# The composer strength/weakness game



## violadude (May 2, 2011)

Ok so this game is very straight-forward. Name a composer and the person replying has to say what they think is the biggest strength and biggest weakness of the composer is. *Please use quotes when replying so things don't get confusing due to the timing of the posts.*

Also, *no passes!* I think every composer has at least one good quality about them...even if the only thing they could do was write a hummable tune. If you can't think of at least one strength or weakness for the above composer then just don't reply and wait for a composer you do have a strength and weakness for.

For weaknesses, you can choose something that is not a weakness per se, but just something the composers music might be lacking because of the style they wrote in. For example, Haydn's music often has very short and concise development sections and while that is not necessarily a weakness because it was just part of the style he was writing in, it can be something that people who enjoy more complex theme development feel disappointed by.

A weakness can also be something that is a shallow weakness....for example, a weakness for Sibelius' music might be that it is not very immediately accessible in a lot of cases, even though if you spend more time listening to his music that becomes no longer an issue and is also not really a compositional weakness.

Ok got it??

I'll go with an obvious pick first

Beethoven!


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## Webernite (Sep 4, 2010)

Strength: His ability to sustain tension for as long as he liked, and in a bizarrely simple way (e.g. middle-movement of the _Waldstein_ sonata)

Weakness: His love of blunt harmonic gestures that no other composer could get away with (e.g. beginning of the first movement of the _Waldstein_)

*Stravinsky*


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

Webernite said:


> Strength: His ability to sustain tension for as long as he liked, and in a bizarrely simple way (e.g. middle-movement of the _Waldstein_ sonata)
> 
> Weakness: His love of blunt harmonic gestures that no other composer could get away with (e.g. beginning of the first movement of the _Waldstein_)
> 
> *Stravinsky*


I love those descriptions of Beethoven's music, sustaining tension in bizarrely simple ways, and blunt harmonic gestures!

For Stravinsky the obvious* strength* is his ability to adopt any style and make it truly his own.

And I'm going to be philosophical in a cliche sort of way and say that his adopting of many styles is also his *weakness* in way. Because I think for many people he is a hard composer to like everything...if you know what I mean. A lot of people who fall in love with the Rite of Spring end up disappointed by his neo-classical stuff and vice versa I imagine. Then people who don't like serialism probably wouldn't be as fond of his later stuff.

Liszt!


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

I agree with what you said about Stravinsky. He's a chameleon, and not everyone likes every colour that he strikes (or struck?). I've been hovering around everything up to about the 1940's with him, haven't gotten much beyond it, but it's more a matter of will, time, headspace (I like to do things "properly"), rather than a matter of not being interested in his late period.



violadude said:


> ...
> 
> Liszt!


Strengths is his ability of innovation - not only in keyboard technique but in pushing/exploring tonality and also bringing back the rhaspody form, his idea/practice of thematic transformation and loads of other stuff.

Weakness is an aspect of rambling, noodling, flashiness and extravagance, but not in all of his works, not everything he did was extroverted and kind of high on bravura, but there's a good element of that in his "persona."


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

Sid James said:


> I agree with what you said about Stravinsky. He's a chameleon, and not everyone likes every colour that he strikes (or struck?). I've been hovering around everything up to about the 1940's with him, haven't gotten much beyond it, but it's more a matter of will, time, headspace (I like to do things "properly"), rather than a matter of not being interested in his late period.
> 
> Strengths is his ability of innovation - not only in keyboard technique but in pushing/exploring tonality and also bringing back the rhaspody form, his idea/practice of thematic transformation and loads of other stuff.
> 
> Weakness is an aspect of rambling, noodling, flashiness and extravagance, but not in all of his works, not everything he did was extroverted and kind of high on bravura, but there's a good element of that in his "persona."


Hey Sid! You forgot to name a composer so the game can continue!


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## ScipioAfricanus (Jan 7, 2010)

nice game.


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## Olias (Nov 18, 2010)

Let's toss out *Haydn*


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## ScipioAfricanus (Jan 7, 2010)

Mendelssohn=Great technical skills at composition
weakness= lack of vision and audacity


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

ScipioAfricanus said:


> Mendelssohn=Great technical skills at composition
> weakness= lack of vision and audacity


Did you read the OP?


