# why don't we have composer like Mozart, Bach or Beethoven in our era?!



## Hamidreza

200 to 400 years ago the opportunity to learn classic music belonged to noblesse and musician families in European countries. But now in most of the countries ( almost all countries ) millions students access to the best and advanced facilities in thousands university and institute to learn classic music but the question is why don't we have composer like Mozart, Bach or Beethoven in our era?!


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## Guest

Hamidreza said:


> 200 to 400 years ago the opportunity to learn classic music belonged to noblesse and musician families in European countries. But now in most of the countries ( almost all countries ) millions students access to the best and advanced facilities in thousands university and institute to learn classic music but the question is why don't we have composer like Mozart, Bach or Beethoven in our era?!


Are you positive that we don't?


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## Dim7

Because composers of the past have already exhausted all the musical possibilities that sound good. Composers can't just keep repeating what's done in the past, so they have to explore the musical ideas that aren't used - that is to say, the bad ones. Nobody likes it but hey, it isn't supposed to be fun.

Just PM some of the "fans" of modern classical here at TC like violadude, nathanb or Mahlerian and if you pay them well enough, they will admit privately that they hate the music and listen to / compose it just because music among all the other arts has the moral imperative to progress no matter what. It's not about having good time, it's about doing what HAS TO BE DONE.


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## Nereffid

If we're asking that question, we should also consider some others, like why were there no composers like Dufay and Josquin in the 18th century?


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## Zarathustra

Dim7 said:


> Because composers of the past have already exhausted all the musical possibilities that sound good. Composers can't just keep repeating what's done in the past, so they have to explore the musical ideas that aren't used - that is to say, the bad ones. Nobody likes it but hey, it isn't supposed to be fun.
> 
> Just PM some of the "fans" of modern classical here at TC like violadude, nathanb or Mahlerian and if you pay them well enough, they will admit privately that they hate the music and listen to / compose it just because music among all the other arts has the moral imperative to progress no matter what. It's not about having good time, it's about doing what HAS TO BE DONE.


I give a thousand lols for this most able troll attempt.


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## Guest

Dim7 said:


> Because composers of the past have already exhausted all the musical possibilities that sound good. Composers can't just keep repeating what's done in the past, so they have to explore the musical ideas that aren't used - that is to say, the bad ones. Nobody likes it but hey, it isn't supposed to be fun.
> 
> *Just PM some of the "fans" of modern classical here at TC like violadude, nathanb or Mahlerian* and if you pay them well enough, they will admit privately that they hate the music and listen to / compose it just because music among all the other arts has the moral imperative to progress no matter what. It's not about having good time, it's about doing what HAS TO BE DONE.


I just want to take this chance to say that I love being lumped in with experienced, intelligent people 

I'm nathanb, perhaps even the same one mentioned above, and I have been listening to classical music for 2.5 years. I have zero formal musical training, and will probably never have any. 3 years ago, I was still raving about how cool a year 1994 was for the Norwegian black metal scene. My interests span from listening to my trusty iPod whilst enjoying a cigarette to eating a nice piece of cake.

Edit: About the black metal thing, I think there's a post about it somewhere on an abandoned blog of mine...still out there, drifting towards the darknet.


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## arpeggio

nathanb said:


> Are you positive that we don't?


This is an issue that frequently comes up here at Talk Classical.

nathanb is correct. There are many outstanding 20th century and contemporary composers who pay homage to older styles in some of their works.

Two examples that popped into my head are:

Norman Dello Joio: _Fantasies on a Theme by Haydn_: 




George Rochberg: _String Quartet No. 3_: 




There are many others.


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## mmsbls

During their lives Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart did not have the aura they do now. Beethoven was probably closest. Over time history has solidified their place as perhaps the 3 greatest composers of all time. Contemporary composers do not have that luxury since history has not had time to raise a few to exalted status. 

Those who listen carefully and at length to contemporary/modern composers apparently find many who are considered truly top quality composers. We simply don't know how generations in the future will assess composers of the past century.


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## Zlatorog

Especially with 7 billion people alive today, I have asked myself the same question. But I don't think it is a fair question, or at least it is a complicated one. Remember that the Big 3 were all (to varying degrees perhaps) innovators of their time. So, if you wanted to look for a composer "like" Mozart, Bach, or Beethoven, I have to assume you would need to look at today's musical innovators. One issue is that the great living musical minds of today may have chosen other genres of music. Another is that looking back at music made in a bygone era is an easier perspective to judge from than while living in said era. In my humble opinion. I say this as somebody who readily admits a preference for older music, and as a relative novice to classical music.


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## mtmailey

Well these guys are very rear today also people are more into modern music such as hip hop/rap pop & so forth.CLASSICAL music is not easy to do you know therefore many do not bother with it.


