Your Top 10 Favorite Composers

[Mister Sharpe]

Delius fans and wanna-be's, esp. don't wanna be's - check out Tasmin Little's documentary https://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=0RocX8MvqcE

[André]

Just so long as the first was not . . . premature.   0:)

Delius was disinterred from his burial place in France and his remains transported to England to be reburied on english soil after his wife's death in 1935. It was a very peculiar event, as it took place privately at night, with lanterns, not a word being spoken. Almost a Harry Potter novel type of thing.

[Karl Henning]

Delius was disinterred from his burial place in France and his remains transported to England to be reburied on english soil after his wife's death in 1935. It was a very peculiar event, as it took place privately at night, with lanterns, not a word being spoken. Almost a Harry Potter novel type of thing.

Thanks.  I had envisioned a repatriation from Florida, but that is mostly because my sense of his biography is less than rudimentary.

[Mister Sharpe]

Thanks.  I had envisioned a repatriation from Florida, but that is mostly because my sense of his biography is less than rudimentary.

That's "Delius: the Early Years." His Dad bought him an orange grove in FL, but he proved more interested in music and Floridians (female) than in fruit farming...

[Ken B]

My list turns over a whole lot less than MI's does!

Pfft. My tires turn over a whole lot less that MI's lists too.

[André]

I was going to write that Delius was an apatride, but then had second thoughts about the translability of the word. Apparently it does not exist in English. The web translator's "stateless" is quite tasteless IMHO. But I'm sure you get the meaning  .

Briefly: Delius was born in England of German émigrés. The Delius household's spoken language was German. The composer changed his name from "Fritz" (as per his official papers) to Frederick only when his father died in 1902. When he was a very young man he tried every way and place to escape the paternal influence: Florida and Virginia, Norway, Germany, France. He would return to England only when summoned, and stopped that when his father died. His music was much played in Germany until WWI. He loathed the german music system ("scales, arpeggios, Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner: throw that away", he said to the young Eric Fenby. He lived the last 30 or so years of his life in France. It's only through the tireless advocacy of Thomas Beecham (and him alone) that his music came to be played and heard in England.

My hunch is that Delius is as un-English as could be for someone who happened to be born there. Apatride is a legal, technical term that does not apply here, as he was officially an English citizen. In French we also use it to describe someone whose roots cannot be determined with any surety, and who does not want a label pinned to him (or her).

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

I'm still deciding exactly what my list will be, I get pedantic about these sorts of things.

I know without a doubt what my consistent favourite/(most important to me) composers are but then it's trying to not miss out other important ones 

I don't think there's any need to have these set in stone. I have about 50 composers who are absolute favourites before anyone else and even that list changes from time to time when I get really into something different.

[vandermolen]

Hi, Jeffrey!  Find all about Delius (and I mean ALL) in this indispensible 88 minute BBC documentary:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uTVhBhPzPQA

Arranged very loosely in a chronological order (starting bafflingly with his second burial in 1935), it contains many fantastic musical excerpts (live, not from discs) and made-for-the-film interviews with conductors Andrew Davis, Mark Elder, Bo Holten, baritone Thomas Hamson, violinist Philippe Graffin, Delius biographer Jerome Rossi as well as period interviews with Beecham.

Truly one of the most probing and fascinating musical documentaries ever made.

And of course, the  provocative, extraordinarily well acted 1968 Ken Russell biopic is a must: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Vyy2SagDwcY

But start with the BBC film. And then there is GMG's own Delius thread too ! 

Andre! Thank you very much. I may well have been over-influenced by VW's negative assessment of Delius ('like a Curate improvising'). VW didn't always get it right - he was quite negative, for example, about the later work of Frank Bridge, whom I consider to be a very great composer. I shall need to consider Delius afresh starting with the documentaries you suggest.   

