WHICH COMPOSER IS THE GREATSEST OF ALL TIME

[prodigy1220]

WHO KNOW THE GREATEST OF ALL TIME I CAN'T DECIDE

[Etude]

It's right between shift and tab.

[prodigy1220]

It's right between shift and tab.

what!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !

[shasta]

Charles Louis Hanon
A         O
P         C
S         K


not.

[nanabush]

I'd say probably Bach...

[Tash]

depends on what day it is...

[perfect_pitch]

It's got to be rachmaninoff... that guy could compose like no other for the Piano and is probably one of the most respected musicians of all time. I love listening to him playing his own Concertos. It's amazing to hear it.

[pill]

In my opinion the greatsest composer of all time has got to be Ravel.
And the greatsest speller of all time..

[prometheus]

Sorabij of course, didn't you know yet, why?

[Bouter Boogie]

GERSHWIN

- BB

[thalbergmad]

I change my mind every hour.

[llamaman]

It's right between shift and tab.

 


I don't know. Everyone has their own opinions.

[Etude]

Sorabij of course, didn't you know yet, why?

[tompilk]

Rach not Bach!!! Rachmaninov is the best and I will have no arguments against him - or heads will roll!!! I'm obsessed with Rachmaninov, Rachmaninov and more Rachmaninov.
Oh, and did I mention anything about RACHMANINOV?!?!?!
Hmmph.
 

[lisztisforkids]

Rach not Bach!!! Rachmaninov is the best and I will have no arguments against him - or heads will roll!!! I'm obsessed with Rachmaninov, Rachmaninov and more Rachmaninov.
Oh, and did I mention anything about RACHMANINOV?!?!?!
Hmmph.
 

Rachmaninoff??? Well... Ehh... Not my personal style, but i do like some of his piano works, the second concerto, AND the greatest symphonic poem ever!!! THE ISLAND OF THE DEAD.
buhahahaw

[dolcejen]

Why Rachmaninov, naturally.

[arensky]

                                     Johan Sebastian Bach. 

[perfect_pitch]

Sorabij of course, didn't you know yet, why?

HELL NO... HIS MUSIC WAS AWFUL!!!!

(Don't hit me stevie)... but it's true.

[prometheus]

Thats because you are tone deaf.

[Etude]

Hahaha   

[tompilk]

I'm waiting for Opus Clavicembalisticum to come through the post after i bought it on eBay. It will be the first Sorabji I have heard and I am awaiting "a cataclysmic ending that cuts like nitric acid" or whatever the composer said... lol...
Tom

[pianohopper]

That's like asking:  Who is the most beautiful woman in the world?  Or:  Which U.S. President was the worst? 

There are so many options.  And it's all opinion.

But in terms of solely piano volume, it must be Chopin.  The guy wrote basically nothing but piano, his etudes are the staple of classical music; his music is the best thing you can do for your technique.  Analyze his chord structure and you will see he is way ahead of his time. 

[stevie]

HELL NO... HIS MUSIC WAS AWFUL!!!!

(Don't hit me stevie)... but it's true.

hahaha, i dont even like sorabji that much 

[Etude]

I'm waiting for Opus Clavicembalisticum to come through the post after i bought it on eBay. It will be the first Sorabji I have heard and I am awaiting "a cataclysmic ending that cuts like nitric acid" or whatever the composer said... lol...
Tom

As long as it's not our old friend Geoffrey it shouldn't be too bad.  I wouldn't recommend starting with OC, since both recordings are disgusting:

Sickening, absolutely sickening..., June 22, 2005
 Reviewer:    John Carey (America) - See all my reviews 
 
This product is very lucky to have recieved two stars from me. It is, in a word, terrible. I do not believe there is any one word that can truly describe the atrocity that G.D. Madge has committed! A scandal! A travesty! It is because of performances like THIS that Sorabji banned performances of his works in the first place! This performance is so terrible, it is OBSCENE!

First of all, in so many places, Madge practically improvises. In the parts where there are large jumping chords, Madge merely pounds out random notes. He does not follow the music. This is what causes many to think that this piece is really bad... they think it is nothing but relentless "banging", but let me tell you, it is not! I have studied the score for this piece for a very long time now, and that is NOT what Sorabji really wrote! I could practically point out parts on every page where Madge completely fakes the performance, often not even trying to hit the right notes.

So, let us start with the very first movement. This truly sets up what will follow. Right when the music starts to get hard, he starts to make mistake after mistake. Aside from that, his playing is not clean. Later, he just starts hitting random notes, a skill that he definitely has mastered, I must say.

The second movement is no exception. Though there are moments when his playing is bearable, for the most part, it is no better than the first movement. The majority of Fuga I is faked. The Fantasia is actually all right for the most part, but he doesn't play cleanly, and at the end, he goes back to hitting random notes.

