Your no. 2 composer

[DavidW]

... or perhaps Northstar.  I would like to see Greg's top 25.  I imagine it is Xenakis Xenakis Xenakis...   It's a shame how many composers like Xenakis, Gorecki, Ravel, Debussy, Faure etc just barely missed my list.

[Philoctetes]

J.S. Bach

[TheGSMoeller]

This is tougher than choosing your #1 

I would have to give that honor to Benjamin Britten, he a grown to become one of my most listened to composers and I, at times, have considered him to be my favorite. Britten is the composer who increased my interest in choral music, pieces such as Ceremony of Carols, Rejoice in the Lamb and Canticle II: Abraham and Issac i feel cannot be equalled.

[Leon]

... or perhaps Northstar.  I would like to see Greg's top 25.  I imagine it is Xenakis Xenakis Xenakis...   It's a shame how many composers like Xenakis, Gorecki, Ravel, Debussy, Faure etc just barely missed my list.

The French composers are well represented on my list, but unfortunately there is not enough room for many 20th C. composers such as Gorecki, Schnittke, Xenakis.  I am an Early Music buff, so I included maybe a half dozen of those since, based on my listening habits, they are more favored than most modern composers.

My #3 is my avatar.   

Beethoven and Mozart fill out the top 5 spots, with Mozart getting the edge.  I love Beethoven, but, as his music becomes more "Romantic" he begins to drop behind Mozart and Haydn, my main man.

[DavidW]

My #3 is my avatar.   

I should have guessed!   Schoenberg is on my top 25.

[Marc]

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

[Karl Henning]

 Quote from: DavidW on Today at 09:40:17 AM

I should have guessed!   Schoenberg is on my top 25.

 
Ditto!

[Elgarian]

Well, well. Only now, faced with choosing a number 2, do I clearly recognise that there is no number 2, because my choice of number one (Elgar) was entirely misleading. It wasn't a number one at all in the ordinary sense - that is a most favourite among several (or many) favourite composers. It was a choice of one unique and complicated kind of relationship out of a set of completely different relationships. However much I've come to admire Mozart, or Wagner, or Haydn, or Puccini, or Sibelius, or Vaughan Williams, or Handel, Elgar is the musical love of my life. It's like comparing how I feel about my wife with how I feel about my friends. It's not a difference that can be expressed in terms of degrees of intensity, but only as a difference in kind.

So although on the face of it, it goes like this:
1. Elgar
2. Wagner,

that's misleading, and it's really more like this:

[Elgar over here in a separate class of his own.] And then, of the others:                                        1. Wagner
                                                                                                                                                           2. Mozart

And I fear that will play havoc with the sophisticated statistical analysis that Karl is doubtless going to carry out on our results.

Life, eh? It baffles us to the end.

[Karl Henning]

Play havoc! At least it's not a bagpipe! : )

[Elgarian]

Play havoc! At least it's not a bagpipe! : )

Ah, Elgar's Bagpipe Concerto, played on period instruments. It doesn't get better than that.

[Karl Henning]

It's an image.

[Conor71]

I choose Shostakovich for this one

[Mirror Image]

I choose Shostakovich for this one

Excellent choice!

[ibanezmonster]

... or perhaps Northstar.  I would like to see Greg's top 25.  I imagine it is Xenakis Xenakis Xenakis...   It's a shame how many composers like Xenakis, Gorecki, Ravel, Debussy, Faure etc just barely missed my list.

Interesting, all this stuff about me and Xenakis, when I barely listen to him any more. 
He was ranked #6 on my list, I think.

1. Mahler
2. Prokofiev
3. Brahms
4. Bruckner
5. Shostakovich
6. Xenakis etc.

I did a list on facebook with Andy, and he actually found my list interesting... I have a saved text file of my favorite works, but not my favorite composers. Would have been nice to copy and paste on the top 25 thread. 

