# Is every piece of Mozart, Bach and Beethoven good?



## DenisAfanasyev (Jul 10, 2021)

Do they have objectively bad pieces? Are all their pieces passed test of time? They might not like their bad pieces but they had to earn money so they released those.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

I'd say only that not everything they wrote is worth listening to a second time - or a first, if your time is limited. Objectively bad? They knew their craft, and were unlikely to turn out anything truly awful. Even _Wellington's Victory_ can probably be fun if you approach it in the right spirit. I confess I'm still trying to figure out what that is.


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

Woodduck said:


> I'd say only that not everything they wrote is worth listening to a second time - or a first, if your time is limited. Objectively bad? They knew their craft, and were unlikely to turn out anything truly awful. Even _Wellington's Victory_ can probably be fun if you approach it in the right spirit. I confess I'm still trying to figure out what that is.


Perhaps if you were to get a ridiculously high-paying (and work-free) position through the English Heritage Trust as honorary curator of Apsley House, Wellington's home, No 1 London, on the corner of Hyde Park, a structure also referred to as the Wellington Museum, you might gain a greater appreciation of the Beethoven work, which could be piped over speakers in the various rooms of the House. An appreciation which would be felt especially on pay days.

Other than that, I too am at a loss to figure out an alternative option.


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## Ethereality (Apr 6, 2019)

Everyone values different types of music, for instance if you listen to much 20th century music, you're statistically likely to say Bartok is better than Bach. There is no objectively good, but there is widely regarded music throughout time, and individual tastes technically just as valid. Nobody likes all of this music for instance, and there are some top 100 Mozart, Beethoven, Bach pieces that many haven't voted above the line of quality. There's no factual rule or knowledge, so are all their works good? Any perspective is valid, the more someone has listened to music, the better their opinion will probably be even though very different from others.


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

Wellington's Victory is fun for us, especially when played by a band like Octophoros with only timpani, brass and woodwinds. In Beethoven's day it was a great piece of patriotic music people loved -- just as they love it today.

It is recorded often, occasionally played in summer stock but rarely anymore in concert, and has contrapuntal excellence throughout starting with the opposing forces coming from each side.

Haydn wrote similarly fun patriotic music -- Battle of the Nile -- that like his more famous Nelson mass is about Nelson's victory over Napoleon at the Nile.

In their day people weren't as stuffy as today, in part because they had no way to play this music themselves. Now snobs complain about this great music as if it were trash. That says more about us in the 21st century than anything about Beethoven -- who never wrote any music I don't like hearing (though I'm not enthused about it all.)

Same for Mozart and J.S. Bach, the other two of the triumvirate of greatest composers in history.

I'll never understand people that listen to the uninspired, routinous, often repetitive (AKA minimalism) music of our time and suggest it is somehow better than Wellington's Victory or any other music these three wrote.


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

Wellington's victory was one of the first Beethoven pieces I heard (it was the flip side of Tchaikovsky 1812, a very short LP) and I loved it as a teenager before I got to the better stuff.
Beethoven wrote quite a bit of lesser music but very little one would regret listening to. He wrote the 3 "electoral sonatas" (Kurfürstensonaten) WoO 47 at 12 and 3 piano quartets two years later. While not on the level of his later pieces they are quite accomplished and enjoyable.
Even less famous composers were usually pretty good at their craft. Some stuff might be a bit boring but rarely technically bad. And the pieces we remember and still edit, play and record were usually among the better and less boring.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

*Are all their pieces passed test of time? *Certainly not, and to expect anyone to bat 100 consistently is nuts. All three composers have had virtually everything they composed recorded, at least once. But there's a lot of 2nd, 3rd and 4th rate stuff from all of them. The truly great masterworks make it easy to overlook the bad stuff. It may not be technically bad, they were all fine craftsmen, but some of the music is just dull and uninspired.


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## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist (Jan 13, 2019)

That's for you to decide. Don't listen to anyone else.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

larold said:


> Wellington's Victory is fun for us, especially when played by a band like Octophoros with only timpani, brass and woodwinds. In Beethoven's day it was a great piece of patriotic music people loved -- just as they love it today. I'll never understand people that listen to the uninspired, routinous, often repetitive (AKA minimalism) music of our time and suggest it is somehow better than Wellington's Victory or any other music these three wrote.


I agree. It served its function as incidental music in its days, and some people (such as our wonderful member Allerius, whom I miss these days) say that they enjoy the work; I don't see any reason it shouldn't exist.







larold said:


> Haydn wrote similarly fun patriotic music -- Battle of the Nile -- that like his more famous Nelson mass is about Nelson's victory over Napoleon at the Nile.


