# Common Criticisms of Your Favorite Composers and Counterarguments



## peeyaj (Nov 17, 2010)

No composer is perfect. Everyone one of us will have a certain criticisms of composers. Those who says that a certain composer achieved perfection should now see a psychiatrist.  So, what are the common criticisms of your favorite composer?

I'll give one.

Schubert ->

1. Weak development sections on his sonata forms
Counterargument: This is somewhat true. Schubert, in some of his larger works may be hampered with his development sections. It seems that he can't drum up the drive of his majestic expositions into thematic developments. It can argued that even though, his development were lacking, it is somewhat countered by its beautiful themes and gorgeous expositions/recapitulations.

2. Repetitive music
Counterargument: To repeat or not? This criticism is particularly aimed at his last sonatas, even Brendel chose to omit the repeats of the exposition in the opening movements. My view in this issue: a good performance of the sonatas, with repeats is not tiring, if the pianist can communicate the music into his audience.
Read more: http://crosseyedpianist.com/2012/12/14/to-repeat-or-not-to-repeat-thoughts-on-schuberts-d960/

What about yours?


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

*gone to see a psychiatrist*


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## Garlic (May 3, 2013)

Bach, Brahms, Schoenberg, Webern, Boulez - frequently criticised for being too cerebral or not emotive enough. I can see where the criticism is coming from, but I don't think a focus on structural detail precludes emotional expression at all, if anything the opposite.

Brahms' solo piano works - often criticised for being heavy and un-pianistic, but that's why I like them.

Cage - charlatan, joker, pretentious buffoon, etc. - I just have to shrug at these comments. Cage was serious and probably the least pretentious composer ever. Now Stockhausen, there's a pretentious composer (though I love his music).


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

peeyaj said:


> Schubert ->
> 1. Weak development sections on his sonata forms


The thing is, Schubert did not write themes so much as melodies, which by their very nature do not lend themselves well to development. Borodin ran into the same problem.

Composers who insist on writing melodies have no business messing around with sonata form.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

Garlic said:


> Bach, Brahms, Schoenberg, Webern, Boulez - frequently criticised for being too cerebral or not emotive enough. I can see where the criticism is coming from, but I don't think a focus on structural detail precludes emotional expression at all, if anything the opposite.


At least in the case of Brahms, I always find this criticism curious, because to me his music seems exceptionally warm-hearted, though not over the top romantic as was the case with many of his contemporaries. It is precisely his tendency towards understatement that I like.


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

Paul Hindemith - over-academic, dry, colourless etc. are the kind of barbs that detractors apply to his music. I prefer to use the term 'cool' to 'dry'. There is both humour and colour to be found in Hindemith's work (esp. the wind sonatas and early orchestral works like Lustige Sinfonietta and Ragtime) but music doesn't have to be steeped in emotion for me to like it. With the previous generation the same kind of criticism was levelled at Reger. Perhaps the fact that both composers were prolific leads some to think that their talents were being spread too thinly or that their music had insufficient variety. I never used to like Reger but I've really warmed to his orchestral works in the last year. Hindemith I've always liked.


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## Ramako (Apr 28, 2012)

Haydn - all his music sounds the same
A criticism based on his late works composed in the period of a few short years. Naturally these will vary less than the output of other composers over their whole life, and who wrote much less.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

Bruckner - his music is bombastic. 

Well, that's one way to put it, if you disregard the masterful building up and breaking down of sonorus sound masses, the layering of rhythms, and the experimentation with and expansion of sonata form.


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

Mahler: His symphonies are too long, too loud, too full of angst, too full of _everything_, too much cowbell.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

Nereffid said:


> . . . too much cowbell.


I'm glad I wasn't drinking anything when I read that. :lol:


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## Wicked_one (Aug 18, 2010)

Nereffid said:


> Mahler: His symphonies are too long, too loud, too full of angst, too full of _everything_, too much cowbell.


Those who say that don't know that he said: "A symphony must be like the world. It must contain everything". And there are cows with bells in this world too. Lots of them!


