# Composers who are "that one guy"



## Sol Invictus (Sep 17, 2016)

There are few composers whose names I know but I am not familiar with their music. I'm not talking One-hit wonder composers but rather ones that have association with or influence on another. Ex. Buxtehude is that one guy who taught JS Bach a thing or two on the organ. Anyone else know composers in this way?


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## Kieran (Aug 24, 2010)

Sol Invictus said:


> There are few composers whose names I know but I am not familiar with their music. I'm not talking One-hit wonder composers but rather ones that have association with or influence on another. Ex. Buxtehude is that one guy who taught JS Bach a thing or two on the organ. Anyone else know composers in this way?


Yeah, the Bach sons, influences on Mozart and great composers in their own right, but I wouldn't know their music if it walked up to me on a hot sunny day, brandishing a cornetto...


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

Giacomo Meyerbeer and Jules Massenet. Hugely influential and successful in their day yet I've nothing by them at all. I like Romantic operas but I have enough of them by the usual suspects and both Meyerbeer and Massenet didn't make the cut.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

Sol Invictus said:


> There are few composers whose names I know but I am not familiar with their music. I'm not talking One-hit wonder composers but rather ones that have association with or influence on another. Ex. Buxtehude is that one guy who taught JS Bach a thing or two on the organ. Anyone else know composers in this way?


If I could squeak up in his defense, I used to laugh at the name Buxtehude because it's so much fun to say. I found out he is much greater than just being an organ instructor with a less-than-attractive daughter. Jos Immerseel's recording of his cantatas and Emma Kirkby's recording of his sacred vocal works changed my opinion of him.

But back to the subject, one composer who seems to have fallen into obscurity for no good reason is Horatio Parker, known primarily for being the teacher of Charles Ives.


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## CnC Bartok (Jun 5, 2017)

I have about the same amount of Meyerbeer and Massenet as Elgar's Ghost has on his CD shelves. I know they're important composers, but..... same with Hummel, who has important links to his contemporary and on-and-off chum Beethoven, thence onwards to Chopin, Schumann and Liszt. A trumpet concerto and a couple of piano concertos is my Hummel collection.

Schumann held a key English composer in very high regard (as did Mendelssohn) - William Sterndale Bennett. I am afraid I have none of his music in my collection.

I do try not to overlook these sorts of composers who have fallen by the wayside, two examples of this being musicians who were contemporaries and friends of Bartok in inter-war Hungary - Erno Dohnanyi and Laszlo Lajtha. Admittedly neither is anywhere near Bartok's level of genius, but the latter was held in the higher regard when still alive. Both are worth getting to know, and I suspect there's more to Lajtha than is immediately apparent (only been collecting his symphonies since they all came out on Naxos these past couple of years!)


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

Manxfeeder said:


> But back to the subject, one composer who seems to have fallen into obscurity for no good reason is Horatio Parker, known primarily for being the teacher of Charles Ives.


Isn't that actually a good reason if it is his primary claim to fame? I've nothing against Ives, but since he's an acquired taste and has a fairly small audience, his less-well-known teacher's will be smaller still.


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## Razumovskymas (Sep 20, 2016)

Wagner is that guy that begged Liszt for money :tiphat:


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## Razumovskymas (Sep 20, 2016)

J.S. Bach is that guy that Händel didn't find important enough to meet.


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## premont (May 7, 2015)

Razumovskymas said:


> J.S. Bach is that guy that Händel didn't find important enough to meet.


Or didn't dare to meet.


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

Actually , Bach and Handel, even though they never met, admired each other greatly . Handel lived most of his life in London, and Bach never traveled outside of what was then the loose connection of German-speaking principalities which eventually became known as Deutschland .


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## DreamBigKeys (Apr 15, 2018)

Hahahahahahahaha I like this one ^

Though I like Wagner's _original_ piano sonata in B-flat, 1st movement specifically.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Kieran said:


> Yeah, the Bach sons, influences on Mozart and great composers in their own right, but I wouldn't know their music if it walked up to me on a hot sunny day, brandishing a cornetto...


Too bad. CPE is great.


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## Razumovskymas (Sep 20, 2016)

EdwardBast said:


> Too bad. CPE is great.


CPE is not bad bud don't you think his concertos lack some originality? I hear the same mannerisms in every concerto, a bit too annoying to my ears. So in my book he's not "great"


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

EdwardBast said:


> Too bad. CPE is great.


I agree. But he was "that guy" for me for most of my listening life. Two recordings of his music changed my life - or at least my appreciation of his music. One was of the Magnificat. The other was actually a huge series of recordings of the keyboard concertos played by Miklos Spanyi. The Spanyi recordings in particular were a revelation: music that sits almost uncomfortably between the baroque and the classical (you can almost hear the classical style being invented and often feel "oh yes, Haydn - for example - would have resolved that more perfectly and beautifully" but at the same time you can hear something that starts off sounding baroque going off into very new territory) but is also very distinctive in, for example, its sense of fantasy. I tend to get bored quickly with second rank baroque music and to find second rank classical music boring from the start. CPE Bach is neither baroque or classical and he is not second rank, either.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Razumovskymas said:


> CPE is not bad bud don't you think his concertos lack some originality? I hear the same mannerisms in every concerto, a bit too annoying to my ears. So in my book he's not "great"


I suspect the "mannerisms" you mention are just the conventions of gallant style(?) If so, this is like criticizing Mozart for doubling final phrases and using trills at cadences.

CPE Bach composed some of the best and most innovative concertos of his era. W. 43 #4 is a fully cyclic work, anticipating the experiments of the Romantic Era. Wq. 23 is just really good. Anyway you cut it, CPE was one of the most important composers of the 18thc.

As Enthusiast mentions, Bach's work can sound to modern ears like a hybrid of baroque and classical elements, but unlike Enthusiast I find nothing uncomfortable in this. The Baroque and Classical boxes are constructs we impose retrospectively and Bach's work should be heard on its own terms, free of anachronistic preconceptions. I too very much enjoy the Spanyi recordings, although I am still missing a few from my collection.

W. 43 #4






Wq. 23


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## regenmusic (Oct 23, 2014)

Razumovskymas said:


> Wagner is that guy that begged Liszt for money :tiphat:


The two had a long correspondence and one can buy an inexpensive book of their letters.


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