# Quantity vs. Quality in proclaiming your favorite composers



## Brahmsian Colors (Sep 16, 2016)

A favorite composer is sometimes based on one's enjoyment of a good number of that composer's works. Other times, it reflects the listener's particularly strong feelings for a single piece or perhaps no more than three pieces by the composer. What have been some of your experiences regarding the latter cases?


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

I don't typically rank a composer as a favorite if I only like one or two of their works. But I have a number of such composers where I very strongly like a single work:

Mascagni: L'amico Fritz
Flotow: Martha
Handel: Messiah
Bellini: La Sonnambula ( to some extent also I Capuleti e i Montecchi )
Strauss: Die Frau Ohne Schatten

This happens to me mostly with opera. For instrumental classical, I tend towards composers where I like much/all of their output such as Beethoven, Mendelssohn, and Rachmaninoff.


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

Quantity is not a big deal for me. For example, Holst wrote plenty of works I enjoy. The only work of Moeran's that I enjoy so far is his Fantasy Quartet for Oboe and Strings - love this work much more than any Holst composition. So in my hierarchy of composers, Moeran trumps Holst.


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

Great reminder of a thread. I sometimes rush to add composers (artists) to my playlists in order to keep things diverse, but I lose quality in doing that.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

I go for one key thing (as it often the case with it comes to assessing the merits of composers' oeuvre): consistency of quality. Now of course many composers do not write epic works all the time but even their smaller scale works demonstrate some degree of consistency with their large scale works and often have signatory features that make it stand out. On Bach for example, the first compositions I listened over and over were the Brandenburgs and other concertos/orchestral works. Most of his concertos are lost, unfortunately. Scholars are sure many did not survive in their original form and others have vanished altogether. So here is an example where quantity does matter. But I see what you mean, of course we value quality as the utmost criteria.


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## Brahmsian Colors (Sep 16, 2016)

Bulldog said:


> Quantity is not a big deal for me. For example, Holst wrote plenty of works I enjoy. The only work of Moeran's that I enjoy so far is his Fantasy Quartet for Oboe and Strings - love this work much more than any Holst composition. So in my hierarchy of composers, Moeran trumps Holst.


Quantity is of little concern for me as well. Interesting you should mention Moeran. I like very much four pieces of his: Violin Concerto, Cello Concerto, Fantasy Quartet and String Trio for Violin, Viola and Cello. Frankly, I currently enjoy greater fulfillment from these than I do from a fair number of works by Prokofiev.


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## Ethereality (Apr 6, 2019)

I don't care about great or favorite composers. I find works I enjoy. To answer your question, there _have_ been composers who've continued to provide consistently great works to my ears, but they're not recognized on this forum well. To me these would qualify as the greatest composers, if I had to make a list. Since I don't have the subjective experience of other people, I can't confirm their preferences are greater than mine. An impossible task.


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## ORigel (May 7, 2020)

I haven't throughly delved into the music of every composer in the repotoire, just the really big names.

I have listened to the works of dozens of other composers: Hildegarde von Bingen, Albinoni, Michael Haydn, Borodin, Webern, etc. but only a few works each from them


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## ORigel (May 7, 2020)

SixFootScowl said:


> I don't typically rank a composer as a favorite if I only like one or two of their works. But I have a number of such composers where I very strongly like a single work:
> 
> Mascagni: L'amico Fritz
> Flotow: Martha
> ...


Did you listen to Handel's Israel in Egypt yet?


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

Quantity only when it comes to outstanding works (the ones I deem important, essential or even hors concours on the artockometer). I like every single Haydn symphony, but there's only a few that I find outstanding. The same with his string quartets. As a result, he does not rank highly in the end for me whenever I make a list of my favourite composers (somewhere in the 30-50 range).

As an example of the other end of the quantity scale, Mahler's total output is about 20 works - but over half of those I deem essential, and ten of them even hors concours. So in spite of the low quantity, he is my #2 composer after Bach, who has even higher numbers. Bruckner is another one who ranks highly for me based on a small output.

Then there is the anti-quality effect. A few composers score high on the number of outstanding works, but also have a number of famous works that I can't stand (1/6 or 2/6)- they will drop in the ranking because of that.

It's all my own opinion of course (to avoid the word ************). In the end there is no mathematical formula I apply when ranking composers, but these considerations are in my mind when I ask the question: total oeuvre of composer A or B - which would I want to keep if I could keep only one? That's the one I rank higher.


