# For fair judgements of composers...



## Lisztian (Oct 10, 2011)

I think that most of us on here agree that people like to make conclusions about composers without understanding the full picture - without understanding the full breadth of achievement, the composers unique languages, importance/innovations, etc. I've decided to make this thread for people to try and help us all start on a journey toward knowing enough about a composer to truly be able to appreciate them in full and make opinions based on knowledge and understanding rather than prejudice and biases.

Basically, the idea is for everyone to post about composers that they love, in as much detail as they want, listing what they feel are the things that, if someone else uses, will be going toward a greater appreciation of a composers full achievement. You can post what works you feel are necessary for this full understanding, recordings, books that you feel are crucial to comprehension of the composer, and whatever comments of your own you want to add. It's a very broad thread and each user will use it in their own way, but we don't want excessive debate and arguements - this is a thread for heightened appreciation - take the unnecessary arguments elsewhere.


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## Webernite (Sep 4, 2010)

Liking your post was easy. Actually writing something about a composer, that's the difficult bit.


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## Vesteralen (Jul 14, 2011)

I don't intend this to convince the unconvincible (and I know Peeyaj will waste no time jumping on the thread to tell us all how he hates Schumann's solo piano music ), but I just wanted to say that I found this little book:









a BBC music guide to Schumann's piano music, to be really eye-opening as to what's going on with this music. I would recommend it highly to anyone who wants to understand or appreciate this music more.

Schumann's solo piano music can be a very personal thing with people - I know it is with me. But, there is something about the sincerity of it that resonates with me. Some of the pieces are wickedly difficult to play, but it never seems to be technique and virtuosity getting in the way of the content. Those things are always in the service of the music itself. The music takes me to another world - the early nineteenth century world of dark romance, which I've always found to be a great place to visit.


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## PlaySalieri (Jun 3, 2012)

It may be different for others - but I have never found that a book about a particular composer - explaining and championing their music - made me appreciate it more, or even at all - maybe that is my failing. I seem to buy books about music I already know and like.


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## GGluek (Dec 11, 2011)

stomanek said:


> It may be different for others - but I have never found that a book about a particular composer - explaining and championing their music - made me appreciate it more, or even at all - maybe that is my failing. I seem to buy books about music I already know and like.


>> "The musicological profession knows that Beethoven went deaf, that Mozart and Schubert died in bed young, that flutes used to be made of wood. It knows that no one knows how the hell Baroque music was customarily ornamented, and that pitches have been creeping upward. It can catalogue every known quotation or near quotation of the Dies Irae, can deconstruct tone-rows that no one will ever walk down the street whistling while giving you every logical reason why Schönberg was the way music had to go. It can define to a 'T' the art of the German minnesingers. Also the musicological profession can describe, chord by chord, every harmonic event in a Beethoven quartet, but still can't explain how that makes it great." . . .
. . . The analytical part of him determined to break apart into understanding this mystical world of late Beethoven, but the more he read, the more he delved into the music's structure, its grammar, the objective meaning of Beethoven's "new way to compose," the less he found musicology had enlightening answers. Like graduate students analyzing great writing by counting adjectives and adverbs, the great musicologists could enumerate all of the music's attributes, but couldn't, in the end, find its soul-and the soul was what made it immortal . . . <<

from "Xylophone Fragments" by Mark Woodward


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## jalex (Aug 21, 2011)

For what it's worth, I became interested in Berlioz's music after reading his Memoirs. But it's a fantastic read whether or not one ends up liking his music any more at the end.

Edit: to expand a little, after reading the Memoirs I was willing to invest more time in understanding works which didn't immediately appeal to me (for example the Grande Messe des Morts) than I was for other composers. I think this is because I had actually seen Berlioz write intelligently about music, art and life in general, I was sympathetic to many of his views and I found his writing style witty and engaging; I felt much more wary of dismissing the musical products of such a brilliant mind. I recently saw the Grande Messe at the Proms and I found it to be an overwhelming work, magnificent in almost every respect.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

GGluek said:


> >> "The musicological profession knows that Beethoven went deaf, that Mozart and Schubert died in bed young, that flutes used to be made of wood. It knows that no one knows how the hell Baroque music was customarily ornamented, and that pitches have been creeping upward. It can catalogue every known quotation or near quotation of the Dies Irae, can deconstruct tone-rows that no one will ever walk down the street whistling while giving you every logical reason why Schönberg was the way music had to go. It can define to a 'T' the art of the German minnesingers. Also the musicological profession can describe, chord by chord, every harmonic event in a Beethoven quartet, but still can't explain how that makes it great." . . .
> . . . The analytical part of him determined to break apart into understanding this mystical world of late Beethoven, but the more he read, the more he delved into the music's structure, its grammar, the objective meaning of Beethoven's "new way to compose," the less he found musicology had enlightening answers. Like graduate students analyzing great writing by counting adjectives and adverbs, the great musicologists could enumerate all of the music's attributes, but couldn't, in the end, find its soul-and the soul was what made it immortal . . . <<
> 
> from "Xylophone Fragments" by Mark Woodward


That's a beautiful quote, thanks for taking the time to write it up. I agree with its specifics, but not with its spirit!


