# What is the unique 'signature sound' of each composer?



## Ethereality (Apr 6, 2019)

This is a spin on 'Who were the most creative composers' but I'm wondering what exemplar pieces or moments demonstrate their most-original voice: not necessarily their most *popular* examples of originality. What are the clearest most-striking signature moments of each composer? What aspects, although maybe unpopular to begin with, were the least-likely for later composers to follow after or mimick?


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## Axter (Jan 15, 2020)

I always consider the opening 2 bars in the first Mvmts of Beethoven's 1st, 4th and 9th symph. as truly Beethovenian sound.

_edited: Thanks to Hammeredklavier for reminding me to add 1st Symph, that I originally forgot to add_


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## Bxnwebster (Jan 5, 2021)

To me, the composer with the most clear signature is Poulenc. I'm not an expert at music theory, but there is the quintessential harmony/chord that immediately tells me that a piece was written by Poulenc. It appears, for example, at the 1:31 timestamp in the recording of his Stabat Mater that I am attaching to this post.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Axter said:


> I always consider the opening 2 bars in the first Mvmts of Beethoven's 4th and 9th symph. as truly Beethovenian sound.


And the 1st symphony. I think we talked about this before; Wagner (and probably Mahler) loved the sound.


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## MusicSybarite (Aug 17, 2017)

It depends on the composer. Nielsen are his energy, quirkiness in my opinion, whilst Sibelius can be the 'minimalist' ostinatos in the strings or the noble melodies, or Brahms his sophisticated counterpoint, craftsmanship in development of thematic material. I agree Poulenc has a very noticeable voice. Janacek is one of those composers with a truly distinctive voice, and so are Hindemith, Copland, Milhaud, Vaughan Williams, Stravinsky, and the list goes on...


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## ORigel (May 7, 2020)

Dvorak: Dumky Trio; Slavonic Dances

Mahler: Symphony 3, DLVDE

Bach: German Organ Mass

Beethoven: Hammerklavier (first three movements), Symphonies 7, 8, and 9 [While 8 is ofeoften overlooked, its musical language presages #9's first two movements]

Brahms: Clarinet Chamber Works, Horn Trio, Piano Concerto no. 2

Mozart: Clarinet Quintet

Haydn: Op 33 and Op 77 String Quartets, the Creation, Trumpet Concerto

Bartok: The Miraculous Mandarin

Handel: Theodora


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## Fabulin (Jun 10, 2019)

*Vivaldi *had a very clear style, kept consistently across most of his compositions. A specific example is not really necessary.

*Beethoven*'s style of progressions and dramatic accents is hard to mistake for anything else. I nominate my favourite piece of his, the second movement of the fifth symphony.





*Berlioz *and the ophicleide use. Not available before his time, out of favour afterwards. And even in recordings where they are not used, the inspiration to play like them remains. I nominate the final movement of the Fantastique Symphony.





*Wagner *is famously very, very slow. His signature sound is the one where instruments proudly play long notes without great hurry. The chromaticism is not without importance either. You can take the Lohengrin Prelude, Tristan and Isolde, the overtures Polonia and Britannia, Siegfried's Funeral Music...

*Herrmann *had a very recognizable thumbprint of choices in harmony, orchestration, and _marked dynamics_. To the point that you can listen to his recording of Holst's _Planets _and you will be excused for thinking that Herrmann has rewritten them, and not merely instructed the orchestra to play the way he liked. Mellow and rough playing, very little vibrato, and frequent half-diminished 7th chords are often a clear giveaway of Herrmann.

*Williams *has his ways of mixing the brass sections and "Christmas tree" orchestration on top of tuttis, resulting in immediately recognizable sound. The rebel fanfare in "Dice and Roll" (1:10) (ironically enough arranged by John Powell) is a perfect example.





But really, most great composers get easily recognizable once you have heard enough of their music.

P.S. Ensemble sizes matter. Orchestras of Haydn's and Mozart's times as well as many of those in the early 20th century recordings (acoustic era classical, Hollywood studio orchestras, etc.) had small sizes; meanwhile famous big bands each had unique signature combinations of instruments and harmonies...


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## Ethereality (Apr 6, 2019)

MusicSybarite said:


> It depends on the composer.


Haha, I'm probably the only one who cracked up at your first entry to this thread... "It depends on the composer."

No, I think all composers had close to the same unique signature sound, you know, the hallmark 'Classical' sound with the orchestra and the notes :lol: it just screams Classical when I hear it.


