# 2oTH C composers tiers of creativity



## paulbest (Apr 18, 2019)

https://www.talkclassical.com/58922-best-contemporary-composers-10.html


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## paulbest (Apr 18, 2019)

Read my post 145.
Not wishing to be too controversial on this TC board,but I think it is a ligit question, that is long over due for discussion.

I often see modern composers all lumped together in one nice tidy box,,,This is not acceptable. 
Discernment is tier levels should be noted when discussing modern composers.


Read some of the lists on that thread,,,you will see Schnittke lumped in with 3,4 others Russian composers, Why? 

I have long ago, noted how each country, past 100 yrs has given us , 1, perhaps 2, almost never 3 major composers, based upon the criteria of creative output.


I do not have time right now to give a composers name for each country,,,I will do so later today, perhaps,,,meanwhile othrs should feel free to finish my post here, by giving the names of each country's best , major composer, past 120 yrs. 

The ones I am thinking of,,,for example,,,Sweden, Pettersson, Germanyl , Henze/hartmann, and so on,,so forth,,,france, Debussy, ravel, Russia, Schnittke.
,,Szymanowski /Poland, The USA Elliott carter,,,if you care to add 1 other to these and other countries, feel free to do so. , some may feel this is subjective and so out of order in the court. I and other modernists feel differently and feel its time to break into new understandings about modern classical era. Lets not be contentious about it, just if you do not like the topic, please feel free to ignore and give us the respect. 


If you can not understand my reasoning behind the topic, just inquire, I will do my best to explain.


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## paulbest (Apr 18, 2019)

England, Ralph Vaughan Williams, that was a easy choice. Tey astonishly, you will see british fans, placing 2 other composers ahead of RVW,,How is this possible? Its not, which drives me to post this topic, so we are all clear about this subject. 
Please add other countries I missed


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

The modern period saw a huge diversification of music and this trend accelerated with very modern music. Classical music fans who like or dislike all of it are rare. Those who like only very few composers from these periods are also quite rare. Any attempt to make sense of and assign value to the whole variety of classical music since 1910 is not going to please everyone. 

Once music is more than 75 years old its reputation is relatively stable and we tend to discuss specific composers rather than the big lump of "modern music". Of, if we want to discuss trends and our responses to them in music that is that old, we generally can in a fairly specific way. The different figures and their individual styles, their strengths and weaknesses, are all relatively clear and known to us. But for music that is younger than that I think it is impossible to know (or to agree or even discuss) how posterity will treat it. So we end up lumping things together in our own individual ways and have great difficulty debating about it.

BTW, you term yourself a modernist but from what I have seen of your posts you are quite strongly against nearly all highly rated modern and very modern music. Your taste seems to focus on a few - more or less backward-looking - composers from the 1950s onwards. Aside from Carter, we could call them neo-Modernists! The emerging mainstream view of these composers is that, although they definitely wrote very interesting and worthwhile music, they are (Carter aside) probably not the major composers of their times. So I think you are a specialist as far as your taste is concerned and could have much to tell us about the music of your specialisms. But it should be no surprise that you find yourself in opposition to most people posting on the subject when you seek to generalise.


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## paulbest (Apr 18, 2019)

Yes You are right, I am more early modernists, Szymanowski, ravel, Shostakovich, RVW,,,but I can extend into high modern period as well, Schnittke for instance.
More when time allows later,,,,,

Ok you are referring to my YT posting with Ligeti's concerto for violin,,or was it for piano,,can't recall. I posted that work to exemplify my post atht many so considdred modern classical, does not sound to me as calssiacl music, It is asome sub genre and yet folks just vring up all sorts of ultra mod composers ,. speaking s if these earned their right to be grouped together with the true mod composers, top tier composers, Ligeti is not of the classical tradition, he has gone off on his own tangent. It is these *I did it my own way* composers which I completely disregard as being considered classical composers, they are not.
They are new age classical, which is not at all classical per se. 
Henze is part of the classical tradition, he is very modern, late modern. carter hasm elements of doing things his own personal way,,but you can always find elements which reach back to other great classical composers. 
This is what I am trying to get at. 
We need to discern who is, who is not of the classical tradition as far as modern is concerned. 
Stockhausen is borderline,,I need more time to look at his music.


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