Your First Favorite Composer?

[Wanderer]

Beethoven. Yes.

[Biffo]

Berlioz/Symphonie fantastique was the first work I became truly obsessed with, 50 years later I still am.

[prémont]

Who was your first favorite composer? Is he still in the same position?

My answers: Beethoven. No.

My answer is also Beethoven and no,

But he has remained among my top three.

[Florestan]

Thank you all for your interesting answers.

It's not that I don't like Beethoven's music any more; I do, a lot, in whatever top 10 I can imagine he's invariably there (not top 3, though, at least not currently). It's just that I don't consider him any more the nec plus ultra of music or the yardstick by which all other composers should be measured --- in fact today I detest both notions.

[some guy]

Rachmaninoff and no, and apparently I'm the first on this thread to question the whole "favorite" idea.

I suppose if I still adhered to the notion of favorites, Rachmaninoff would still not be my favorite, but more importantly, I don't have any favorite. There are some people I like more than others, sure, but criminy, to hold on to a single composer after listening to music for almost sixty years (in my case) is inconceivable. Even the mere idea of having a favorite as one's list of "know and like" has grown into the hundreds (at a conservative estimate) is difficult for me to comprehend. But that's just me.

But yeah, when I was 9 or so, and only knew maybe a dozen or so composers (though that number grew very quickly--it can't have been a dozen for more than a few months), it was fairly easy to have "a favorite." I even felt guilty for preferring Tchaikovsky's first piano concerto over Rachmaninoff's 2nd. (I had an LP that coupled the two.) And for quite awhile, I had more Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, and Rachmaninoff LPs than I had of any other single composer. Prokofiev would eventually take over, but by then the whole idea of "favorite," had faded.

I suppose the closest I get to a favorite is this--if one counts only the 19th century, Berlioz is almost the only one I still listen to with great pleasure. If one counts only the 18th century, Gluck is almost the only one I still listen to with great pleasure. I did say "almost."

[Florestan]

when I was 9 or so, and only knew maybe a dozen or so composers (though that number grew very quickly--it can't have been a dozen for more than a few months), it was fairly easy to have "a favorite." I even felt guilty for preferring Tchaikovsky's first piano concerto over Rachmaninoff's 2nd. (I had an LP that coupled the two.)

Why would you have felt guilty for that at the tender age of 9, I wonder. 

[Jo498]

This has been "tested" only with popular music (in a culture where music is really important for most teenagers) but supposedly the musical taste is fixed in ones early teenage years.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/10/opinion/sunday/favorite-songs.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpPSF7-Ctlc

So it seems somewhat uncommon to revise ones teenage tastes considerably.

"When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things."

[relm1]

Beethoven, no.

Tie for 2nd place:
Mahler, yes (top 5)
Shostakovich, yes (top 5)
Vaughan Williams, yes (top 5)
John Williams, yes (top 5)
Sergei Prokofiev, yes (top 5)

[bhodges]

Charles Ives, and no.

Still in my top 10, but I no longer feel the need to choose a favorite. Too many interesting composers running around!

--Bruce

[Elgarian Redux]

It's just that I don't consider him [Beethoven] any more the nec plus ultra of music or the yardstick by which all other composers should be measured --- in fact today I detest both notions.

I've been thinking about this business of 'favourite', and I wonder if we're all interpreting the word in the same way. One can have a 'favourite' composer for all sorts of different reasons - not all of them musical.

Like you, I find the very idea of supposing that the work of one composer might establish a yardstick against which others are measured is absurd. That's impossibly stifling. Rather, the concept of favouriteness is a question of love, rather than argument. These days I listen to Elgar far less than I once did, but he showed me things I'd never heard or imagined before - new ways of musical feeling; new musical ways of understanding landscape, and history. Those things have stayed with me through a lifetime, and to some extent have helped me to discover who I am. So I feel immense gratitude to the man himself, and you see this goes far beyond merely appreciating his music.

I listen to all sorts of things now that I wouldn't have enjoyed even, say, 15 years ago. To have a deep personal attachment to one composer doesn't mean that one stops having enriching musical adventures elsewhere; neither does it mean that this 'favourite' composer is held to be somehow superior to others. For me, it's more a matter of feeling rooted somewhere: of growing and changing (as Ruskin said) 'like a tree, rather than a cloud'.

[Cato]

It is difficult for me to define, because Classical Music attracted me very early in childhood via classic cartoons, so in one sense the pastiche music of Carl Stalling for Bugs Bunny and company was my favorite!

Later, thanks to Mr. Stalling, Richard Wagner and Franz Von Suppe' became favorites, and they led me to "everybody else,"  , along with the Peanuts comic strips recommending Beethoven.

Today I have too many favorites to choose only one!

[pjme]

Ravel

(on a 7 inch disc / Bolero by Morton Gould "and his orchestra" and Pavane (Monteux, I think)

(Later, in quick succession: Debussy (Danses pour harpe et cordes - Fricsay/Zabaleta), Brahms (Hungarian dances), Kodaly (Dances)....Orff, Stravinsky....)

[Karl Henning]

Who was your first favorite composer?

Possibly Prokofiev (Peter and the Wolf being among the very earliest classical pieces I heard)

Is he still in the same position?

Couldn't be.  At the beginning, you only knew a relatively few composers, and one is still perhaps naïf enough to apply a "#1" to a composer 

My answer is not a no, but, that the question itself is flawed  0:)

[Florestan]

This has been "tested" only with popular music (in a culture where music is really important for most teenagers) but supposedly the musical taste is fixed in ones early teenage years.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/10/opinion/sunday/favorite-songs.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpPSF7-Ctlc

So it seems somewhat uncommon to revise ones teenage tastes considerably.

