Topic: Quiz.

[ritter]

He wrote solo cello suites

Max Reger...

[Ken B]

Max Reger?

Oh, that's the third one. I forgot to inform Biffo about it, sorry. 

Ye

[Christo]

Currently, two I think.

Even a short third one, offered when you declined:

That said, which contemporary composer wrote a symphony in which these little creatures are dancing on war music? Name both. 

[North Star]

Even a short third one, offered when you declined:

That's Kalevi Aho's 'Insect Symphony', drawing on material from his opera based on Karel Čapek's Pictures from the Insects' Life. The little creatures are ants.

I guess we don't need more questions at the moment...

[JBS]

We seem to have three active questions at the moment: Florestan's, San Antone's, and Ken's.

I have no idea of the answers to any of the three.

[listener]

A major publication named me "the worst composer", but that is nonsense since I never lived in Darmstadt. I admired Bach and Mozart...

Bortkiewicz     (referring to the Margaret Mitchell recording on (US) Decca Lp many years ago of the heavily cut piano concerto and Indian Fantasy?)  in High Fidelity or the other magazine at the time (c.1962)

[Ken B]

I thought someone had answered my question correctly with Haydn (despite Florestan's complaints).   

Can you speak up? Hard to hear. 

[JBS]

I thought someone had answered my question correctly with Haydn (despite Florestan's complaints).   

So that was the answer?  I was also thrown off by the "lack of innate talent", which I would dispute.

Haydn's parents had noticed that their son was musically gifted and knew that in Rohrau he would have no chance to obtain serious musical training. It was for this reason that, around the time Haydn turned six, they accepted a proposal from their relative Johann Matthias Frankh, the schoolmaster and choirmaster in Hainburg, that Haydn be apprenticed to Frankh in his home to train as a musician. Haydn therefore went off with Frankh to Hainburg and he never again lived with his parents.

[Wikipedia]
We put some of that down to normal parental pride, but he had enough signs of talent at age six to attract Frankh's interest.

[Florestan]

I was thinking that compared to Mozart, Haydn's accomplishments were the result of disciplined work.  Of course he was very talented - but his work ethic is what I think of as exemplary more so than the kind of spectacular prodigious talent of Mozart.

And yet in your original post you wrote this:

This composer was not spectacularly gifted nor a prodigy but he possessed a work ethic that made up for any lack of innate talent.

Haydn and "lack of innate talent" are hardly on the same page --- at least in my book. As for "not spectacularly gifted", I'd say that a guy whose catalogue amounts to hundreds of works, in every genre available to him, of which at least several dozens were big hits then and have remained so until this very day doesn't fit in that either. One can disciplinedly work 12 hours a day, seven hours a week, 52 weeks a year, but without "innate talent" and "spectacular gifts" one can't produce half quarter of Haydn's masterpieces.

[DaveF]

A major publication named me "the worst composer", but that is nonsense since I never lived in Darmstadt. I admired Bach and Mozart...

http://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php/topic,26113.0.html ?

[Florestan]

Blah, blah, blah ...  And yet, despite all of this someone guessed the correct answer. Get over it.

As far as I'm concerned, Haydn is emphatically not the right answer for "lack of innate talent", but if it makes you and Ken feel smart, be my guests.

[Gurn Blanston]

I thought someone had answered my question correctly with Haydn (despite Florestan's complaints).   

Nice to start the day with a good laugh, makes things go better.

Even the canard about him not being a fine musician could/should be questioned. I would submit that the keyboard, for example, which wasn't his best instrument, he could play better than Schubert, who couldn't even play a great many of the works he wrote (thus he wrote simplified versions for himself).

Unless you are willing to concede that composition is not a talent, I would submit that all the hard work in the world can't replace genius. Every single composer who was contemporary with and for the following century readily admitted that Haydn was the most talented composer of the Age.

And hell, I'm not even debating this, just stating the obvious stuff. Yes, he was a hard worker. But he also had a full and rich life when NOT working.

OK, I'm awake now...

[Florestan]

Unless you are willing to concede that composition is not a talent, I would submit that all the hard work in the world can't replace genius. Every single composer who was contemporary with and for the following century readily admitted that Haydn was the most talented composer of the Age.

And hell, I'm not even debating this, just stating the obvious stuff.

Thank you very much for this, Gurn. I agree 150 %.

[Florestan]

Here - solve this one

Lame.

[Florestan]

Had I not hidden the identity with a little misdirect, the answer would have been so obvious as to not pose any challenge at all. 

Next time I'll post a quiz about Brahms and give as hint that the composer had no beard in his heydays. A little misdirect, you know. 

"lighten up".  It's supposed to be a game ... 

Okay, I lightened up. The answer to your last quiz is the author of one of the best symphonies you gratuitously dislike. Now, do you have a solution for my quiz? 

[Ken B]

http://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php/topic,26113.0.html ?

Not quite a MAJOR publication. 

The Rough Guide named Reger the Worst Composer

[Ken B]

As far as I'm concerned, Haydn is emphatically not the right answer for "lack of innate talent", but if it makes you and Ken feel smart, be my guests.

Oh Andrei. I don’t need San Antone to make me feel smart. I just need you!   

[Florestan]

Oh Andrei. I don’t need San Antone to make me feel smart. I just need you!   

I aim to please, so go on, solve my quiz.   

(looks like I just wrote a two line poem rhyming please with quiz; you might make me feel smart as well...  )

[Biffo]

I aim to please, so go on, solve my quiz.   

(looks like I just wrote a two line poem rhyming please with quiz; you might make me feel smart as well...  )

I take it we are still looking for the child prodigy pianist etc?

[Florestan]

I take it we are still looking for the child prodigy pianist etc?

Yes. This is what his teacher said about him:

My God! What a child! Nobody has ever understood me as this child has...It is not imitation, it is the same sentiment, an instinct that makes him play without thinking as if it could not have been any other way. He plays almost all my compositions without having heard me [play them], without being shown the smallest thing - not exactly like me [because he has his own cachet], but certainly not less well