# Composers- etched in stone!



## Chi_townPhilly (Apr 21, 2007)

This topic is on my mind for two reasons. The first is that the Michigan Avenue face of Orchestra Hall in Chicago, USA has 5 names carved in the stone. They are.... BACH___MOZART___BEETHOVEN___SCHUBERT___WAGNER.
I also know that the storied Proscenium Arch of the Metropolitan Opera House in New York bears some names, but (never having attended) I don't know which names are there. 

So, drawing on the worldwide experience of the TC contributors:
a) Does anyone have other examples of venues where composers are honored in this manner?, and b) can somebody list the names on the Met's Proscenium Arch?!


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## Kurkikohtaus (Oct 22, 2006)

Interesting.

I wonder who chooses those names, and what the debate around it looked like. The first thing that occured to me when I saw the Chicago names for the first time was "_Why Schubert and not Brahms?_" Of course, if that were the case, someone else would say "_Why Brahms and not Schubert?_" So it becomes a bit of a moot point, left as a legacy of the tastes of the powers-that-be at that moment.

In the Czech Republic, the closest parallel to this idea is the naming of the concert hall _within the building_, which are usually 2 different names.

For instance, the Prague Symphony's building is called the Municipal House, while the actual room is called *Smetana's Scene*.

The Czech Philharmonic plays in the Rudolfinum, while the room is called *Dvořák's Hall*.


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## opus67 (Jan 30, 2007)

What's the big deal with Wagner anyway?


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## Chi_townPhilly (Apr 21, 2007)

I'm speculating that back in turn-of-the-previous-century America, one was expected to choose _either_ Wagner _or_ Brahms, not both. Many may already be familiar with the oft-quoted story of wording above a fire-escape door at Boston's Symphony Hall (which might date from a similar time), saying "this exit in case of Brahms!"

A monument to the preferences of the movers-and-shakers at that place and time? No doubt. Still, as an experiment, we could ask our musically literate friends which 5 pre-20th century composers _they_ would have placed on that facade. (Orchestra Hall, now called Symphony Center, was completed in 1904.) I think we'd quickly discover that you could do worse.

Really interesting to note the tributes to Smetana and Dvorak (blasted basic keyboard) in the Czech Republic. Any love coming Janacek's way? Is there another country of similar size that's had such a disproportionately great impact on Classical Music?!

Any bets on the proposition that Mozart & Wagner will be the only two names on both Orchestra Hall and the Proscenium Arch?


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## opus67 (Jan 30, 2007)

> Many may already be familiar with the oft-quoted story of wording above a fire-escape door at Boston's Symphony Hall (which might date from a similar time), saying "this exit in case of Brahms!"


Haha...I've never heard that!



Chi_town/Philly said:


> Is there another country of similar size that's had such a disproportionately great impact on Classical Music?!


Finland?

Interesting Link


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## Kurkikohtaus (Oct 22, 2006)

Chi_town/Philly said:


> Any love coming Janacek's way?


The third largest city in the country, *Ostrava*, is home to the *Janáček* Filharmonie Ostrava: www.jfo.cz



opus67 said:


> Finland?


Regardless of his overall impact on Classical Music as a whole, Sibelius will always be remembered for his impact on my CD budget.


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## Chi_townPhilly (Apr 21, 2007)

Indeed, Opus, it was an interesting link to find a list of Finnish composers that excluded Part & Rautavaara. I know that Finland's bidding fair to become "the new Hungary" on the conductor front, but The Czech Republic lights them up with regard to composers. So (_immaturity alert follows_), and with apologies to the Monty Python skit on the "Greece v. Germany" soccer (football) game, let's drop the puck! Finland- C-Sibelius, RW- Rautavaara, LW- Part, LD- Madetoia, RD- Crussel, G- Kilpinen, coach-Salonen. Czech Republic- C-Dvorak, RW- Smetana, LW- Janacek, LD- Martinu, RD- Suk, G- Zelenka, coach- Kubelik. Sibelius centers a "helicopter line," receiving as little help as was given to Litmanen in FIFA play, and Finland has serious problems at the back end. Czech Republic gains a huge advantage from their "triple-threat" forwards, and much sturdier blue line. We make the Czechs to be a HUGE favorite in this match-up


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## ChamberNut (Jan 30, 2007)

And the winner of the Czech vs. Finland hockey game plays the German hockey team:

RW - Schubert, C - Bach, LW - Mozart

RD - Wagner, LD - Brahms

G - Beethoven

Coach - Papa Haydn 

Wagner and Brahms are on defence, Wagner being the free wheeling, offensive defenceman, while Brahms is the stalwart stay at home defensive defenceman.

