Greatest Composer Since the Time of Beethoven, sorry but it's true.

[Mirror Image]

Moderator action does not define the topic of a thread. I agree they should've merged it, but that doesn't change the fact that the OP intends to start a Stockhausen thread.

No, the moderators do not define the topic of a thread, but they can delete a useless thread such as this one if they see the thread going under or has reached its saturation point. My vote goes to putting this thread out of its misery and locking it before it gets beyond ridiculous (as we're pretty much there already).

[Monsieur Croche]

Okay, then let me rephrase, I don't get Mozart. Is that better?

The quip is from a musician friend of mine, though I don't know if it is his or just one of those things in general circulation. It is also yet another spin, basically, on, "Gasp! How can you not like composer X?, that is not worth caring, on your part or mine, if one or another reaction is better.

I have a large enough list of great composers whose music I get, yet just don't care for. There are more I really do care for than not.  I'm alright with that as much as I'm alright with the different lists of composers others have of the composers not on their lists of the ones they like.

The fact that so many of those composers on different peoples' don't care for list are still around, are considered great by the cognoscenti as well as so many listeners, just shows how much all those differences are a matter of individual tastes.

Whether it is Stockhausen or Sibelius, Bach or Berio, for any individual, if a composer is not to their taste, whatever the experts or the general public say to the contrary is moot.

I think the truest response to "Gasp! How can you not like composer X? is
"Because I am not you." But of course, that stops it in its tracks and makes for no further dialogue 


Best regards.

[Monsieur Croche]

For some reason I have always preferred to be the younger one in a relationship am I normal

I'm not the first to have thought that where relationships are concerned, there are about as many different types of relationships as their are people having them.

"Normal" has a very wide latitude of all that falls under its aegis as well.

A friend just passed this quote to me from a romantic comedy, a book by alice Hoffmann,  Practical Magic "...when are you going to realize that being normal is not necessarily a virtue?  It rather denotes a lack of courage."

There is your completely non-answer to your question.  "Hope that helped." 

[North Star]

Yes, Sibelius made subtle, some say dramatic, innovations in the how and what of thematic materials treated and presented within the Sonata-Allegro Symphonic format.  If he had done it first, that would be a different degree of innovation. Sibelius' innovation is a matter of degrees of variation of innovation vs. startling innovation, while I suppose it is necessary to say, once again, newness on its own not being enough to give prizes for, either.

Sibelius altered his own terrain, and only a little bit the treatment of the presentation and variants of themes within the symphonic form. That is quite different from a seismic upheaval of the force of change Monteverdi, Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner, Debussy, Schoenberg, Webern, et alia affected.

If he had done 'it' first? I don't quite follow what you mean there - do you mean to say that anything presented in the context of a sonata-allegro form was not innovative by then? It's quite clear that Sibelius indeed didn't startle so much as others who needed to colour outside the lines in order to look new. One of the chief reasons why his influence has shown mostly over half a century later, I suspect, was that he was being innovative in a different way than all the others...
 

Within the context of the times Sibelius was composing, those innovative features were also not so startling to those who did notice them, unless they were staunch conservatives unaware or unwanting of other progressive developments in music going on then.  Over one hundred years later, some here are making out that Sibelius' subtle innovations were actually that startling, or perhaps even influential.  I think not, and that in no way dismisses his contribution in that area and certainly does not and can not diminish the value of his music.

Oh, I'm sure Sibelius's music wasn't as startling as serialism or Le sacre. I hope you don't really think that to be influential, you need to be startling. And it's funny how you again go around trying to make it look as if Sibelius really wasn't influential, when I have already shown otherwise.

I seriously doubt that even those for whom Sibelius does not do much are interested in demoting his status as a composer.  Whatever anyone thinks, and following criteria Karl Henning gave earlier [] -- criteria with which I wholly agree -- basically as long as what is written is not a pale imitation of some other composer's work or style, 'innovative' or not, if it is superb writing, and speaks genuinely for itself -- that really ought to be great enough.

