Your No. 1 Composer

[North Star]

I looked through my collection.

I thought about composers whose music I've only heard in concert.

None of them were numbered. Not any of them.

When I want to listen to what only Berlioz can give me, I listen to Berlioz. When I want to listen to what only Luc Ferrari can give me, I listen to Luc Ferrari. When I want to listen to what only Bach can give me, I listen to Bach. (Added after Bulldog's most recent post: When I want to listen to what only Xenakis gives me, I listen to Xenakis.) And so it goes.

Easy!

So I call Bulldog's number one idea a silly thing.

When I was a child, I had favorite composers. When I became a man, I put away childish things. (That's my Biblical version of "banana." Biblical references raise the tone of discussions, you know. Biblical and Greek and Roman and the Bhagavad Gita and the Kalevala. Man that stuff is so tonal.)

This is certainly more true to me, too, than naming a single composer an absolute favourite. All great composers have their unique voice and style, and as Luke says, take me to different places. So naming a single composer as your favourite is akin to naming the kitchen or the living room your favourite room. But naturally I visit some rooms more often than others.

[Karl Henning]

 Quote from: Bulldog on Today at 12:36:06 AM

Xenakis?

 
Ubloobideega?

[ibanezmonster]

Xenakis?

No, Mahler.

well, Xenakis is in my top 10, so not too bad of a guess... 

[Karl Henning]

Daniel is now your best buddy : )

[Mirror Image]

I was anxiously awaiting whether it's be Shosty, Keochlin or H V-L. Now we know!

Yes! The truth came out!

[Bulldog]

Current Tally:

Beethoven     6
Bach              4
Haydn            3
Brahms          2
Handel           2
Mahler           2
Janacek         1
Stravinsky     1
Bartok           1
Wagner         1
Brian             1
Shost.           1
Mozart          1
Holst             1
R. Strauss     1
J. Williams     1
Elgar             1

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

You forgot Luke's Janacek...

[Bulldog]

You forgot Luke's Janacek...

Right, it's now included.

[Mirror Image]

Daniel is now your best buddy : )

[Luke]

All the composers above do things to me that no others do, take me to places no others can, and mean the world to me as they do it. But the place Janacek takes me to is a particularly special one; it's the place I would choose to live in, metaphorically speaking, were I able to, whereas the others, to extend the metaphor, offer me places I desperately want to visit for long, repeated periods, but not necessarily to base myself in fully. That's why it was also easy for me to pick him as a number 1, without in the least suggesting that any of the others leave me less moved or wonderstruck. I didn't find that a childish or shallow choice, personally - that's why I found your last paragraph somewhat patronising.

What a heart-warming explanation; I'd like to have said much the same myself, but would have done it less eloquently.

There was a period of a couple of years when exploring Wagner's music seemed the most important thing in my life; there was a week in hospital not so long ago when Mozart's piano concertos kept me sane through painful, sleepless nights; there was a glorious summer when I was sixteen, listening to Scheherazade almost every day and wondering whether music could actually get any better than this. And most of us have these treasured memories that - in the absence of anything else - would make it impossible to pick a number one, as per Bulldog's requirement.

But then there's this thing 'love', which isn't childish, which defies explanation, and which surely oughtn't to be scoffed at or patronised. And that brings me to Elgar. Irascible and unpredictable as a man, uneven as a composer, and too limited in range to be counted among the greatest, nevertheless (as Luke has it) his best music takes me to the places I most want to be. Not all the time, certainly; but the one that feels most right for me, most of the time. A kind of bedrock. My roots are pretty much the same as his; I can't contemplate the English landscape without hearing his music. (I can't sit still for long anywhere without hearing his music, actually.) There's no other single artist (musician, painter, or writer) to whom I feel so much personal affection and gratitude for providing companionship in the face of existential solitariness, by showing me musical equivalents for feelings and perceptions that I could never have articulated myself.

So add Elgar to the list, please, Bulldog.

Beautiful post, and really, when you talk of my post being eloquent, I am ashamed, given the regularity with which you post such wonderful things as this, which are at once well-written, humble and fascinatingly revealing.

Anyway, to extend my analogy somewhat - yes, Janacek is 'home', to me. I don't think him greater or more worthy or more beautiful than others, and there are others I love to visit every bit as much, and whose music I love and know so well that they too feel like somewhere I can be truly happy. But Janacek will be where I return to; when I'm old and grey it'll be Pohadka and Mladi and Riklada you find me playing as I potter in the garden! And - this is the point - that means that, as my life bustles by, I don't even feel the need to listen to him any more than I do other composers. It has in fact been years since I had a good Janacek binge, whereas my Ravel and Tippett and Brian and Chopin and Schubert binges, for instance, come regularly every few months.  But Janacek is always there, or at the world of his music is, rather like my parents' house is always there, not for decades now the place I live and work in, but nevertheless the place in which the child Luke lived, and thus somewhere where my mind returns, a kind of base or focal point of who I am.

Yeah, I love Janacek... 

[Karl Henning]

I love reading your posts, gents.

[Elgarian]

And - this is the point - that means that, as my life bustles by, I don't even feel the need to listen to him any more than I do other composers.

That's perfect. I wish I'd said that. In fact - may I steal your idea openly, here and now, and play with it? If I'd kept a record of which composers I'd listened to most in the last few months it would be something like:
1. Haydn
2. Rimsky-Korsakov
3. Vaughan Williams
4. Vivaldi
etc...
Elgar would probably come in at something like no. 9 or 10, which gives no indication at all of the intensity and character of my love for his music, or of the unparallelled depth of my lifelong involvement with it.

[starrynight]

Music seems to make people feel they have a connection to the actual composer themselves sometimes.  I do wonder if they actually met their idol whether they would actually like him as much though.    The very distance increases the mystery and enhances our ability to put ourselves into that space and claim it for ourselves.  Music has enough ambiguity and shifting moods to shape itself to our own desires and needs.

[Elgarian]

Music seems to make people feel they have a connection to the actual composer themselves sometimes.  I do wonder if they actually met their idol whether they would actually like him as much though.    The very distance increases the mystery and enhances our ability to put ourselves into that space and claim it for ourselves.

Yes, I think that's inescapably part of the special power of art. It permits the making of a unique kind of indirect connection between listener and composer that bypasses some of the problems associated with 'ordinary' human interactions. I'd quibble about the use of the word 'idol' though. I'm under no illusions about Elgar the man, or about the limitations of his music (and it wouldn't surprise me if Luke said the same about Janacek). Loving and admiring aren't at all the same as idolising.

[Karl Henning]

 Quote from: starrynight on Today at 04:36:33 PM

Music seems to make people feel they have a connection to the actual composer themselves sometimes.  I do wonder if they actually met their idol whether they would actually like him as much though. 

 
That consideration is part of why I appreciate Alan's on-going discussion of Elgar. He knows that Elgar was no cuddly teddy bear . . . .

[Karl Henning]

(and it wouldn't surprise me if Luke said the same about Janacek)

Nor me.

Loving and admiring aren't at all the same as idolising.

Do you mind if I say spot on? You don't?

Well: Spot on.

[Elgarian]

Spot on.

Spot on indeed, you cuddly old teddy bear.

[Karl Henning]

Gosh!

[Elgarian]

(Just trying out the 'Cuddly Teddy Bear' tactic for size.)

[Karl Henning]

We're veering terribly off-topic (because I'm not anyone's No. 1 Composer, I'm not), but I was actually called a cuddly teddy bear, by one musical friend to another.  They meant it as a compliment.

(I think.)