Bach is centerman, because, well, Bach is the Center of all musical influence.

And your best player has to be your goaltender in order to win the championship, and that's gotta be dear old Ludwig Van 

Schubert and Mozart are the speedy young wingers who can get into the corners fast.

Oh, and even though I'm Canadian, I'm cheering for Anaheim in the Stanley Cup finals, because Teemu Selanne (Finland ) use to play for the Winnipeg Jets. Even though, Ottawa has a Schubert on their team


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## opus67 (Jan 30, 2007)

I didn't know the Germans bought Mozart from Austria. I would probably include the rookie Mendelssohn.


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## Chi_townPhilly (Apr 21, 2007)

It's a small quibble, but Schubert's Austrian as well. (Perhaps you meant Schumann?) R. Strauss is a possibility, or we could go "old fashioned nasty" with Handel. [What have I gotten us into?]


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## ChamberNut (Jan 30, 2007)

Perhaps we should have a "whose on your top scoring line" thread?


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## opus67 (Jan 30, 2007)

Someone please rename this thread to 'Composers - etched on the Stanley Cup'.


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## Morigan (Oct 16, 2006)

*foams*

I'm eating _Duck_ for dinner these days.


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## Keemun (Mar 2, 2007)

Let's have a separate Austrian team:

Mozart, Mahler, Bruckner, Dittersdorf, Haydn and Schubert, with Schoenberg as coach.


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## opus67 (Jan 30, 2007)

Composers beating each other up...that would be a sight to watch.


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## Chi_townPhilly (Apr 21, 2007)

Morigan said:


> I'm eating _Duck_ for dinner these days.


I should imagine that there's a high demand for _duck_ around your region, to the point that Chinese restaurants may need more than the traditional 24 hour notice for orders of Peking Duck. 


Keemun said:


> Let's have a separate Austrian team: Mozart, Mahler, Bruckner, Dittersdorf, Haydn and Schubert, with Schoenberg as coach


I'm not sure I'd have Dittersdorf in my top XI (J. Strauss/Hummell/Wolf/Berg/Webern).


opus67 said:


> Composers beating each other up...that would be a sight to watch


No, not beating each other up, just thrilling us fans by seeing which lineup can out-"score" the other

I'll leave it to others to speculate on the colors of the medals, but I know who'll earn the "podium" finishes: Germany/Austria/Russia (France lost the bronze medal game )


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## Kurkikohtaus (Oct 22, 2006)

Boy, has this thread ever gone to crap.

Also, I take huge exception to Chi_town messing with the Czech lineup.

Janaček is a defenceman, everybody knows that. It's Martinů who is the winger.


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## Chi_townPhilly (Apr 21, 2007)

Kurkikohtaus said:


> Boy, has this thread ever gone to crap.


Thus chided, let me tack hard-to-starboard and return to the land of grown-ups (although my childishness sure increased the activity here ). I reseached that the figures on the Proscenium Arch of the Met are... MOZART/WAGNER/VERDI. (I had the option of searching all along, but it would have been more interesting if a contributor had chimed in with this info.) I remember reading that Puccini would "of course" have been included, if it weren't for the fact that his career ascendency post-dated the completion of the Arch. Now, the relative musical merits of Puccini contrasted to those other names might be a debate for another time, but I will say that, if "total performances" is an essential to the hypothetical honor, he belongs, oh, yes, he belongs.


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## Chi_townPhilly (Apr 21, 2007)

*I stand corrected*



Chi_town/Philly said:


> I reseached that the figures on the Proscenium Arch of the Met are... MOZART/WAGNER/VERDI.


Well, I was half-right. Thanks to a book perusal and an updated Wiki, I now know that there are six. Any guesses on who the other three could be (remember, the Arch predates much of Puccini's work)? Here goes:

GLUCK (father of the genre, so they say).
BEETHOVEN (_Beethoven_?)... and 
GOUNOD (interesting).


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## opus67 (Jan 30, 2007)

_Beethoven_?


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## Artemis (Dec 8, 2007)

In recalling places where the famous composers' names are etched in stone I was reminded of one obvious place, their own graves. One of the most famous cemeteries is Vienna's Central Cemetery, and I came across the following interesting little essay found in the New York Times. The last section about Brahms is of special interest in regard to his efforts to codify his illustrious predecessors' works, and thus to help create the classical music canon.

