Fave B-tier composers

Was chatting with a friend about my love for CPE and realized that he's a perfect example of "a favourite B-tier" composer. I decided to make a top ten list, for fun

CPE Bach
Mussorgsky
Scriabin
Holst (yes really sorry)
Ives
Messaien
Barber
Ustvolskaya
Adams
Grisey

Bubbling under: Fauré, Franck, Boulez, Murail, Saariaho

What are yours?

Ten Holt
Byrd (W)
Ives
Hindemith
Copland
Tavener
Skempton
Carter
Andriessen

thinking of a bunch of composers who are probably in the proverbial a-tier.

i'll say janacek is a good one for the b-tier, beyond the people you've mentioned, plus berlioz

Tavener is very good. Don't know Tenholt. Hard for me to place Byrd, Purcell and Tallis as being A- or B- but I'd just put Thomas in my top ten A-tier and blow kisses to Henry and William

Who's in the A-tier?

is this “not as good as” or “not as well-known as” or “not as critically celebrated as” B,B,M,etc…?

would nominating brahms be a spicy take

My A-tier is Tallis, Bach, Handel, Mozart, Schubert, Chopin, Bartok, Stravinsky, Stockhausen, Ligeti

Bubbling under: Mahler, Shostakovich, Vivaldi, Debussy, Prokofiev, Purcell, Ravel

Not contenders, but are A-tier, and I adore most of them: Monteverdi, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Brahms, Haydn, Wagner, Rach, Britten, Tchaikovsky, Strauss, Elgar, Dvorak, Gershwin, Verdi, Liszt, V-W, Sibelius

Dunno if they're A-tier: Grieg, Puccini, Copland, Rossini, Rimsky-Korsakov

Oh obv Beethoven too

beethoven is S-tier

Vaughan Williams
Delius
Tavener (the Younger)
Sibelius

scriabin is my fav

The elder is Taverner!

I need to figure out if I like Delius. I did it for Elgar (Elgar won me over)

going on gut feelings about what this means & who would qualify i also nominate zemlinsky, reger, arriaga, spohr, busoni, penderecki, weinberg, gubaidulina, kodaly

The elder is Taverner!

D'oh! Quite right.

I originally discovered Delius after reading that Nick Drake requested a "Delius-like" string arrangement for "River Man".

Kodaly not-so-secretly awesome, like Bartok stayed early-period and made it poppier

I love Hindemith but yes he’s below the gods. My A tier would be very small bach, beethoven , bartok, Stravinsky.

And Schubert for A level.

i feel like the best british composers could just about scrape into B-tier if they’re lucky

Some B-tier (I presume) candidates I love ... mostly modern because I haven't done the work to research earlier:

Scriabin
Lutosławski
Khachaturian
Ives
Penderecki
Respighi
Kabalevsky
Milhaud
Kapustin

Britten is A-tier

doubling down on brahms as the absolute best of the B-tier

I got love for georg telemann

I don't understand if the "tiering" is done by us as listeners or the classical music world in general? Like these are composers we enjoy but know somehow that they are not top rank?

My A-tier is Tallis, Bach, Handel, Mozart, Schubert, Chopin, Bartok, Stravinsky, Stockhausen, Ligeti

ha if they're in the tier before a-tier they're "s-tier"

xp didn't see ciderpress's post, but yeah

I think I can only do this if tiering is defined as a subjective act. Otherwise, I'm finding it really hard to work with a canonical baseline since there's so many of them (e.g. Sibelius is A-tier+ in Finland, A-tier in the UK, B-tier in France).

Jan Ladislav Dussek (1760-1812)

A famous piano virtuoso in his day, he wrote many sonatas and other keyboard works. There are some proto-romantic elements in his music, and plenty of inventiveness.

Brilliant Classics has released (or is maybe still in the process of releasing) his complete piano sonatas, played on period instruments by various performers. A very enjoyable series that I've been listening to a lot lately.

The classical period seems unlike other periods in that Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven are so dominant that a lot of other music from the time is unfairly neglected. (Of course other periods have their huge names and hidden gems but it seems more pronounced here.)