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## Rapide (Oct 11, 2011)

even if one does not love the music of Boulez, this book discuss about also his art as a conductor.


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## GGluek (Dec 11, 2011)

science said:


> That's a beautiful quote, thanks for taking the time to write it up. I agree with its specifics, but not with its spirit!


To be fair, those are the thoughts of one character. In have no idea what the author thinks -- although it's evident he loves Beethoven.


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## Lisztian (Oct 10, 2011)

Webernite said:


> Liking your post was easy. Actually writing something about a composer, that's the difficult bit.


Very true  I'll get up to making one for Liszt eventually. For now, though, I will just state the relatively well known. The one work I would consider required reading as far as Liszt goes is Alan Walker's three part biography. Despite the fact that it is more a document of Liszt's life than it is focused on his music, every other resource on Liszt is subordinated to this masterpiece and, for the greatest understanding and highest possible accuracy in the problematic field that is Liszt scholarship, are best used in conjunction to it rather than alone.


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## peeyaj (Nov 17, 2010)

"

_We pull into a rest stop restaurant for dinner. I have chicken and a salad, he orders the seafood curry and a salad. Just something to fill our stomachs, is the best you could say about it. Oshima pays the bill, and we climb into the car again. It's already gotten dark. He steps on the accelerator and the tachometer shoots way up.

"Do you mind if I put on some music?" Oshima asks.

"Of course not," I reply.

He pushes the CD's play button and some classical piano music starts. I listen for a while, figuring out the music. I know it's not Beethoven, and not Schumann. Probably somebody who came in between.

"Shubert?" I ask.

"Good guess," he replies. His hands at ten-and-two on the steering wheel, he glances at me.

"Do you like Schubert?"

"Not particularly," I tell him.

"When I drive I like to listen to Schubert's piano sonatas with the volume turned up. Do you know why?"

"I have no idea."

"*Because play Schubert's piano sonatas well is one of the hardest things in the world.* Especially this, the Sonata in D Major. It's a tough piece to master. SOme pianists can play one or maybe two of the movements perfectly, but if you listen to all four movements as a unified whole, no one has ever nailed it. A lot of famous pianists have tried to rise to the challenge, but it's like there's always something missing. There's never one where you can say, Yes! He's got it! Do you know why?"

"No," I reply.

"Because the sonata itself is imperfect. Robert Schumann understood Schubert's sonatas well, and he labeled this one 'Heavenly Tedious.'"

"If the composition's imperfect, why would so many pianists try to master it?"

"Good question," Oshima says, and pauses as music fills in the silence. "I have no great explanation for it, but one thing I can say. Works that have a certain imperfection to them have an appeal for that very reason - or at least they appeal to certain types of people. Just like you're attracted to Soseki's The Miner. There's something in it that draws you in, more than more fully realized novels like Kokoro or Sanshiro. You discover something about that work that tugs at your heart - or maybe we should say the work discovers you. Schubert's Sonata in D Major is sort of the same thing."

"To get back to the question," I say, "why do you listen to Schubert's sonatas? Especially when you're driving?"

"I*f you play Schubert's sonatas, especially this one straight through, it's not art. Like Schumann pointed out, it's too long and too pastoral, and technically too simplistic. Play it through the way it is and it's flat and tasteless, some dusty antique. Which is why every pianist who attempts it adds something of his own, something extra. Like this - hear how he articulates it there? Adding rubato. Adjusting the pace, modulation, whatever. Otherwise they can't hold it all together. They have to be careful, though, or else all those extra devices destroy the dignity of the piece. Then it's not Schubert's music anymore. Every single pianist who's played this sonata struggles with the same paradox.*"

He listens to the music, humming the melody, then continues.

"*That's why I like to listen to Schubert while I'm driving. Like I said, it's because all the performances are imperfect. A dense, artistic kind of imperfection stimulates your consciousness, keeps you alert. If I listen to some utterly perfect performance of an utterly perfect piece while I'm driving, I might want to close my eyes and die right then and there. But listening to the D major, I can feel the limits of what humans are capable of - that a certain type of perfection can only be realized through a limitless accumulation of the imperfect. And personally, I find that encouraging*…_"


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## Very Senior Member (Jul 16, 2009)

Lisztian said:


> Basically, the idea is for everyone to post about composers that they love, in as much detail as they want, listing what they feel are the things that, if someone else uses, will be going toward a greater appreciation of a composers full achievement. You can post what works you feel are necessary for this full understanding, recordings, books that you feel are crucial to comprehension of the composer, and whatever comments of your own you want to add. It's a very broad thread and each user will use it in their own way, but we don't want excessive debate and arguements - this is a thread for heightened appreciation - take the unnecessary arguments elsewhere.


Don't you think the "composer guestbook" section of the Forum is the better place to post material along the lines you propose? Otherwise this single thread could quickly become very cluttered with all manner of bits and pieces. If anyone fancies writing a fuller length appreciation of any composer they happen to like, there is also the "Articles" section of the forum, where some existing biographies already exist. I understand that prior approval may be required to slot articles in there.


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