The mother of all essential,desert island,favourite,top 10,top 3 etc list things.

[AmpH]

Sorry ER ....... you do the best emoticons

[AmpH]

and think of the years you can spend comparing editions...

...... and boring yourself to sleep every night

[salymap]

Sorry, can't possibly choose between Mozart, Dvorak, Haydn, Elgar, RVW etc,etc so can't compete.

[teamsaint]

Being pragmatic......Beethoven.

[vinteuil]

I can very happily live without Elgar or Vaughan Williams...

If only one composer, then (o so predictably) for me it has to be Bach

[verismissimo]

Haydn.

[cloughie]

Ravel, but only if I can ditch Bolero!

[MrGongGong]

surely you would only take music that you already knew if you wanted to revel in nostalgia ?
and given that for many pieces the phenomena of phonomnesis is sufficient to recall the music internally ?

so for me given that there are many pieces I have yet to hear (and it does depend on HOW I am going to listen to them) i'm sure there's enough Messiaen to last a while ....... today at least

[cloughie]

surely you would only take music that you already knew if you wanted to revel in nostalgia ?
and given that for many pieces the phenomena of phonomnesis is sufficient to recall the music internally ?

so for me given that there are many pieces I have yet to hear (and it does depend on HOW I am going to listen to them) i'm sure there's enough Messiaen to last a while ....... today at least

Good point MrGG, those Round Tuit boxes on the shelf spring to mind eg the warner Messiaen comes to the fore!

[DoctorT]

Brahms

[Pabmusic]

...Only one rule,you can take the complete works of one,and only one,composer to the desert island,simples...

Gerald Finzi - cheating, partly, because I also get some very good poetry - Hardy especially.

[Nick Armstrong]

With my screen size, each time this thread pops up in the "What's New" list, I see

"The mother of all essential,desert"

and think it's a new heading (complete with typo) for the Refreshment Room thread...

[Mary Chambers]

Is there a composer called Bach-Mozart-Schubert-Mahler-Britten? That's who I want.

Impossible decision.

[Boilk]

If you're stuck with one composer, it would surely have to be one

(a) that's fairly prolific
(b) whose music is reasonably diverse - not too samey
(c) you're not familiar with much of their output but like what you know, thus leaving scope for new discoveries rather than endless nostalgia (as mentioned above).

So I'd initially shortlist Telemann / Martinu / Hovhaness / Milhaud, who satisfy all of the above criteria for me.

[Serial_Apologist]

If you're stuck with one composer, it would surely have to be one

(a) that's fairly prolific
(b) whose music is reasonably diverse - not too samey
(c) you're not familiar with much of their output but like what you know, thus leaving scope for new discoveries rather than endless nostalgia (as mentioned above).

So I'd initially shortlist Telemann / Martinu / Hovhaness / Milhaud, who satisfy all of the above criteria for me.

I would add to those criteria, a composer whose music does not give away all its secrets at one, or even after several listenings, if ever.

There remain a few folk song settings of Bartok I still have not heard, but the fact that I continue to note details and interconnections in works of his I have listened to innumerable times yet missed supersedes most other factors of his music, other than the fact of liking most of it.