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

Wicked_one said:


> Those who say that don't know that he said: "A symphony must be like the world. It must contain everything". And there are cows with bells in this world too. Lots of them!


Well, if Shostakovich could put Stalin in a symphony, then I don't see why Mahler shouldn't have put cows in a symphony.


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## Tristan (Jan 5, 2013)

People seem to criticize Tchaikovsky for his emphasis on melodies, but to me, that can only be a good thing, since I tend to look for composers who are great melodists. To me, that's nothing negative. I can see how an over-emphasis on simplistic "catchy" melodies could be seen as bad, but I don't see Tchaikovsky as guilty of that. In fact, I tend to see that as an issue with popular music moreso than with classical.

I guess people Shostakovich for being uneven, coming out with "crap" and then amazing works side by side. I must be more of a fanboy than I think because I don't really see anything he wrote as being "crap"; he had weaker works, for certain, but I don't just disregard some of them the way certain critics do.


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## neoshredder (Nov 7, 2011)

I don't have an absolute favorite but here are a few.
Vivaldi- Wrote the same Concerto 500 times. I disagree with this but do see some common patterns he likes to use. 
Albinoni- Hardly any talk about him at all. Very underrated imo. He is no second rate Composer.
Tchaikovsky - over the top, bombastic, melodies are too sweet
Mozart - Too simplistic.
Bach - Too mechanical. Not enough emotion.


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

Glazunov - old-fashioned and derivative.
First I'll address old-fashioned: yes he was, and yet it doesn't matter. In the whole context of music, this fact is becoming less and less relevant. Rachmaninoff was old-fashioned too, and many other composers were equally as "uninnovative" such as Tchaikovsky, Brahms, etc. And yet they were still masters of their craft. Glazunov's craftmanship has only to be discovered, and then such other remarks will seem unimportant. It's the quality of what he did, not the context of what his contemporaries were doing. And he wasn't even that old-fashioned, he had some experimental works like the Forest and the Sea. He tasted innovation, but didn't find it very remarkable, and turned to be conservative instead, which was where his heart truly was.
Addressing "derivative:" you could say this was Glazunov greatest advantage!! Yes, he was derivative, but in such a way that made him more unique than any other derivative individual to ever exist. His mixing of nearly a dozens different composers into his music at different times has produced an extremely original tone, and here I will explain. NO other Russian composer openly admired Brahms in his time, except for him. NO other Russian composer loved Rimsky-Korsakov AND Tchaikovsky at the same time. NO other Russian composer loved Wagner AND Tchaikovsky at the same time the way he did. In short, Glazunov was combining seemingly antithetical musical perspectives in ways that the formerly named would never have done. Glazunov was the first to sound like Brahms, Wagner, Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, AND a host of others all at the same time! Now that's a feat! That was true cosmopolitanism, ground-breaking, unheard of in Russia at the time. Tchaikovsky and his gang had a thing or 2 to learn from his example! Thus, I can proudly say that it was his greatest advantage because truly no other Russian was brave or open-minded enough to do what he did. Just imagine: a Brahmsian ballet with Wagnerian anthems, Tchaikovskian bombast, and Exoticism of the Nationalists all in one: that is Raymonda. Imagine: a symphony dedicated to a man that hated Brahms (Taneyev), yet has allusions to 2 Brahms symphonies, Russian folk themes, Borodinian woodwinds, and Tchaikovskian fate allusions: that is his 5th symphony. And those are just a few examples. You won't find a composer with quite his signature sound, which has the glitzy Glazunov element in there too, a certain kind of joyous spontaneity, open-eyed, to the point. 
Have you ever thought to look at him this way?


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## ptr (Jan 22, 2013)

Nereffid said:


> Mahler: His symphonies are too long, too loud, too full of angst, too full of _everything_, too much cowbell.


Please explain, I do not understand how there can be to much cowbell in any music!

/ptr


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## Cosmos (Jun 28, 2013)

"Chopin's too delicate" so in other words, you've heard nothing but the nocturnes. Because when I think of Chopin delicacy, the works that DON'T come to mind are the piano sonatas, the Ballades, the Scherzi, the Polonaises, his Fantaisie op 49, his piano concerti, his Etudes...do I really need to go on?

