Why do you like your favorite composers?

[Florestan]

What could be more human than a drama queen? 

If you refer this to Mahler, that´s actually quite mean, Karl. His life was full of sorrows and tragedies that I wouldn´t wish upon my bitterest enemy, whoever he might be. 

[Karl Henning]

If you refer this to Mahler, that´s actually quite mean, Karl. His life was full of sorrows and tragedies that I wouldn´t wish upon my bitterest enemy, whoever he might be. 

Well, it would not entirely exculpate me from your admonishment, but I did not mean it seriously.

[Florestan]

Well, it would not entirely exculpate me from your admonishment, but I did not mean it seriously.

Ego te absolvo.

If you want drama queen and histrionics, admittedly expressive, there is a certain Hector Forgot-His-Last-Name out there. 

[Karl Henning]

Ego te absolvo.

If you want drama queen and histrionics, admittedly expressive, there is a certain Hector Forgot-His-Last-Name out there. 

I love the mad plan of disguising himself in a maid's clothes for a multiple-murder-&-suicide.  An icon of High Romanticism!

[North Star]

Ego te absolvo.

If you want drama queen and histrionics, admittedly expressive, there is a certain Hector Forgot-His-Last-Name out there. 

I love the mad plan of disguising himself in a maid's clothes for a multiple-murder-&-suicide.  An icon of High Romanticism!

And this one, too!
https://www.youtube.com/v/--n5YJlBqFk

[Florestan]

I love the mad plan of disguising himself in a maid's clothes for a multiple-murder-&-suicide.  An icon of High Romanticism!

Now truth is, can we really be sure he really had that in mind? After all, he wrote his memories in old age. 

[Karl Henning]

Now truth is, can we really be sure he really had that in mind? After all, he wrote his memories in old age. 

Doesn't matter;  even as a fiction, it works 

[Florestan]

even as a fiction, it works 

Drama-queen Romanticism in a nutshell.

[Karl Henning]

Ah, those were the days . . . now you have to write for four helicopters to get anywhere as a composer . . . .

[Florestan]

Ah, those were the days . . . now you have to write for four helicopters to get anywhere as a composer . . . .

Pffffft...

[Karl Henning]

Pffffft...

Would you believe, five chainsaws of carefully graded speeds?

[San Antone]

John Cage:  Because his music is magic; it opened my mind to possibilities; his boundless creativity; enlightening us that music includes sounds not usually thought of as music.  Because of his study of Zen and how it enhanced his music with a wonder and freedom that also excites my imagination.

Claude Debussy:  His pristine textures and melodic gifts.  His restraint despite the music's sensuousness.  His mastery of setting text.  The dynamic static quality of all his music, but especially evident in Pelleas et Melisande.

Igor Stravinsky:  The manner in which he handles form; his rhythmic sense, the variety of his works, all of which contain wit, imagination and absolute beauty.

Guillaume de Machaut:  His command of language and knowledge of human nature, which is almost Shakespearean in scope.  His book-making in which he used allusion in his music and poetry to connect ideas and emotional content which I see as a 14th century version of hyperlinking.  His belief in hope.  The intricacies of his delicate polyphony.

That's four of my favorites.  But to the extent other composers also have these traits, their music will find its way to be among my favorites.

I expanded on my thoughts as to why Machaut is one of my favorite composers in this blog article.  I also gathered a few recordings I think are a good place to start building a collection.

[Artem]

I like Machaut and generally like ECM engineering, so there is a good chance i would     but the recordings escape me at the moment - is that the Hilliard group?  If not, which recordings?

Yes, it is the Hilliard one.

[San Antone]

Yes, it is the Hilliard one.

That's the one I have, but haven't listen to it in a while.  But I am doing so now.  I really like OVPP performances, and the Hilliard Ensemble has been a pioneering group in this regard.  Thanks for reminding me of this disc.

[Artem]

No problem. It's been on my wishlist for some time now. I will probably get it as part of my next amazon order.