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## Axter (Jan 15, 2020)

hammeredklavier said:


> And the 1st symphony. I think we talked about this before; Wagner (and probably Mahler) loved the sound.


Indeed we did, I just edited my prev. post and added it. Thanks for reminding me.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

I don't think the 18th-century Classicists intentionally or consciously tried to be different from one another like the Romantics. But I still hear interesting differences in their expressions. I think their different educational backgrounds and regional differences of tradition (a.k.a. "dialects") caused them to be different. For example, Carl Philipp Emanuel's Hamburg symphonies of 1775 sound quite "unique" from his contemporaries, and Wilhelm Friedemann sounds rather "capricious" in feel compared to his brothers.













To me, these are the unmistakable sounds of Joseph Haydn:
















 (0:06~0:30)




 (0:18~0:28)

and these are of Michael Haydn:













and these are of Mozart:


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Look at this part of Bernstein's lecture on Mozart's symphony in G minor K.550: [ 8:07 ]
"Do you realize that, that wild, atonal-sounding passage contains every one of the twelve chromatic tones except the tonic note G? ... Take my word for it, that out-burst of chromatic rage is Classically-contained, and so is the climax of this development section, which finds itself in the unlikely key of C-sharp minor, which is as far away as you can get from the home key of G minor."
> and then look at this modulation from G minor to E major in
missa sancti trinitatis K.167 [ 3:52 ]

Look at - Bernstein: [ 2:03 ] "But notice that Mozart's theme is already chromatically formed. And even more so when it repeats."
> and then look at these passages in
missa brevis K.275 [ 3:07 , 3:18 ] , [ 14:00 , 14:37 ]
missa brevis K.257 [ 3:57 , 4:10 ] , [ 8:22 , 9:50 ]

Look at - Bernstein: [ 2:59 ] "There's that Classical balance we were talking about -chromatic wandering on the top, firmly supported by tonic-and-dominant structure underneath."
> and then look at these passages in missa brevis K.258 [ 2:51 ~ 3:31 ]

Look at - Bernstein: [ 6:02 ] "Even this lead-in to the home key, is chromatically written, firmly held in place by a dominant pedal." 
> and then look at this passage in
missa brevis K.275 [ 7:12 ~ 7:21 ]

Look at the introduction to the K.465 "dissonance" quartet,
> and then look at this contrapuntal passage of chromatic fourths in 
missa sancti trinitatis K.167 [ 10:47 ]

Luchesi or Salieri, for example, ([E.M.], [H.M.], [R]) don't orchestrate like this: 
spatzenmesse K.220 [ 2:30 ~ 4:00 ]
"On the other hand, for the French, Mozart was certainly not 'one of us' from a national point of view. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, before Berlioz's time, some influential critics - for instance, Julien-Louis Geoffroy - rejected Mozart as a foreigner, considering his music 'scholastic', stressing his use of harmony over melody, and the dominance of the orchestra over singing in the operas - all these were considered negative features of 'Germanic' music."
<
View attachment 130858
>


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

Stravinsky: offbeat rhythms (everywhere)
Prokofiev: characteristic use of woodwinds (easiest example Peter and the Wolf)
unorthodox leaps within a phrase that seem to "resolve" on a peculiar, unexpected note (Lt. Kije)
R. Strauss: A distinctive sound or orchestration that is unmistakable and nearly universal (listen to anything)
Bruckner: Slow moving constant repetition (any symphony)
Ives: quoting "Columbia the Gem of the Ocean." (all over the place)

Tovey relates an anecdote about being visited by a famous conductor who pointed to the first chord of Missa Solemnis (C major) which happened to be open on the desk, and saying "It's remarkable how you can recognize any common chord orchestrated by Beethoven."


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

hammeredklavier said:


> regional differences of tradition (a.k.a. "dialects")


Speaking of tradition, I find that "Salzburgian" vocal music exhibits a unique sense of rhythm. For example, look at these arpeggiated, syncopated figures:
Johann Ernst Eberlin (1702-1762) - missa in C [ 3:30 ]
Michael Haydn requiem in C minor (1771) [ 0:55 ]
Michael Haydn missa in C "rupertimesse" (1782) [ 15:40 ]
Michael Haydn missa in C "in honorem sancti gotthardi" (1792) [ 4:14 ]
Michael Haydn missa in C "in honorem sanctae ursulae" (1793) [ 0:10 ]
W.A. Mozart missa brevis K.194 in D (1774) [ 11:06 ]
W.A. Mozart requiem in D minor (1791) [ 0:50 , 28:27 ] ,
and short semitonal phrases in the strings, like "D-C#-D.."
Michael Haydn requiem in C minor (1771) [ 8:03 ]
W.A. Mozart missa brevis K.192 in F (1774) [ 5:18 ]
W.A. Mozart spatzenmesse K.220 in C (1775) [ 6:21 ]
W.A. Mozart litaniae de venerabili altaris sacramento K.243 (1776) [ 10:55 ]
(I found them also in La finta giardiniera, K.196, but I can't remember where exactly.)


