Which composer do you like more than you think you do?

[Guest]

On listening last night to the Double Concerto in A minor for Violin and Cello, I was reminded again that mine is Brahms.

My concept of Brahms is of an old 1950s sideboard that I once owned but there is a tremendous amount of complexity, variety, subtlety and interest there. It always surprises me. At the same time, I wouldn't necessarily go out of my way to tune in.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

John cage if he is a composer ....

[MrGongGong]

John cage if he is a composer ....

Stop it now ............
You will only bring out the ENC brigade

[Bryn]

Stop it now ............
You will only bring out the ENC brigade

To be fair, he is more of decompo.. . these days.

(I'll get me coat.)

[BBMmk2]

Contemporary classical music, perhaps. There's some verygood music here, anbd bad.

[MrGongGong]

Contemporary classical music, perhaps.

I (really ) don't know what , or rather who, you mean by this ?
a bit like the word "Jazz"

[BBMmk2]

I was meanig in a general way, MrGG.

[Serial_Apologist]

I was meanig in a general way, MrGG.

[ahinton]

John cage if he is a composer ....

It's curious that you should mention this within minutes of my receiving the following from a colleague (no names mentioned!) about him:

I'm not surprised you don't like any Cage as even the early pieces have a deliberate Stravinsky-like suppression of emotion - though compared with Stravinsky whose music is, as Hans Keller said, "expressive through the very suppression of expressionism", Cage has very little emotion to suppress, and his later use of chance procedures is an effective way of eliminating any hint of emotion whatsoever.

I responded

Stravinsky did indeed have emotions to suppress, ignore (or perhaps even cynically sell off at a large profit! - actually that one's a tad unfair, as even I will admit!), as his earlier works and some later ones demonstrate, but I fear that the fact that you're correct about Cage in this respect might even have been one reason why Schönberg preferred to think of him as an inventor rather than as what he understood to constitute a composer.

I seem to recall (though my multiple forgetfulness illustrated above might well undermine this!) that it was G K Chesterton who once questioned how anyone could expect someone with the name Martin Tupper to be a poet; by a not dissimilar token, I might ask (albeit equally rhetorically!) how anyone could expect someone whose name spells out (albeit in the wrong order) the strings to which a ukulele is tuned could be a composer...

FF will probably now give me my first warning (well, I hope that she doesn't, but at least it WILL be only my first if she does!...)

[Serial_Apologist]

I sometimes think I like Elgar's music more than I should...

The parts of his music I prefer to the Empire tub-thumping stuff are the episodes where he seems at home surrounded by the seminatural beauties of the border countryside, and I think of him, out in his back garden, sitting in a Bath chair kissed by the sun as he takes his afternoon tea, or riding the Malverns in that fantastic image, and think of all the people who by dint of circumstance have been deprived of their capacity for such identifications by circumstance or maltreatment.

[Lateralthinking1]

I sometimes think I like......music more than I should...

I feel much the same about Tristan und Isolde. Fortunately, none of that composer's other work is sufficiently enjoyable to trouble me. Do you have any specific examples of Elgar in mind as I am not sure that I know where best to locate that Elgar.

[Serial_Apologist]

I feel much the same about Tristan und Isolde. Fortunately, none of that composer's other work is sufficiently enjoyable to trouble me. Do you have any specific examples of Elgar in mind as I am not sure that I know where best to locate that Elgar.

The bracing Introduction and Allegro (1905) for Strings is probably my favourite piece by Elgar.

[Lateralthinking1]

Thank you. So far the thread has highlighted Cage. I am not sure whether I like Cage more than I think I do or whether I think I like Cage more than I do. That, I think, is precisely the appeal of Cage.

[MrGongGong]

Thank you. So far the thread has highlighted Cage. I am not sure whether I like Cage more than I think I do or whether I think I like Cage more than I do. That, I think, is precisely the appeal of Cage.

I'm sure he would have loved your reasoning ............

[cloughie]

I'm sure he would have loved your reasoning ............

He certainly seems to leave the cage door open!