# The Idea of a 'Magnum Opus'



## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

This is just another question that has been on my mind for the past few hours, so I thought I'd share it! It's conveniently facilitated by the other recent thread about a composer outdoing himself, but this question has a slightly different perspective.

The question is, quite simply, whether or not you _believe_ that the notion of a 'magnum opus' is a useful one. First, to clarify, a 'magnum opus' is the work of a given composer (or any artist) perceived to be their greatest. Brahms's _Ein Deutsches Requiem_ or his Fourth Symphony are often cited as his magnum opus, but is there any sense in making such distinctions?

I ask because this idea seems to imply that the composer's greatest achievements are all contained within one piece; there is distilled in this given piece every aspect of the composer's perfected style. In a sense, it epitomises _who they are_.

It seems to me, however, that it's more valuable to consider a composer's full oeuvre as a chronological spectrum - a personal and characteristic style that develops over time; the initial, immature pieces being _just_ as characteristic as the (usually late) masterpieces. In terms of form, structure and instrumentation _etc._, the magnum opus could perhaps be demonstrated as a work of perfected craftsmanship, but I don't think any single work can ever embody every aspect of an individual's artistic philosophy. That is something better viewed as a secondary manifestation of a composer's complete works.

This seems especially true of more modern composers who often quite easily fluctuate between wildly different styles, making the distinction of a magnum opus utterly pointless, because one piece could never represent more than the one style in which it is composed.

But what do you think more generally?


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## Ignis Fatuus (Nov 25, 2008)

I don't think many people claim a masterpiece (if I can use the English) embodies every aspect of a composer's style. And if they do, I suspect they mean, it can be used as a summary of the composers _important_ output.


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## scytheavatar (Aug 27, 2009)

Whether or not a piece is a composer's greatest and best work is debatable, but whether or not a piece is a composer's most popular or significant work is not. And when you are trying to get into a composer, it's certainly more valuable to start with their most popular works and learn to love the composer before you spend time on their lesser known works. But more importantly, it tends to be that the more popular a work is, the more competitive the quality of the performances of that work is. So the quality of the performances and the options you can choose from tend to be much better.


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

I agree it is more valuable to consider the entire career, warts and all, to really appreciate a composer. But that doesn't fit into a soundbyte or a pigeonhole, so important to today's culture of short attention spans. A magnum opus or masterpiece is a good way to create a symbol for the person.

You would not for instance define Orson Wells as the spokesperson in TV wine advertisements from the 1970's. You might instead define him as the director of _Citizen Kane_.


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

The _Magnum Opus_ or single masterpiece that towers over every other achievement by a given artist certainly exists in the visual arts: Brunelleschi's _Duomo_, Michelangelo's _Sistine_, Giotto's _Arena Chapel_, Gericault's _Raft of the Medusa_, etc... as well as in literature: Dante's Comedia, Spenser's _Fairie Queene_, Cervante's _Don Quixote_, Flaubert's _Madame Bovary_, Proust's _In Search of Lost Time_, Baudelaire's _Flowers of Evil_ and Whitman's _Leaves of Grass_... but music...? What would Beethoven's _Magnum Opus_ be? The 9th? The String Quartets? The Piano Sonatas? Or Mozart's? _Don Giovanni_ or _The Marriage of Figaro_? The Great Mass in C? The late piano concertos? Even with Monteverdi I'd be torn between _L'Orfeo_ and the _Vespro della Beata Vergine 1610_. Hell... I might give Wagner the _Ring_ as his Magnum Opus... but then again... _Tristan und Isolde_ and _Parsifal_ are certainly rivals to this. Perhaps with someone like Scarlatti I could imagine his collected sonatas as his _Magnum Opus_ as they are essentially a single body of works... not unlike Whitman's or Baudelaire's great volume of collected poems. Any other ideas?


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## Artemis (Dec 8, 2007)

The concept of "magnum opus" is difficult to apply in the case of the greatest composers since, almost by definition, they produced a range of very high quality music across a number of different genres. The only possible exceptions are Chopin and Wagner, who remained largely specialised, but even here their greatness is attributable to the fact that they wrote a lot of music of consistently high or very high quality, which thus makes it difficult to select any particular work as being singularly outstanding. Again, Wagner's "Ring" could be an exception. Perhaps the concept of "magnum opus" in classical music can only apply to lesser composers who may have written a lot of work but only a very small part of it is now generally regarded with any distinction, for example Bruch’s violin concerto, or Holst’s Planets.


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## emiellucifuge (May 26, 2009)

Translated directly from Latin, Magnum Opus can mean many things but has the same concept. The variants are mostly found in the word Magnum which can indicate:

Large Work - in which case most composers do have one
Great Work - I think most composers have one or two of these.
Important Work - A lot of composers wrote excellent music, but they were not all important. In the historical context there were very few works that are important - Beethovens 9th may be one example.