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Fabulin said:


> *Vivaldi *had a very clear style, kept consistently across most of his compositions. A specific example is not really necessary.


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## chu42 (Aug 14, 2018)

Every Schumann-ism can probably be found in the Album for the Young in some way or another.


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## Guest002 (Feb 19, 2020)

I find Vaughan Williams distinctive, though I don't really know why: I presume it's his use of modes more than keys?

Someone's already mentioned Nielsen, too: I can 'spot' him a mile off, for again unknown reasons.

It's an interesting question, that's for sure.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

It IS an interesting question - and a highly complex one. Long before I got to know all of Tchaikovsky's orchestral music I could "hear" it within seconds as being from his pen. Despite many other "cow pat" English composers who used some of the same techniques RVW did, no one sounds quite like him. It's a combination of all the elements of music put together in a unique way. Lesser composers are much harder to place: Stanford, Parry, Raff, Spohr and company - nothing in their writing says "this is me". I think it's why completing the work of great composers who died is so difficult. Despite the hard work, and many re-writes and edits, none of the completions of the Mahler 10th sound exactly like Mahler; in every version there are many sections that just sound wrong, not like Mahler, but being able to say why is really difficult to pin down. But then a master orchestrator like Mahler wrote Weber's opera Die Drei Pintos and its impossible to say where Weber left off and Mahler begins, so accurate was his emulation.


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## Bxnwebster (Jan 5, 2021)

chu42 said:


> Every Schumann-ism can probably be found in the Album for the Young in some way or another.


I've always thought that the piece most representative of Schumann's style was either his Novelletten or Kreisleriana. However, since you mentioned it, I think that the Album for the Young is also very representative of Schumann. In the end, though, I think that every [mature] piece by Schumann is a strong representation of his style because he is always on his own wavelength.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

This bit from Mendelssohn symphony No.3 in A minor has always reminded me of Wagner:




 (15:26~15:50)


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## GucciManeIsTheNewWebern (Jul 29, 2020)

Villa-Lobos has an instantly recognizable sound in my opinion. I don't know what it is compositionally in the the score that defines and _einprägt_ his musical style and harmonic vocabulary, but it's so unique and distinct!


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Ethereality said:


> What aspects, although maybe unpopular to begin with, were the least-likely for later composers to follow after or mimick?


This sort of "angularities": 
K.317, K.475, K.477 [ 0:37 , 4:50 ], K.511, K.533, K.626
10:55 ~ 10:59
11:35 ~ 11:39 
12:07 ~ 12:12
29:07 ~ 29:15

shows up in Michael Haydn and Mozart as early as in the early 1770s, but Joseph Haydn only starts incorporating them in his work in the late 1780s, -starting with the slow movement of string quartet Op.54 No.2 of 1788, -I think this was the time Joseph started getting influenced by Mozart. For example, the chaos intro to his own Die schöpfung (1798) was his attempt to emulate the chromatic intro to Mozart's K.465 quartet.

I think that in the Agnus dei of Missa sancti nicolai (Hob XXII:6, which Joseph revised in 1802), he references the Et incarnatus est of Mozart's K.317, -
as he does the Agnus dei of Mozart's K.317, in the Agnus dei of his own Harmoniesse (and 98th symphony slow movement), and 
Mozart's K.262 (the "little G minor symphony theme"), in the Agnus dei of his own Theresienmesse.
But the way Joseph does it just doesn't strike me as "chilly" as Mozart's.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

MusicSybarite said:


> Sibelius can be the 'minimalist' ostinatos in the strings or the noble melodies


"Haunting modal melodies in obsessively reiterative patterns (adumbrating minimalist and post-minimalist techniques of the 1970s and 80s) are threaded through intense, dark textures and uneasy, jolting rhythmic arrangements, creating within just a few seconds a sound-world unmistakably Finnish and Sibelian."
https://theconversation.com/the-case-for-the-music-of-jean-sibelius-46808


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