Your Favourite Composers-Reality & Perception

[Richard Barrett]

Oh, I think it's called...fun.

I see. I've always thought fun to be overrated.

[Beef Oven!]

Is that in hours or number of works?

Number of times I've listened to Rachmaninov compared to Sorabji. It's not very scientific, but it's systematic with a fair bit of subjective memory!

For example, I forgot to check my Sony DAP at first. Here there is what appears to be two years worth of Vivaldi listening!

I didn't envisage my methods to be able to bear close, forensic examination!

[Serial_Apologist]

Like Jayne and Ferney I have periodic passions - the last were for Berio and Henze. Having settled on building as "representative" a collection of recorded 20th century music as I have been able over the past 50-odd years, my listening tends to veer between my favourite composers or works and less favoured stuff - possibly on the bashing ones head agaisnt a brick wall is so nice when you leave off principle, but more more probably in the interests of re-assessing works or styles I've tended not to like in the past, eg Stravinsky's neo-classical music, barring the Symphonies of Psalms and In Thee Movements. Each time, however, I find myself returning to those long-term favourites Frescobaldi, late Beethoven, Debussy, Vaughan Williams, Holst, Brian, Bartok, Schoenberg, Eisler, Prokofiev, Honegger, Berio and Stockhausen. In aggregate they generously cover all I am interested in finding in music, because there always seems to be something previously undiscovered by me.

[EdgeleyRob]

Current top 10 favourite composers

Vaughan Williams
Elgar
Howells
Britten
Arnold
Alwyn
Shostakovich
Weinberg
Alkan
Mendelssohn

Last 10 composers listened to

Vaughan Williams
Elgar
Bach
Beethoven
Mathias
Taneyev
Dussek
Czerny
York Bowen
Mozart

[jayne lee wilson]

I see. I've always thought fun to be overrated.

I think the only possible comment here is..... no comment...

[Lat-Literal]

There have already been some fascinating insights in this thread from my point of view. I would not have associated Debussy and Ravel with Beef Oven (ie often piano music and from that particular era - not older or newer), Shostakovich with Rob (non British although I knew about the interests in Alkan and Weinberg), Alwyn with Ferney (too traditional for 20th C) and especially Vaughan Williams and Holst with Serial_Apologist who I'd told myself was the epitome of Anti Vaughan Wlliams for perceiving him as folky and nationalistic. I'm shocked!

As a footnote, I've often wondered which composer represents the axis point for widely varying tastes. The one that permits the most compromise is Debussy, I reckon,or if not Dvorak.

[Constantbee]

Hmm, this is a tough one, but since you ask ...

The reality is my tastes have been so strongly influenced by music media what I think I like will be what I hear most of or most often:

Beethoven
Brahms
Schubert

Prokofiev
Shostakovich

Grieg
Sibelius

perception is different. (My perception or what other people think I like? )

Haydn
Handel
Telemann
Vivaldi

Strauss
Bowen
Britten
Arnold

In many cases I'd warm to a composer for their life rather than for the music

[gurnemanz]

Here's a list reflecting my penchant for German song:

Schubert
Schumann
Brahms
Mahler
Strauss R
Wolf
Weill

[Pabmusic]

Despite grave misgivings, here are two lists, together with why they don't mean much.

Favourite composers:

Elgar
Finzi
Vaughan Williams
Barber
Suk
Strauss (Josef)
Borodin
Kalinnikov
Sibelius
Bartók

But these are favourites in the sense that my interest has been quite intense at different times - I have 'lived' their music. But that also means I have much less need to play their music - I know much of it almost note-for-note, so I don't play them too often.

The top ten composers I have played recently. (This is compiled from my own collection stored on computer as well as on YouTube):

Debussy
Abert
Berwald
Parry
Harris
Grainger
Ravel
Milford
Britten
Fauré

No two composers overlap, but that is entirely because most of the music represented in the second list I didn't know, or wanted to know better. They are lists for different purposes.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Alphabetically:

Beethoven
Elgar
Mozart
Puccini
Ravel
Strauss R
Tchaikovsky
Vaughan Williams
Wagner
Walton

[antongould]

Despite grave misgivings, here are two lists, together with why they don't mean much.