"Mahler's symphonies are too long and too much" you've gotta MAKE time for great music! But seriously, I agree he does require patience with new listeners. And really, IMO, the only work I would classify as "too much" would be the 8th symphony. Other than that, the parts that may seem "too much" occur in small doses among a sea of less crazy music. I.e. the Second symphony starts out with a long funeral march that has a few moments of bombastic flair, and could be considered "too much" by these critics. Well the next movement is a quieter, very calm andante. That's just one example of Mahler easing the listener's plate by shifting between heavy and dramatic to calmer, quieter, not as intense music. Beethoven did the same thing in much of his work.

"Bruckner is so boring!" Ok I get that: his music requires even MORE patience with new listeners, and most prefer Mahler over Bruckner because Bruckner can sound like molasses at times. But his rich orchestration, long developments, and epic climaxes are just what attract me to Bruckner. But yeah he's not for everyone, especially since his symphonies aren't exactly remembered for their melodies.

"Bach's music is outdated and dull" well I admit theres a good portion of his music that would never be considered masterpieces, but his counterpoint and flow never ceases to amaze me (granted I prefer his works for solo instruments - organ, violin, cello, harpsichord, lute, etc. - to his ensemble works [the Masses being an exception]). Outdated? In music, I don't believe that word applies. Tallis' Spem in alium moves me the same way that Penderecki's "Dimensions of Time and Silence" moves me. And dull? Well that's personal opinion but I can think of many works by Bach I would never consider dull: especially his organ music.


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## Cheyenne (Aug 6, 2012)

Just ask the other members.



tdc said:


> I've heard many of Haydn's symphonies, piano sonatas, string quartets, choral works, and concertos, and have to admit that I don't find any of his great works comparable to the best works of the composers I mentioned. I would go so far as to say I don't think his best works are even on par with the best works of Mendelssohn, I really don't get the fuss about Haydn, outside of him writing a lot of music in different styles. It may be well written, but it does not seem bold artistically, or harmonically, and ends up having too many predictable 'cookie-cutter' sounding phrases I just don't derive much listening pleasure out of. I also don't find his _range of expression_ nearly as diverse as the first group of composers I mentioned.





aaroncopland said:


> So I hate Beethoven. I know, I sound stupid saying this but I do. I just don't like his orchestration in his symphonies and in his chamber music I hate how often he uses cadences and just teases you into thinking the that the movement in over, and its not.





Huilunsoittaja said:


> My main qualms with Stravinsky:
> 
> 1) His turning from his Russian roots in a vengeful way rather than a happy revolution. I don't really support hatred being the reason for revolution, I appreciate the composers that did things because they respected the past, and directly built on it. You could say he did that with Neo-Classicalism, but he certainly didn't do that with his more recent origins. Prokofiev was staunch opposite: he went rebel because it made him happy, and although it was a struggle at the beginning, he came to seriously appreciate his predecessors for most of his life, so even though he changed his musical language quite a bit, he remained Russian at heart. Stravinsky's identity was in his lack of it. If I want to enjoy Stravinsky's middle and late period music, I will have to enjoy him as a Cosmopolitan Impressionist, and not as Russian Composer.
> 
> ...





millionrainbows said:


> Brahms' symphonies sound artificial now, forced, with a curious lack of emotion and a strange detached otherworldly sense that we are behind a wall of thick glass. The phrases, the themes, are perfectly balanced, almost artificially perfect, as if extensive study of computer-data had gone into the formulation of these specimens. A cool objectivity, always calculated, never "on the edge of losing control" or being swept away in a storm of emotion.
> 
> At one time, I chalked this up to some sort of character quirk of Brahms...was he gay, celibate, who knew? But, no, now I see it as the last gasp of a dying age; a futile attempt to extend the heroic age.





