rythm, melody, harmony

[flash]

I think that each composers and piano players  gives more importance to one of the following aspects:

1 rythm (i.e. stravinsky, beethoven, gould..)
2 melody (i.e. , mozart, richter..Bach...)
3 harmony (i.e. scrjabin, gould, magaloff...Bach....)



...and so on. It may seems a bit reductive but in my opinion there is some truth.
What do you think about?

[jam8086]

Wow, am I digging up an old post or what?

But yes, I definitely see what you're saying. 20th Century composers do seem to place more importance on rhythm and gesture rather than pitch, and I do see how Beethoven places the most importance on rhythm: Beethoven had some great melodies, but it was what he did to develop those melodies that made him so great - he could develop any rhythmic pattern into something genius. Mozart was definitely one of the best composers of melody, and Debussy obviously placed a ton of importance on harmony.

But Bach, of course, placed equal importance into each category - just look at any fugue. He used the same rhythmic pattern throughout, and of course, as the master of fugue, he was a genius at crafting the individual melody of each line while keeping great harmonies going.

[jeremyjchilds]

Bach uses all of them masterfully
Brahms uses all of them almost as masterfully...

[planetdave]

I had an interesting theory teacher who was discussing composers in terms of their horizontal (melodic-rhythmic) and vertical (harmonic) emphasis. Bruckner, for example, was clearly concerned mostly with the vertical aspect. The professor then posed the question "Now...what about Bach?" We all sat thinking for a minute and when it became apparent we had gotten ourselves trapped in this calculated dilemma he said "Both!"
Perhaps this is another instance of the conceptual significance of the Crucifix for Bach...

[Bouter Boogie]

So I guess that's harmony for Ravel and Debussy too