OK, since we're on classical music....various composers c/d

Um... I'd have to say that I think Vaughn-Williams is awful tripe... but my ex-girlfriend thought the world of him, so I guess there's no accounting for taste... :)

I totally dig the Saint Saens Organ Symphony... for some reason, no matter how treachly I know it to be, it kills me... I think because it's like pop music in some ways, the short little hooks and the obvious pandering to an audience in its motifs...

Shosty is very cool as well... I like Messaien, Ligeti, Takemitsu, Berio, for the slightly younger crew... Schnittke, Webern, Berg, not so much Schoenberg... Brahms, finally, after being browbeaten... Mozart, Bach, and definitely definitely Beethoven (esp. the later stuff)... Bartok's Quartets... Barber Adagio, no matter how cheesy... some Elliot Carter... Schubert... Strauss (not the waltz man).. Copland's Clarinet Concerto is very cute... and um... there are so many great composers! I'm not sure how to narrow it down more than history already has... Chopin, of course... Debussy... a lot of the Impressionists...

I think it's easier to do a dislike list than a like list--most of the Baroque stuff I'm not too keen on... nor am I a bit fan of minimalism or the modern classical-for-philistines-commited-by-pop- musicians stuff--Taverner, for instance... or that Gavin Bryars, which is only notable as a novelty...

Faves: Howells, Tavener, Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Mahler, Hayden, Palestrina, Mozart, Puccini, Verdi.

Hates: Harbison, Carter, Pinkham, and most of the rest of the Harvard composers (except my friend Dan Roihl who is GRATE), Webern, Martino, Liszt. (No particular reason for Liszt. I don't like his name.)

But, classical music wasn't really meant to be listened to repeatedly on compact discs or records or tapes. In its time it was a rare event for people lucky enough to see it, which is why the songs are so long, metastasizing and variances on a theme; it had to be interesting enough to let you get lost, but repetitive enough to be familiar in one sitting.

So, if you judge Mozart by the things that have been overplayed or Vivaldi by his 4 seasons only, of course they seem typical. I think they are my favorites, though and Bach and Beethoven, which seem to be most people's first choice, don't do it as much for me. Also, I suffer from Mozart Effect so I'm smarter than all of you who think your taste is better. ;)

and tchaikovsky. (but only when performed by clara rockmore.)

I like a lot of the Great Big Hits(tm) from Mozart, but my favourite pieces have to be "Messiah" and "Serenade for Winds, K.361, 3rd Movement". Favourite artist/work of all, though: Holst's The Planets. Close Second is probably Dvorak's 9th (so predictable, I know).

Modern stuff would be Ligeti, Gavin Bryars, a lot of Kronos (best work: Black Angels). If you give me the Low Symphony, you can throw out virtually everything else that Mr. P. Glass ever did and I wouldn't care. Okay. That's it for now. Time to get back to work.

Other faves off the top of my head: Prokofiev (the bane of my existence during that brief period I took piano lessons, but such wonderful piano music!), Schoenberg, Schubert, Debussy, Webern (sorry Dan), Penderecki, Chopin, Górecki

All of my canon have already been mentioned I think, save for Britten, Lutoslawski, Boulez and Ligeti.

Search: JS Bach motets, Beethoven late string quartets and Symphony No.9, Schubert songs and late works, Tchaikovsky symphonies and The Nutcracker (complete), Debussy piano préludes, Bartok "Music For Strings Percussion and Celeste", Shostakovich symphonies, most any Berio, Feldman, George Crumb or Steve Reich.

Really, my dislike of Webern comes from a soprano art song I heard during a music theory class. The accompaniment was stupid little trills that made me think he'd put catnip on the keys of his piano and recorded the first riff his cat produced when it freaked out on it, while the soprano had to do all of these stupid octave-and-a-fifth (twelfth?) leaps in an unrelated key. It sounded dumb and would be an awful thing to have to sing. Carter wrote one of the ugliest pieces of music for men's chorus that wasn't by Harbison ever ("Tarentella"), but he also wrote this fantastic piece whose title escapes me, so I can't really say that I hate him. Most of my exposure to these composers has come from performing their work as opposed to listening to them, so I may be unfairly judgubg some of them on stupid things they did with the voice.

I am APPALLED that I didn't mention Britten. His "War Requiem" is one of the greatest pieces of music ever written; certainly the best choral/symphonic piece of the 20th century.

I think I've stumbled across a difference in our sensibilities: to me, that sounds great (and I did not dislike a single art song on the Complete Works).

More seriously, I think there's a little more compositional structure going on in Webern that that. That sounds much more like something that would come out Cage/Fluxus-style chance experimentalism.

So what is classical?

Gesualdo, Monteverdi, Vivaldi, Bach, Mozart, some Haydn, Beethoven, some Schubert, some Mendelssohn, some Chopin, Wagner, Bruckner, Scriabin, Debussy, Ravel, Satie, some Ives, Schoenberg, Berg, Webern, Stravinsky, Bartok, Hindemith (wildly underrated), earlier Cage, Morton Feldman, Takemitsu, Crumb.

What don't I like? Of the "top-tier greats", I find myself seldom really engaged by Brahms or Handel. I'm not a fan of Telemann or the mid-late-19th-century French composers like Saint-Saens (though Fauré can be really great). I can't stand any of the Milton Babbitt I've heard, and a lot of later Cage is just unlistenable. Vaughan Williams, Holst, and Elgar are, to my taste, very bland. Minimalism is usually deadly dull, though Glass's Koyannisqatsi and Einstein on the Beach are quite good, and some of Steve Reich's music is very good. Michael Daugherty's pieces (Superman, Barbie, etc.) seem cynical and calculated.