Absolutely. Influence (not necessarily innovation) is just something that helps keep an artist's work fresh in the minds of younger generations.

1899 to 1924: Sibelius symphonies 1-7  Symphonic form or other, innovative as he was, "innovation" is also relative.
~~~1899 to 1910: Mahler symphonies 4 - 9 / Das Lied von der Erde / the unfinished 10th symphony.
~~~1905: Debussy's La Mer, a formal symphony regardless of what the composer chose to call it.
~~~1911 - 1922: Carl Neilsen Symphonies 3 - 5

-- just to keep the innovation thingie in relative proportion :-)

Best regards.

Well, I'm not sure how that keeps 'the innovation thingie in relative proportion' - the other three composers certainly weren't without innovation, but their ideas were all quite different from each other, and from Sibelius's.

Within the context of the times Sibelius was composing, those innovative features were also not so startling to those who did notice them

Perhaps it is because most people did not notice them, being distracted by all the others painting with brash colours all over the place, frames and all.  0:)

The other factor in Sibelius that attracted the spectral composers was his strangely distended timing. The passage from Tapiola cited in Ex. 13.1 lasts an abnormally long time -nearly a whole minute. The rotating chromatic storm near the end of the same work lasts even longer. The Tempest prelude lasts over three minutes. During all such textures, any clear sense of harmonic direction is virtually suspended in a manner not found in any other music prior to 1960.

[The new erato]

Each time this thread pops up I'm tempted to reply:

"Yes, I too would be sorry if that was true".

To get it out of my head I just had to post it.

[James]

"Getting it" and liking it are two different things.

They go hand in hand imo, one leads into the other. But also, what that individual has been exposed-to & knows as a basis of comparison leading to a judgement. Especially so when an truly experienced authority addresses it. i.e. Gould, Boulez etc. They hear it, get it, have been "under the hood", see it for what it is .. and either like it or not based on this.

[Karl Henning]

Each time this thread pops up I'm tempted to reply:

"Yes, I too would be sorry if that was true".

To get it out of my head I just had to post it.

(* chortle *)

[nathanb]

Each time this thread pops up I'm tempted to reply:

"Yes, I too would be sorry if that was true".

To get it out of my head I just had to post it.

I prefer Stockhausen to Beethoven these days, so I guess you're right about it not being wholly true.

[snyprrr]

FINZI
FINZI
FINZI
FINZI
FINZI
FINZI
FINZI

[Christo]

FINZI
FINZI
FINZI
FINZI
FINZI
FINZI
FINZI

Who?

[North Star]

Who?

I think he meant to say Finzi.

Not quite the greatest since Beethoven, that Gerald chap, but easily preferable to Karlheinz..

[Karl Henning]

FINZI
FINZI
FINZI
FINZI
FINZI
FINZI
FINZI

Finzi fanboy!

[Christo]

I think he meant to say Finzi.

Not quite the greatest since Beethoven, that Gerald chap, but easily preferable to Karlheinz..

I'm sure he means the Italian composer Aldo Finzi (1897–1945), who's musical style has been described as somewhere between Respighi and Richard Strauss: http://www.unsungcomposers.com/forum/index.php?topic=4321.0

That Gerald chap was, of course, of Italian (Jewish) descent; hence his Italian name. Wikipedia calls him a "son of John Abraham (Jack) Finzi (of Italian Jewish descent) and Eliza Emma (Lizzie) Leverson (daughter of Montague Leverson,of German Jewish descent)." 

[North Star]

I'm sure he means the Italian composer Aldo Finzi (1897–1945), who's musical style has been described as somewhere between Respighi and Richard Strauss: http://www.unsungcomposers.com/forum/index.php?topic=4321.0

That Gerald chap was, of course, of Italian (Jewish) descent; hence his Italian name. Wikipedia calls him a "son of John Abraham (Jack) Finzi (of Italian Jewish descent) and Eliza Emma (Lizzie) Leverson (daughter of Montague Leverson,of German Jewish descent)."

Only if snyprrr's enchiladas were expired.

[Christo]

Only if snyprrr's enchiladas were expired.

Yep. He likes them frozen.

[North Star]

Yep. He likes them frozen.

So good it melts in your mouth

[Karl Henning]

[ snypsss proposes a "Biggest Hack" Thread ]