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

Weston said:


> I agree it is more valuable to consider the entire career, warts and all, to really appreciate a composer. But that doesn't fit into a soundbyte or a pigeonhole, so important to today's culture of short attention spans. A magnum opus or masterpiece is a good way to create a symbol for the person.
> 
> You would not for instance define Orson Wells as the spokesperson in TV wine advertisements from the 1970's. You might instead define him as the director of _Citizen Kane_.


Do you think that, for the serious listener, the soundbyte-y nature of giving a magnum opus is useful? Has anybody here often acquainted themselves with new composers by finding out what their most important work is?

I don't doubt that I have introduced myself to new composers through the works that are perceived as their greatest - often quite substantially different to their most popular - but it's not because I went in search of which piece this is. My initial approach to a new composer is usually purely circumstantial - a particular recommendation from someone else; a CD I happen to have _etc._. Thus, the purpose of a soundbyte, all-encompassing title has never helped me appreciate new music.


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

Artemis said:


> The concept of "magnum opus" is difficult to apply in the case of the greatest composers since, almost by definition, they produced a range of very high quality music across a number of different genres.


Precisely this.



emiellucifuge said:


> Translated directly from Latin, Magnum Opus can mean many things but has the same concept. The variants are mostly found in the word Magnum which can indicate:
> 
> Large Work - in which case most composers do have one
> Great Work - I think most composers have one or two of these.
> Important Work - A lot of composers wrote excellent music, but they were not all important. In the historical context there were very few works that are important - Beethovens 9th may be one example.


The 'large work' point has me groaning, but that is how critics tend to assess things. Larger works tend to be towards the end of a composer's work when they might feel they can get more ambitious. So a late large work is likely to send music critics into ecstasy, even if it isn't perhaps as successful as a smaller scale work by the same composer in the same genre.


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## nickgray (Sep 28, 2008)

> The question is, quite simply, whether or not you believe that the notion of a 'magnum opus' is a useful one


Not really. Once you get to know the composer you realize that the obscure, unknown and less-known pieces can if fact be very, very good. I can even argue that it's not even useful to the beginners - say, Beethoven's Ninth, it's a great work, but it's not what Ludwig usually wrote. Shostakovich's "Leningrad Symphony"? Indeed a masterpiece, but the sixth, a relatively obscure work, in fact, would tell you much more about the composer. And etc.


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## Lukecash12 (Sep 21, 2009)

Honestly, I don't believe in any kind of Magnum Opus. A piece doesn't have to be striking to be great, nor does it have to be characteristically docile, refrained, and sweet. Everyone has differing tastes even within the same composer. Alkan's Esquisses are every bit as great as his concertos for solo piano.

So if I ever could put a finger on just one piece, I'd tell myself "How could you be that lacking in perspective?" That, and a lot of composers write so very many pieces that just strike a chord. It would be exceedingly difficult, even with common standards, to say that the Brandenburg Concertos or Italian Concerto is Bach's Magnum Opus.


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## JSK (Dec 31, 2008)

Not many composers can really be assigned a "magnum opus" that is truly their best and most important work. Maybe one-hit wonders like Humperdinck or Nicolai can each be given a "magnum opus" but there'll always be somebody out there arguing that they had other important and unjustly neglected works too.


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## World Violist (May 31, 2007)

I tend to think that a "magnum opus" idea is a good thing for someone new to the composer in question (i.e. Tapiola being Sibelius', the B minor mass being Bach's, etc.), to get an idea of what the composer is about--like noted above. However, for people who are very knowledgeable about the composer's work, the term becomes totally useless (I, for one, vastly prefer Mahler's 3rd over his 5th). 

So really I think that such a question is one of those that changes depending upon who is considering the composer.


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## Ignis Fatuus (Nov 25, 2008)

World Violist said:


> I tend to think that a "magnum opus" idea is a good thing for someone new to the composer in question (i.e. Tapiola being Sibelius', the B minor mass being Bach's, etc.), to get an idea of what the composer is about--like noted above. However, for people who are very knowledgeable about the composer's work, the term becomes totally useless (I, for one, vastly prefer Mahler's 3rd over his 5th).
> 
> So really I think that such a question is one of those that changes depending upon who is considering the composer.


That my opinion too. It's a useful concept to some extent. And when it stops being useful, we abandon it.

Having said that, has anyone heard any music by Holst and Allegri (beyond the Planets Suite and Miserere Me)?


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

World Violist said:


> I tend to think that a "magnum opus" idea is a good thing for someone new to the composer in question (i.e. Tapiola being Sibelius', the B minor mass being Bach's, etc.), to get an idea of what the composer is about--like noted above. However, for people who are very knowledgeable about the composer's work, the term becomes totally useless (I, for one, vastly prefer Mahler's 3rd over his 5th).


But some people may not like the B Minor Mass or Tapiola as much as other pieces by those composers.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

Ignis Fatuus said:


> That my opinion too. It's a useful concept to some extent. And when it stops being useful, we abandon it.
> 
> Having said that, has anyone heard any music by Holst and Allegri (beyond the Planets Suite and Miserere Me)?


Allegri, no. I do have four CDs of Holst. And those compositions are very worthwhile as well.