His entire Coda-Stretta is improvised. Any thing he plays that resembles the actual music even the slightest bit is merely a coincidence. And the end can make your ears bleed...

So, I gave this two stars because he played a few parts nicely, but I would not recommend this recording to anyone. I, personally, would wait for the Powell recording, since he apparently knows what he is talking about.

(review of the Madge by JCarey)

Introito:

He clearly struggles in sections, and he has little clarity. On the first page there is a slip in the Contrary motion arpeggios, and the left hand quintuplets of the third system are completely butchered, with minimal accuracy. On the second page, he plays the ascending scale passage fairly decently but on the way down we get some double notes coming in. He struggles with those and in one beat he plays many wrong notes. The quintuplets of the second system are MOSTLY okay, but in one or two instances he tries to get away with random notes in the bass. The Presto section of this is not very clear or good at all. From the beginning chords of this section he makes many slips and wrong notes and the playing seems so FORCED. As he reaches the top of the ascending patterns, he plays lots of wrong notes. It doesn't seem as though he is improvising but it's like a BORDERLINE of one standard of accuracy to the next, if you know what I mean. When he is improvising your standards are MUCH lower and you are more pleased when he plays the notes, than displeased when he doesn't since LATER in the piece, accuracy becomes something of a rarity. After this section it's basically a recapitulation of the first page (without the adagio) but his playing is very forced again. Apart from a few minor slips this is it. THIS IS ONE OF HIS MOST ACCURATE MOVEMENTS.

Preludio-Corale:

This is basically the same story. It opens with those ascending semiquaver accompaniments, which he does not play clearly. After a few more messed up passages, his playing settles down. That is, until the third page, where he seems to struggle in the top system, which to be honest is NOT really that difficult, it's just a bit awkward to play. But he plays ver uncleanly again. The same can be said for the semiquavers on the last two systems of the page. The final wave of triplet chords have many wrong notes in them, they seem to be faked, more so than the presto of the introito, where he seems to GENUINELY struggle, but here he doesn't try very hard. The next page isn't so bad, but the one after that is horrendous. The first system recalls the second system of the second page of the Introito, but here Madge plays far more random notes in the left hand. The last two systems are simply awful. He plays far too heavily and disregards the score completely in one moment on the second system of this page. He even tries to get away with a few audacious splashes of random clusters towards the end of the page. The next page isn't too bad, but there are some strangely missed chords occasionally. The two pages after these are the most DREADFUL. He misses towards the end of the first bar and plays a tone lower than he should. After this system it's littered with wrong notes and effortless (in a bad way) playing for the rest of the page. The top of page fifteen is the most disgraceful. This is the worst passage yet. He completely makes it up, basing the random notes he plays on what the notes on the score LOOK LIKE. After these two systems, his playing is mostly fine until page 18, where he improvises the top line with the syncopated chords. The ending of this part is full of wrong notes, and he seems to make a big deal out of the bass, making it clouded with pedal and seemingly more dissonant. The A pedal solo isn't as bad but I think he slows down WAY too much.

Now the first Fugue is where it starts going horribly wrong. His exposition is flawless, as many of the fugal expositions are in his recording. After the expositions little things creep up in his performance. Little note slips and things like that. They develop into huge problems though. Page 20 is fine but from the section of the second system on page 21 which goes onto the third, the end of this section is faked, in a way. The notes are still there, but he adds others, and the voice to which he adds them is the dominant one on his recording where it shouldn't be as there is a full statement of the subject in this section. After this the recording is okay for a while, but he starts improvising again in sections such as the third system of page 22. AT THE END OF PAGE 23, HE IS IMPROVISING, and he continues to do so all the way through the first system of page 24. It sounds RIDICULOUS when he makes a random return to the score after this section. The section that follows on pages 24-27 isn't quite the same on his recording as it is when I play it. Perhaps, some parts are faked, but in places he choses different subjects than I (there are often multiple entries of the subject). There are a few slips after this but it's quite accurate otherwise. When we get to page 28, we lose this. It seems his need to play the written notes vanishes when the notation extends to four stave systems. It starts properly on system two of page 28, where he improvises substantial amounts of the upper staves. This only increases as this two pages progress, climaxing in some of the most pathetic banging on the second system of page 29. Slight pause.... It continues with newfound accuracy for a few seconds before he diverges again. And he stays there until he decides the final thunderous chord of G#minor sounds better as mezzo-piano. Page 28 is the borderline, if you will, where he switches from making many mistakes and improvising occasionally in the more difficult sections, to COMPLETELY FAKING MOST of what follows.