[Madiel]

I am, at heart, a structuralist.

I don't just mean in music, either. My job is essentially about building conceptual structures, about organising ideas and making them relate to each other in as clear a way as possible. I want the world to make sense in that way. And I do think that spills into the kinds of music that I like.

My favourite music is often my favourite because I have a sense of how larger structures evolve out of smaller ideas. I want to have those moments of recognition of a musical cell coming back at a later moment, or transforming. I marvel at a piece of music that uses only a couple of basic ideas to create something much larger.

And I do want that something larger. I don't just want the cute little idea, I want it to be part of a larger plan, and to have a sense of shape and direction. I need that balance between the micro- and the macro-

For classical music this does tend to mean I like a good sonata form. For popular music it means I like albums - a whole group of songs that relate to each other, but with similarity and contrast.

How does this relate to my favourite composers? It's arguable that they actually impress me for how much they can do that's unexpected while still fulfilling my basic requirements. I guess Beethoven qualifies because he was able to pack such amazing emotional drama into those classical forms. I remember my piano teacher asking me once whether I saw Beethoven primarily as 'classical' or 'romantic'. I saw him as 'classical', whereas my teacher saw him as 'romantic'. For me, the amazing part is that the forms are still present, stretched but not actually broken.

For Faure it's the way the music twists and turns on the way to its destination that makes it special. Harmonically, he never goes in a straight line, yet for me it always feels there IS a sense of direction there, and the developments are logical. I love the complexity of some of his greatest piano pieces, where an idea comes back at a perfect moment.  Holmboe is arguably similar, in that I love the moments where I go "wait a minute, this idea came from that one" and I suddenly perceive the logic that's connecting things - in his case, very often across different movements.

And Tori Amos because... well, over the years I've realised that her ideas and mine about how to put different songs together match almost perfectly. Within individual songs, too, our sense of the right proportions just seems to gel - it's very rare for me to feel that one of her songs ends to soon or too late or the climax is not in the right spot. But it's the way songs on an album or in a concert both link and contrast with each other that clinches it for me. Her tour last year was for me the best she's ever done, and that was why. She started with the same first song every night, but from there would head in a different direction each time (I worked out that by the time you heard the 3rd song, you were almost guaranteed to be experiencing a different show from every other show on the tour). The flow from one song to the next was astonishing. I even had a chance to talk to her about this very thing, and to my utter amazement she twice paired songs at my suggestion.

[Madiel]

Sorry to keep wittering on, but there was something I wanted to say about pieces of music generally, not necessarily favourite composers but it's one of the reasons why my favourites are my favourites.

What I really want a piece of music to do is present its set of... let's say "rules"... and then follow them. Explore them, play with them, see what can be done in that musical space.

I'm not very concerned with what those rules are. Different pieces of music can have a different set of rules, and certainly when it comes to popular music my favourite artists are ones who aren't trying to make the same album each time.

What I don't want is something in the middle where I go "hang on, where did that come from? it doesn't make sense in this context".

This is why I love stories like Beethoven cutting the middle movement out of the 'Waldstein' piano sonata. It's not about it being a poor piece of music, it's about it not following the right rules. As Tovey puts it, the Andante "was quite out of touch with the harmonic style of the rest".

[Ken B]

You a mathematician Orfeo? If not I can recommend a couple books explaining some advanced math requiring only high school math. I seriously think you'd enjoy that sort of thing.

[Madiel]

You a mathematician Orfeo? If not I can recommend a couple books explaining some advanced math requiring only high school math. I seriously think you'd enjoy that sort of thing.

I did excel in maths at school, but at university it eventually got dropped in favour of (bio)chemistry and law. I now write laws for a living, and stuff that is mathematical does tend to get pushed my way because I'm one of the people who'll see the maths issues.

[Mirror Image]

Ah, those were the days . . . now you have to write for four helicopters to get anywhere as a composer . . . .