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## MoonlightSonata

Hamidreza said:


> 200 to 400 years ago the opportunity to learn classic music belonged to noblesse and musician families in European countries. But now in most of the countries ( almost all countries ) millions students access to the best and advanced facilities in thousands university and institute to learn classic music but the question is why don't we have composer like Mozart, Bach or Beethoven in our era?!


If you mean "composers of the same calibre", then we probably do, they just haven't been recognised as such. This is not unique to our time; I believe Bach was better known as an organist than as a composer in his lifetime.
If you mean "people composing in the same style", then we _certainly_ do.

I have yet to hear of a living composer fitting both categories, though.


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## GreenMamba

Times have changed. Society today is more focused on the middle class and popular culture. You could argue that Classical music was always of the "elite" to a large extent, but that elite had the power to ensure their tastes were given prominence. 

That seems to be less the case nowadays. People who don't listen to Classical still have heard of Bach, Mozart and Beethoven, and are familiar with a few of their works. They are exposed to them in music class (or at least they were). In the future, will anyone do the same for whoever the genius composers are today?


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## DiesIraeCX

I think it's today's lack of powdered wigs. It's what gave them their power.


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## Morimur

DiesIraeVIX said:


> I think it's today's lack of powdered wigs. It's what gave them their power.


Powdered wigs and syphilis. Ain't enough of the syphilis nowadays.


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## Hamidreza

yes exactly, and they gave this power from their society which was unique. Today from equipped institutes and universities and training in great condition without any intellectual concern, maybe we find good player but for innovation and creativity something else is necessary.


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## Woodduck

The vocabulary of Western music, utilizing the twelve semitones of the octave and gradually elaborating, over several centuries, the possibilities of what we call common practice tonality, has given composers opportunities to create varied and elaborate forms and to express an immense range of feeling. Working within the tonal "system," certain composers excelled in inspiration, skill, and expressive power, and history has pronounced them "masters." These composers - most notably the trio of Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven - will probably stand forever as the greatest composers, by general consent, of the Western tradition of tonal music. We will not have "composers like them" again.

Since the end of the common practice era, we've had plenty of great composers, as we have in eras, including the Middle Ages, before common practice. But in some respects they cannot be compared to those of that era in a direct way. As time goes on we can expect more and more sounds and styles to be added to the fund of world music, and less and less clarity as to what genre or classification it all represents. Already we can see Bach, Mozart and Beethoven as representing a small subset of music's possibilities. They (along with other masters of the common practice era) will go on representing the most profoundly meaningful achievement in music for many of us now living and probably many yet unborn. But there is no certainty as to their position in the remote future, when music will have moved on to something unimagined now.

Best just to be grateful that they came along when they did. The future will make its own music; we won't be here, and it'll be up to those who are to look back and ask why there are no composers like...


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## ArtMusic

Hamidreza said:


> 200 to 400 years ago the opportunity to learn classic music belonged to noblesse and musician families in European countries. But now in most of the countries ( almost all countries ) millions students access to the best and advanced facilities in thousands university and institute to learn classic music but the question is why don't we have composer like Mozart, Bach or Beethoven in our era?!


I think it doesn't really matter if we "don't have composers like Mozart, Bach or Beethoven in our era". These three composes have composed so much top tier material that we have available to us today, here and now, so all we need to do is go to them for music.


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## Blancrocher

Dim7 said:


> Because composers of the past have already exhausted all the musical possibilities that sound good. Composers can't just keep repeating what's done in the past, so they have to explore the musical ideas that aren't used - that is to say, the bad ones. Nobody likes it but hey, it isn't supposed to be fun.
> 
> Just PM some of the "fans" of modern classical here at TC like violadude, nathanb or Mahlerian and if you pay them well enough, they will admit privately that they hate the music and listen to / compose it just because music among all the other arts has the moral imperative to progress no matter what. It's not about having good time, it's about doing what HAS TO BE DONE.


We missed you for martinis at yesterday's breakfast meeting of the Stupid Thread Ideas editorial board, Dim7. Consider yourself lucky, though, since it was a total mess. Mahlerian actually admitted to disliking _Mahler_! At first we thought he was kidding, but then we all got uncomfortable when he kept maintaining it. Finally, TurnaboutVox asked him why he did all those fantastic blog posts containing careful analyses of Mahler's symphonies, and Mahlerian was like: "look, guys, I can't make _all_ my posts in STI."

Worst meeting we've had since the debate about whether 4'33'' jokes are actually funny.


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## Dim7

Blancrocher said:


> We missed you for martinis at yesterday's breakfast meeting of the Stupid Thread Ideas editorial board, Dim7. Consider yourself lucky, though, since it was a total mess. Mahlerian actually admitted to disliking _Mahler_! At first we thought he was kidding, but then we all got uncomfortable when he kept maintaining it. Finally, TurnaboutVox asked him why he did all those fantastic blog posts containing careful analyses of Mahler's symphonies, and Mahlerian was like: "look, guys, I can't make _all_ my posts in STI."
> 
> Worst meeting we've had since the debate about whether 4'33'' jokes are actually funny.


