5 Worst Composers Ever!!

[Florestan]

There is one characteristic of bad composers that has been neglected - their music is anonymous, they  have no recognizable idiosyncrasies. Therefore it is unlikely that you know whose music you are listening to. 

I'm sure Gurn can tell Gaetano Brunetti from Giovanni Battista Sammartini and Karl Ditters von Dittersdorf from Johan Georg Albrechtsberger. But I can't. So according to your criterion, they are bad composers for me and good composers for Gurn. Is this what you imply?

[schweitzeralan]

But does she actually write the music or lyrics?

Clearly, any such list requires mention of Harry Wayne Casey.

Ah Britey! The mental (musical) giant au fin du siecle.

[71 dB]

There is one characteristic of bad composers that has been neglected - their music is anonymous, they  have no recognizable idiosyncrasies. Therefore it is unlikely that you know whose music you are listening to.

Well, if you hear Beethoven's music 100 times and Krumpholtz's one time, which ones recognizable idiosyncrasies are you likely to learn to understand better?

I'm sure Gurn can tell Gaetano Brunetti from Giovanni Battista Sammartini and Karl Ditters von Dittersdorf from Johan Georg Albrechtsberger. But I can't. S

Karl Ditters von Dittersdorf is a mighty composer. Telling him from other composers isn't that hard if you know his music/style better.

[(poco) Sforzando]

Karl Ditters von Dittersdorf is a mighty composer. Telling him from other composers isn't that hard if you know his music/style better.

Yes, because his music is mighty weak.

[Dana]

Zing!

[Tapkaara]

Dittersdorf is a funny name. Anyone with a name that outrageous CANNOT be any good. Just ask E. Humperdinck or Carl Maria von Weber. I mean come on...Maria is a GIRL'S name!!!

[snyprrr]

Curtis Curtis-Smith

[snyprrr]

I'd go along with Richard Strauss (although I respect the fact that others here rate him highly)

I can't really appreciate Nicholas Maw's music

York Bowen has been a big disappointment after reading enthusiastic reviews

Stockhausen/Boulez/Berio

Gottschalk

These are really composers whose music I don't like - not necessarily 'worst composers ever'

What a thoughtful bunch!... Vandermolen's taste reigns supreme!!! ;Dhaha

"Composers I Can't Really Appreciate" would maybe have been a better thread!



Still, I haven't heard anyone defend Glazunov!

And lump me in with those who fall asleep to pre-Ives American Romantic music...Foote, et al. Add the Brits, too (Parry, Stanford, etc...)



My prediction is is the the worst composer EVER will appear on the next Kronos Quartet disc! And I have no idea who that will be.

[Tapkaara]

My prediction is is the the worst composer EVER will appear on the next Kronos Quartet disc! And I have no idea who that will be.

You can't mean GLASS, can you??? 

[71 dB]

Yes, because his music is mighty weak.

How much of his music have you actually heard? I know plenty of his symphonies, string quartets/quintets and the awesome oratorio Giob that Mozart admired. Dittersdorf was THE rival of Haydn and almost as great. If you call such a composer weak you don't keep Haydn in that high esteem either.

Dittersdorf is a funny name. Anyone with a name that outrageous CANNOT be any good. Just ask E. Humperdinck or Carl Maria von Weber. I mean come on...Maria is a GIRL'S name!!!

This is the most idiotic argument you can make about a composer. What if J. S. Bach's surname was Sucksdorff? Would you call Mass in B minor weak? Dittersdorf's original name is less funny; Carl Ditters but since he was one of the greatest composers of his time he was elevated to noble rank, receiving the additional surname "von Dittersdorf". Keep in mind that what we find funny today wasn't necessorily funny to the people of 17th century.

[Gabriel]

Dittersdorf is a funny name. Anyone with a name that outrageous CANNOT be any good. Just ask E. Humperdinck or Carl Maria von Weber. I mean come on...Maria is a GIRL'S name!!!

Maria is considered a girl's name, but it is normal in Christian countries to find it still nowadays as a name of men. In Spanish, for example, in a compound form, José María. (For another example, now in Italian, Cherubini's complete name was Maria Luigi Carlo Zenobio Salvatore Cherubini, if I remember correctly). And it is also the other way: in Spanish, a traditional compound name for girls is María José.

And if Dittersdorf is certainly not at the front line among classical composers, he was nonetheless a very competent one. 71 dB has recalled Giob, which has moments of really inspired music, worthy of being included in an anthology of his time. His 6 string quartets are not the non plus ultra of chamber music, but they have very enjoyable music in their nature of divertimenti.

[Dana]

What if J. S. Bach's surname was Sucksdorff?

I, for one, would point and laugh mightily.

[karlhenning]

Dittersdorf was THE rival of Haydn and almost as great. If you call such a composer weak you don't keep Haydn in that high esteem either.

Oh, a couple of errors in there.

