# classical music analogy to the Warriors getting DeMarcus Cousins



## science (Oct 14, 2010)

If you're not an NBA fan, here's the idea:

You take the best team, one of the best teams of all time, and then you take its weakest point, and you fix that with the best player at that position in the league. (Since this is about a classical music analogy, we don't have to worry ourselves about issues like whether Boogie can fit into the Warriors culture, whether he can learn their playing style, when he'll recover from his injury, or if he'll ever be as good as he was before.)

So I was thinking, what's the classical music analogy?

For example, Mozart might be the "greatest" composer of all time. He's at least in the discussion about who is the the "greatest" composer of all time. But it's close, right? Like maybe Bach is better, or Beethoven. Long debates have been debated.

But now we get to settle it the Warriors way.

Let's say Mozart's weak spot may be that he never wrote a good cello concerto. So let's say we take the greatest cello concertos of (approximately) his era - let's say, Boccherini's - and attribute them to Mozart, and then - BOOM! Wolfgang gets on twitter and is like, "How you like me now, Ludwig?"

Or perhaps Brahms's big problem is that he never wrote an opera. Would he be the greatest composer of all time if he just, you know, took Wagner's operas for himself? "BOOM!" He might say. "Third B that!"

Last one for me, just to open it up a bit. Perhaps "greatest of all time" isn't what interests all of us. Let's say greatest 20th-century Russian composer is Prokofiev. I mean, it's debatable, there's Shostakovich, you know, maybe someone else. Anyway, what Prokofiev does not have is a great song cycle. But in Warriors world, that's no problem. You just take Shostakovich's song cycles, and BOOM. Greatest Russian Composer of the the 20th century is in the bag.

You see the idea. You get to take a great composer, then consider what his or her relative "weakness" might be, and then replace that composer's output in that genre with a near-contemporary's output! It's like building a superteam,* but it's building a super-oeuvre.

Have at it.

*For some reason, the spellchecker program on my browser considers "superteam" an error but it allows "superteazm."


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Alright so it's a little too innalecshal for youse guys, eh? 

Let's say you want to make the "greatest" American minimalist composer of all time. Arguably that's Steve Reich but his operas aren't so well-known. So you give him Glass's operas and - BOOM! That Adams fella ain't got nuttin to say now, does he? 

Like that.


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

Okay. Bach has no operas, so give him Handel's. The problem here is one of very different styles.


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

I tend to think that Albéric Magnard wrote the symphonies that Max Reger never did, so that's one. Of course, this could fall down because neither is unanimously considered to be a top-rank composer.


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## Klassik (Mar 14, 2017)

science said:


> Alright so it's a little too innalecshal for youse guys, eh?


Actually, my first reaction after reading your OP was something along the lines of, "science must have been drunk when he wrote this." 

Just kidding, science, but not really.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Klassik said:


> Actually, my first reaction after reading your OP was something along the lines of, "science must have been drunk when he wrote this."
> 
> Just kidding, science, but not really.


Sleep deprivation has a similar effect on some cognitive functions.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

elgars ghost said:


> I tend to think that Albéric Magnard wrote the symphonies that Max Reger never did, so that's one. Of course, this could fall down because neither is unanimously considered to be a top-rank composer.


No, but that's better. That sounds like an interesting conversation. But I don't know Magnard's symphonies so in order to evaluate your claim I'm going to have to learn something. Well done, sir. Well done.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Bulldog said:


> Okay. Bach has no operas, so give him Handel's. The problem here is one of very different styles.


How about giving him Vivaldi's operas?

Is it the case that Vivaldi's operas are somewhat neglected because they're his, or is it that the only reason we pay any attention to them because they're his?

If those works had JS Bach's signature attached, what would that do to their reputation and to his?


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

science said:


> How about giving him Vivaldi's operas?
> 
> Is it the case that Vivaldi's operas are somewhat neglected because they're his, or is it that the only reason we pay any attention to them because they're his?
> 
> If those works had JS Bach's signature attached, what would that do to their reputation and to his?


I'm very negative on Vivaldi's music, so I reject the transfer. If Vivaldi's operas had Bach's signature, Bach's reputation would take a hit.


