8 composers you can live without

[Nick Armstrong]

Well, Copland wouldn't be too far from my list but his best work would be sure to keep him off it and all that he did for other American composers' music has ensured his stature as one of the last century's most important American musicians, I believe...

Yes I felt cruel and it was his clarinet concerto that saved him and got Glass his place on the Roll of Dishonour! (Not before Pabs and Sir Velo quoted my first stab and revealed my working though.. )

Mind you, I don't think 'importance' and 'influence' are necessarily criteria here. I wholeheartedly accept and acknowledge the huge influence of Liszt on lots of music. But it doesn't make me want to liszten to most of his stuff.

[Nick Armstrong]

I don't know enough to write them off just now.

Certainly possible to live without 'em!

[Sir Velo]

Any composer of opera with the exception of:

Mozart
Bartok
Janacek
Britten

Turnage (white boy's 3rd rate jazz impressions)
Minimalists (save some early Glass)
Bernstein (kitsch!)
Carter (tried; boy have I tried!)

[Beef Oven!]

An interesting phenomenon is apparent. Not a single poster seems to share my views on:

Sterndale Bennett
Holbrooke
Reinecke
Rubinstein
Macdowell
Fibich
Draeseke
Mackenzie

Does this mean that I'm the only person to have listened to their music in the last x years? Or that their music is so banal that it doesn't even merit consideration? Or that theirs is music of real worth and I'm just not getting it?

Rubinstein is in my list on post #4

[Sir Velo]

Weill

...you think is rather vile?

[Beef Oven!]

I asked a similar question when I included Rutter in my list. If they count, I'd include the ones you've named as well, except they would take up too much of the list.

I included Rutter in post #4, but if Jenkins et can be considered as 1 or no composers, I'd like to add Delius a few more times.

[Mary Chambers]

Bernstein (kitsch!)

How on earth did I forget him? My list is getting too long.....

[Pabmusic]

Here's eight more:

Feknok Prevarikan
Arturo Falifaglio
Ted Louche
Silvestro Aresole
Eiger Eigersen
Eiger Eigersen's son (I can't be bothered to think of his name)
Zap Swat
Garret Wesley, 1st Earl of Mornington

Believe me, it's not worth listening to anything of theirs.*

* [I actually have no idea about Garret Wesley's music, because I've not heard any. He was a cousin of John & Charles and wrote church stuff. His elder son (the 2nd Earl) changed the family name to Wellesley, and his youngest son, Arthur, was quite well known.]

[Pabmusic]

Rubinstein is in my list on post #4

I knew I could rely on you, Beefy!

[Pabmusic]

pabs: I think the thread demands a substantial exposure to, and engagement with, the sidelined composer's work...

It's not worth it.

[Beef Oven!]

I knew I could rely on you, Beefy!

That's me Pabs, Mr Reliable (ahem)

[Nick Armstrong]

Silvestro Aresole

Now you're pulling our plonkers....

[Beef Oven!]

Now you're pulling our plonkers....

He's just being a bit of a silvestro!

[Thropplenoggin]

Flabbergasted that no one has mentioned Queldryk so far.

Everyone's favourite omphaloskeptic and self-styled 'philosophe du jour', Alain Lobotomy, has beaten us to this lark. In this month's Gramophone he states witheringly:

'Occasionally I feel I must stretch my horizons and have a go at Mozart, but find him too jolly, or Beethoven, but find him too emotional, or Schubert, but find him too limp.'



Where to start with critique as profound as this?

[Pabmusic]

Now you're pulling our plonkers....

And with that image indelibly in his mind, he goes to bed (because Mrs Pab says so - it's late here).