Favourite composers:

Elgar
Finzi
Vaughan Williams
Barber
Suk
Strauss (Josef)
Borodin
Kalinnikov
Sibelius
Bartók

But these are favourites in the sense that my interest has been quite intense at different times - I have 'lived' their music. But that also means I have much less need to play their music - I know much of it almost note-for-note, so I don't play them too often.

The top ten composers I have played recently. (This is compiled from my own collection stored on computer as well as on YouTube):

Debussy
Abert
Berwald
Parry
Harris
Grainger
Ravel
Milford
Britten
Fauré

No two composers overlap, but that is entirely because most of the music represented in the second list I didn't know, or wanted to know better. They are lists for different purposes.

Different purposes indeed pabs .... any views on Harris .... ????

[Serial_Apologist]

I would not have associated [...] Vaughan Williams and Holst with Serial_Apologist who I'd told myself was the epitome of Anti Vaughan Wlliams for perceiving him as folky and nationalistic.

Vaughan Williams and Holst were not like yer modern-day nationalists or their fascist forbears, Lat! They were closer to the late Victorian/Edwardian disillusionment with industrialism, which had really started in this country, and to some extent like William Morris & co identified creativity with spiritual pathways closer to eg Buddhism and Taoism than the religion for which VW in particular composed as a readymade popular context ritual for collective music making. They may have had similar Luddite illusions to followers of the Arts & Crafts Guild together with a sadness that certain lifestyle options eg pre-mass industrial handicraft, recognising of self-realisation through creative accomplishment, were lost, but neither swallowed their religious heritage whole, both being skeptics and believing in a naturalistic basis to the spiritual. Holst taught himself Sanskrit, some Japanesse scholars regarding his Upanishad settings in the Rig Veda hyms as closer in insight to the orginals than the translations via Christian-biased missionaries then to hand - hardly what you'd expect would interest a modern nationalist. He and VW were influenced by Bartok, indicating a common take on folk musics transcending national boundaries. If their own take on folk music was ruralistic and ignored its industrial stream this only reflected their privileged background. VW stated that they only wanted to prove music could be made that reflected the richness of the Shakespearian language out of the beauty of the music of its ordinary people, at a time when British music had long been at a low ebb. You have little of the imperialist rhetoric you find in Elgar, none of the misanthropy of Delius's impressionism; and we remember that VW went off to France to study orchestration with Ravel. The last thing a modern nationalist would do would be go off study in France - he would claim to have all he needed to hand here in this country, no? British jazz caught up with the pastoral folklorist composer generation in the 1960s - Michael Garrick saying "We couildn't pretend to be born in Chicago or legendary New Orleans, we had to draw on our own resources and make the British best of it". That was in a way part of the movement that sired Pentangle, the Incredible String Band, and John Martyn among many others, which could not have happened without the VW/Holst axis as a precedent. EP Thompson and Tony Benn are in that tradition that critically acknowledged the importance of that generation of radicals, and I think with the third industrial revolution or whatever decimating skilled work through automation plus goodness knows what else besides we should critically look back at them as positives and examples - ideologically flawed in some ways, (we can't know what they would have thought about black British culture) the emphasis being on critically.

[Richard Barrett]

Sometimes I've wondered why RVW and Holst are more or less the only early 20th century British composers I can stand listening to, and there it is all laid out clearly by S_A.

[cloughie]

Alphabetically:

Beethoven
Elgar
Mozart
Puccini
Ravel
Strauss R
Tchaikovsky
Vaughan Williams
Wagner
Walton

A few changes to your list Alps but a good core!