"Zentralfriedhof, Vienna
Graves Galore, Not All Of Them Inhabited

The most significant of all musical cemeteries is, of course, Vienna's Zentral friedhof, or Central Cemetery, with its ''Musicians' Grove of Honor.'' Music lovers and curiosity seekers of all nationalities circulate among monuments to Mozart, Gluck, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms and Hugo Wolf. In point of fact, only Brahms and Wolf have been lying here undisturbed since death: the ''grove'' came into being when the Central Cemetery opened in 1888. Mozart's physical remains are not present in any form, since the original burial site was left unmarked in 1791. Beethoven and Schubert belong together, having been buried nearly side by side in successive years, 1827 and 1828.

The sites show, for better or worse, a distinctly 19th-century Viennese taste: grandiose busts, Muses bestowing wreaths, various golden lyres, a general preponderance of pseudo-Grecian kitsch. The day I visited, an American couple crouched in puzzlement over Schubert's visually cluttered site. ''It doesn't have the year he died,'' one said. ''Maybe they don't know,'' said the other.

They know all too well. Special luster attaches to Mozart and Schubert because of their early and tragic deaths. And the fascination with musical death has outstripped reality in its urge to rhapsodize. According to popular myth, ensconced long before the movie ''Amadeus,'' Mozart's corpse was hurled into an anonymous pauper's grave, amid rain and snow. In fact, the weather was fine, and Mozart did not die penniless; he had requested a simple burial in adherence to ascetic Masonic principles. (He died, in fact, at the end of the most financially successful year of his career, according to Maynard Solomon's biography.) Schubert also died on the verge of greater success, and his funeral was quite a splendid one.

We prefer not to think that these composers were celebrated in their own times: their true audience was the future, which is to say, ourselves. And at least one writer claimed that Mozart had to die young: ''In the realm of grandeur, of turmoil -- there is his native soil! and there too he tarried with zest unmistakable, in a land whose everlasting tempests and earthquakes must needs have sealed his early doom.''

The linchpin of the Viennese circle, in a way, is Brahms. Despite his boldness of invention, Brahms felt himself to be living more in the past than in the present. He looked back with intense nostalgia to the ''golden age'' of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert, and his work as a manuscript editor helped codify their work as a central canon of musical literature. He edited his own output ruthlessly with an eye toward the judgment of posterity. It was in his time that music began to turn into ''classical music.'' Before him, the idea of a repertory of past works was foreign to the public; dead composers belonged on dusty shelves.

Brahms himself found a way out of this dilemma of the past and present. Paradoxically, the more he immersed himself in the past, the more personal and direct his musical voice became. The music of his melancholy old age is eerily free of restriction and convention; it floats into a new harmonic world and erases the distinction between melody and background. While the obelisk grave of Beethoven is fitting in its boldness, the heavily decorated Brahms monument seems radically wrong: the man is elsewhere, escaped into the purity of his music."


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## SalieriIsInnocent (Feb 28, 2008)

opus67 said:


> Composers beating each other up...that would be a sight to watch.


I think Beethoven would kick all their butts  I guess knowing beethoven was probably the toughest though Bach was big he was to decent of a guy to want to fight


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## Chi_townPhilly (Apr 21, 2007)

*Another correction*



Chi_town/Philly said:


> ...it was an interesting link to find a list of Finnish composers that excluded Pärt & Rautavaara.


Oops!

Pärt was excluded righteously. I've come into information indicating that he's Estonian.

I still have Finland at #10 in my FICA (composers) ranking thread. They remain several slots behind the Czechs (@ #6).


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## BuddhaBandit (Dec 31, 2007)

I can't believe I haven't stumbled upon this thread yet, as it's got my two favorite topics: masonry and fantasy hockey!

So, Chi, I know you're trying to get this thread back on track, but I couldn't resist making a USA "dream team":

C: Gershwin, RW-Ives, LW-Copland, LD-Barber, RD-Piston, G-Cage, Coach-Bernstein

Gershwin, of course, is a jazzy center; Ives brings a surprising, experimental approach to the right, and Copland brings his folkiness to the left. There's a staunch Romantic and a modernist as defenders, and John Cage brings his cheeriness and quirkiness to the goal. Naturally, Bernstein coordinates the whole thing.


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## opus67 (Jan 30, 2007)

BuddhaBandit said:


> John Cage brings his cheeriness and quirkiness to the goal.


Nah...he would not last for more than 4 minutes and 33 seconds.


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## shsherm (Jan 24, 2008)

The Concertgebouw in Amsterdam has several famous composers names painted on the walls around the performance hall. I was there two years ago and cannot remember the names. Another interesting venue is Westminster Abbey in London where several of the great British composers are interred. I was fascinated when I was visiting last year.


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