Koechlin
Suk
Crumb
Schoeck
Ohana

i'll step up for bruckner

Bruckner is A tier
Like Mahler, he was once B tier but they have both been A for decades

Oh I forgot
Ginastera!

even better

Tallis, Purcell, V-W, Britten and Elgar are def A-tier Britishers, no? And yeah obv the "tiering" itself is subjective I was mostly just interested in reading about great composers who aren't The Great Composers

I've kinda been curious, pursuant to Eric H's post, as to what is up with Kabalevsky? I don't really understand why he isn't spoken of with the same enthusiasm as Prokofiev and Shostakovich. Is it because he's kinda neo-classicist or is it a Stalin thing

Jon Not Jon talk about those composers I know them not except Suk and Crumb

Would be interested in a TS: Korngold vs. Herrmann moment, too

kabalevsky definitely suffers from perceived conservatism and stalinism much like shostakovich did before the secret dissident narrative became popular. I've only heard the 2nd cello concerto but I remember it being good

I'm not taking the thread too seriously since I hate canonisation in general and classical music is like the final boss of whatever it is people hate about those rolling stone lists

however on the thread's terms I wouldn't rank any of those brits as A tier. maybe a handful of works from some of them

I'm assuming this thread is going for what R Strauss meant when he called himself a first class second rate composer (he may have been right)

delibes has better ballet music than tchaikovsky!

I'm not taking the thread too seriously

Me neither :)

I wouldn't rank any of those brits as A tier.

Interesting! Not even Elgar? Between the concerti the symphonies Enigma and Gerontius I kinda assumed he had household name status

"Radetzky March", Op. 228, is a march composed by Johann Strauss Sr. which is pretty much what he is famous for so i would consider him B tier but Johann Strauss Jr. is definitely A tier!

So we're calling Strauss A-tier but C.P.E. Bach B-tier!? disagree

if we're talking about great composers who don't get enough love: D. Buxtehude. Buxtehude is S+ tier

CPE's reputation kinda fluctuates, no? Like he was once more popular than JS. Just read his wikipedia page and was surprised and delighted to learn that JS named his friend Telemann as CPE's godfather :D

I'm only recently learning that certain classical works that have seemed ubiquitous since my childhood were "recently unearthed"-- Bach Cello Suites, for example, and The Four Seasons and Vivaldi as a whole, all revived in the 20th c.

The little bits of Buxtehude I've listened to seemed hairy and unfinished, like a mess that was waiting for JS Bach to come and clean up. Any recommendations would be appreciated crüt

Tallis, Purcell, V-W, Britten and Elgar are def A-tier Britishers, no?

For sure. I’m not coming up with any others off the top of my head. Maybe Byrd and Birtwistle depending who you’re talking to

What I’ve heard of CPEB has been great - the last thing Peter Serkin recorded before he died was a big survey of CPE’s solo keyboard works and I would love to hear that

Would be interested in a TS: Korngold vs. Herrmann moment, too

Korngold is often fantastic and a great nomination for this thread but Herrmann by a country mile

Goldsmith is my favorite film score composer but I recognize with my non lizard brain that he’s a first rate second rater whereas Herrmann is A tier imo

Re: Kabalevsky, I had a Ukrainian teacher so I learned an inordinate amount of his music, including his violin concerto, which is weaker (and much easier) than the Khachaturian but pushes the same buttons-- not written for Oistrakh, but it was made famous by him. His piano works featured heavily in my education, too, and I remember looking at his preludes and fugues for piano and thinking they were equal to Shostakovich's.

I don't remember where I played the overture to Colas Breugnon but I think it is (or was) a youth orchestra staple. Definitely has all the Kabelevskian features-- he writes melodies the same way Shostakovich did, with the same inflections and repeated phrases at the same moments. Kabalevsky does this hilarious thing where he writes parallel chordal movements with a kind of stoopid brutalism that always sounds fun and a little cartoonish. I always felt that Shostakovich had two modes, the bleakest-of-the-bleak and the silliest-of-the-silly, and few in-betweens, but Kabalevsky in comparison always occupied that in-between.

The "His Legacy" paragraph in Kabalevsky's wikipedia page is extremely confusing. This oddball sentence: "In Russia, Kabalevsky has been excluded both from a shortlist of worthy Soviet-era composers and longlist of composers studied at local music institutions." Curious!

xps I like elgar to some extent but the context in which i was first exposed to him - through the flag waving empire nostalgia industry which has adopted him as their composer - has made me reluctant to spend much time with his music. that might be unfair. I like gerontius a lot and the symphonies, cello concerto, and enigma variations a bit. I don’t know much else

he’s definitely a household name and A tier in britain by that standard but aside from a couple of tunes he’s better known for his moustache than his music

Great thread!