[Ten thumbs]

I can now put here the composer whose works I would retain beyond all others. This is an entirely personal choice and has nothing to do with stature in the musical world. I would keep Fanny Hensel for the depth of emotion in her piano works, for her lieder, which Felix justly called the most beautiful that mankind could make and, as a bonus, for some very fine chamber and vocal music.

[Leo K.]

Charles Ives (1874-1954).

I remember discovering Ives during my senior year in High School. I had checked out a Leonard Bernstein record that featured four different lectures on composers, Ives being the last lecture. I'll never forget the sound of Ives' Fourth of July (from his Holiday's Symphony) blaring from my turntable in the middle of the night as I lay in bed, eyes wide open. Thus began an obsession that lasted for years (and is still with me!).

Scholar Maynard Solomon, perhaps on a lead from Eliot Carter, started a fascinating discussion regarding the possibility Ives purposely added dissonance onto his youthful works in order to be more 'modern' and spite the establishment.  I tend towards this point of view these days, but whatever Ives did, it's the end result that counts. In the end, Ives's strong sense of the mystery of existance, and his transcendental freedom between the physical and spiritual conditions of nature is what is heard most in his music.

One of the happiest moments of my life was finally tracking down the score to his Piano Sonata No. 2, Concord, Mass., 1840-1860.  Some nice lady in a piano store ordered me the score, which cost around 20 bucks in 1989.  I used to pour over that thing during camping trips, following along to John Kirkpatrick's classic perfromance from 1968 (Columbia MS 7192, out of print LP).

The Concord Sonata is interesting in that it was originally a Piano Concerto, also known as the Emerson Overture (based on the great transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson). The piano is portrayed as Emerson, and the orchestra is the congregation (or The Mass culture of America) reacting to Emerson's edgy, transcendental discourse. Great (very dissonant and wild) music and great concept!

Like most of Ives's music, this piece is a 'happening' each time it is performed, like performance art, or like Jazz.  However, the music seems very occupied over the concept of time, or at least thats how I've heard it.  And I'm not just talking about the unique technical aspects he used, such as avoiding using time signatures for most of the Concord Sonata and etc.  Ives was obsessed with the past...America's past as well as his own, especially his own childhood.  I strongly feel that Ives is the forefather of 'conceptual' art. 

My favorite recording of the 2nd is the Harold Faberman account, but after listening to this and the Schermerhorn (on Naxos) I have to admit that Schermerhorn is really excellant and is winning me over with each new listen. I'm finally getting used to the corrected tempos in the new criticial edition.

The 1st and 2nd Symphonies are works I can put on causually as well as listen seriously with full attention. The 3rd is almost like that as well, but the 4th demands my full attention, rightly so. What I really like about the 2nd is it's effortless dance with the themes...the tunes develop and progress very naturally, humorously and seriously as well. In any given listening situation, I can listen just to the surface, or listen at a deep level and find a profound discourse goin on, connected to Ives's own personal nostalgia, but also connected to a more universal "Americana" that I definitely feel in sympathy with.

The 2nd is so musically evocative of the soil and culture from which it arose in an apparently more "simple" manner than the mature works, and it also evokes nature as well...I often think of thunder-filled clouds in the distance during the 1st movement. Now when I say "simple" I don't mean to imply the 2nd is not sophisticated, rather, I mean to suggest "simple" from the viewpoint of my ears upon hearing the "surface" of the music. Every year I appreciate more what Ives accomplished as a youthful composer.  The 1st String Quartet is another great early work.

I recently bought the new critical edition score of the 2nd Symphony (edited by Jonathan Elkus), which is a real wonderful edition, beautifully put together with excellant commentary and an essay by the editor. The 2nd Symphony is fast becoming my favorite Ives symphonic work. I recently read the article "Quotation and Paraphrase in Ives's Second Symphony" by J. Peter Burkholder, and was taken aback with memories of my own grandfather playing many of these old tunes and hymns on his violin when I was young...we used to play Turkey In the Straw and Old Black Joe and etc. 

[Karl Henning]

Charles Ives (1874-1954).