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## Guest (Dec 5, 2009)

Hi are you online?


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## PartisanRanger (Oct 19, 2008)

I find many of these posts a bit dumbfounding. For someone with limited time for music and the desire to explore a great variety of it, I find it very useful to have magnum opei as a jumping off point when exploring a new composer. No, the most popular or most critically acclaimed piece is not always the one I'll enjoy the most, but a lot of times it is. The Rite of Spring was the first Stravinsky I ever listened to and it's still my favorite. What's the point of starting with a random or juvenile piece from a great composer when I'm trying to get an idea of whether his music is worth pursuing further?


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## World Violist (May 31, 2007)

starry said:


> But some people may not like the B Minor Mass or Tapiola as much as other pieces by those composers.


That's the whole point. The idea of "magnum opus" is just in order to give people an idea of the composer. I can't begin to say how many composers I have neglected because of a bad first impression based on this "magnum opus" idea. Thus it really isn't terribly important.


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## Tapkaara (Apr 18, 2006)

Ignis Fatuus said:


> That my opinion too. It's a useful concept to some extent. And when it stops being useful, we abandon it.
> 
> Having said that, has anyone heard any music by Holst and Allegri (beyond the Planets Suite and Miserere Me)?


I have several Holst CDs as he is my favorite British composer.


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

I think the main distinction that I would make is that it _is_ useful for there to be a (or several) starting piece(s) for when we attempt to discover the style of a new composer, but I don't think this necessarily has to be enshrined in the whole concept of a Magnum Opus.

A simple, 'most commercially successful' or 'most often performed' list would be sufficient in order to gain an idea about what impression of a particular composer stays in most people's minds. The problem I have with assigning a Magnum Opus is that it implies some sort of artistic ranking. I don't mind the newcomer finding new music by using sales rankings or popularity rankings, but the MO suggests an 'art value' ranking, which is inherently flawed because such rankings are impossible.

Put simply, the current _function_ of the concept of a Magnum Opus - a small function it would seem, useful only to beginners - should be retained, but it should no longer be considered anyway indicative of artistic value and, thus, shouldn't even be called a Magnum Opus.


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## TresPicos (Mar 21, 2009)

Wagner and the "one-hit-wonder" composers may have a masterpiece or Magnum Opus, but in most cases, that rather romantic idea would be difficult to apply. I guess Beethoven's 5th and Schubert's 9th could be considered their masterpieces, but then again: says who? Public opinion? The scholars? 

It really shouldn't be about popularity. What would, if so, be the Magnum Opus of Ravel? The trivial Bolero? That one says absolutely nothing about who Ravel was, or what kind of music he generally wrote. 

On the other hand, the 5th symphony says a lot about who Beethoven was.


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## World Violist (May 31, 2007)

TresPicos said:


> On the other hand, the 5th symphony says a lot about who Beethoven was.


And the piano sonatas (much more than any of the symphonies, actually).
And the 3rd and 7th and 9th symphonies.
And the violin sonatas.
And the string quartets (also much more than any of the symphonies).

Worthless to try making a magnum opus for Beethoven.

As for Ravel, I would put Daphnis and Chloe as his magnum opus. He did so himself, as it turns out.


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## Tapkaara (Apr 18, 2006)

World Violist said:


> As for Ravel, I would put Daphnis and Chloe as his magnum opus. He did so himself, as it turns out.


I agree. It shows he was capable of creating a work of real substance and invention as opposed to pot-boilers like La valse and Bolero. His piano concerti are substantial, as well.


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## Dim7 (Apr 24, 2009)

World Violist said:


> And the piano sonatas (much more than any of the symphonies, actually).
> And the 3rd and 7th and 9th symphonies.
> And the violin sonatas.
> And the string quartets (also much more than any of the symphonies).
> ...


But the fifth symphony probably has the best balance of popularity and being representative of Beethoven's work. Perhaps both should be taken into account when deciding which work should be considered the "Magnum Opus" of the composer.


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

PartisanRanger said:


> I find many of these posts a bit dumbfounding. For someone with limited time for music and the desire to explore a great variety of it, I find it very useful to have magnum opei as a jumping off point when exploring a new composer. No, the most popular or most critically acclaimed piece is not always the one I'll enjoy the most, but a lot of times it is. The Rite of Spring was the first Stravinsky I ever listened to and it's still my favorite. What's the point of starting with a random or juvenile piece from a great composer when I'm trying to get an idea of whether his music is worth pursuing further?


A composer's style can change over time. That doesn't have to mean their music gets better, the style just changes. And a composer's sound in chamber music for example might be different to how it might be in a symphony, their approach might change.


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## munirao2001 (Mar 2, 2009)

To me, "Magnum opus" denotes a masterpiece-with creativity expressed at its best, fresh or new, original, bestowing enrichment of knowledge, trend setting, with immense scope for research, time tested, immortal-in the sense that the work gives highest intellectual satisfaction and the quality remains same in all times of recall experiences, unconditioned by the listeners knowledge, efforts and experiences.


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