Mahlerian's hatred for Mahler is already well-known: http://www.talkclassical.com/37444-other-news-day.html?highlight=#post854143 (ignore the date of the post)

I also had to leave early the meeting before that one, namely the one with the debate about whether we should ban all serious discussion at Talk Classical and make the whole forum strictly a playground for Stupid Thread Ideas (posted as actual threads). Did you reach any consensus on that?


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## science

Dim7 said:


> Mahlerian's hatred for Mahler is already well-known: http://www.talkclassical.com/37444-other-news-day.html?highlight=#post854143 (ignore the date of the post)
> 
> I also had to leave early the meeting before that one, namely the one with the debate about whether we should ban all serious discussion at Talk Classical and make the whole forum strictly a playground for Stupid Thread Ideas (posted as actual threads). Did you reach any consensus on that?


Not being at that meeting, I don't know what might have been resolved, but privately I dedicated myself to that project and have not wavered yet.


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## Couac Addict

Morimur said:


> Powdered wigs and syphilis.


Not much of either since the 1980s


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## hpowders

It's a simple example of supply and demand.

The demand for pop music dwarfs that for classical music.

Classical composers these days are more or less writing for themselves.

If they are fortunate to get a work of theirs performed, it's usually a one shot deal and will never be heard again.

Pop rules.

For contemporary classical composers, it's really a hard day's night.


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## Ken Cohen

This is an interesting topic. Those composers wrote in the styles of their times. At least in Bach's and Mozart's cases, some of what they wrote was what their aristocratic audiences and sponsors wanted to hear. John Elliot Gardner describes how Bach would write "serious" pieces for performance in coffee houses but in a popular and less conventional way for church audiences. Composers today write for their audiences too - but their audiences have different expectations and are far more diverse than the German and Austrian music listeners of the 17th to 19th centuries.

Commercial radio and the phonograph gave an opportunity for market exposure to popular songs which, as it turned out, gave them mass audiences unheard of in theprevious hundreds of years. So George M Cohan, Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern became great composers, and later john Lennon, Elton John, and various rap and hip hop artists attained fame and fortune. Only posterity will determine which composers continue to be considered immortal while others fade away. In other words, the market became more democratic, no longer dominated by a few powerful or wealthy individuals.


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## pianolearnerstride

Do composers have the opportunity to compose with the same volume as in the past?

I'm astounded by how much Bach, Vivaldi, Telemann, Mozart composed... are there people today composing like that?


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## Baregrass

My take on this is two fold. First we do have some modern excellent composers; Bernstein for example. Second is that the 17th, 18th and 19th century composers were to an extent writing what might be called popular music. By that I mean music for immediate consumption much like pop artists of today except they were composing for either the churches or wealthy and/or noble patrons. This of course changed somewhat later on in the 19th century with the advent of mass audiences. I probably didn't explain myself well but.....best effort.


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## Guest

pianolearnerstride said:


> Do composers have the opportunity to compose with the same volume as in the past?
> 
> I'm astounded by how much Bach, Vivaldi, Telemann, Mozart composed... are there people today composing like that?


Absolutely. But given the relative complexity of contemporary styles, you better have a formula down just like they did.

Leif Segerstam has a formula down for symphonies in the same way that Vivaldi had a formula down for concerti, for instance.


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## violadude

pianolearnerstride said:


> Do composers have the opportunity to compose with the same volume as in the past?
> 
> I'm astounded by how much Bach, Vivaldi, Telemann, Mozart composed... are there people today composing like that?


The difference is that those guys weren't composing for the sake of posterity. Most of their compositions were done for a job or for teaching purposes. These days most composers are pressured (either externally or internally) to make a lasting and unique artistic statement with every new piece they write.


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## musicrom

On a slightly different note, I think something that could help classical music gain at least some popularity would be to have a composer to be a "THE composer" - someone like Mozart or Beethoven that everyone would at least know _of_. That way, people would at least realize that classical music is not just music written a very long time ago, but in fact that classical music is still very much alive today.

(Some have suggested that Philip Glass is pretty popular, but in my experience, very few people outside the music world knew about him before I showed them some of his music. Most liked his music a lot though.)


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## Albert7

Hmm... I could quip why we don't have Glass or Nono for the 17th century.

To be dead serious, we do have our Mozart and Beethoven for our 21st century. I think that after intense study of Feldman and some Liszt that we have wonderful composers like John Adams, Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Luigi Nono, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Morton Feldman, etc. etc. who have achieved great heights in composition techniques as the older masters who came before them.

The question is marketing I think honestly. People will be buying Laserlight Beethoven CD's but if Laserlight put out Nono I don't think that would sell.

Then again, from a popularity standpoint, I really do like John Williams' Star Wars music. So maybe that could be similar to what Beethoven achieved in terms of emotional tenor and psychological evocation? (Accessibility being the factor here.)


