

[Contemporaryclassical]

That pick rather stands out to me, as the only composer from the time between Brahms and Monteverdi. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Only top 10, what can I say? 
On the contrary, I was considering putting Haydn in but I decided against

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

Only top 10, what can I say? 
On the contrary, I was considering putting Haydn in but I decided against

Don't take the number 10 too seriously. In a 'top 3' thread I listed 45.

[Mirror Image]

I suppose a bit of editing is needed for mine:

Mahler
Shostakovich
Sibelius
Nielsen
Vaughan Williams
Bartók
Prokofiev
Rachmaninov
Dvořák
Martinů

For the first time, in a long time, I'm actually still completely satisfied with these choices.

[Madiel]

After 3.5 days?