Its nickname actually comes from this anecdote: "What Haydn did not know when he wrote the mass, but what he and his audience heard (perhaps on September 15, the day of the very first performance), was that on 1 August, Napoleon had been dealt a stunning defeat in the Battle of the Nile by British forces led by Admiral Horatio Nelson. Because of this coincidence, the mass gradually acquired the nickname Lord Nelson Mass. The title became indelible when, in 1800, Lord Nelson himself visited the Palais Esterházy, accompanied by his British mistress, Lady Hamilton, and may have heard the mass performed."

Speaking of the Napoleonic era and its music, (strangely) Die Schöpfung (Day 1) reminds me of the theme music from the Hornblower series:









Waterloo (1970) did a very good adaptation of the slow movement of Beethoven's 5th piano concerto, for its "emperor theme".

The string figures, even with their "modernity", remind me of Mozart's K.345 and K.334
1:07 








a very good example of "Neoclassical" (Gluckian in feel) film music:
0:38


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

Mozart's earliest pieces: the attempts of a 7 year old can only be so good
Bach's cantatas: Churning them out every Sunday as a day job means they can't all be gems
Beethoven: Battle Symphony


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## 8opus (Jul 17, 2021)

As writing music was Mozart's job, he did write some not so interesting pieces to put food on the table. I feel like you have less of those in Chopin's work. He was an highly valued teacher and Georges Sand was wealthy. Could it be related?


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

8opus said:


> As writing music was Mozart's job, he did write some not so interesting pieces to put food on the table.


It wasn't as crazy as the Baroque composers' (ex. Graupner's 1400+ cantatas, Telemann's 1000+ cantatas), but they still did things like:
"Michael Haydn's (1737-1806) Romance in A flat major for horn and string quartet poses many questions. It is instantly identifiable as a version of the slow movement of Mozart's Horn Concerto in E-flat major, KV447. Which of the two works came first is hard to say. The Mozart concerto was first published by Johann Anton André (Offenbach am Main) in 1800 and André's handwritten date of 1783 can still be seen on the manuscript housed in the British Library. More recent studies of the manuscript paper have suggested a later date of 1787. Haydn's Romance is thought to date from 1794 and was first published in 1802. However, there are some slight peculiarities about both works that suggest it may not be as simple as it first seems as each work contains passages that are hard to conceive of having been composed without knowledge of the other's version.
Mozart and Michael Haydn were great friends - to the extent that Mozart helped Haydn out in 1783 by 'ghost writing' a set of violin and viola duets that the Archbishop of Salzburg had commissioned from Haydn, and which he, due to illness, had been unable to complete. One plausible explanation may be that Haydn had also been required to write a horn concerto and, having completed the slow movement, was unable to fulfil the commission and passed the job on to his friend, only to later return to his earlier sketches and complete the work with his original intentions." (plumstead-peculiars.com)









I value the adagio from divertimento K.287 more, btw:


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Couchie said:


> Bach's cantatas: Churning them out every Sunday as a day job means they can't all be gems


I hardly know the church cantatas. Which is the least gem like?


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Mandryka said:


> I hardly know the church cantatas. Which is the least gem like?


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Couchie said:


> Mozart's earliest pieces: the attempts of a 7 year old can only be so good
> Bach's cantatas: Churning them out every Sunday as a day job means they can't all be gems
> Beethoven: Battle Symphony


I was thinking the same re Mozart but .. the 1st symphony is a good one! OK, he was 8 and not 7.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Ethereality said:


> Everyone values different types of music, for instance if you listen to much 20th century music, you're statistically likely to say Bartok is better than Bach. There is no objectively good, but there is widely regarded music throughout time, and individual tastes technically just as valid.


I wonder if that is right. I love Bartok and many works written more than 50 years after he died. But I think I like Bach and Mozart even more. I wonder if I am in a minority in this as it seems to me that knowing music that came earlier seems to help me get more out of Bartok and Carter. In fact when people post that their taste is exclusively modern - often they exclude the more avant garde contemporary as well as music that came before the modern era - I feel surprised and may even wonder whether they here the same things that I hear in modern music. I think there were periods in my life when I was more interested in the music of a single period that all the other periods. Perhaps many of those who are "only modern" fans are just in one such period?


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Enthusiast said:


> I was thinking the same re Mozart but .. the 1st symphony is a good one! OK, he was 8 and not 7.


The ones I listen to with any frequency are:


hammeredklavier said:


> 11:41
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