# And the winner of the "most revolutionary composer of all time" competition is:



## Anselm (Feb 24, 2011)

*And the winner of the "most revolutionary composer of all time" competition is:*

Franz Liszt!

I use the term "revolutionary" as being synonymous with "unprecedented", without implying any influence on subsequent music history.

Never mind _Liebestraum_, _Les Preludes_, the piano concertos and all that stuff. The late music, especially (but not exclusively) the late piano music, is more unprecedented than was any other music ever written before the 20th century relative to its own time. I'm talking about all the way back to _Musica Enchiriadis_ in the late 9th century. I'd be prepared to back that up if anyone cares to challenge me.

The only composers I can think of who were equally revolutionary in the above sense were Varese (1883-1965), who broke with conventional musical sound altogether, and the Americans around the turn of the century, particularly Charles Ives (1874-1954).

Anyone care to disagree? I'm callin' ya out - to an informed discussion, that is!


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## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

I don't know, I don't care, but it's good to hear something positive about dear Ferenc. Usually he gets rather harsh remarks, at least here.


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## Edward Elgar (Mar 22, 2006)

Beethoven. Every decision he ever made was unprecedented!

Berlioz on the strengths of Symphonie Fantastique

Stravinsky on the strengths of The Rite of Spring

Liszt is a good choice though!


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## regressivetransphobe (May 16, 2011)

You're both wrong. Obviously the answer is Dittersdorf.


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## Webernite (Sep 4, 2010)

I'm going to go with the _Grosse Fuge_ on this one.


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

I don't really know if he was the most revolutionary or not, but Id say he was a phenomenal talent and ahead of his time. He is the kind of composer where the more I listen to him, the more I enjoy his works. My mind was just blown by his second Piano Concerto the other day.


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## Serge (Mar 25, 2010)

Beethoven was my knee jerk response. I think that he pretty much turned the music of his day upside down to the extent where most now don’t even know whether to consider him a Classical or a Romantic era composer. Regardless, the Romantic musical floodgate is arguably the most powerful one ever opened and undisputedly it was Beethoven who opened it. I’ve heard some Liszt of course, but if he’s all that unconventional, I haven’t noticed. Perhaps I’ll listen to him again one day, who knows. :shrug:


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

Anselm said:


> Franz Liszt!
> 
> I use the term "revolutionary" as being synonymous with "unprecedented", without implying any influence on subsequent music history.


An interesting definition, one would think being revolutionary would usher revolution, hence having a large influence on subsequent music. Liszt perhaps does qualify under your definition, but he certainly didn't steamroll everyone after himself with influence the way Beethoven and Wagner did.


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## Vaneyes (May 11, 2010)

LvB


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## Webernite (Sep 4, 2010)

The problem with Liszt's late pieces is that many of them weren't even published until after Debussy and Schoenberg had already made their mark.


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## Argus (Oct 16, 2009)

I've got 2 answers.

1) There are no revolutionary composers. The stylistic evolution of music follows a logical path with each subsequent chronological composer being influenced by his predecessors and some ever so slightly furthering the development of the art themselves.

2) John Cage.


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

Vaneyes said:


> LvB


Nice example! If we were really looking for 'revolutionary' though, I'd choose his Opus 8 sonata, because it's earlier. The hard, dark emotions in music - in the drawing room? Shocking!


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## Rasa (Apr 23, 2009)

Monteverdi invented the baroque


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## Guest (May 17, 2011)

I quite like both of Argus' answers.


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## Air (Jul 19, 2008)

Since revolutionary implies the involving or causing of a complete or dramatic change, I'm not sure if Liszt would qualify as well as Wagner would. Maybe Liszt's Bagatelle sans tonalité and quasi-12 tone rows in the Faust symphony sowed the seeds for this revolution, but it wasn't really until Wagner wrote his Tristan und Isolde that the results of these innovations were really "published". So in many ways, Wagner was the one who carried out the revolution and forcibly impacted the history of music.