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## science

Albert7 said:


> Hmm... I could quip why we don't have Glass or Nono for the 17th century.


Actually, I really like that point!


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## ptr

musicrom said:


> On a slightly different note, I think something that could help classical music gain at least some popularity would be to have a composer to be a "THE composer" - someone like Mozart or Beethoven that everyone would at least know _of_. That way, people would at least realize that classical music is not just music written a very long time ago, but in fact that classical music is still very much alive today.
> 
> (Some have suggested that Philip Glass is pretty popular, but in my experience, very few people outside the music world knew about him before I showed them some of his music. Most liked his music a lot though.)


But the correct historical stance is that nether Mozart nor Beethoven or even Bach where "The Composer" during their own time! Like any Saint, canonisation of these gents started well after their death's and none of them reached Zenith's (World Wide recognition) until the the late 19th and mainly during the 20th century!

With the advent of the Internet we all know that canonisation incubation has been shortened drastically, most famous composers of our time won't have had "rigor mortis" set before their 15 minutes of fame has passed! (I know I'm a cynic!  )



Albert7 said:


> Then again, from a popularity standpoint, I really do like John Williams' Star Wars music. So maybe that could be similar to what Beethoven achieved in terms of emotional tenor and psychological evocation? (Accessibility being the factor here.)


But Williams SW music is at best a pastiche imitating conventional classical music, and that might well be a a sign of our shallow times where the copy cat is revered higher then the original... 

/ptr


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## Hamidreza

considering the power of media and the span of music world 200-400 years ago I believe that most of musicians and composers were well-known at there time. Yes we have some exception such as Bach but for most of them this rule is true.


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## musicrom

ptr said:


> But the correct historical stance is that nether Mozart nor Beethoven or even Bach where "The Composer" during their own time! Like any Saint, canonisation of these gents started well after their death's and none of them reached Zenith's (World Wide recognition) until the the late 19th and mainly during the 20th century!
> 
> With the advent of the Internet we all know that canonisation incubation has been shortened drastically, most famous composers of our time won't have had "rigor mortis" set before their 15 minutes of fame has passed! (I know I'm a cynic!  )
> 
> But Williams SW music is at best a pastiche imitating conventional classical music, and that might well be a a sign of our shallow times where the copy cat is revered higher then the original...
> 
> /ptr


I don't know much about which composers were popular when they were alive and which weren't. Maybe Mozart and Beethoven weren't too popular, I'm not sure, but I do know, for example, that Handel was very popular during his lifetime - over 12,000 people went to the first performance of Music for the Royal Fireworks, and over 3,000 attended his funeral. So there definitely was such a thing as being "THE" composer historically.

Plus, it arguably should be much easier nowadays for composers to become well-known, as you don't even have to leave your house anymore to hear most of their music.


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## Woodduck

Albert7 said:


> Hmm... I could quip why we don't have Glass or Nono for the 17th century.
> 
> To be dead serious, *we do have our Mozart and Beethoven for our 21st century.* I think that after intense study of Feldman and some Liszt that we have wonderful composers like John Adams, Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Luigi Nono, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Morton Feldman, etc. etc. who have achieved great heights in composition techniques as the older masters who came before them.
> 
> *The question is marketing I think honestly. People will be buying Laserlight Beethoven CD's but if Laserlight put out Nono I don't think that would sell.*
> 
> Then again, from a popularity standpoint, I really do like *John Williams' Star Wars music.* So maybe that *could be similar to what Beethoven achieved in terms of emotional tenor and psychological evocation?* (Accessibility being the factor here.)


No, we do not have a Mozart or a Beethoven in the 21st century. Those composers were working within an evolving musical tradition with deep roots - popular roots - in both the music of previous eras and the culture of the time. Both their refinements of that tradition and their innovations moving it forward were clear developments of a common tonal language and drew strength and meaning from it. They were able to use it with absolute mastery to achieve expressions of humanity which continue to be deeply meaningful two and three centuries after their deaths. It is, at the very least, too soon for us to presume that any composer active today has achieved or will achieve any comparably significant stature in world culture.

Do you actually believe that this would change if we were all fed a steady diet of Nono?

_Star Wars?_ "Similar to what Beethoven achieved"? In what universe?


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## DavidA

The answer is surely that the great composers of that era said all there was to say, leaving very little original material to be written. The problem facing the modern composer is that if they want to be original they tend to have to compose something unlovely which does not connect with the general musical public. The other thing is that talented composers have been sucked into the movies where the money is!


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## Gaspard de la Nuit

if I devoted myself to writing music, you would retract your statement and this would not be a discussion, because i would eventually produce some of the most potent music ever written, I just happen to not be in a hurry.



Dim7 said:


> Because composers of the past have already exhausted all the musical possibilities that sound good.


I predict you'll become one of the greatest, most prolific non-composers of all time, if you can just manage to keep your attitude.