The artrockometer:
6/6 "hors concours", one of about 100 most favourite compositions.
5/6 "essential", a must-have for my CD collection.
4/6 "important", I really like to have it in my CD collection.
3/6 "good to have", OK for my CD collection, no big deal if not.
2/6 "not required", I don't need this.
1/6 "no thanks", I really prefer not to hear this.


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## ORigel (May 7, 2020)

Art Rock said:


> Quantity only when it comes to outstanding works (the ones I deem important, essential or even hors concours on the artockometer). I like every single Haydn symphony, but there's only a few that I find outstanding. The same with his string quartets. As a result, he does not rank highly in the end for me whenever I make a list of my favourite composers (somewhere in the 30-50 range).
> 
> As an example of the other end of the quantity scale, Mahler's total output is about 20 works - but over half of those I deem essential, and ten of them even hors concours. So in spite of the low quantity, he is my #2 composer after Bach, who has even higher numbers. Bruckner is another one who ranks highly for me based on a small output.
> 
> ...


Haydn is my #5; Bruckner and Mahler are in my top 10.


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

It's difficult for me to imagine a composer being a "favorite" because I like one of his or her works.

The composers I enjoy most had many more than one composition that strongly appealed to me; they had quantity made up of similar qualities.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

It's a little of each. My personal rankings more or less follow th algorithm of how many works would I really miss if he/she were to excised from the face of the earth. "Really miss" being more or less dependant on quality.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

ORigel said:


> Did you listen to Handel's Israel in Egypt yet?


Ah, I should have included oratorios in this thread:
Operas You Only Like for a Single Aria

I like only the frog aria in Israel in Egypt.


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

Brahmsian Colors said:


> A favorite composer is sometimes based on one's enjoyment of a good number of that composer's works. Other times, it reflects the listener's particularly strong feelings for a single piece or perhaps no more than three pieces by the composer. What have been some of your experiences regarding the latter cases?


The second case is a rare exception for me. Most of my favorite composers wrote quite a few works from many different genres and I usually like a large number of them. And for more narrow composers like Chopin or Mahler I usually like most of their works as well. 
Composers I like mostly/only for a few select works that I like immensely and don't care too much about the rest of their works are not among my absolute favorites, more like around rank 15-20 (but I don't really rank that deeply). 
Examples are Berlioz (like/love Faust, Fantastique and most of R&J, can't really get into the sacred works and operas), Berg (love the Lyric suite and a few other pieces, don't really care about others, again it's mostly opera I have not enough patience for) Prokofiev, Shostakovich (maybe the most uneven famous 20th century composer for me).


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## Malx (Jun 18, 2017)

An interesting question was put to me years ago which _may_ help some determine who their favourite composer is. Question - If you could only listen to one composer for the rest of your life who would that be?


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

Beethoven, and he is my favorite composer anyway.
But I don't think that this is a very good way to find this out because it is a completely unrealistic restriction. I can only listen to a certain amount of music in the rest of my life, so I need to pick favorites because of limited time. But I do not need to restrict myself to one or ten composers. 
And almost everyone would rather listen to their favorite 50 works by other composers than to 50 lesser pieces of a favorite.


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## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist (Jan 13, 2019)

Quality trumps quantity any day of the week. But in practice, I find that is very rare a composer produces one work that is significantly ahead of the rest of their output. In fact, I'm struggling to think of any example.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist said:


> Quality trumps quantity any day of the week. But in practice, I find that is very rare a composer produces one work that is significantly ahead of the rest of their output. In fact, I'm struggling to think of any example.


Orff - Carmina Burana (well, at least for me).


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## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist (Jan 13, 2019)

Art Rock said:


> Orff - Carmina Burana (well, at least for me).


Don't think I've heard anything else by him. I suppose you wouldn't be the person to ask for recommendations, then...


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## MatthewWeflen (Jan 24, 2019)

Quantity does not factor in to my listening choices, as I like to mix things up and include some "lesser lights" to avoid anything getting stale. 

But quantity does factor in to how I evaluate a composer against others... which some might say is a pointless game, but I must like pointless games, then.

So, speaking of Holst, I really like The Planets, and I have purchased a more complete set of his orchestral works, but that's the only one that's really stuck for me. As such, if I were making a ranked list, he would be lower. Someone like Schubert has a large set of both symphonies and quartets that are truly top rate. He would go higher. Beethoven rests at the top because of his mastery of so many genres - though the symphonies would probably still be enough. Sibelius is my number 2 and his oeuvre is somewhat smaller. But I've never heard a piece of his I dislike.

