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Favorite Composers

Sceptic Realist

Bad Speller
Sceptic Realist
Joined
Sep 24, 2006
Messages
954
Following in the Famos Authors thread's footsteps, I've looked over the topics in this section and discovered that Music needed some love. So let's have it! Your favorite, or perhaps your least favorite. List them here!

My own (I'm sure I forgot some of them):

Mahler
Resphigi
Rachmonanoff
Stravinsky
Beethoven
Brahms
Copland
Gershwin
Verdi

I need to stop now. :boxedin:
 
Richard Wagner
Claude-Michel Schönberg
John Williams
Howard Shore
Hans Zimmer
Ennio Morricone
Alan Silvestri

Not a huge fan of classical music so most of my favourite composers are film composers. :)
 
gumboot said:
Richard Wagner
Claude-Michel Schönberg
John Williams
Howard Shore
Hans Zimmer
Ennio Morricone
Alan Silvestri

Not a huge fan of classical music so most of my favourite composers are film composers. :)
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Williams and Shore are indeed awsome. I forgot to add them to the list!

That being said, Classical is a hoooyge genre. You likely are listening to the bad stuff. I promise there is also fantastic stuff, too (particualrly if you like Shore and Williams). Actually, most of the composers up there are of the Romantic period and 20th century, rather than classical, but that's the "genre" title everyone uses I guess.
 
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gumboot said:
Richard Wagner
Claude-Michel Schönberg
John Williams
Howard Shore
Hans Zimmer
Ennio Morricone
Alan Silvestri

Not a huge fan of classical music so most of my favourite composers are film composers. :)
Click to expand...

Same here.

Of course, I have to add the vastly underrated late Jerry Goldsmith. He was able to give each movie its own musical identity, and quite often it was his score that saved a movie from being a complete disgrace.
 
Sceptic Realist said:
Williams and Shore are indeed awsome. I forgot to add them to the list!

That being said, Classical is a hoooyge genre. You likely are listening to the bad stuff. I promise there is also fantastic stuff, too (particualrly if you like Shore and Williams). Actually, most of the composers up there are of the Romantic period and 20th century, rather than classical, but that's the "genre" title everyone uses I guess.
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Some more to add:

Carl Orff
Gustav Holst
Wojciech Kilar
Vangelis
Harry Gregson-Williams
Michael Nyman
James Horner

There are also particular pieces by various composers that I really like, although often I don't know who the composer is... :(
 
Is anybody else familiar with David Holsinger? In high school we played Havendance, and it's an incredible piece.

John Williams is my favorite "modern classical" composer.

And every time I hear Stravinsky's "Firebird Suite", I have to restrain myself from jumping up and conducting an imaginary orchestra.
 
I'll toss my two bits in:

Arvo Pärt
Henryk Górecki
Ralph Vaughan-Williams
Gilbert and Sullivan
Philip Glass
Geinoh Yamashirogumi (for the soundtrack to "Akira")
Susumu Hirasawa (for the soundtracks "Paranoia Agent" and "Paprika")
Ryuichi Sakamoto
 
J.S. Bach - for the aching lyricism and the polyphony and the unexpectedness and the sheer weight of his personality. Particularly the cantatas - Ich will den Kreuztab, Ich habe genug, Ein Feste Burg ist unser Gott, Erschallet ihr Lieder and so on for 200 works. I also love to play the 2 part inventions on the piano, never get tired of them. Aiming at being able to play the 3 part sinfonias soon. Oh and there are the Passions and the B Minor Mass. And more, much more.

Franz Schubert. Another extremely prolific composer so it's good to fall in love with him too. He does aching lyricism as well. Outdoes anybody for lyricism actually and for melody but can do a wide variety of emotions - try http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5B6nysheec for a great interpretation of his most famous song. And there are 600 more of them. Wonderful late piano sonatas - dramatic and touching - and the chamber music. He was getting better and better all the time but was dead at 31.

Robert Schumann - mostly for his songs but also piano pieces. All the manic-depressive emotion you could possibly want.

Debussy. The piano pieces shimmer in no particular key. Ravishing. Try Images and the Preludes.

Hugo Wolf (no greater songs exist according to Harold Schonberg, the late music critic for the NY Times)

Brahms. If you like rich, deep sound and lots of development.

Haydn...Richard Strauss...Purcell...the English and Italian madrigalists....Arvo Part for luscious sound that doesn't require too much input from the listener...Mozart for the operas and the piano concertos...

Got to stop.
 
Russian Muppet said:
Ralph Vaughan-Williams
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That's what I was forgetting. Variation on a Theme by Thomas Tallis is one of my favorite pieces.