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## Albert7

Woodduck said:


> No, we do not have a Mozart or a Beethoven in the 21st century. Those composers were working within an evolving musical tradition with deep roots - popular roots - in both the music of previous eras and the culture of the time. Both their refinements of that tradition and their innovations moving it forward were clear developments of a common tonal language and drew strength and meaning from it. They were able to use it with absolute mastery to achieve expressions of humanity which continue to be deeply meaningful two and three centuries after their deaths. It is, at the very least, too soon for us to presume that any composer active today has achieved or will achieve any comparably significant stature in world culture.
> 
> Do you actually believe that this would change if we were all fed a steady diet of Nono?
> 
> _Star Wars?_ "Similar to what Beethoven achieved"? In what universe?


No problem... the universe is that of Homo sapiens sapiens.


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## Woodduck

Albert7 said:


> No problem... the universe is that of Homo sapiens sapiens.


Haha! That's really cute. I used to do that sort of thing in college. Had fun one day playing "Happy Birthday" in the styles (or rather the cliches) of different composers. I really don't think I was very good but my classmates loved it and the composers were too dead to object.

Actually, this piece is pretty dismal too. If Beethoven could hear it he'd leap to his feet, red-faced, yelling "Schweinerei!"


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## arpeggio

*To Carter or not to Carter?*

Many times we get into pretentious arguments on how to label music. It seems that some members think that if they can invalidate the label that they can invalidate the music.

I do not know what to call modern music anymore. Atonal? Avant-garde? Whatever?

My favorite whatever composer is Elliot Carter. Attached is a pdf file of all of the recordings of Carter in my library:
View attachment carter CD's.pdf


Why do I like the music of Carter?

Well that question can be divided into two parts.

The first part is "Why?" A question that has been confronting philosophers, theologians and scientists since the dawn of time.

The second part of the question is do I like the music of Carter?

The answer to that is, "Yes."

Do others have to like Carter simply because of my opinion?

The answer to that is, "No."

Is Carter as good a composer as Bach or Mozart or Beethoven (My second favorite after Mahler) or Brahms? Will Carter be remembered a hundred years from now?

I do not know and I do not care. All I know is that I enjoy listening to his music today.

I have seen nothing in all of the voluminous posts in this and other forums that has convinced me that I should stop admiring and listening to the music of Carter. (I had the privilege of meeting him at Tanglewood.) If that means that I am an overly sensitive elitist snob who overreacts to the criticism, so be it. (I have had these accusation directed at me in one form or another many times.)

I also like concert band music and it also has a poor reputation in classical music forums.


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## Guest

DavidA said:


> The answer is surely that the great composers of that era said all there was to say, leaving very little original material to be written. The problem facing the modern composer is that if they want to be original they tend to have to compose something unlovely which does not connect with the general musical public.


This is exactly the answer given about Mozart in comparison with Boccherini.

And then about Beethoven in comparison with, yes, Mozart (and Haydn).

And then about Berlioz in comparison with, wait for it!!, Beethoven.

And so it goes.

This--"something unlovely"--only has any sort of traction at all if the person using it has a lock on loveliness. I'm guessing not. Original does imply unfamiliar, it's true. And unfamiliar may very briefly seem unlovely. But it doesn't last. (Tchaikovsky's violin concerto used to stink to the ear. For awhile.)

And I will never understand how the chimerical "general musical public" gets to have the last word on all of this. For one, there is no such thing, for two, oh right. One does the job.


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## Dim7

To solve this problem we have (all good musical ideas being used), I think we should somehow induce global musical amnesia among mankind. Then all the old and good ideas would feel fresh again and we could reinvent the wheel while feeling we are being innovative.


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## Guest

Dim7 said:


> To solve this problem we have (all good musical ideas being used), I think we should somehow induce global musical amnesia among mankind. Then all the old and good ideas would feel fresh again and we could reinvent the wheel while feeling we are being innovative.


The problem has been solved in some quarters I believe; the wheel_* is*_ being reinvented! I'm not sure if it's to have a faux sense of innovation though; quite the opposite - it is for a sense of familiarity. An aural comfort blanket if you will.


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## Guest

Dim7 said:


> To solve this problem we have (all good musical ideas being used)


Um, I think the point was that there is no problem. Or at least that it is not true that all good musical ideas have been used.

Be fair, it's not as if a musical idea were a thing and there are only so many of these things.

The notion that all good musical ideas have been used is an old one. As my example shows, even though it keeps being proven wrong, over and over again, it keeps coming up as if it were a fresh, new idea. It's not. It's stale. Flat, stale, and unprofitable, even.

I'd say that the real problem is that in every age (ever since at least the Boccherini/Mozart comparison) there are people who perceive that contemporary composers aren't giving them what they want. Which in the times before recording technology had at least some validity. But now, when musics of the past, familiar and comfortable and numerous, are readily available not only in recordings but in all of the concerts that anyone who articulates this faux problem is likely to attend, it seems odd to keep grousing about composers who keep writing all this "unlovely" music I keep hearing about.