I remember discovering Ives during my senior year in High School. I had checked out a Leonard Bernstein record that featured four different lectures on composers, Ives being the last lecture. I'll never forget the sound of Ives' Fourth of July (from his Holiday's Symphony) blaring from my turntable in the middle of the night as I lay in bed, eyes wide open. Thus began an obsession that lasted for years (and is still with me!).

Scholar Maynard Solomon, perhaps on a lead from Eliot Carter, started a fascinating discussion regarding the possibility Ives purposely added dissonance onto his youthful works in order to be more 'modern' and spite the establishment.  I tend towards this point of view these days, but whatever Ives did, it's the end result that counts. In the end, Ives's strong sense of the mystery of existance, and his transcendental freedom between the physical and spiritual conditions of nature is what is heard most in his music.

One of the happiest moments of my life was finally tracking down the score to his Piano Sonata No. 2, Concord, Mass., 1840-1860.  Some nice lady in a piano store ordered me the score, which cost around 20 bucks in 1989.  I used to pour over that thing during camping trips, following along to John Kirkpatrick's classic perfromance from 1968 (Columbia MS 7192, out of print LP).

The Concord Sonata is interesting in that it was originally a Piano Concerto, also known as the Emerson Overture (based on the great transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson). The piano is portrayed as Emerson, and the orchestra is the congregation (or The Mass culture of America) reacting to Emerson's edgy, transcendental discourse. Great (very dissonant and wild) music and great concept!

Like most of Ives's music, this piece is a 'happening' each time it is performed, like performance art, or like Jazz.  However, the music seems very occupied over the concept of time, or at least thats how I've heard it.  And I'm not just talking about the unique technical aspects he used, such as avoiding using time signatures for most of the Concord Sonata and etc.  Ives was obsessed with the past...America's past as well as his own, especially his own childhood.  I strongly feel that Ives is the forefather of 'conceptual' art. 

My favorite recording of the 2nd is the Harold Faberman account, but after listening to this and the Schermerhorn (on Naxos) I have to admit that Schermerhorn is really excellant and is winning me over with each new listen. I'm finally getting used to the corrected tempos in the new criticial edition.

The 1st and 2nd Symphonies are works I can put on causually as well as listen seriously with full attention. The 3rd is almost like that as well, but the 4th demands my full attention, rightly so. What I really like about the 2nd is it's effortless dance with the themes...the tunes develop and progress very naturally, humorously and seriously as well. In any given listening situation, I can listen just to the surface, or listen at a deep level and find a profound discourse goin on, connected to Ives's own personal nostalgia, but also connected to a more universal "Americana" that I definitely feel in sympathy with.

The 2nd is so musically evocative of the soil and culture from which it arose in an apparently more "simple" manner than the mature works, and it also evokes nature as well...I often think of thunder-filled clouds in the distance during the 1st movement. Now when I say "simple" I don't mean to imply the 2nd is not sophisticated, rather, I mean to suggest "simple" from the viewpoint of my ears upon hearing the "surface" of the music. Every year I appreciate more what Ives accomplished as a youthful composer.  The 1st String Quartet is another great early work.

I recently bought the new critical edition score of the 2nd Symphony (edited by Jonathan Elkus), which is a real wonderful edition, beautifully put together with excellant commentary and an essay by the editor. The 2nd Symphony is fast becoming my favorite Ives symphonic work. I recently read the article "Quotation and Paraphrase in Ives's Second Symphony" by J. Peter Burkholder, and was taken aback with memories of my own grandfather playing many of these old tunes and hymns on his violin when I was young...we used to play Turkey In the Straw and Old Black Joe and etc. 

Thanks for this post, Leo. I've had an at times complicated relationship with the earlier Southern New England composer; but recent acquisitions of Hilary Hahn playing the violin sonatas, and of Litton conducting the symphonies, has been an enormous plus.

[North Star]

Great post, Leo. I really should get familiar with Ives; I remember liking the Concord Sonata, but it's been a while.

[prémont]

That is more difficult to say - probably Beethoven.

[Ataraxia]

I said Bach in another thread forgetting I said Chopin here.

Whatever.