CountenanceAnglaise said:


> In removing Mozart and his own feelings from his music is to reduce it to a porcelain statue. Cold, highly polished and sculpted, eternal but deeply superficial. Like Keats' _Grecian Urn_: "beauty is truth; truth beauty. That is all ye know on earth and all ye need to know". A disturbing thought!!





neoshredder said:


> This is how a Bruckner Symphony sounds to. Soft part, loud part, soft part, loud part with little memorable melodies to go with it. I guess this was common for late Romantic German Composers. Just not my thing.





TheComposer said:


> I don't think Wagner was meant for the opera. Seriously, Wagner was a true symphonist, just listen to the overtures of most if not all of his operas, they develop so 'symphonially' ...too bad he had that silly ambition of 'Gesamtkunstwerk'.





drpraetorus said:


> Schubert is like the little girl with the curl in the middle of her forehead. When he is good he's very good and when he is bad he's horrid.
> 
> Schubert is kind of quirky. He can do wonderful things and then something totally pedestrian comes in. Quirky is not a bad thing, all the time. The slow movement from the piano trio is quirky in a fascinating way. Rosemunde is quirky in a not so good way.





moody said:


> The big problem with Mahler outside the concert hall is the length of all his symphonies bar two,I have always found it difficult to concentrate.





ScipioAfricanus said:


> When one considers Schumann's piano sonatas with their well sculpted majesty, cohesion, and nuances, one would expect that this would be successfully transferred towards orchestral works where Schumann would have taken up where Beethoven and Schubert left off with their 9th symphonies. But Schumann didn't even come close with the exception of his perfect Piano Concerto in A minor.
> 
> Can we attribute this to his mental illness?





PetrB said:


> Ergo - the most profoundly intended and more than well-written pieces from that era sound to me exaggeratedly overblown, excessive... and more than just a little vaguely ridiculous.
> 
> I've never responded well to just about all of the larger works by anyone post Schumann until Mahler came onto the scene.
> 
> Barring the first cliche ballet experience of the Nutcracker, and being at least moderately convinced of the effectiveness of Sleeping Beauty _as a theater piece_, not a standalone score -- I can not, literally, bear to listen to Tchaikovsky... nor any Rachmaninoff (not romantic by date, actually modernist throughout as per vocabulary, but retro romantic.)





JTech82 said:


> The reason people don't "get" Schoenberg is because there's nothing to "get." He composed terrible music that had no kind of lyrical or emotional qualities whatsoever. It was too modern for it's own good. It lacked heartbreak, soul, and most important beauty.
> 
> Innovator/pioneer he may be, but I don't see how anyone in their right mind could enjoy him. Totally inaccessible to my ear.


I had a good time looking these up :lol:


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

Criticisms of a composer could sometimes just be of something which makes their voice more unique and individual. So if those aspects were taken away they would be less distinctive and memorable. Try and please everyone and you probably just become more forgettable and fade into the general style of the time.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

Cheyenne said:


> Just ask the other members.


 This is one list where I'm glad I didn't make the cut.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

"The quotes go along with his mindset about music. I'm pretty sure we would NOT have gotten along. He seems to have despised the idea of imagery in music, and thought it was paltry for a musician to invent imagery or stories to go along with abstract music for help with meaning. He wanted his abstract to have no connection to images, stories, etc. Well, if that's so, what the point of ME listening to it, since I love imagining things when I listen to music, and he obvious didn't design his later music for that purpose? Just saying..."

Well, you can still imagine things about Stravinksy's music behind Stravinksy's back can't you? lol

Honestly, I can really understand where he is coming from though. It's really frustrating being a young upcoming composer and hoping everyone will catch on to all the clever musical things you accomplished and all they can pick up is stuff like "OOHH that sounds like a mountain and a bird and things like that." As a composer, it makes you feel like they are only enjoying your music for the stuff that they impose on your music and they're not actually enjoying your music because it's good music.

On top of all that, it was probably really bad in the era that Stravinsky was trying to compose in, right off the heels of the Romantic Era where you practically wouldn't be taken seriously if you didn't evoke imagery of some kind.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Huilunsoittaja said:


> Glazunov - old-fashioned and derivative.