Hearing _about._ Not hearing, however.


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## Simon Moon

Since my classical listening is almost exclusively 20th, 21st century and contemporary, I believe we do have composers of the caliber the OP speaks of.


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## Dim7

Blancrocher said:


> We missed you for martinis at yesterday's breakfast meeting of the Stupid Thread Ideas editorial board, Dim7. Consider yourself lucky, though, since it was a total mess. Mahlerian actually admitted to disliking _Mahler_! At first we thought he was kidding, but then we all got uncomfortable when he kept maintaining it. Finally, TurnaboutVox asked him why he did all those fantastic blog posts containing careful analyses of Mahler's symphonies, and Mahlerian was like: "look, guys, I can't make _all_ my posts in STI."
> 
> Worst meeting we've had since the debate about whether 4'33'' jokes are actually funny.


A picture from our latest meeting.


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## Albert7

Honestly, I think of this OP's question as a leading question. For me, resurrection of the past isn't a bad thing but with postmodern tendencies I think that the combination of high and low culture in classical music is a wonderful trend.

However, people who imitate Beethoven's or Mozart's style like copycats don't really grasp my interest unless it's musical quotation.  For example,






This selection respects the past without slavishly worshiping it.


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## Dustin

hpowders said:


> It's a simple example of supply and demand.
> 
> The demand for pop music dwarfs that for classical music.
> 
> Classical composers these days are more or less writing for themselves.
> 
> If they are fortunate to get a work of theirs performed, it's usually a one shot deal and will never be heard again.
> 
> Pop rules.
> 
> For contemporary classical composers, it's really a hard day's night.


I was kind of thinking the same. I bet there are definitely some people in the world right now who have the natural ability and potential that Bach, Beethoven and Mozart had but they were not exposed to the same classical music environment from an early age, so maybe they went on to some other fields such as jazz or maybe they never pursued music intensely at all.


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## TradeMark

Well, at least its not the romantic era. Everyone wanted to be a Beethoven but nobody could.

I honestly don't care weather or not a composer is a Mozart, Bach, or Beethoven. Really, I think they should compose in way that they think suits them. Mozart didn't try to be a Bach, and Beethoven didn't try to be a Mozart.


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## Morimur

There are truly great composers working today, but one must often seek them out.


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## Albert7

Morimur said:


> There are truly great composers working today, but one must often seek them out.


Actually during the olden days, people forgot somewhat about Haydn in the shadow of Mozart and Beethoven. And it wasn't until the 20th century that Haydn's genius was again reborn.


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## Blake

Greatness is in the hole of the behinder. Someone can tell you how our era has all kinds of great composers until they're blue in the face, but if it's not your cup of chai... what they say won't make a bit of difference.

Greatness isn't simply a popularity contest. It should hit something within you... and if it doesn't, I wouldn't consider that great at all.


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## Hamidreza

Morimur said:


> There are truly great composers working today, but one must often seek them out.


who looked for Mozart or Beethoven?


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## hpowders

Dustin said:


> I was kind of thinking the same. I bet there are definitely some people in the world right now who have the natural ability and potential that Bach, Beethoven and Mozart had but they were not exposed to the same classical music environment from an early age, so maybe they went on to some other fields such as jazz or maybe they never pursued music intensely at all.


If you were just getting out of Juilliard with a degree in composition, which career would you pursue?

1. Writing symphonies that nobody will ever hear.

2. Writing jingles for one minute advertising commercials on TV.

If you expect to eat, you would choose #2.


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## ptr

hpowders said:


> If you were just getting out of Juilliard with a degree in composition, which career would you pursue?
> 
> 1. Writing symphonies that nobody will ever hear.
> 
> 2. Writing jingles for one minute advertising commercials on TV.
> 
> If you expect to eat, you would choose #2.


What stop's You/anybody from doing both? Most, even the single minded penniless git's need to be pragmatic to get ahead!

/ptr


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## isorhythm

There was a whole confluence of cultural, social, political and economic factors that made possible the "classical moment" of European music in the 18th century. Needless to say, things are different now. We are not going to have a composer "like Mozart" any time soon.

This is not a statement about musical merit.


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## hpowders

mmsbls said:


> During their lives Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart did not have the aura they do now. Beethoven was probably closest. Over time history has solidified their place as perhaps the 3 greatest composers of all time. Contemporary composers do not have that luxury since history has not had time to raise a few to exalted status.
> 
> Those who listen carefully and at length to contemporary/modern composers apparently find many who are considered truly top quality composers. We simply don't know how generations in the future will assess composers of the past century.


Beethoven was a celebrity in Vienna, if the reports are correct. When he went for a walk, people knew who he was.

His funeral was supposedly like that for a US president.