So yeah, someone with one or two pieces I really strongly like might make my top 30, but in a correspondingly lower position than someone with a large string of successes.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

Brahmsian Colors said:


> A favorite composer is sometimes based on one's enjoyment of a good number of that composer's works. Other times, it reflects the listener's particularly strong feelings for a single piece or perhaps no more than three pieces by the composer. What have been some of your experiences regarding the latter cases?


Favorite composers for me is largely based on my liking their symphonies, which is why Bach does not make my list. So favorites for me include Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Saint-Saens, Rachmaninoff, and Schubert.

It is hard for me to have favorite composers in opera because my interests are spread over so many composers and some only for one or two operas, but if I had to list the ones who have the most operas that I like, it is Wagner and Donizetti.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist said:


> Don't think I've heard anything else by him. I suppose you wouldn't be the person to ask for recommendations, then...


Somehow I ended up with 12 Orff CD's, 9 of which are not the Carmina. These 9 are marked for deletion if I ever cull CD's from my collection.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

When I think of the composers whose music I like more than the rest, it based on a few of their works that I like a lot.

My top five:

*Bach*:while I like his vocal works, it is his keyboard music and the solo violin and cello works I almost always listen to.

*Brahms*: the chamber works mainly.

*Stravinsky*: Symphony of Psalms, the concertos, esp. the one for violin, and L'Histoire du soldat, and some other works from that period.

*Debussy*: Pelleas et Melisande, the late sonatas, string quartet, and some of the solo piano works

*Durufle*: the Requiem above all, but he published so few works I often listen to the other works.


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## JohnP (May 27, 2014)

I haven't made a formal list of my favorite composers; but there are those I return to time and again: Bach, Scarlatti, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Mahler, Debussy, Ravel, Sibelius, Shostakovich. Others I listen to less often, perhaps, but still wouldn't want to be without: Schumann, Chopin, Bruckner, Stravinsky, for instance. For a few I truly admire only one work: Melartin's, Magnard's, and Braga Santos' 4th Symphonies, Orff's Carmina Burana, but I really love those three 4th Symphonies. (A thread on favorite 4th Symphonies would probably run dry pretty quickly, but it's an interesting category.) If pinned to the mat, I'd probably grunt "Beethoven," but how to live without Bach, Haydn, Debussy, Sibelius...? I agree with Kreisler Jr. that limiting oneself to only one composer is impractical. Whether it is or not, I won't do it.


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## MatthewWeflen (Jan 24, 2019)

Art Rock said:


> Somehow I ended up with 12 Orff CD's, 9 of which are not the Carmina. These 9 are marked for deletion if I ever cull CD's from my collection.


Orff's De temporum fine comoedia is the worst thing I've ever listened to.


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist said:


> Quality trumps quantity any day of the week. But in practice, I find that is very rare a composer produces one work that is significantly ahead of the rest of their output. In fact, I'm struggling to think of any example.


It could be that one just enjoys some works or genres much more. I don't dislike opera at all but for some reason nowadays I can rarely be bothered to listen to operas (especially ones I don't already know at least to some extent) at home and I am also too lazy and too poor to travel to performances on stage. So I am very fond of Janacek's quartets, Sinfonietta, violin sonata, like some smaller pieces and his piano music and Glagolitic Mass but although I have two operas (Vixen and House of the Dead) on my shelves, I have never more than dipped into them and not listened to any in its entirety. So I have a rather skewed picture of the composer because his operas are among his most highly regarded works.

Rachmaninoff is another case. I am overall not a great fan, never heard any of his operas, find the 2nd symphony, the 2nd and 3rd piano concertos overrated and overplayed but I love the similarly overplayed Paganini variations and don't dislike the 3rd symphony and symphonic dances. This does not make him a top 20 or maybe even 30 favorite, but I could imagine a similar case where I was so inordinately fond of a few works that a composer became one of the favorites for a handful of works or less, despite not caring about dozens of other pieces.


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## JohnP (May 27, 2014)

Kreisler jr said:


> It could be that one just enjoys some works or genres much more. I don't dislike opera at all but for some reason nowadays I can rarely be bothered to listen to operas (especially ones I don't already know at least to some extent) at home and I am also too lazy and too poor to travel to performances on stage. So I am very fond of Janacek's quartets, Sinfonietta, violin sonata, like some smaller pieces and his piano music and Glagolitic Mass but although I have two operas (Vixen and House of the Dead) on my shelves, I have never more than dipped into them and not listened to any in its entirety. So I have a rather skewed picture of the composer because his operas are among his most highly regarded works.
> 
> Rachmaninoff is another case. I am overall not a great fan, never heard any of his operas, find the 2nd symphony, the 2nd and 3rd piano concertos overrated and overplayed but I love the similarly overplayed Paganini variations and don't dislike the 3rd symphony and symphonic dances. This does not make him a top 20 or maybe even 30 favorite, but I could imagine a similar case where I was so inordinately fond of a few works that a composer became one of the favorites for a handful of works or less, despite not caring about dozens of other pieces.