Mahler has always been one of my favorites because he can go from deep, violent anger or strife to complete serenity in a few bars.....and he does those both better than any composer I've ever heard. Also his second symphony ("Resurrection") is my favorite musical work. I have yet to hear a piece that gives me more emotional connection, satisfying structure, or sheer awe than this 'un. I tear up for the last two minutes every time, never fails.

Reshpigi because he bases his work on actual circumstances or things (rather than abstract ideas or musical structure), which I find very interesting, and he has brilliant orchestration to back it up. Also has pieces that blow me away every time. Also he is Italian.
 
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Placed:
Mozart
Shostakovich
Brahms

Also rans:
Mahler, JS Bach, Stravinsky, Elgar, Purcell, Faure, Vivaldi
 
Let me indulge a bit in elitism and list only those of my favourites that are not as widely known as Mozart and that crowd. This I do to escape a repetition of previously mentioned composers. Note also that I list one of my favourite pieces, so that, if you are interested, you can get it and see where the excellence lies.

Michail Ippolitov-Ivanov (Caucasian sketches 1 and 2)
Louie-Moreau Gottschalk (too much to list)
Percy Grainger (too much to list)
Charles Valentine Alkan (especially The Railway)
Gang Chen and Zhanhao He (solely for their Butterfly Lovers)
Akutagawa Yasushi (Music for Symphony Orchestra)
George Antheil (Ballet Mechanique)
John Adams (The Grand Pianola)

I'm also a great fan of Uematsu Nobou, who wrote the music to the Final Fantasy games 1-9 (maybe 10 as well?).
 
Rachmaninov is pretty good. Especially his works for solo piano. Bartok is a lot of fun, for example Concerto for Orchestra. I've always been a big fan of Debussy. I can't think of anything he wrote I don't find wonderful. I second the vote for Respighi. His Roman Trilogy is fantastic. Carl Orff's Carmina Burana is an amazing work. I've sung in it 4 times. I just love all those melodies. And I really get knocked out by Mahler's (Der Lied von der Erde) and R. Strauss' (4 Last Songs) vocal works. So many great composers, and so little time to hear everything.
 
The staples of my musical diet are J.S.Bach, Bartok, Steve Reich, John Adams and one other composer whose name you have to guess ;). I also season occasionally with Beethoven, Rachmaninov, Ravel, Brahms, Shostakovich...

Since it's not worth opening a whole thread about, I will note here that I'm currently working through Beethoven's symphonies, ten years after having listened to a few movements and put them on the back burner, and here's my two cents: they are all works at the sublime pinnacle of human achievement, with one exception.

RANT! The last movement of Beethoven's 9th is a STEAMING PILE OF BLECCH and a waste of half an hour of anyone's life.


There, I said it. And I'll say it again.

RANT! The last movement of Beethoven's 9th is a STEAMING PILE OF BLECCH and a waste of half an hour of anyone's life.


I'll probably waste another half hour of my life again, in maybe five years, in another attempt to see what the hell all the fuss is about. And the first three movements are so damn good, as well.
 
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In no particular order of favorites...

Bach. Pure and utter genius. What more can I say?

Beethoven. My favorite thematic composer from the Classical / Romantic era. His melodies and pure mastery of the sonata form is one of the greatest contributions to human society by any one person.

Rameau. He advanced music theory more than anyone before him, and the current dichotomy between major/minor and harmony/dissonance is owed to his work. Musically, his work approaches the complexity of Bach and lays the foundation for Western music from the Baroque era to the present day. If guys like Bach and Beethoven are Einstein, then Rameau was Newton.

Shostakovich. A tortured soul who managed to be heard over the Soviet Union's political pressure cooker. I really consider him to Beethoven's musical counterpart for the modern age. And his first Cello Concerto is the greatest thing written for the instrument in the entire 20th Century, period. This is not up for debate.

Prokofiev. I think he's "the man behind the curtain" of classic Hollywood film scores. Listen to "Alexander Nevsky" and his 5th Symphony and you'll realize where John Williams gets all his inspiration from.

Ravel. Everything he wrote except "Bolero" is fantastic. Even he didn't like that piece, and rightfully so. His music owes a lot to Debussy's influence, but I find it more expressive.

Rachmaninoff. Of course, his piano concertos are some of the very best around, but his symphonies are woefully overlooked.
 
Chopin nothing quite like the Etudes
Tchaikovsky ditto the Violin Concerto in D
plus most of those previously mentioned
 
The thread title is an impossible question! I love many, many of the ones quoted above but just at the moment - Poulenc (I don't think I've heard anything of his that I didn't like), Prokofiev, Ravel, Scriabin.

Also I have just 'discovered' Honegger 'Le Roi David'.
 
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