[karlhenning]

What if J. S. Bach's surname was Sucksdorff?

I waited on someone the other day whose name was Pornsuk.  I didn't think to ask her if she intended to go in for music.

[DavidW]

This is the most idiotic argument you can make about a composer. What if J. S. Bach's surname was Sucksdorff? Would you call Mass in B minor weak? Dittersdorf's original name is less funny; Carl Ditters but since he was one of the greatest composers of his time he was elevated to noble rank, receiving the additional surname "von Dittersdorf". Keep in mind that what we find funny today wasn't necessorily funny to the people of 17th century.

Uh that's tongue-in-cheek, he's not being serious.

[DavidW]

Dittersdorf was THE rival of Haydn and almost as great.

And I thought they were friends.

[Gurn Blanston]

How much of his music have you actually heard? I know plenty of his symphonies, string quartets/quintets and the awesome oratorio Giob that Mozart admired. Dittersdorf was THE rival of Haydn and almost as great. If you call such a composer weak you don't keep Haydn in that high esteem either.

Actually, they weren't rivals, they were friends.  

This is the most idiotic argument you can make about a composer. What if J. S. Bach's surname was Sucksdorff? Would you call Mass in B minor weak? Dittersdorf's original name is less funny; Carl Ditters but since he was one of the greatest composers of his time he was elevated to noble rank, receiving the additional surname "von Dittersdorf". Keep in mind that what we find funny today wasn't necessorily funny to the people of 17th century.

Yes, all true. His patron elevated him to the nobility and they actually looked at a map of the area he came from and found a town called Dittersdorf and decided that was cool. So Ditters von Dittersdorf it became. If you notice, I always call him Ditters when I speak of him so that the little chuckle doesn't get planted in peoples' minds. You don't have to do that, just sayin'...


I can tell you the secret, 71dB, about why people don't care for music by Ditters and Vanhal and any number of other very good composers of the Viennese Classical Period. And why they prefer Haydn and Mozart for that matter. I really believe that in a good many cases, they don't know themselves why this is so. It actually does go beyond names, tradition and screwing with you. All of those things are great fun, of course, and people do like their fun, but the reason (IMO, of course) is that when Classical Style developed, is was based on forms that had a very regular rhythm and meter. It became almost a rule of composition that we would have 4 bar phrases, regular as clockwork. And so there were a goodly number of composers that stuck to that rule. Well, the downside of that rule is that before too long the music (by its regularity) begins to become a bit monotonous. And composers like Haydn and Mozart broke that rule with monotonous regularity, using like 9 and 7 instead of 8 and 8 for example. The result was an irregularity in rhythm and phrasing that keep the music more novel. Now, I know that the mere fact that there is some sort of explanation for this phenomenon, and that Ditters is punished by modern audiences for being too rigidly formal probably pisses you off, but I can't help it. Neither can he, and neither can the people who dislike his music after a while, even if they don't know why. But that's life. You and I can still listen and enjoy.



----------------
Listening to:
Goodman, The Hanover Band - Hob 01 071 Symphony in Bb 2nd mvmt - Adagio

[(poco) Sforzando]

I can tell you the secret, 71dB, about why people don't care for music by Ditters and Vanhal and any number of other very good composers of the Viennese Classical Period. And why they prefer Haydn and Mozart for that matter. I really believe that in a good many cases, they don't know themselves why this is so. It actually does go beyond names, tradition and screwing with you. All of those things are great fun, of course, and people do like their fun, but the reason (IMO, of course) is that when Classical Style developed, is was based on forms that had a very regular rhythm and meter. It became almost a rule of composition that we would have 4 bar phrases, regular as clockwork. And so there were a goodly number of composers that stuck to that rule. Well, the downside of that rule is that before too long the music (by its regularity) begins to become a bit monotonous. And composers like Haydn and Mozart broke that rule with monotonous regularity, using like 9 and 7 instead of 8 and 8 for example. The result was an irregularity in rhythm and phrasing that keep the music more novel. Now, I know that the mere fact that there is some sort of explanation for this phenomenon, and that Ditters is punished by modern audiences for being too rigidly formal probably pisses you off, but I can't help it. Neither can he, and neither can the people who dislike his music after a while, even if they don't know why. But that's life. You and I can still listen and enjoy.

The case against Dittersdorf is made briefly but very well by Edward Lowinsky in his valuable article "On Mozart's Rhythm," where he argues that Dittersdorf tends towards highly regular and reptitious phrase structures; and implicitly by Charles Rosen in "The Classical Style," where he argues that only Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven fully grasped the potential of the classical language. Mr. Gurn seems to argue that Mozart and Haydn were trying to be more "novel," where I would rather say they exploit the classical language with far greater imagination, sensitivity, and skill. In other words, they were more talented.