You're just saying that because it's his birthday!


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

KenOC said:


> You're just saying that because it's his birthday!


I've read those 2 words together countless times though, by critics from all around. It's enough to make me cringe. But now I don't read critiques of him anymore, like I use to, unless they fall in my lap. I'm done trying to defend him, he doesn't need it anymore.

Glazunov is not for everyone, but he certainly is for many others!


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Huilunsoittaja said:


> I've read those 2 words together countless times though, by critics from all around. It's enough to make me cringe. But now I don't read critiques of him anymore, like I use to, unless they fall in my lap. I'm done trying to defend him, he doesn't need it anymore.
> 
> Glazunov is not for everyone, but he certainly is for many others!


Well, I admit to quoting your words out of context. Just a tiny bit out of context. Well, maybe just a miniscule pinch more than a tiny bit... :lol:


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

Tristan said:


> People seem to criticize Tchaikovsky for his emphasis on melodies, but to me, that can only be a good thing, since I tend to look for composers who are great melodists. To me, that's nothing negative. I can see how an over-emphasis on simplistic "catchy" melodies could be seen as bad, but I don't see Tchaikovsky as guilty of that. In fact, I tend to see that as an issue with popular music moreso than with classical.


It takes a special sort of snob to complain that a piece of music contains too many melodies. 
Offhand, I cannot think of all that many great composers who were not also pretty good at writing catchy tunes, whether it be extended melodies or just catchy themes. I would go as far as to say that it is one of the most important elements of the talent to compose in the first place.



> I guess people Shostakovich for being uneven, coming out with "crap" and then amazing works side by side. I must be more of a fanboy than I think because I don't really see anything he wrote as being "crap"; he had weaker works, for certain, but I don't just disregard some of them the way certain critics do.


In the case of Shostakovich, one must never lose sight of the fact that his work was constantly interfered with by the government of the day. He often had no choice but to produce work to please a bunch of bureaucrats. On several occasions he almost ended up in the Gulag (as happened to many of his colleagues). I think it is difficult to produce consistently great work under such circumstances.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

brianvds said:


> On several occasions he almost ended up in the Gulag (as happened to many of his colleagues).


In a previous thread, people were hard put to find examples of this, at least of composers. One or two composers paid a price, but not for their music (one was for drunken brawling and insulting waiters...)

Re Shostakovich, he was a government employee and expected to earn his keep by turning out potboilers for many occasions. Some were quite good in fact. Examples are the tone poem "October" and the "Festive Overture."


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

KenOC said:


> In a previous thread, people were hard put to find examples of this, at least of composers. One or two composers paid a price, but not for their music (one was for drunken brawling and insulting waiters...)
> 
> Re Shostakovich, he was a government employee and expected to earn his keep by turning out potboilers for many occasions. Some were quite good in fact. Examples are the tone poem "October" and the "Festive Overture."


It is perhaps noteworthy that it was of course not just Shostakovich. Bach was also a government employee, as was Mozart in the first part of his career. This did not prevent composers from creating great work, or even some of the potboilers from being pretty great. But having to churn out music at that sort of rate inevitably takes its toll, I would think. Shostakovich had the added burden of not just risking to lose his job; under Stalin you could lose your life if you failed to please.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

brianvds said:


> It is perhaps noteworthy that it was of course not just Shostakovich. Bach was also a government employee, as was Mozart in the first part of his career. This did not prevent composers from creating great work, or even some of the potboilers from being pretty great. But having to churn out music at that sort of rate inevitably takes its toll, I would think. Shostakovich had the added burden of not just risking to lose his job; under Stalin you could lose your life if you failed to please.


Of course it didn't prevent Shostakovich from creating great work as well (obviously). And he was a dedicated Communist, just as Bach was a dedicated Lutheran, so maybe the two situations aren't entirely different. While Shostakovich reportedly feared (at one point) being taken away at midnight, it didn't in fact occur, nor did it occur to other composers. Weinberg was detained after the "Doctor's Plot" on Stalin, but the old man had the decency to die soon after and Weinberg was released...