Dan: I find that a bad performance can render atonal music utterly unintelligible. I've heard performances of a certain Schoenberg piece that left me thinking it was nonsense, and then heard others that were like a revelation by comparison. Similarly, I heard a performance of Boulez's 2nd sonata that sounded like garbage, and then heard a Pollini recording where it sounded like music, and rewarding music at that.

Other notes: Gorecki's Third, which has been beaten to death in the Nonesuch version, is actually available in a far better rendition in Britain (Jerzy Swoboda, Katowice Philharmonic, and Kilanowicz singing). It makes the Upshaw version seem histrionic. And it's beautiful.

Erwin Schulhoff's string quartets are great. As is some music by a composer named Fred Lerdahl -- a piece called Eros and his Waltzes for string quartet come to mind.

From what I've heard, I would rank the Carter string quartets just as they're numbered -- the first is brilliant, and the fourth seems nearly random.

I remember really liking George Perle's music, and some of Roger Sessions'.

Nono's Prometeo is great.

(Now as for Stravinsky - totally overrated. Petrushka
is only decent, and I actively dislike The Rite Of Spring.
Haven't heard the Firebird yet.)

4 Seasons turns me ON in a big way. I love it.

I wish there was more Schoenburg available, but there ain't so i've had to settle for those who are carrying the torch (sort of), ie what i've heard of C Wuorinen, M Powell, D Martino, J Druckman, J Schwantner etc. etc. that post-serialist american school.

I think John Cage is almost completeley a waste of time (the prepared piano interludes etc. were composed, so they're funky, honourable exception).

(
Yeah, given all the other composers out there trying to make a crust w/out poking fun to the exclusion of any useful overiding aestetics, screw John Cage. Listen to that stuff at the library, if you think your valuable time is worth wasting even a little bit. Compared to what has been composed in the last half century, John Cage is a waste of your ears, your cognisance will be stretched into false connections, John Cage is just a NYC art cult, like sonic youth. You could treat your brain as an adult or you could go and listen to them. Both Cage and 'Youth once had good chops, but just as the "music" of cage is still alive, both these cults relying more on ny reputation and patronage than on actual musical intelligence, have really been dead musically for about ten years.
)

This is what I don't get. Even if you only stick to the 'composed' stuff, throwing out all the chance/indeterminacy stuff, that still leaves you with a massive catalogue of unique, diverse, often brilliant, and often quite accessible material.

Too true. Mahler was engaged w/ history, humour (? yes) and irony in a way that Wagner never was. Stay away from sym. 8 tho. And search 4, 6 and 7

Re: Kagel - the new recording of the Piano Trio on Winter+Winter is, technically, one of the best sounding recordings I've heard. And the piece itself is no slouch either

Re: Vivaldi - It's easy to get bored by the 4 seasons, but try Fabio Biondi's recordings to relieve this

GG in 'conspiracy theory' mode shockah!

That parenthetical about Cage doesn't make any sense to me ("your cognisance will be stretched into false connections"? "You could treat your brain as an adult or you could go and listen to them." -- if that means what I think it means, then yes: this was, in some pieces, Cage's point entirely, that it's important to shuck away that sort of "adult listening"; similarly I might point out that it's important to play sometimes and not just go to work and be responsible).

I'm a fan, though, and dismissing Cage in one swoop like that seems weird, since for me Cage's work contains many different directions and styles, and if someone says they don't like Cage I immediately wonder what period they're talking about -- the prepared piano stuff? the early chance music? the deeply experimental 70s stuff? the quiet end-of-life numbers pieces? I can imagine someone not getting much out of "Music of Changes" but nevertheless adoring "Ryoanji" or "1O1".

or just that i don't mind playful music, but why is there this beef mountain of cage material already out there, why do i have to play with john cage ? with such an immensity of realisable scores, should that result in more and more john cage recordings ? i'm sure it's easier to be prolific if you have cage's aesthetic, throwing the continuity in music that's what other composers work hard to get right out the window -- should that result in what i think is high and over-representative coverage of his music, when those same few ensembles could be playing other 20th century music thats going to be axiomatically different to john cage music ?

there's another thread "the john cage industry" -- discuss it there if you want, as that's the heart of what grates -- that john cage is tending towards the pop star of 20th century music, maybe because what's required isn't thoughtful listening -- that it's more econically feasible and easier for ensembles to put out john cage releases -- john cage as chin stroking easy listening industry shocker (cf: hard to play and more lassez faire to listen to post-serialist music, for instance)

my attitude is that john cage has put himself into a whole seperate category from all the other composers i mentioned yet he gets _so_much_ posthumous attention, and apologists -- it's nice though to see some people _have_heard_of_ and bother to listen to Kagel

other favourites-cantus for benjamin britten by arvo part,gorecki's third sympony,dvorak's new world symphony,and mozarts piano concerto no 20 and 21...i also really like mahler's fifth symphony....

ah now come on ted...surely the one thing in the world mozart couldn't possibly be is overrated...

I have to agree with that.

Like so many classical composer before the 20th century then (though here we have multiple performances of one score). There is a reason why we have a music INDUSTRY.

I see yr point: I'd like to attend a performance of Iancu dumitrescu's music, or Xenakis and so on but at least a focus on Cage might get ppl to look at other 20th century composers, no?

The purpose of releasing any Cage recordings is suspect, because Cage was against them. You're not supposed to hear the same notes every time you hear Winter Music, and recordings give a certain authority to a single performance that Cage distrusted. (But he also understood that people liked recordings for various reasons, so assisted in making and gave his blessing to several of them.)

The Mode project is wonderful mostly because it's a document of the breadth of the music, and because many of the recordings are terrific.

But yeah: Obviously listening to Cage and listening to Kagel are two completely different things, and there's no reason why you can't have room for both of them in your listening habits.