Monteverdi and Beethoven are good candidates too. I think the reason people can never classify Beethoven by era is that his music simply supersedes that. He basically turned it upside down forever for the better or for the worse.


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## scytheavatar (Aug 27, 2009)

Anselm said:


> I use the term "revolutionary" as being synonymous with "unprecedented", without implying any influence on subsequent music history.


If that is your definition then shouldn't John Cage or Arnold Schoenberg win this by a country mile? Liszt's music was darling and highly experimental, but could you imagine him having the balls to write something like 4′33?


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## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

> but could you imagine him having the balls to write something like 4′33?


 4'33 isn't revolutionary at all, harmony that it uses is as old as the music itself. Not even single chord that couldn't be easily taken for written by baroque or classical composer.

Actually, John Cage stole a quarter-note pause from one of Mozart's symphonies and just made it least longer. How revolutionary it is, just to re-write note from other composer's work and increase it's duration, then present as your own work? This piece is such conservative crap that it puts it's contemporary neo-romantics to shame.


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## LudwigVanBeethoven (Nov 26, 2011)

Beethoven wins as the most revolutionary. Im not even going to get into one of my long speeches.


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## Lisztian (Oct 10, 2011)

I like you OP


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## Igneous01 (Jan 27, 2011)

Id say, either Gesualdo (all tho his chromatic work was never implemented into baroque and beyond) or Beethoven (Schoenberg created Atonality, believing the grosse fugue was the extension of this new world. Stravinsky created polytonality, believing the grosse fugue was an extension of this also)

and so, the Grosse Fugue, inspired both, atonality, and polytonality. In fact, there is no other piece of music that can imitate the grosse fugue.


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## Dodecaplex (Oct 14, 2011)

Strictly going by the OP's definition of the word "revolutionary" but not influential, I'd agree that it is, without a doubt, Gesualdo.
But in terms of both being revolutionary and influential, I'd say Beethoven.
Similarly, in terms of being influential but not exactly revolutionary, I'd say Bach.
Finally, for neither revolutionary nor influential, I'd say . . . SEBASTIAN DE ALBERO!


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## DavidMahler (Dec 28, 2009)

Beethoven, the end.


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## Dodecaplex (Oct 14, 2011)

DavidMahler said:


> Beethoven, the end.


Care to explain how he was more "revolutionary", by the OP's definition, than Gesualdo?


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Interesting thread.

I basically agree that Liszt was a revolutionary in music of the c19th, but he was so many things, a man of so many sides. He adored three composers of the past especially - Beethoven, Schubert and Weber. It could be said that he built upon the past like the best of them, so was maybe an "evolutionary" as well as a revolutionary. A contradictory man for sure, that is part of the richness of his music. He took the baton from the past and by the end anticipated many trends to come later. He left his mark on all genres, except opera and chamber (methinks, he did write in those genres but his significant works lie in the other genres).

As for what's said here (I'm nitpicking, guys, as usual, I'm a pedant :lol: ) -



Edward Elgar said:


> Beethoven. Every decision he ever made was unprecedented!
> ...


Well, the wigs - of Baroque and Classical eras - did anticipate what Beethoven did, or many things he did, but in embryo or prototype form. Esp. Haydn, I think, but Beethoven was a huge admirer of Mozart and Handel, and the imprint of Bach is also in his music strongly.



Air said:


> Since revolutionary implies the involving or causing of a complete or dramatic change, I'm not sure if Liszt would qualify as well as Wagner would. Maybe Liszt's Bagatelle sans tonalité and quasi-12 tone rows in the Faust symphony sowed the seeds for this revolution, but it wasn't really until Wagner wrote his Tristan und Isolde that the results of these innovations were really "published". So in many ways, Wagner was the one who carried out the revolution and forcibly impacted the history of music.
> ...


I agree Wagner's impact was greater, but basically he just built upon what Beethoven, Liszt, Berlioz, etc. did before. Maybe it's a factor of audiences in Liszt's time not being ready for his innovations (eg. apparently he never played his _Sonata in B minor _in public). Similar thing with Berlioz, he was largely shunned by esp. the French musical establishment, only "rewarded" the Legion of Honour in his final years, it was too little too late.

