All other composers are inferior to Beethoven

[karlhenning]

Funny but true, and you contradicted not a word of it.

A. It is funny.

B.  It's balderdash, and your repeating your eccentric mantras doesn't make them true.

C.  No, I did not trouble to contradict it.  One doesn't trouble to contradict balderdash.  One has better things to do with one's time.

[karlhenning]

I see that the corkster hasn't changed his mode of operation.  He holds up Beethoven and Handel as the best in the business while dumping on Mozart and Bach to further elevate his favorite two composers.  Very unbecoming but nothing unexpected from the corkster.

Corkster didn't start this topic Don! I'm merely an innocent bystander.

First day with the new reading comprehension skillset, Rod?  The fact that you didn't start this topic (which is a diverting jeu d'esprit from our esteemed MN Dave) is one thing;  the fact that you have taken it as yet another occasion to bring in Handel as an irrelevancy here, and to dump on Mozart, is another.  "Innocent bystander"!  You're a one-man bundle of unalloyed fatuity, Rod.

[Don]

Corkster didn't start this topic Don! I'm merely an innocent bystander.

Don't be so grumpy, it's holiday time soon!

I guess that the holiday season remains fair game for your "dumping on composers" regimen.  But I suppose that God forgives you even though she's a Bach and Mozart enthusiast.

[jochanaan]

Oh, blast!  I was having fun joking about the love/hate relationship Classical Musicdom has with Beethoven, and then you guys had to go all serious!

I don't need to prove my love for Beethoven by dissing any other composer, certainly not Fanny Mendelssohn, whose Piano Trio, Opus 11, is as masterful as anything her brother ever wrote.  (I don't know her lieder, but I'll happily accept the judgment of others who say they're wonderful. )  Beethoven is great, Bach is great, Handel and the Haydn brothers and Mozart and--we're inundated with great composers!  That's why GMG exists.

[BachQ]

I don't need to prove my love for Beethoven by dissing any other composer, certainly not Fanny Mendelssohn, whose Piano Trio, Opus 11, is as masterful as anything her brother ever wrote.  (I don't know her lieder, but I'll happily accept the judgment of others who say they're wonderful. )  Beethoven is great, Bach is great, Handel and the Haydn brothers and Mozart and--we're inundated with great composers!  That's why GMG exists.

We accept all that.

All we ask in return is that you accept that Beethoven is the greatest.  Fair enough?

[karlhenning]

It seems so little to ask.

Let me check with paulb . . . .

[Don]

I don't need to prove my love for Beethoven by dissing any other composer, certainly not Fanny Mendelssohn, whose Piano Trio, Opus 11, is as masterful as anything her brother ever wrote.  (I don't know her lieder, but I'll happily accept the judgment of others who say they're wonderful. )  Beethoven is great, Bach is great, Handel and the Haydn brothers and Mozart and--we're inundated with great composers!  That's why GMG exists.

Well said, and I wish that certain other board members would adopt your view.

[Haffner]

There are many whom will set a rabid Vibra-Slap on me for writing this, but I'll take Mahler's 6th and 9th symphonies any day over any LvB Symphony except the 9th.

[BachQ]

Well said, and I wish that certain other board members would adopt your view.

........ without naming names ........

[max]

We'll always need the BIG guys to make comparisons as to who's the biggest but I think, even that may be seasonal.

I personally believe that Vivaldi is THE GREATEST in spring, summer, autumn and winter.

[Ten thumbs]

There are many whom will set a rabid Vibra-Slap on me for writing this, but I'll take Mahler's 6th and 9th symphonies any day over any LvB Symphony except the 9th.

Mahler's symphonies are wonderful but his compositions do not range across many genres, not in volume anyway. Maybe this was a product of the era in which he lived. I do not know. Times change. Beethoven couldn't produce over a hundred symphonies and the whole concept of a symphony has had to change today.

[Cato]

You did ask me to issue the cease and desist order to Tututulu, didn't you? 

 

Do we dare say Toodle-loo to Tututulu???   

[71 dB]

I have seen a few Mozart operas live and thought the music very boring for the most part, barely a memorable tune in any of it, especially to ears used to Handel's great epics which all have a feast of 'hits'.

I agree about the (surprising) weakness of Mozart's operas but Mozart is still greater composer than Beethoven imo. Händel is above both.

[Josquin des Prez]

Oh, blast!  I was having fun joking about the love/hate relationship Classical Musicdom has with Beethoven, and then you guys had to go all serious!

Well, at least i tried to kept a modicum of mirth in the form of personal self parody. While i'm in no way less bigoted then our other esteemed philistines i at least promise to avoid being as boorish as they all the time. Nobody likes broken records.

[Josquin des Prez]

I'd listen to Handel more if those damn HIPsters weren't so determined to bring out all the dreadful excesses of 18th century liberalism, like, for instance, the tendency to blur the line from what is male and what is female, a common trend among libertine societies. God bless the 19th century for bringing that to an end. Gives me hope for the future of our own degenerate society. 

[Haffner]

Listening to the Messiah tends to make me doubt the topic's validity. But then, so did listening to Mozart's C minor Piano Concerto yesterday.

[12tone.]

So many other composers were as good if not better.  By that I mean their music soared more effortlessly and was more grounded and yearning than Beethoven's music.  Was Beethoven a great composer?  Yes.  Were there other great composers?  Yes.

Here's a list of some other great pieces full of emotion and dynamics...moreso than anything I hear in Beethoven, Shubert, etc. of that era.


R. Strauss: An Alpine Symphony
Rachmaninoff: Piano Concertos, Prelude in C sharp minor Op.3, No.2
Pretty much any piano piece by Medtner
Mahler symphonies
Bruckner symphonies

Need more?

Enough about Beethoven already.  It's making me sick.

[Bonehelm]

I am also sick of these "this composer is better than that composer, no?'' threads. Art can only be measured objectively, one's favourite piece could be another's nightmare. One's desert island disc could be another's P.O.S. So you can't say this is superior than that just because you personally like A more than B.




























With that said, though, Elgar is the worst composer next to Dittersdorf. Too vibrationally simple.

[Josquin des Prez]

Art can only be measured objectively

Finally somebody who sees the truth.

[karlhenning]

So you can't say this is superior than that just because you personally like A more than B.

Let's try this out.

How do we objectively compare the valuation of the following pairs of musical works?--

1.A. Bach St Matthew Passion
1.B. Brahms German Requiem

2.A. Beethoven Symphony No. 7
2.B. Beethoven Symphony No. 8

3.A. Chopin Prelude in E Minor, Opus 28 No. 4
3.B. Tallis, Spem in alium

4.A. Brahms Double Concerto for Violin and Cello in A Minor, Opus 102
4.B. Nielsen Maskarade