Among Vienna's elite, Haydn was a celebrity too. One couldn't get a ticket to hear Haydn's The Creation when first performed in Vienna. Beethoven supposedly kissed his hand at that performance, out of respect, if not affection.


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## Guest

Hamidreza said:


> who looked for Mozart or Beethoven?


Can you please clarify your original question? Are you referring to the popularity of composers or the caliber of composers?

Someone said it best on an earlier page: there are composers of a high caliber and composers of high popularity. Literally the only difference is that you probably won't find both in one place. However, caliber and popularity being fairly unrelated things, I'm not sure why this would matter.


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## hpowders

OP: Perhaps because the odds of the greatest of geniuses appearing are like a one in a trillion chance of ever happening?


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## Albert7

hpowders said:


> OP: Perhaps because the odds of the greatest of geniuses appearing are like a one in a trillion chance of ever happening?


Takemitsu is back ... for me he is the one of the best colorists in the 20th century.


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## Morimur

There are quite a few modern musical geniuses in my humble opinion — Ligeti, Kurtág, Xenakis, et al.


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## Hamidreza

nathanb said:


> Can you please clarify your original question? Are you referring to the popularity of composers or the caliber of composers?
> 
> Someone said it best on an earlier page: there are composers of a high caliber and composers of high popularity. Literally the only difference is that you probably won't find both in one place. However, caliber and popularity being fairly unrelated things, I'm not sure why this would matter.


If we had composers who could write Symphony in Beethoven level or Opera in Mozart level in our era we could have caliber and high popularity in one place but it seems that it is impossible!


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## Guest

Hamidreza said:


> If we had composers who could write Symphony in Beethoven level or Opera in Mozart level in our era we could have caliber and high popularity in one place but it seems that it is impossible!


So you're admitting that the popularity of the music you listen to is what makes or breaks the deal (for you).


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## Hamidreza

nathanb said:


> So you're admitting that the popularity of the music you listen to is what makes or breaks the deal (for you).


The popularity of a music can be a good signal for you to find your favorite music sooner but it doesn't mean any popular music is your favorite music!


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## Baregrass

hpowders said:


> OP: Perhaps because the odds of the greatest of geniuses appearing are like a one in a trillion chance of ever happening?


Maybe not one in a trillion but yes, quite rare and then for that genius to surface in any given society....?


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## Baregrass

Hamidreza said:


> who looked for Mozart or Beethoven?


Most of the great composers of the past rose because they had, in most cases;

1. achieved great proficiency on their chosen instrument at an early age,

2. had a very good work ethic,

3. had important family connections in the musical milieu of their time,

4. had ability above nearly everyone else.


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## regenmusic

We need to go back to an 18th Century school curriculum and then we will have 
master composers once again.


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## Albert7

I am pretty sure that the composers of today work just as hard if not harder than the composers of yesteryear.


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## Guest

regenmusic said:


> We need to go back to an 18th Century school curriculum and then we will have
> master composers once again.


Um, I believe the point that some of us have been making is that "we have" master composers now, right now, right this second.

Our lists may differ--lists of master composers of the 18th century made in the 18th century may have differed as well, _pace_ the sense by at least one critic that Boccherini had thoroughly exploited the fertile soil of the valley, leaving Mozart to till the rocky soil of the hills. But any of the master composers of today would be bemused by the idea that they do not exist.


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## nbharakey

In the first five minutes of the video, Gubaidulina explains how she concluded what direction she should follow. It is really easy to understand.


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## Corvus

I think we are forgetting that Bach and Mozart were geniuses. In the book "the Eternal Golden Braid" Bach's intellect was compared to that of a man who could play simultaneous games of chess while blindfolded. Maybe this is why composers of that caliber are rare. Maybe that kind of mind only comes along once every few centuries.


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## science

I don't know about composers, but people who can play simultaneous blindfold chess come along more than once every few centuries.


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## Blancrocher

science said:


> I don't know about composers, but people who can play simultaneous blindfold chess come along more than once every few centuries.


Especially now that we have grand-master level computers. Not to get too speculative here, but The Singularity might be a great time for music.


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## hpowders

It's all supply and demand. At that time Classical music was "in" and royalty craved it and gave instant respect and wealth to those who supplied it.

Today?

Beethoven and Mozart would be writing music for movies, broadway shows or TV commercial jingles.


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## Guest

hpowders said:


> It's all supply and demand. At that time Classical music was "in" and royalty craved it and gave instant respect and wealth to those who supplied it.
> 
> Today?
> 
> Beethoven and Mozart would be writing music for movies, broadway shows or TV commercial jingles.


Or they'd just be writing contemporary music... just as they did in their own time...

But then again, Beethoven did have a tendency to occasionally pen a piece intended to pad his bank account...


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## silentio

I sometimes wonder if the audiences in Bach, Mozart and Beethoven's times reacted to The Art of Fugue, the Dissonance String Quartet (plus the last movement of the 40th), and The Große Fuge the same ways we react to modern and contemporary music.