In my case it's true as well.

The first five composers I've ever heard were Grieg, Tchaikovsky, Bizet, Chopin and Mozart. I was an early teenager without any knowledge of classical music whatsoever. Thirty years later, while my musical horizon and knowledge have expanded beyond anything I could have imagined back then, Romantic music is still my favorite while Mozart and Chopin are currently on my top 3 (the other one being Schubert).

[Florestan]

I've been thinking about this business of 'favourite', and I wonder if we're all interpreting the word in the same way. One can have a 'favourite' composer for all sorts of different reasons - not all of them musical.

Like you, I find the very idea of supposing that the work of one composer might establish a yardstick against which others are measured is absurd. That's impossibly stifling. Rather, the concept of favouriteness is a question of love, rather than argument. These days I listen to Elgar far less than I once did, but he showed me things I'd never heard or imagined before - new ways of musical feeling; new musical ways of understanding landscape, and history. Those things have stayed with me through a lifetime, and to some extent have helped me to discover who I am. So I feel immense gratitude to the man himself, and you see this goes far beyond merely appreciating his music.

I listen to all sorts of things now that I wouldn't have enjoyed even, say, 15 years ago. To have a deep personal attachment to one composer doesn't mean that one stops having enriching musical adventures elsewhere; neither does it mean that this 'favourite' composer is held to be somehow superior to others. For me, it's more a matter of feeling rooted somewhere: of growing and changing (as Ruskin said) 'like a tree, rather than a cloud'.

Very nicely put and I agree.

[71 dB]

This has been "tested" only with popular music (in a culture where music is really important for most teenagers) but supposedly the musical taste is fixed in ones early teenage years.

My childhood music listening was passive and mostly jazz because of my dad playing his jazz records. I was in fact a fan of Max Roach and his marvelous drum solos. I also liked John Williams' movie music. Other than that I wasn't into "music listening". Rock, pop etc. I heard passively here and there sounded stupid for me.

My active music listening  started in late 80's when I was in high-school. In 1988 we got the British acid house explosion and that got me very interested. There actually WAS music in the World that gets me very excited! I was 17. In mid 90's when I was 25 I started to get interested of classical music because my friend who plays violin told me how Prokofiev has cool music. However before I discovered classical music I had thought classical music is simply too old to be enjoyed by modern people. Obsolete. Well, I was totally wrong. The point is I entered the music listening habid lind of AFTER teenager years. I totally skipped "heavy metal phase" or whatever it is 13 year olds listen to.

[Jaakko Keskinen]

This may be surprising but Wagner actually was not my first favorite composer. The first one was Grieg. And no, he's not anymore.

[Karl Henning]

I've been thinking about this business of 'favourite', and I wonder if we're all interpreting the word in the same way. One can have a 'favourite' composer for all sorts of different reasons - not all of them musical.

Like you, I find the very idea of supposing that the work of one composer might establish a yardstick against which others are measured is absurd. That's impossibly stifling. Rather, the concept of favouriteness is a question of love, rather than argument. These days I listen to Elgar far less than I once did, but he showed me things I'd never heard or imagined before - new ways of musical feeling; new musical ways of understanding landscape, and history. Those things have stayed with me through a lifetime, and to some extent have helped me to discover who I am. So I feel immense gratitude to the man himself, and you see this goes far beyond merely appreciating his music.

I listen to all sorts of things now that I wouldn't have enjoyed even, say, 15 years ago. To have a deep personal attachment to one composer doesn't mean that one stops having enriching musical adventures elsewhere; neither does it mean that this 'favourite' composer is held to be somehow superior to others. For me, it's more a matter of feeling rooted somewhere: of growing and changing (as Ruskin said) 'like a tree, rather than a cloud'.

My favorite post on this thread.

[pjme]

+ 1

Reading Aaron Copland's "What to listen for in music" and "Music and imagination" (bought in 1973 /secondhand shop) helped me a lot to listen well.

[Jo498]

My active music listening  started in late 80's when I was in high-school. In 1988 we got the British acid house explosion and that got me very interested. There actually WAS music in the World that gets me very excited! I was 17. In mid 90's when I was 25 I started to get interested of classical music because my friend who plays violin told me how Prokofiev has cool music. However before I discovered classical music I had thought classical music is simply too old to be enjoyed by modern people. Obsolete. Well, I was totally wrong. The point is I entered the music listening habid lind of AFTER teenager years. I totally skipped "heavy metal phase" or whatever it is 13 year olds listen to.

I had very little interest in music as a child. Sure, I remember Peter and the Wolf, the Carnival d'animaux and a few other pieces. My parents listened to a little bit of classical music, like the favorite opera choruses and similar stuff and I recall that I love th sailor's chorus from the Flying Dutchman. Popular music was even less important. I hardly recall anything before 6th or 7th grade; I vaguely remember that I listened to some pieces by Depeche Mode at a friend's around that time. I had no personal record player and no records as a young teenager. Even later I was so clueless about popular music that I didn't quite realize that Sam Cooke's song "Don't know much about history" that because of some movie? or for whatever reason became popular in the mid-1980s was 30 years old...

The first music I got really interested in at all was classical, when I was about 14 or 15. So this would in theory roughly fit the thesis from the article quoted further above. The main difference is that while I still like most music I liked then, I like music from a much broader spectrum now, and I think that the differences between e.g. Dvorak's "New World Symphony" I loved with 15 and music I like now as well but would probably have ignored as a teenager, like Dowland songs or Debussy Preludes are larger than between the 1980s and 1990s pop/charts music from the article.