[vandermolen]

Thank you, Jeffrey. You remind me that I quite forgot Delius - i'm such a fickle listener,  esp. now with Malipiero being all the rage chez moi.  (might I recommend Delius' VC?  https://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=R5ylRLJQI4c my favorite performance of it.) BTW, I love his Requiem, too.

Thanks Ghost Sonata (sorry, don't know your real name). Delius's Piano Concerto, in its various manifestations, is a favourite of mine and although I rarely listen to Delius I find the very end of his Requiem incredibly moving.

[vandermolen]

I was going to write that Delius was an apatride, but then had second thoughts about the translability of the word. Apparently it does not exist in English. The web translator's "stateless" is quite tasteless IMHO. But I'm sure you get the meaning  .

Briefly: Delius was born in England of German émigrés. The Delius household's spoken language was German. The composer changed his name from "Fritz" (as per his official papers) to Frederick only when his father died in 1902. When he was a very young man he tried every way and place to escape the paternal influence: Florida and Virginia, Norway, Germany, France. He would return to England only when summoned, and stopped that when his father died. His music was much played in Germany until WWI. He loathed the german music system ("scales, arpeggios, Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner: throw that away", he said to the young Eric Fenby. He lived the last 30 or so years of his life in France. It's only through the tireless advocacy of Thomas Beecham (and him alone) that his music came to be played and heard in England.

My hunch is that Delius is as un-English as could be for someone who happened to be born there. Apatride is a legal, technical term that does not apply here, as he was officially an English citizen. In French we also use it to describe someone whose roots cannot be determined with any surety, and who does not want a label pinned to him (or her).

Your hunch is v interesting and I suspect v true.

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

There's way too much Sorabji in your list!

[EigenUser]

Hmmmm...

1. Bela Bartok
2. Maurice Ravel
3. Gyorgy Ligeti
4. Olivier Messiaen
5. Joseph Haydn
6. Ludwig van Beethoven
7. Morton Feldman
8. Alexander Scriabin
9. George Gershwin
10. Claude Debussy

[Ken B]

Hmmmm...

1. Bela Bartok
2. Maurice Ravel
3. Gyorgy Ligeti
4. Olivier Messiaen
5. Joseph Haydn
6. Ludwig van Beethoven
7. Morton Feldman
8. Alexander Scriabin
9. George Gershwin
10. Claude Debussy

Sic transit gloria Ockeghem.

[nathanb]

Ones that won't change:

Xenakis (#1)
Bartok
Messiaen
Webern
Kagel

The rest I'm struggling with:
Mahler
Varese (I'm a Vareseian but I don't listen to him every week)
Ives
Scelsi
Kate Soper
Schoenberg
Stockhausen (one of the most incredible composers but I still haven't gotten familiar with a large chunk of his work)
Wagner
Brahms
Stravinsky (he introduced me initially to classical but he doesn't generally interest me)
Ligeti
JS Bach
Palestrina
Perotin
Schnittke
Korndorf
Scriabin
Sorabji
Boulez
Liszt
Nancarrow
Zappa
Zorn
Rautavaara
Maja Osojnik
Telemann
Faure
Haas
Grisey
(Lou) Harrison
Murail
Kurtág
Riley
Goldsmith

And I'm still forgetting stuff 

I could certainly think of some substitutions I would make

[Sergeant Rock]

Hi, Jeffrey!  Find all about Delius (and I mean ALL) in this indispensible 88 minute BBC documentary:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uTVhBhPzPQA

Arranged very loosely in a chronological order (starting bafflingly with his second burial in 1935), it contains many fantastic musical excerpts (live, not from discs) and made-for-the-film interviews with conductors Andrew Davis, Mark Elder, Bo Holten, baritone Thomas Hamson, violinist Philippe Graffin, Delius biographer Jerome Rossi as well as period interviews with Beecham.

Truly one of the most probing and fascinating musical documentaries ever made.

Thank you for that link. It rekindled my interest in the composer.

Sarge

[Karl Henning]

Thank you for that link. It rekindled my interest in the composer.

Sarge

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

[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.