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

violadude said:


> Hey Sid! You forgot to name a composer so the game can continue!


Sorry. Ok to get this thread back on track, we can go with *"papa" Haydn* as next cab on the rank, what Olias said below -



Olias said:


> Let's toss out *Haydn*


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## Clementine (Nov 18, 2011)

Strength: Originality. His ability to effectively try something different in almost every piece, making a conscious effort to surprise us.

Weakness: Lack of ambition. A composer who gave up writing operas and piano concertos because he didn't think he could outdo Mozart. His humbleness dissuaded him to be ambitious.

*Debussy*


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Clementine said:


> Strength: Originality. His ability to effectively try something different in almost every piece, making a conscious effort to surprise us.
> 
> Weakness: Lack of ambition. A composer who gave up writing operas and piano concertos because he didn't think he could outdo Mozart. His humbleness dissuaded him to be ambitious.
> 
> *Debussy*


Strength: harmonization / timbre
Weakness: writing for voice (relatively speaking)

*Vaughan Williams*


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## An Die Freude (Apr 23, 2011)

Strength: Writing for voice.

Weakness: Overuse of modes: While he can write a good tune, for me it gets a bit boring when everything is in modes.

Let's do another British composer: *Elgar*


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## DavidMahler (Dec 28, 2009)

Strength: Graduation Themes

Weakness: Finished 3rd Symphonies

*J.S. Bach*


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## Dodecaplex (Oct 14, 2011)

Strength: Every note he ever wrote.

Weakness: None.

*Schumann*


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## DavidMahler (Dec 28, 2009)

Dodecaplex said:


> Strength: Every note he ever wrote.
> 
> Weakness: None.
> 
> *Schumann*


Strength: Piano Music when not glued to a structure. Chamber music

Weakness: Form and Orchestration

*Mozart*


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## Dodecaplex (Oct 14, 2011)

Strength: Operas, concerti, orchestral music.

Weakness: His piano sonatas suck donkey **s.

*Bartok*


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

*J.S. Bach*

Strengths:

Undisputed emperor of counterpoint and fugues, creates harmonic patterns of largely unrivaled consistency in their intricacy using these methods, an individualist almost purely on the basis of raw skill, and a few tunes that are know largely by the public even to this day.

Weaknesses:

Harmonic and theme developing proficiency is limited to baroque contrapuntal language, and however rich the harmonies, they strike one as not being based on intuitive inspiration, but as having a more intellectual purpose in "solving" harmonic problems. Sometimes textures are too thick for some listeners.

Edit: I see Dodecaplex beat me.


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

*Bartok*

Strengths
The music is both extremely intellectually rigorous and thrilling.

Weaknesses
Its dissonant as all hell, doesn't make comforting background music.

*Medtner*


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

Come on, somebody's got to have enough knowledge of enthusiasm for Medtner to be able to give this one a good answer. Otherwise I'll just answer.


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## DavidMahler (Dec 28, 2009)

Strengths: He is probably the 6th greatest Russian composer for solo piano (pretty cool) [Rachmaninov, Scriabin, Prokofiev, Mussorgsky and Shostakovich superior]

Weaknesses: ^That's not enough


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

DavidMahler said:


> Strengths: He is probably the 6th greatest Russian composer for solo piano (pretty cool) [Rachmaninov, Scriabin, Prokofiev, Mussorgsky and Shostakovich superior]
> 
> Weaknesses: ^That's not enough


Umm, Shostakovich and Mussorgsky are not superior to Medtner, he is superior in solo piano to them. In his own way he is superior to Rachmaninoff, but Prokofiev and Scriabin top him just by a hair. In Rachmaninoff's own way he's superior to them all. Things are not so cut and dried Mr. David Mahler, in the mind of a Medtner fanatic, because Medtner has his own unique capacity to make me and a few other people on this world like me love him like no other composer for whatever amount of time this phase is to last.

Still, I fancy that Medtner is the joker card that tops the ace Rachmaninoff, but has trouble competing with the likes of Kings and Queens like Prokofiev and Scriabin..