For a sadder story, having nothing to do with music, read about Lina Prokofiev, the composer's wife.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

KenOC said:


> Of course it didn't prevent Shostakovich from creating great work as well (obviously). And he was a dedicated Communist, just as Bach was a dedicated Lutheran, so maybe the two situations aren't entirely different.


For all the horrors of perpetrated by Stalin, one should keep in mind that in some respects, Russian communism was actually a great success, especially compared to what the czars did. So Shostakovich's loyalty to the party is perhaps not all that surprising.



> While Shostakovich reportedly feared (at one point) being taken away at midnight, it didn't in fact occur, nor did it occur to other composers. Weinberg was detained after the "Doctor's Plot" on Stalin, but the old man had the decency to die soon after and Weinberg was released...


If memory serves, some fairly major musicians did end up dying in the Gulag though. Under Stalin, nobody was safe.



> For a sadder story, having nothing to do with music, read about Lina Prokofiev, the composer's wife.


Yup, I read about that some time ago. I often wonder what possessed Prokofiev to return to the Soviet Union in the first place. But then I think of how thoroughly rooted I am in my own native country. It would take more than a Stalin to make me want to leave, so I can't really point fingers.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

brianvds said:


> If memory serves, some fairly major musicians did end up dying in the Gulag though. Under Stalin, nobody was safe.


Memory may be unreliable in this case. My own memory says that the only example found was a German composer who had migrated to the USSR and was rounded up in an anti-German pogrom during WW II, later dying during construction of a canal. Others may have lost positions, or had their works proscribed...


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

KenOC said:


> Of course it didn't prevent Shostakovich from creating great work as well (obviously). And he was a dedicated Communist, just as Bach was a dedicated Lutheran, so maybe the two situations aren't entirely different. While Shostakovich reportedly feared (at one point) being taken away at midnight, it didn't in fact occur, nor did it occur to other composers. Weinberg was detained after the "Doctor's Plot" on Stalin, but the old man had the decency to die soon after and Weinberg was released...
> 
> For a sadder story, having nothing to do with music, read about Lina Prokofiev, the composer's wife.


I think Alexander Mosolov was jailed in the 30s for so-called 'counter-revolutionary activity' but his music had already offended. The point had been made - once released a cowed Mosolov didn't try to rock the boat again and supposedly composed in a much blander style which conformed to the demands of Socialist Realism. Stalin could have had Shostakovich killed any time he liked, of course, but maybe realised that he was probably more useful alive than dead, hence the carrot and stick policy.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

elgars ghost said:


> I think Alexander Mosolov was jailed in the 30s for so-called 'counter-revolutionary activity' but his music had already offended. The point had been made - once released a cowed Mosolov didn't try to rock the boat again and supposedly composed in a much blander style which conformed to the demands of Socialist Realism. Stalin could have had Shostakovich killed any time he liked, of course, but maybe realised that he was probably more useful alive than dead, hence the carrot and stick policy.


Per Wiki: "His quick release, having only served eight months of his eight-year sentence, was possible because he had been imprisoned not on political charges but on an overblown accusation of "hooliganism" brought by Mosolov's enemies in the Composers' Union."

In fact, he had been expelled from the Composer's Union the prior year for a drunken brawl.


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## Guest (Aug 11, 2013)

Nereffid said:


> Mahler: His symphonies are too long, too loud, too full of angst, too full of _everything_, t*oo much cowbell*.


Too much *ranz des vaches*? That surely is the point ! Wagner tried that one, too. Bruckner (as far as I can tell) resisted the temptation.


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## Guest (Aug 11, 2013)

Manxfeeder said:


> Bruckner - his music is *bombastic*.
> Well, that's one way to put it, if you disregard the masterful building up and breaking down of sonorus sound masses, the layering of rhythms, and the experimentation with and expansion of sonata form.


'They' say the same ('bombastic') about Beethoven.