The Fantasia is a movement which I believed to be among the more accurate ones until lately. Beware! When it seems like he is playing what is written. He sometimes disguises the fake lines by muddling them under the other EASIER parts that he plays correctly. This continues throughout the movement until the last page where he plays complete bs. It's all random notes on this page, everything is embellished with dissonance.

Most of the second fugue seems to be faked, EVEN the subjects. Nothing is really significant in his recording of this movement, except for the annoying banging at the end. Enough said.

Interludium Primum. Completely improvised, except for the "simple" variations, the ones with less activity.

Cadenza I. All but the first few lines on one stave alone is completely improvised.

Fuga Tertia Triplex. Same annoying story as the first fugue. Except it lasts three times as long.

Interludium ALTERUM

Toccata: Not clean in the opening, and much improvisation.
Adagio: Mostly right notes, but inaccurate rhythms.
Passacaglia: Same as the variations. The last variation might as well have not been written for all his recording does for it.

Cadenza II: Almost entirely faked, but he makes it seem correct, like the second fugue, but like his performance of the second fugue, nothing is memorable or interesting. He likes to end movements with some clusters.

Fuga IV: Like the first fugue, but with less accuracy and is four times as big.

Coda-Stretta: Never mind. There's too little to compare in the score.

(short analysis of the Madge recording by me)

Even the Ogdon recording isn't very good, and lasts an hour over Madge's version.  I think the shorter pieces like Fantasie Espagnole and Valse-Fantasie are good to start with, as well as the Nocturne:  Le Jardin parfume which is incredibly beautiful.  Just don't judge Sorabji by either recordings of OC, whichever recording you get.  ESPECIALLY the Madge recording, about which I agree with another member (forgot who) who doesn't consider hearing the Madge recording, hearing Opus Clavicembalisticum.  Look for any recordings by Jonathan Powell; they are of excellent quality, when (or if) you want to hear some of Sorabji's, longer music, start with the hour and a quarter long Toccata no. 1, played excellently by JP, then if you feel up to it, Sonata no. 4 which is about 2 1/2 hours.  If you don't like Sorabji, never mind, but DON'T judge him from either OGdon or Madge recordings of OC. 

[prometheus]

Start with the Toccata No.1 by Powell if you are interested in Sorabji baroque style.

[JCarey]

HELL NO... HIS MUSIC WAS AWFUL!!!!

(Don't hit me stevie)... but it's true.

For the love of God, shut up.

As for the rest of you, THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS "THE GREATEST COMPOSER!"

Jesus H. Christ, what next? Is there some kind of competition going on for who can create the worst thread?

[da jake]

Bach.

End of debate.

[perfect_pitch]

Jesus H. Christ, what next?

JESUS Has a middle name beginning with H??? I didn't know that... What is it???   

[JCarey]

JESUS Has a middle name beginning with H??? I didn't know that... What is it???   

https://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_033

[thalberg]

Bach is the greatest because, regardless of what we instrumentalists think, all the composers of every era have all admired Bach.

[perfect_pitch]

He set the foundations for music, but he certainly wasn't the best. His music is kind of bland compared to rachmaninoff or liszt.

[prometheus]

It is kind of strange to say that because so many of the people after Bach were even more bland. Probably up to Beethoven. But I don't understand, Bach is too bland, but Sorabji is noise? Hmm... Maybe you should try harder to look for the things that are likable in music you don't like.

[randmc]

This is an impossible question! It's no fair to compare composers The correct way to pose this question would be: WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE COMPOSER OF ALL TIME
Asking this question would be like asking which religion is best? or what is the greatest skin or hair color of all time? It's all a matter of opinion.




......man is so ignorant

[Tash]

Bach is the greatest because, regardless of what we instrumentalists think, all the composers of every era have all admired Bach.

that's because bach came from one of the earlier eras...

but seriously, you can't compare composers from different eras, or even countries to a degree, because they're all trying to do something different. take into consideration their instruments, what was going on at the time, what the purpose of music was, etc. and it is so different for everyone it's impossible to compare them in any kind of unbiased, unsubjective way.

so you can't decide, well i'm not surprised!

[practicingnow]

No one has mentioned the name Beethoven.
I have lost faith in this group, and in humanity!

[apion]

Brahms.  Johannes Brahms.  Non plus ultra.

[prodigy1220]

I think beethoven is the greatest of all time. I am not saying all the other composeres are not great but look at beethoven i think is songs our used more than other composers like fifth symphony and moonlight sonata i hear these songs in modern movies , i know this is not the reason what makes him so great but its just a point
 

[prometheus]

I fail to understand you.

[prodigy1220]

I fail to understand you.

I fail to understand you too

[xenon]

Not Mozart.

[practicingnow]

Not Mozart.

OK- that's one down...