BY comparison, Wagner got Prince Ludwig's cash to build Bayreuth, you couldn't really avoid or ignore what he was doing, the list of composers of the time that made their pilgrimage their to hear his operas is very very long. It was like something that every composer worth his salt kind of had to do, it was an obligation. Wagner made more impact then, but then again, Liszt was also making impacts. Debussy as a young student in Rome heard the elderly Liszt play, and this impacted on him probably just as much as when he went to Bayreuth.

At a later time, Debussy, Stravinsky, Ravel also heard Schoenberg's _Pierrot Lunaire_ live when the composer was taking this new work on tour after it's premiere in 1912. This was a really significant work. Stravinksy called it the "solar plexus of 20th century music." All three were quite impressed by it, and the last two at least influenced to write their own chamber song-cycles, Ravel _Chansons Medicasses_, Stravinsky _The Soldier's Tale_, which in turn was to influence Walton's_ FAcade_. All these things are linked, & they do go back to the likes of Liszt, as well as Wagner and Berlioz, & many others....


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## HarpsichordConcerto (Jan 1, 2010)

The most revolutionary composer? Monteverdi. Not just in opera but the implication opera then had on pure instrumental music that carried the vocal idiom through from Baroque and beyond.


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## mleghorn (May 18, 2011)

Beethoven, Wagner, Debussy, Stravinsky changed the course of music. Ives and Varese were two of the most original composers ever, but didn't have as much as the first ones I mentioned. Schoenberg gets credit for being revolutionary, but I'm not crazy about his music.


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## rojo (May 26, 2006)

Interesting post by Sid James. Evolutionary vs revolutionary?

It does seem that we have been 'led' to the point we are at right now.

I was reading the other day about how inventions and ideas can occur simultaneously in different minds in different locations.

Perhaps the innovations in music become part of the collective consciousness (or unconscious?) of composers of the time, so the changes seem to be incremental, if one looks at the evidence.


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## nikola (Sep 7, 2012)

Serge said:


> Beethoven was my knee jerk response. I think that he pretty much turned the music of his day upside down to the extent where most now don't even know whether to consider him a Classical or a Romantic era composer. Regardless, the Romantic musical floodgate is arguably the most powerful one ever opened and undisputedly it was Beethoven who opened it. I've heard some Liszt of course, but if he's all that unconventional, I haven't noticed. Perhaps I'll listen to him again one day, who knows. :shrug:


I think that Beethoven was at begining classical composer. Then he simply metamorphosed into Beethoven and the older and more deaf and more crazy he was, he was more and more Beethoven, not anything else.


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## BurningDesire (Jul 15, 2012)

Sorry Anselm, I'm very happy for you, and I'ma let you finish, but Chopin was the most revolutionary composer of all time! OF ALL TIME!


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## pwdemars (Oct 10, 2013)

don't you think a better definition for revolutionary would be someone who started a revolution, and the bigger the revolution the bigger the revolutionary? surely if that's the case then i'd go for someone like schoenberg, from whose work half of twentieth century classical music is essentially directly descended. or perhaps bach?


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Or perhaps, Beethoven who some contemporary composers from Ives to Pohjola are actually still quoting in their music.

My second choice would be John Dunstable.


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## MagneticGhost (Apr 7, 2013)

John Dunstable and his English countenance gets my vote.


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## peeyaj (Nov 17, 2010)

Strauss. Schoenberg attested to that:* "I was never revolutionary. The only revolutionary in our time was Strauss!"* lol


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## QuietGuy (Mar 1, 2014)

Stravinsky. The Rite of Spring turned music on its head.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

I vote for Charles Ives.


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

Beethoven
Wagner, Tristan chord


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## Cosmos (Jun 28, 2013)

I would think Beethoven, Liszt, or one of the late 20th century composers perhaps


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