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## HaydnBearstheClock (Jul 6, 2013)

Haydn - no 'hook' that catches you, lack of tune (except for maybe the Emperor's hymn), too much 'humour', all 'sounds the same'

counterargument: personally, I like many Haydn tunes and he has catchy ones as well, especially in the Creation. Maybe they're not as elaborate as Mozart's longer tunes but I still admire them a lot. Haydn's music isn't about the tune, it's about construction, cohesion and the fun of the unexpected. For me, this fully compensates the supposed 'lack of tune'. 

I don't see what's wrong with Haydn's humour - it was one of the things which got me into classical and keeps me into it - I always thought classical was meant to be completely serious but when I heard Haydn's practical jokes I became fascinated, since they also open up a whole new of way of connecting to a composer by revealing some parts of the compositional process.

And Haydn's music does not all sound the same - listen to the 'La Passione' or 'Lamentatione' symphonies, then to the Creation - you'd almost think these are two different composers at work. I personally think there's a Haydn work for any time of day and any mood. Also, whereas Haydn's masses sound more serious (Nelson mass, for example), his quartets are filled with quirks and humour.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

More on the two-fisted brawler Mosolov: It's his birthday!


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## Janspe (Nov 10, 2012)

Rachmaninoff is sometimes accused of being overly sentimental and melancholic, along with the usual 'dinosaur of the romantic age' talk and so forth. Sure, he did compose a lot of music filled with sweet melodies and this Russian-esque melancholy, including the second and third piano concertos, second symphony, some preludes etc. This effect is further emphasized by the fact that these works are the ones that became enduringly popular. And we also shouldn't forget that Mr. Rach himself admitted that he felt like an outsider because of his compositional style.

_However_, there is so much more in his oeuvre to be discovered! His fourth piano concerto, the études-tableaux... Very different kind of style compared to his more popular pieces. Also his songs deserve _a lot_ more attention.

I love listening to Rach's own recordings of his pieces. They have this lightness that's often missing from modern recordings. I don't like interpretatios of his music that are played in this heavy "Russian" style and make me think of Cossack boots, fur coats and vodka...


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Janspe said:


> I don't like interpretatios of his music that are played in this heavy "Russian" style and make me think of Cossack boots, fur coats and vodka...


"Rimsky-Korsakov- what a name! It suggests fierce whiskers stained with vodka." -- correspondent in the New York Musical Courier (1897)


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## spradlig (Jul 25, 2012)

I've never heard "October", but I really like his Festive Overture. Am I alone?


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## Ondine (Aug 24, 2012)

peeyaj said:


> Those who says that a certain composer achieved perfection should now see a psychiatrist.


I stopped visiting the psychiatrist and decided to fully enjoy the perfection of my favourite composer and have delight in my madness


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## mstar (Aug 14, 2013)

Ramako said:


> Haydn - all his music sounds the same
> A criticism based on his late works composed in the period of a few short years. Naturally these will vary less than the output of other composers over their whole life, and who wrote much less.


Augh, I do hate when people make an even worse musical offense, that I've sadly heard so many times....

"All classical music sounds the same!" Counterargument: Classical Music.


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## mstar (Aug 14, 2013)

Janspe said:


> Rachmaninoff is sometimes accused of being overly sentimental and melancholic, along with the usual 'dinosaur of the romantic age' talk and so forth. Sure, he did compose a lot of music filled with sweet melodies and this Russian-esque melancholy, including the second and third piano concertos, second symphony, some preludes etc. This effect is further emphasized by the fact that these works are the ones that became enduringly popular. And we also shouldn't forget that Mr. Rach himself admitted that he felt like an outsider because of his compositional style.


Rachmaninov's music is beautiful! Several of both his piano and orchestral works have very passionate melodies which cannot be described accurately as "sweetness...." No, not at all....


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## peeyaj (Nov 17, 2010)

Rachmaninoff's music have been labeled as kitsch Romanticism.

My signature came from that quote. 



> Schubert manages that most supreme of feats, to be melancholy without being maudlin, his pain is not a mockery of pain but truly heartfelt, and he manages to pass that though with all of its complexities in his music. *This is not Rachmaninoff's kitsch romanticism.*


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