I see nothing wrong with dipping into Dittersdorf once in a while, and I spent some time today with his 5th quartet in Eb, supposedly one of his most popular works. Dittersdorf actually starts off with a very promising 2-bar idea, which he repeats in sequence. But then his next 4 bars get stalled, especially in bars 7-8 with the weak held whole notes and the cello arpeggiation. And then all he can think to do is literal repetition!

Again, promising ideas surface, such as the dip into G minor for the transitional passage to Bb. But then once he gets there, he gets bogged down in clumsy repeated sequences. It's a case of someone who has some good ideas, but lacks the imagination to see what to do with them. Worse yet is the return of the main material following the development. Dittersdorf here adopts a trick that some lazier and less inventive composers made use of - that is, starting his recapitulation in the subdominant (Ab) so that all he has to do is transpose all the material for it to resolve in the tonic. And this is what he does! Mozart on the other hand almost always (K. 545 is the only exception I know) recapitulates in the tonic, and this forces him to vary and develop the original material as it is being reprised. (Tovey said of an attempt to finish a Mozart fragment - I paraphrase: "the composer writes a very convincing Mozartean development, but he has no idea whatever how to compose a Mozartean recapitulation.")

Dittersdorf's coda for the first movement is quite decent, his middle movement is adequate, and his finale a disaster despite a striking "Gypsy-like" passage that emerges twice if the marked repeat is taken. Part of the problem especially in the finale is contrapuntal: the first violin does almost all the work and there is no interplay among the instruments as distinguishes the quartets of the three greatest masters. Just turn to a masterly movement like the 3rd from LvB's op. 130 to see the difference - an enchanted andante where all four players are absolutely equal and contribute equally to the discussion.

That said, the quartets I've looked at strike me as superior to wretched stuff like the Symphonies on Ovid's Metamorphoses.

http://imslp.info/files/imglnks/usimg/f/f1/IMSLP05906-Dittersdorf_String_Quartet_No.5_in_E_Flat.pdf

[Gurn Blanston]

Poco,
Very interesting analysis. Thanks for that.

I wasn't saying that they were trying to be novel, I was saying that their methods present their musical ideas in a more novel way for the listener so that he doesn't get bored so easily with the regularity of rhythm and phrasing. A subtle difference, perhaps, but important to me.   Just a thought along those lines however. Maybe they got bored with regularity too and wanted to add drama and excitement to their music. That, in fact, would be novelty.



----------------
Listening to:
Philharmonia Hungarica \ Dorati - Hob 09 16 #21 Minuet in Eb for Orchestra

[karlhenning]

The case against Dittersdorf is made briefly but very well by Edward Lowinsky in his valuable article "On Mozart's Rhythm," where he argues that Dittersdorf tends towards highly regular and reptitious phrase structures; and implicitly by Charles Rosen in "The Classical Style," where he argues that only Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven fully grasped the potential of the classical language. Mr. Gurn seems to argue that Mozart and Haydn were trying to be more "novel," where I would rather say they exploit the classical language with far greater imagination, sensitivity, and skill. In other words, they were more talented.

I see nothing wrong with dipping into Dittersdorf once in a while, and I spent some time today with his 5th quartet in Eb, supposedly one of his most popular works. Dittersdorf actually starts off with a very promising 2-bar idea, which he repeats in sequence. But then his next 4 bars get stalled, especially in bars 7-8 with the weak held whole notes and the cello arpeggiation. And then all he can think to do is literal repetition!

Again, promising ideas surface, such as the dip into G minor for the transitional passage to Bb. But then once he gets there, he gets bogged down in clumsy repeated sequences. It's a case of someone who has some good ideas, but lacks the imagination to see what to do with them. Worse yet is the return of the main material following the development. Dittersdorf here adopts a trick that some lazier and less inventive composers made use of - that is, starting his recapitulation in the subdominant (Ab) so that all he has to do is transpose all the material for it to resolve in the tonic. And this is what he does! Mozart on the other hand almost always (K. 545 is the only exception I know) recapitulates in the tonic, and this forces him to vary and develop the original material as it is being reprised. (Tovey said of an attempt to finish a Mozart fragment - I paraphrase: "the composer writes a very convincing Mozartean development, but he has no idea whatever how to compose a Mozartean recapitulation.")

Dittersdorf's coda for the first movement is quite decent, his middle movement is adequate, and his finale a disaster despite a striking "Gypsy-like" passage that emerges twice if the marked repeat is taken. Part of the problem especially in the finale is contrapuntal: the first violin does almost all the work and there is no interplay among the instruments as distinguishes the quartets of the three greatest masters. Just turn to a masterly movement like the 3rd from LvB's op. 130 to see the difference - an enchanted andante where all four players are absolutely equal and contribute equally to the discussion.

That said, the quartets I've looked at strike me as superior to wretched stuff like the Symphonies on Ovid's Metamorphoses.

http://imslp.info/files/imglnks/usimg/f/f1/IMSLP05906-Dittersdorf_String_Quartet_No.5_in_E_Flat.pdf

Molto bene.