Your Favourite Composers-Reality & Perception

[kea]

10 favourite composers (in terms of most important to me I guess)

Beethoven
Schumann
Schubert
Bartók
Mozart
Bach
Brahms
Haydn
Dvořák
Cage

10 favourite composers (according to last.fm play count)

Schumann
Bach
Beethoven
Brahms
Haydn
Mozart
Schubert
Shostakovich
Bartók
Dvořák

I'm surprised they end up mostly the same except for ordering. (Cage is at #13 in terms of play count. Shostakovich makes the top 10 because of some fairly intensive exploration of his music 2-3 years ago, but in terms of favourites, he'd probably be in the 30s.)

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Because the works of my favourite composers are so firmly embedded in my memory (and consciousness, and blood) I tend to play them less frequently than those I'm getting to know better. So recent listening has been Christian Wolff, William Alwyn, Verdi, Linda Catlin Smith, Martinu - and lesser-known (to me) works of favourites, such as the Monteverdi madrigals, the harpsichord Music of Bach, and the chamber Music of Schumann, and Mendelssohn.

But then ... I go to a concert given by the Hallé which includes a near-perfect performance of the Beethoven Fourth Symphony, and I remember exactly why my favourites became my favourites in the first place.

[Richard Barrett]

There seems to be a crazed obsession with "favourites" on the forum at the moment... wake me up when it's over (or don't)...

[ahinton]

Asked in a pub who are my favourite composers, I'd say Bach, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert , Wagner, Bruckner and Mahler.

What would you say, and do you think it squares with your listening habits?

Looking through my 'recently played' on iTunes etc, and checking what's on my iPod/pad/FiiO/Sony &c a different picture is shown ...

1. Bruckner
2. Mahler
3. Bartók
4. Sibelius
5. Webern
6. Ravel
7. Debussy
8. Messiaen
9. Boulez
10. Rachmaninov !!!!!!!


Rachmaninov never enters my ken/radar ever! But I seem to listen to his piano music more than I listen to Wagner!!

I'm afraid that I'm rather with Richard Barrett on this; "asked in a pub who are my favourite composers", I'd go find another pub, just as I would if someone asked me whether I "favour" Remain or Leave (except that, in this instance only, I'd favour Leave in the sense of leaving that pub for another one a.s.a.p.).

No list that I could compile would ever be accurate or meaningful or indeed other than misleading because I simply don't think that such a list would be possible; "favourite" implies "favouring one composer over another" and, given the immense differences between so many of them, the exercise would seem to be to be pointless even before attempting to embark upon it.

[Pabmusic]

I'm very pleased to say that I've never been asked this question in a pub, and never hope to be. I often listen to music not because it's a favourite, but rather because I don't know it - or perhaps don't know it well enough.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

There seems to be a crazed obsession with "favourites" on the forum at the moment... wake me up when it's over (or don't)...

It's a bit more subtle than that this time, I think. BeefO is inviting us to compare what we believe to be our "favourites" with the actual amount of Music of their Music that we choose to listen to.

This is more interesting, I think than the usual "favourite spoon"-type Threads.

[Lat-Literal]

As someone who is more inclined to seek out new things rather than going over the familiar, I tend to see lists of this kind as sketch maps or route maps. They help me to navigate the roads I know or have recently found and to see which ones I don't know well or haven't ever travelled. Shapes ensue. Dare I mention "Talk Classical"? It has been a helpful source on occasions in this respect. Lists also enable me to understand the tastes of people on this forum better and to get a flavour or colour on "typical" combinations. I am always struck, for example, by the way in which forum members lean heavily towards the Austro-German while I don't. Sure, this accentuates inferiority at times - but that is the least of my problems!

[Joseph K]

There seems to be a crazed obsession with "favourites" on the forum at the moment... wake me up when it's over (or don't)...