I don't spend much time with opera, either. (The WHF, Wife Happiness Factor, weighs heavily.) My enthusiasm for it tends to come in spurts of a week or two in which I immerse myself in works I already know pretty well--with headphones. Regarding Janacek's operas, Jenufa is a knockout. The first time I heard the opening bars, I was hooked.


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## Olias (Nov 18, 2010)

Genre tends to play a role for me as well. My "favorite" composer sometimes changes with different genres:

Symphonies - Beethoven, Haydn, Dvorak
Concerti - Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Dvorak
String Quartets - Haydn, Beethoven
Other Chamber Music - Mozart, Dvorak
Concert Overtures - Beethoven, Mendelssohn
Operas - Mozart
Solo Piano - Beethoven
Ballet Music - Copland
Tone Poem/Program Music - Debussy, Holst


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## Livly_Station (Jan 8, 2014)

In regards to ranking favorite composers, I try to be the most instinctive with my feelings as possible instead of following a logical system or rigid criteria. And it's a relationship that builds up with time as I return to the composer (after focusing on something else) and he still delivers me the shivers (with the same pieces I already loved, or with pieces that I hadn't yet delved into yet).

_*Quality*_ is the main principle for ranking, of course. However, I don't know if a single ~~GREATEST MASTERPIECE OF ALL TIME~~ would be enough to make me rank a composer above another one who has many works I *love*, since I don't have any favorite piece that ranks too much above another favorite. If that ever happens (of a piece being too much better than anything else in the world), then I would have to think about it.

So let's say _Composer A_ made a single piece I rate as a 10, but all the rest are below 5. Meanwhile, _Composer B_ have a bunch of 9+, but no 10. Then I'll probably rank _Composer _B above _Composer A_. That said, the latter would probably still feature in my ranking somewhere despite only a single masterpiece.

_*Quantity*_ is valuable for my appreciation of a composer. For example, I love miniatures, all these little pieces that don't have enough substance to fight against a great symphony, but which have some sort of genius that upgrades my experience in life. That's what makes J.S. Bach my favorite composer, since the more you discover from him the more you consistently find music to fall in love for him over and over again.

One thing that I must say is that the _average quality_ of the oeuvre of a composer is of no importance to me. Let's say a composer created a hundred works I rate as a 10 and a hundred works I rate as a 0, then his average rating would be a disappointing 5. But that would be the dumbest way to measure his greatness. What's important is only the amount of masterpieces he contributed to the world that are available for my pleasure, so this composer is a 10.

I mostly ignore what's bad.


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## Ethereality (Apr 6, 2019)

Both. Quality alone is for when you're young, some composer writes the best chord or whatever and they become your favorite. As you progress, you seek more, you look for newness and what else the composers have done.


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## Coach G (Apr 22, 2020)

I think that quantity is the driving force behind the composers that become favorites. In my case, my favorite composers are the likes of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Brahms, Wagner, Stravinsky, and Schoenberg. With each of these, I'm always discovering new things to enjoy even after many, many years (even decades) of getting to know each one's musical vision. I also like some composers for a single work or maybe a handful of their works. Holst's _Planets_, _Organ Symphony_ by St. Seans, _Symphony in D_ by Franck, _Gloria_ by Poulenc, _Symphony #3 "Sorrowful Songs"_ by Gorecki, the _Violin Concerto_ by Rochberg, might be some examples of pieces that strike me more than the composer's overall vision. There are other composers such as Bruckner, Mahler, and Borodin who have a slim number of opuses but also have a high hit-to-miss ratio even compared to heavy hitters such as Beethoven and Mozart. Borodin is especially interesting in that Tchaikovsky once wrote to his patron Nadezhda Von Meck that despite Borodin's talent, he couldn't "compose a single bar of music without outside help. Like Ives who was a full-time insurance salesman; Borodin, the chemist, was also a part-time composer who only did music at nights and on weekends. And even if those in his circle such as Balikerev, Mussorgsky, Rimsky and Glazounov helped Borodin along, his style is distinctive despite his reliance on others.


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