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## Mahlerian

silentio said:


> I sometimes wonder if the audiences in Bach, Mozart and Beethoven's times reacted to The Art of Fugue, the Dissonance String Quartet (plus the last movement of the 40th), and The Große Fuge the same ways we react to modern and contemporary music.


I've been looking for an excuse to post this anonymous review of Rameau's first opera for days, and now you've provided the perfect opportunity!



Anonymous said:


> "Everybody labors emulously to compose music; each bragged about his work and the trouble he had taken. Even the geometers got involved; they praised the vast calculations they had to make to discover the means to traverse in the violin-airs all the different combinations of a D or an E with other notes. It is true that this air had no tune, and in this constrained music, so arduous to compose, nothing flowed from the well; no genius animated it; it shied from nature and sentiment. Art should have served only to seek out the one and the other and to decorate them and to reveal them in the best light....The music had no relationship to the dance except for its more or less lively movement. There was consequently no thought, no expression at all. It ran through every trick with speed, unsparing of dissonances without end; sometimes two notes were persistently repeated for a quarter of an hour. There was much noise, force, humming; and when, by chance, two measures were encountered that could have made a pleasing melody, there was a quick change of key, of mode, and of meter. Continually it was sadness instead of tenderness. The uncommon had the character of the baroque, the fury instead of din. Instead of cheer, restlessness, and never any graciousness, nor anything that could reach the heart."


Also the first use of the word "baroque" to refer to music (1730s), here as a term implying confused and ill-proportioned.


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## SeptimalTritone

"... nor anything that could reach the heart."

I just got a stark sense of deja vu.


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## isorhythm

^I understand the point of these comparisons, I really do, but it does no one any favors to pretend that the reception of 20th century and later classical music is _just like_ the contemporary reception of Rameau or Beethoven or Mahler. This is obviously untrue, and it doesn't tell us much about the music, but it does call attention to some important things that have happened, such as

-capitalism
-world wars
-globalization
-the internet

Things are _not_ the same now as they were when audiences jeered at Rameau. They are not going to be the same for a long time or maybe ever. The music that classical composers are writing now will _never _occupy a cultural position analogous to Beethoven's in any way. _This is all OK._


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## MarkW

As one drunk on a barstool said to another in an old New Yorker cartoon: "Nobody sings polly-wolly-doodle all the day anymore."


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## BabyGiraffe

nathanb said:


> Or they'd just be writing contemporary music... just as they did in their own time...
> 
> But then again, Beethoven did have a tendency to occasionally pen a piece intended to pad his bank account...


Beethoven, Mozart and Haydn wrote tons of dance music and songs, also did arrangements of modern and folk songs. It's not like they weren't composing for the money.


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## PlaySalieri

Some would say that Philip Glass is a big name composer.

For myself - the last "great" composer was probably Shostakovich, who died in the 70s.

In time perhaps a composer today will be recognised as great in the future - I doubt it - but who knows.

It's the same with Lit - who can match Tolstoy, Dickens, the Bronte's, Hardy, DHL, T Mann, Camus etc


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## DavidA

BabyGiraffe said:


> Beethoven, Mozart and Haydn wrote tons of dance music and songs, also did arrangements of modern and folk songs. It's not like they weren't composing for the money.


Of course, Beethoven's biggest earner was Wellington's Victory


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## DavidA

stomanek said:


> Some would say that Philip Glass is a big name composer.
> 
> For myself - the last "great" composer was probably Shostakovich, who died in the 70s.
> 
> In time perhaps a composer today will be recognised as great in the future - I doubt it - but who knows.
> 
> It's the same with Lit - who can match Tolstoy, Dickens, the Bronte's, Hardy, DHL, T Mann, Camus etc


Maybe al;l the great music has been written?


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## Chronochromie

Music died with Pérotin.


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## beetzart

I think probably Elgar gobbled up the last remaining great 'classical music' ideas.


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## Chronochromie

beetzart said:


> I think probably Elgar gobbled up the last remaining great 'classical music' ideas.


Not even Brahms? Elgar? Come on, we can be more conservative than that!


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## Chronochromie

Music was never the same after Pérotin's death and the decline of the Notre Dame School. Those after him are all lucky amateurs and hacks.


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## Baregrass

How about Samuel Barber. His Adagio is one of best written, in my estimation anyway. And then we have Remo Giazotto who wrote the Gm Adagio based on a fragment from Albinoni. Also one of my favorites.


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## regenmusic

I think William Schuman, Arvo Part, Bernard Herrmann, Ginestera, Villa Lobos, Alfred Schnittke, and others approach greatness. ives died in 1954. Hovhaness certainly tried.

Nobody was really writing music exactly like this before Herrmann:






The Day The Earth Stood Still | Soundtrack Suite (Bernard Herrmann)


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