My list was simply of composers whose music I listen to the most, at least relatively recently. Unfortunately I can't really answer the reality vs. perception since I don't have the means to do that. Are there not composers whose stuff you listen to more than others? Or rather, do you not consider it a very interesting question?

[jayne lee wilson]

There seems to be a crazed obsession with "favourites" on the forum at the moment... wake me up when it's over (or don't)...

Oh, I think it's called...fun.
It can be very interesting how one perceives and misperceives one's listening patterns and evolving habits, and favourite composers (which concept I would have at one time dismissed) are a part of that, however you define favourites i.e. who do I listen to most, most recurrently, over years or months? For me it may be easier because I have "seasons", I obsess about one or two composers for weeks on end.... just now it's Lutosławski, yet I wouldn't have called his music a favourite as such...
How we engage with and perceive the world and our emotional and intellectual orientation within it has always fascinated me. I think list-making is a lighthearted way of enjoying the awareness of that.

What do I truly love, what really matters to me, what do I carry around in my head and heart, musically (or otherwise)? Let's make a list...
"How do I know what I think till I see what I say?"
(E.M. Forster)

[ahinton]

Oh, I think it's called...fun.
It can be very interesting how one perceives and misperceives one's listening patterns and evolving habits, and favourite composers (which concept I would have at one time dismissed) are a part of that, however you define favourites i.e. who do I listen to most, most recurrently, over years or months? For me it may be easier because I have "seasons", I obsess about one or two composers for weeks on end.... just now it's Lutosławski, yet I wouldn't have called his music a favourite as such...
How we engage with and perceive the world and our emotional and intellectual orientation within it has always fascinated me. I think list-making is a lighthearted way of enjoying the awareness of that.

Maybe you're right about that; I just couldn't do it, that's all...

[Beef Oven!]

What I was trying to get at was the relationship between one's perception of one's favourite composers and the 'reality' of one's actual listening habits. Pretty much along the lines of Jayne's post #24. With the assumption being that on balance, we will tend to listen to things we like and research and learning unfamiliar pieces will be a marginal phenomenon.

I for example had no idea that I listened to so much Bartok and Messiaen. And the Rachmaninov was a big surprise.

[ahinton]

What I was trying to get at was the relationship between one's perception of one's favourite composers and the 'reality' of one's actual listening habits. Pretty much along the lines of Jayne's post #24. With the assumption being that on balance, we will tend to listen to things we like and research and learning unfamiliar pieces will be a marginal phenomenon.

I for example had no idea that I listened to so much Bartok and Messiaen. And the Rachmaninov was a big surprise.

OK, that's quite a lot clearer; however, the issue remains open as to the criteria upon which an answer to this question might be based by the person answering it as distinct from those in the mind of the person in the pub asking it - i.e. were the questioner instead to ask someone the more complex question as to how and whether he/she perceives a difference between his/her listening habits and the composers that he/she might consider to be "favourites" (and why), it might focus that person's attention on the relationship between his/her listening habits and his/her likes and dislikes. Even then, were such a question to be put to me in a pub, I might still feel tempted to answer "a large Tanqueray 10 and tonic, please" but try to think better of it...

[ahinton]

What I was trying to get at was the relationship between one's perception of one's favourite composers and the 'reality' of one's actual listening habits. Pretty much along the lines of Jayne's post #24. With the assumption being that on balance, we will tend to listen to things we like and research and learning unfamiliar pieces will be a marginal phenomenon.

I for example had no idea that I listened to so much Bartok and Messiaen. And the Rachmaninov was a big surprise.

I'm somewhat surprised that Rachmaninov was "a big surprise", given your interest in Sorabji!

[Beef Oven!]

I'm somewhat surprised that Rachmaninov was "a big surprise", given your interest in Sorabji!

That's one of the things I was thinking of when starting this thread. I would have thought that I listen to more Sorabji than Rachmaninov, but no.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

That's one of the things I was thinking of when starting this thread. I would have thought that I listen to more Sorabji than Rachmaninov, but no.

Is that in hours or number of works?