Assuming, for convenience sake, that A Tier is just the conventionally-agreed Immortals Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Orff and Domenico Zipoli, some of my B-tier faves would be:

Monteverdi, Gesualdo, W Byrd, Janacek, Othmar Schoek, Pavel Haas, Poulenc, Mahler, Scriabin, Shosty, Berlioz, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Berg, Schoenberg, Telemann, Handel, oh god so many

Re: Elgar, I had the pleasure of watching a 70s BBC TV movie a couple of weeks ago called "Penda's Fen", and Elgar's music features prominently, and the composer himself appears to the protagonist in a dream. The TV movie was wildly good, I had medium expectations but it's one of the best things I've seen recently

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penda%27s_Fen

After the fact, I read a bunch of Enigma theories and found all of them extremely unsatisfying

Oh, of course Penda's Fen has its fans around here :)

Penda's Fen

kodaly

Oh I’ve got one: Malcolm Arnold

Buxtehude recommendations:

Membra Jesu Nostri, a gorgeous vocal work. René Jacobs’ recording is great.

Capricciosa variations for harpsichord

He’s best known for his organ works and there is much good stuff to be discovered there.

Koechlin

Les Heures Persanes for piano. There’s also an orchestrated version

Les chants du nectaire. A three-hour work for solo flute.

He’s a composer worth exploring… an eccentric of diverse interests and influences.

can someone explain to a dummy (not me, of course) what the "s" in s-tier stands for?

I'm not sure except that I remember when I played Devil May Cry on the PS2 some 20 years ago, the highest ranking you could get was S (A was second to S), and I started noticing that S-tier (and SS-tier, SSS-tier) was a specific way of suggesting super-superlativity on usually Japanese-developed shooting and dancing games

it's apparently derived from some japanese academic grading systems and made its way into english via video games

some of my favorite Buxtehude:

Sonata in G Minor, BuxWV 261
Toccata in G Major, BuxWV 165
Prelude in E Minor, BuxWV 143
Chaconne in C Minor, BuxWV 159

My favorite B-tier composers, choral edition

Howells (Requiem)
Harris (Faire is the Heaven)
Martin (Mass for double choir)
Tavener (Song for Athene, The Lamb)
Thompson (Alleluia, The Best of Rooms)
Durufle (Ubi caritas)
Josquin (Deploration sur la mort d’Ockeghem)
Milhaud (Psalm 121)
Ockeghem (Missa “Mi-Mi”, particularly the Agnus Dei)

milhaud is great and so his les six compadre francis poulenc

ah shit I meant to include Poulenc

btw, my Spotify Release Radar playlist threw this movement from a symphony by Louise Ferranc; I had never heard of her but I like this a lot

https://open.spotify.com/track/70WG7tXKMQGcyLLG8PVVJ3?si=b39342cfb99b48ff

Awesome DJP I can’t wait to listen to all this tonight

Koechlin

Les Heures Persanes for piano. There’s also an orchestrated version

Les chants du nectaire. A three-hour work for solo flute.

He’s a composer worth exploring… an eccentric of diverse interests and influences.

Co-sign both versions of Les Heures Persanes

Also unmissable: Offrandre Musicale sur le Nom de BACH; the Law of the Jungle and Spring Running movements of The Jungle Book, Paysages et Marines (solo piano or chamber versions) and the Seven Stars Symphony (each movement dedicated to a different silent film star)

some of my favorite Buxtehude:

Sonata in G Minor, BuxWV 261
Toccata in G Major, BuxWV 165
Prelude in E Minor, BuxWV 143
Chaconne in C Minor, BuxWV 159

Thanks for this, was listening to different versions of each this orning. It's amazing how differently organists interpret the keyboard works. 143 was subdued and almost melancholy in the Bryndorf version, but brassy and assertive when played by Koopman. Koopman's liner notes specifically state there is little information how Buxtehude would have played his own works "so do what feels right for you."

I'm a little on the fence about Koopman's playing/interpretation anyway, but my feelings for him are complicated by him complaining in an interview about electric power windmills.