# Match the composer to the piece that best describes their personality



## Abraham Lincoln (Oct 3, 2015)

Title says it all! 

What pieces do you think suit the composer's personality best and why? All I have as of now is Ride of the Valkyries - Richard Wagner, although my assessment could be inaccurate.


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

Prokofiev and his 1st Piano Concerto. Everything about it, from its dark, forbidden moments to its outrageous paroxysms with more than a little acerbity, it's all him in a little bundle.


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## DiesIraeCX (Jul 21, 2014)

Beethoven: String Quartet #14, Op. 131

All-encompassing. Before Mahler's symphonies contained the whole world, there was Beethoven's late period music which did the same thing.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Abraham Lincoln said:


> Title says it all!
> 
> What pieces do you think suit the composer's personality best and why? All I have as of now is Ride of the Valkyries - Richard Wagner, although my assessment could be inaccurate.


For Wagner it's _Tristan und Isolde_, that exhaustive and exhausting essay in passion, sensuality, despair, death and transfiguration. If he'd written nothing else, he would still be the Wagner who changed music forever.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

Jubilee Games - later Concerto for Orchestra - by Bernstein. It packs so much into its half hour duration, even if some of the material was apparently reworked from previous output. Here is Lenny playing cerebral tricks with time signatures and number values (especially with the numbers seven and eighteen, where he sometimes constructs the music around their Hebraic relevance), culminating in a work loaded with characteristically jerky dance rhythms, barely-controlled chaos and moments of real tenderness. Just like some of his works for the stage, then.

The first section is called 'Free-Style Events' which partly alludes to its spontaneous and improvisational nature, and the time signatures which dominate are 7/4 and 7/8 as well as the word 'sheva' (Hebrew for seven) being shouted seven times. The next movement is called 'Mixed Doubles' where different instrumental duos play a set of (seven) variations. This is followed by 'Diaspora Dances' which sounds at times as if the Jets and Sharks have been on the Peruvian marching powder (and which features more number games), and the work ends with a beautiful Benediction sung in Hebrew (taken from - yes, you've guessed it - the Book of Numbers), the finale being especially poignant as Bernstein died not long after revising the composition. 

The work as a whole may be less than the sum of its parts but it's bloody clever nonetheless and the multi-faceted aspect of Bernstein - the egg-head theorist, the showbiz personality, the man of devotion - is here taking one last bow in the spotlight.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

For Sibelius, I would say En Saga sets forth (and set forth then) early in his career what Sibelius was going to be about. It is perhaps because an old London LP with Anthony Collins conducting that had En Saga on one side and Tapiola on the other was my introduction to Sibelius--if not the Alpha and the Omega, but maybe the Beta and Omega-- that I have En Saga as the prototypical Sibelius work.


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

Strange Magic said:


> For Sibelius, I would say En Saga sets forth (and set forth then) early in his career what Sibelius was going to be about. It is perhaps because an old London LP with Anthony Collins conducting that had En Saga on one side and Tapiola on the other was my introduction to Sibelius--if not the Alpha and the Omega, but maybe the Beta and Omega-- that I have En Saga as the prototypical Sibelius work.


_En Saga_ as we currently know it is contemporaneous with his 2nd symphony, the original version of 1893 being substantially revised in 1902. There is a recording of the original work by Osmo Vanska on the BIS label.


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## helenora (Sep 13, 2015)

Chopin would be represented with his "24 preludes" but from them I can't pick only one  or as an alternative could be his 2nd sonata.
Brahms - 3rd symphony.
JS Bach can be Messe in b minor or "WTK" - big personality - big works 
R. Strauss even though I really love his 4 last songs, but here the question is about a piece which best describes a composer's personality, then for Strauss it would be one of his operas Rosenkavalier I think, not Salome, neither his other operas. At leasr I think like that.
Schumann Kreisleriana 
Schubert Symphony 9 as it's encompasses many aspects/ideas of other Schubert's works.
Rachmaninoff both 2d and 3rd piano concertos, the 2nd as an emanation of his "younger" personality, the 3rd is more obscure for a "wiser" version of a composer.

just some random ideas .....


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

Verdi: La Traviata, reflects his own life also the most.


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## Heliogabo (Dec 29, 2014)

Scriabin-Poéme de l'extase
Mompou-Música callada (silent music. This is a perfect match! )


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

Mahler and his depressing live/ moods and fear of death .


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Huilunsoittaja said:


> Prokofiev and his 1st Piano Concerto. Everything about it, from its dark, forbidden moments to its outrageous paroxysms with more than a little acerbity, it's all him in a little bundle.


Well said! I would add only mention of this very early exhibition of Prokofiev's never-ending gift for melody, evident particularly in the first three piano concertos.


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## Sloe (May 9, 2014)

I imagine Italians to be strutty so I associate every Italian composer with Verdi´s Attila the struttiest opera I can think of.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

Beethoven and his 5th symphony.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

Mahler - _Das Lied von der Erde_
Mozart - Sinfonia concertante for violin and viola
Brahms - clarinet quintet


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## TradeMark (Mar 12, 2015)

Ravel - L'enfant et les sortilèges


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## MosmanViolinist (Nov 10, 2015)

Dvorak: the sound of a locomotive whistle ...


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

Richard Strauss -_ Ein Heldenleben_ (or so he would want us to think)


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## Epilogue (Sep 20, 2015)

Haydn - The Creation

Starts out turbulent and strange, then spends most of its life channeling that nervous energy into supremely masteful genial good humor and pastoral picturesque.


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## sam93 (Nov 9, 2015)

I think Chopin's 4th Prelude in E minor is (in miniature) a perfect representation of him and his music. It's melancholic and enigmatic, yet romantic and beautiful.


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## Picander (May 8, 2013)

Johann Sebastian Bach:


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## helenora (Sep 13, 2015)

Becca said:


> Richard Strauss -_ Ein Heldenleben_ (or so he would want us to think)


absolutely! 
How could I forget about it!  His personages overshadowed the Hero himself


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## Orfeo (Nov 14, 2013)

*Carl Nielsen* and his Fourth Symphony: Life-affirming and resilient after turbulence and struggles.
*OR*
*Carl Nielsen* and Maskarade: A comic observation of life and society (structures, mores, customs) from a man who knew life through and through. Honest and unpretentious, like the man himself.


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## Steatopygous (Jul 5, 2015)

Beethoven: Rage over a lost penny
Mozart: Lech mich im arsch

Lesser known, but suitably irreverent


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## Xaltotun (Sep 3, 2010)

Personalities usually change with time, and pieces of music usually reflect just a single phase in a composer's development. Like Sibelius said, a symphony is a credo in a specific stage in your life. Perhaps some works can "sum up" a life, but then they do not match any single stage of the personality in question, any stage that actually existed, but an abstract integral.

Of course then there are some crazyheads that always stayed more or less the same, like Bruckner. Any and all Bruckner's music matches Bruckner's personality at any time of his life.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Xaltotun said:


> Personalities usually change with time, and pieces of music usually reflect just a single phase in a composer's development. Like Sibelius said, a symphony is a credo in a specific stage in your life. Perhaps some works can "sum up" a life, but then they do not match any single stage of the personality in question, any stage that actually existed, but an abstract integral.


Good observation. We might add to that the impossibility of any single work being complex enough to represent a personality at any stage, at least if that personality is an interesting one.


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