Debussy
Dvorak
Elgar
Mahler
Mozart
Rachmaninov
Ravel
Strauss R
Tchaikovsky
Vaughan Williams

Left out Berlioz - add as a bonus! Needs to be there if only for the Sym Fant!

[Lat-Literal]

Vaughan Williams and Holst were not like yer modern-day nationalists or their fascist forbears, Lat! They were closer to the late Victorian/Edwardian disillusionment with industrialism, which had really started in this country, and to some extent like William Morris & co identified creativity with spiritual pathways closer to eg Buddhism and Taoism than the religion for which VW in particular composed as a readymade popular context ritual for collective music making. They may have had similar Luddite illusions to followers of the Arts & Crafts Guild together with a sadness that certain lifestyle options eg pre-mass industrial handicraft, recognising of self-realisation through creative accomplishment, were lost, but neither swallowed their religious heritage whole, both being skeptics and believing in a naturalistic basis to the spiritual. Holst taught himself Sanskrit, some Japanesse scholars regarding his Upanishad settings in the Rig Veda hyms as closer in insight to the orginals than the translations via Christian-biased missionaries then to hand - hardly what you'd expect would interest a modern nationalist. He and VW were influenced by Bartok, indicating a common take on folk musics transcending national boundaries. If their own take on folk music was ruralistic and ignored its industrial stream this only reflected their privileged background. VW stated that they only wanted to prove music could be made that reflected the richness of the Shakespearian language out of the beauty of the music of its ordinary people, at a time when British music had long been at a low ebb. You have little of the imperialist rhetoric you find in Elgar, none of the misanthropy of Delius's impressionism; and we remember that VW went off to France to study orchestration with Ravel. The last thing a modern nationalist would do would be go off study in France - he would claim to have all he needed to hand here in this country, no? British jazz caught up with the pastoral folklorist composer generation in the 1960s - Michael Garrick saying "We couildn't pretend to be born in Chicago or legendary New Orleans, we had to draw on our own resources and make the British best of it". That was in a way part of the movement that sired Pentangle, the Incredible String Band, and John Martyn among many others, which could not have happened without the VW/Holst axis as a precedent. EP Thompson and Tony Benn are in that tradition that critically acknowledged the importance of that generation of radicals, and I think with the third industrial revolution or whatever decimating skilled work through automation plus goodness knows what else besides we should critically look back at them as positives and examples - ideologically flawed in some ways, (we can't know what they would have thought about black British culture) the emphasis being on critically.

Thank you for your thoughtful post serial_apologist. Yes - I am fully aware of the nature of VW's political and cultural outlook with which I have considerable empathy. We have had Morris and Ruskin mentioned today elsewhere. Vaughan Williams sits even closer to any ideas I might have about my thinking. You have provided more detail. I didn't know much of it.

What I had thought was that your angle was more jazz against folk and that this was reflected in your classical music tastes. That the pastoralism, for example, was all a bit this land above we individuals and musically on occasion too flowery. I didn't get the nuances right, nor did I think you would link it up to the likes of Light Flight although I might well have done.

Benn is an interesting one. I came round to him in the 1990s and early 2000s, made a point of seeing him speak at Great Smith Street and several times at Glastonbury and there is a copy of "Arguments for Socialism" on my shelves. However, his was a radical prophet in the fields appeal in which I perceived a small c conservatism to any methodism, big or small m.

That is placed in me on the centre left rather than with the sort of badge wearing I'd have associated with Livingstone and now Corbyn/McDonnell. I don't trust the latter to deliver what I believe. They don't feel right, possibly as I sense a hidden authoritarianism. As for Bartok, how I've tried on many occasions but I just don't get him yet. It feels bizarre but there it is.

I realise the political placing is tortuous with unfeasible leaping but that's the kaleidoscope for you, no primary colours or basic logic; even the centre left today is not my centre left.
That's something along the lines of radicalism with cautious methodology to bring about social reform for a newish order that is modestly based upon non-dictatorial moral principles.