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

Since DavidMahler did not post a new composer, I will do that: *James Brown*


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## Air (Jul 19, 2008)

*Medtner*

Strengths: He weaved complex contrapuntal textures in his work and did so without leaving the Romantic idiom. His music is rhythmically and harmonically unique, and being so complex and different, tends to grow on one as one becomes more familiar with it. His music, though conservative, reflects a wonderful fusion of Russian and German influences (his teacher was Taneyev, the 'Russian Brahms') and thus, unlike many of his Russian contemporaries, he seemed to excel in both the evocative and formal departments. Due to this difficult task, his works are usually quite ambitious, and can rarely be described as 'too simple'.

Weaknesses: His textures are sometimes so thick that among the complex contrapuntal work, melodies can get lost. Medtner is never particularly melodically generous, but even when he is, the melodies are usually a lot less ear-pleasing than those of his contemporaries (the easiest comparison being to Rachmaninoff, whose melodies are a lot more 'memorable'). Even compared to a relatively 'conservative' composer like Rachmaninoff, his music tends to be a lot more conservative, largely (but not completely) ignoring influences such as jazz, serialism, and neo-classicism.

*Prokofiev*


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

^^^^
Bravo Air,
You are very fair,
Medtner will have his share


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## Air (Jul 19, 2008)

clavichorder said:


> ^^^^
> Bravo Air,
> You are very fair,
> Medtner will have his share




I'm curious what the next person (you perhaps? ) will say about Prokofiev. Almost the exact opposite of Medtner, I might think. With a few striking similarities.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

Air said:


> *Prokofiev*


Strength: I think one of Prokofiev's biggest strengths is his uncanny ability to make dissonant notes work out. We all know that Prokofiev threw out weird random dissonant notes all over the place, but to me it always fits into place and falls together well in an odd sort of way. It's kind of like he is writing in a scale that exists in some parallel universe that sounds just as natural as the major scale even though it is all over the place tonally. He also was no pushover when it came to variations!

Weakness: I kind of feel like his music doesn't always hold up structurally. I feel like his music tends to take weird detours that don't always make sense in context, or maybe sometimes he spends too much time with one theme and not enough with another. Just minor things like that 

Sticking with the theme of Russian pianists.
*Scrabin*


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## jalex (Aug 21, 2011)

Scriabin's are pretty obvious to me.

Strength: gift for harmony
Weakness: adherence to traditional forms in the sonatas which was obstructive to natural stylistic flow

*Schubert*


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## poconoron (Oct 26, 2011)

DavidMahler said:


> Strength: Piano Music when not glued to a structure. Chamber music
> 
> Weakness: Form and Orchestration
> 
> *Mozart*


Laughable............... in fact, hysterically funny.


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## NightHawk (Nov 3, 2011)

I goofed the thread - wrote on Schumann - and there is no one mentioned in the previous post...sorry.

I'll pass and mention:

*Chopin*


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## regressivetransphobe (May 16, 2011)

Chopin

Strength: changed the way people think about piano and how it should be played. Revived many interesting forms.
Weakness: his concertos are one-sided conversations. Also, he bounced between two emotional extremes that sort of irked me (lilting self-pity and rah-rah patriotism).

Poulenc?


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## brianwalker (Dec 9, 2011)

Verdi can't write cohesive extended continuous music, with or without voices, of longer than 5 minutes.

His Grande Marche, which clocks in at a lengthy 6 minutes, has about as much cohesion as a movement from Mahler unless you divide it into 2 parts.

Doesn't make him bad or anything; in fact I agree with Tommasini's assessment of Verdi.  (Verdi is the only position on that list I agree with ordinally).


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## peeyaj (Nov 17, 2010)

jalex said:


> Scriabin's are pretty obvious to me.
> 
> Strength: gift for harmony
> Weakness: adherence to traditional forms in the sonatas which was obstructive to natural stylistic flow
> ...


*Strength*: Incredibly gifted in creating memorable and flowing melodies. Effortless modulation, that he can make a minor key sounds "happy" and a major key sounds "sad". Poetic and he has a rare ability to compress a verse into a mini drama like an opera. A great miniaturist who excells at tackling large forms at well. The greatest composers of songs who ever lived. The composer whose music is honest and pure.

*Weakness:* His operas leave something to be desired. At times, he struggles at larger forms. He modelled some of his works to his predecessors and contemporaries.

And he died young. With so much promise.


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