For this proposed future OP, I pre-nominate John T. Williams, and Alan Hovhaness.

I predict a lot of outrage, hurt feelings and butt-hurt reactions having named just those two....

They both clearly have talent.  But they don't really belong in the same class.  However at times good the work of the former, even the worst of his work is rationalizable by "it's what I was paid to do."  The latter wrote what he did, and he wrote a great deal, because that is what he wished to do, what he was made to do.

Probably, I cannot make the case that Hovhaness is a great composer.  But I believe he was a very good composer, and that he wrote a respectable volume of genuinely excellent music.  In anticipation of the argument of the Loyal Opposition, I will say that I have a disc with three symphonies on it, and for the life of me, I cannot understand how they are three distinct pieces;  and I have a disc of music with harp, against which a similar argument could be levied.

That was the kernel of my quarrel with Hovhaness for a number of years.  On the occasion of the composer's passing, as I read eulogistic remarks of a number of "virtual friends" on line, I felt I owed it to the late composer to test drive more of his œuvre – after all, he had written so very much, I could not be so very naïf as to suppose that it all sounded the same.  And, in fact, the only piece of his which I had myself performed (an arrangement of The Prayer of St Gregory for trumpet and organ, where I read the trumpet part on the "clarionet") is perfectly lovely in its chaste simplicity.

So, for the extreme Hovhaness sceptic ("you know who you are"), I offer the one score which I probably like the very best (and I do think very highly of, let's say, 15 of his works):

http://www.youtube.com/v/JlLjtie9xJk

Thread Duty:

My reservations about Hovhaness notwithstanding, I think rather more highly of him than of Stockhausen.

[kishnevi]

The inestimable Dr. Henning remarked in passing

I cannot understand how they are three distinct pieces

Sometimes one needs to find an alternate performance or repeat listenings to figure out the differences.

I first encountered Ligeti through his piano etudes and string quartets, which impressed me enormously.  I then went out and got the Warner box set of his large scale works, and for some years, despite sporadic relistens got nothing out of them, except possibly headaches.  But my initial impression of the etudes and SQs was strong enough that I felt repeated listening was of value--although I did consider the possibility that perhaps what worked for Ligeti in works with limited forces did not work on the larger scale of orchestral/choral.

It was in face getting the DG box, with different performances, which cracked open that hard nut--and going back to the Warner box, although I ultimately preferred the DG performances, I had much better reaction to what I heard there.

But I did find, on my initial hearing of the Warner box, that the concertos did sound very much of a muchness, and remarked here that the only way I could tell which concerto was which was by the solo instruments.

The key point there was that I was motivated to attempt relistens and alternate performances because my initial reaction to the composer made me feel it worth the effort.    With KHS, I have no such motivation, with the result that I don't listen to him.  The only piece of his I have heard which has even tempted me to a relisten is Tierkreis.

[Karl Henning]

Sometimes one needs to find an alternate performance or repeat listenings to figure out the differences.

An excellent observation.  I do like one of the three (Mysterious Mountain);  and I have listened to the disc through a few times.  It may hit me, yet!  And meanwhile, there is much of his music which does strike me as (to use one of my former teacher Judith Shatin's favorite words) specific, so his credit is good with me.

[James]

In fact I've had a harder time appreciating Beethoven and Mozart

Same here .. on the other hand, contemporary music, the music of my time was easier to hear and listen to than the older stuff, which well .. sounded really old and dull at first. The sounds of contemporary music sounded much, much closer to the popular music & film we were hearing and taking in  ..