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## Gordontrek (Jun 22, 2012)

I think an even better analogy would be a big orchestra, say the Los Angeles Philharmonic (in California after all), deciding to use the rest of the world as a musical farm system, and hiring all the best principal players out there to play in THEIR orchestra. Imagine a trumpet section made up of Phil Smith, Chris Martin, and Gabor Tarkovi, or a trombone section with Joe Alessi, Jay Friedman, and Charlie Vernon. (I'm a brass player, gotta start there) The 1st violins are made up of the LA Phil concertmaster, then the NY Phil concertmaster, then the concertmasters from Berlin, Chicago, London, Vienna...
As I recall there was an attempt at something like this a few years ago called the All Star Orchestra that Gerard Schwarz put together, but I believe it was limited to American orchestras, and of course didn't try to get all principal players/concertmasters.


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## GeorgeMcW (Jun 4, 2018)

There was one - Abbado did it with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra in his final years


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## GeorgeMcW (Jun 4, 2018)

science said:


> If you're not an NBA fan, here's the idea:
> 
> You take the best team, one of the best teams of all time, and then you take its weakest point, and you fix that with the best player at that position in the league. (Since this is about a classical music analogy, we don't have to worry ourselves about issues like whether Boogie can fit into the Warriors culture, whether he can learn their playing style, when he'll recover from his injury, or if he'll ever be as good as he was before.)
> 
> ...


Nice idea.. but you need some sort of limitation. The NBA has a salary cap. The Warriors were able to get Boogie due to luck and exceptional circumstances (beyond what we want to go into in this thread). In your game, what's to stop just putting all the best of all genres into one "composer"?

Or to further the NBA analogy, you take a tanking team .. in music, let's take Czerny (sorry Carl) who really didn't write anything original.. and give him .. (same period) Mozart's operas, Beethoven's everything, Schubert's song cycles, etc ... and you have (the old) Cleveland! Except this would make him more like the Warriors than the Cavs haha.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Gordontrek said:


> I think an even better analogy would be a big orchestra, say the Los Angeles Philharmonic (in California after all), deciding to use the rest of the world as a musical farm system, and hiring all the best principal players out there to play in THEIR orchestra. Imagine a trumpet section made up of Phil Smith, Chris Martin, and Gabor Tarkovi, or a trombone section with Joe Alessi, Jay Friedman, and Charlie Vernon. (I'm a brass player, gotta start there) The 1st violins are made up of the LA Phil concertmaster, then the NY Phil concertmaster, then the concertmasters from Berlin, Chicago, London, Vienna...
> As I recall there was an attempt at something like this a few years ago called the All Star Orchestra that Gerard Schwarz put together, but I believe it was limited to American orchestras, and of course didn't try to get all principal players/concertmasters.


Excellent! That is a much better idea. This is what we should do.

*The Vienna Philharmonic hires all stars at every position! The other orchestras might as well not even play!*

Who is the line-up?

We've got:

Trumpet: Phil Smith, Chris Martin, and Gabor Tarkovi

Trombone: Joe Alessi, Jay Friedman, and Charlie Vernon

I'll add:

Violin: Hilary Hahn and Joshua Bell

Viola: Gidon Kremer and Kim Kashkashian

But I have lazily (of course) contributed only the beginning and the most obvious all-stars to the list. Who is on this list of all-star performers?


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

GeorgeMcW said:


> Nice idea.. but you need some sort of limitation. The NBA has a salary cap. The Warriors were able to get Boogie due to luck and exceptional circumstances (beyond what we want to go into in this thread). In your game, what's to stop just putting all the best of all genres into one "composer"?
> 
> Or to further the NBA analogy, you take a tanking team .. in music, let's take Czerny (sorry Carl) who really didn't write anything original.. and give him .. (same period) Mozart's operas, Beethoven's everything, Schubert's song cycles, etc ... and you have (the old) Cleveland! Except this would make him more like the Warriors than the Cavs haha.


Clearly this is a productive line of analysis and we have a lot of work to do.

Now one thing we have to recognize about Czerny (with Mozart's operas and Beethoven's everything) is that it was a tougher time in the music world back then. The rules were different. So Czerny would of course dominate today's so-called super-composers.

But what would _today's_ supercomposer have? I suspect...

I say we take Per Norgard but we have to give him... somebody's string quartets, somebody's works for solo piano...


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