# Who develop the best themes?



## peeyaj (Nov 17, 2010)

Beethoven? Mozart? Brahms? Mahler?

Schubert was criticized for being weak in developing his themes ( it just go on and on, some says), while LvB is regarded among the best (dum dum dum).. Is being weak in thematic development a liability of a composers?

Who develop the best themes in classical music?


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

Schoenberg. All he ever _did_ with the 12 notes of the chromatic scale was motific development again and again and again in _every_ dodecaphonic piece he wrote.


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## Ravndal (Jun 8, 2012)

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> Schoenberg. All he ever _did_ with the 12 notes of the chromatic scale was motific development again and again and again in _every_ dodecaphonic piece he wrote.


Perhaps the best, but il interpret the topic as "favorite". And schoenberg is not on that list.

Something like this, but not in that order:

Brahms
Schumann
Beethoven
Schubert
Mendelssohn
Bach

I dont know..


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

peeyaj said:


> Beethoven? Mozart? Brahms? Mahler?


All of the above, in different ways. It's difficult to compare one composer's style to another in terms of quality, once one gets to the greats.



peeyaj said:


> Schubert was criticized for being weak in developing his themes ( it just go on and on, some says), while LvB is regarded among the best (dum dum dum).. Is being weak in thematic development a liability of a composers?


Potentially, but only if their music depends on development. People appreciate Schubert for other reasons, usually. There are composers like Satie and Messiaen who do not develop their music in the traditional sense (breaking apart themes into their consituent elements) at all, but don't make it a focal point of their music, so it's not an issue. The symphony, on the other hand, is a genre that traditionally depends on development, so when people criticize Schubert's 9th for its relative lack of development (other than playing the same thematic fragment in different keys), they're saying it doesn't line up with traditional expectations. But there are a lot of other Romantic-era composers who aren't developmentally oriented, and the notion of development became looser. So people today generally judge Schubert by his own standards rather than by some mythical "norm".


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## Winterreisender (Jul 13, 2013)

I very much enjoy Liszt's ability to develop a theme in works such as the Faust Symphony and and Piano Sonata. I don't think the melodies themselves are especially memorable, perhaps because is there is so little exact repetition, but in each case the whole piece seems to be structured around endless variety of a few basic motifs. Apparently Liszt initiated a whole style of composing known as "thematic transformation," and no doubt this is a style Wagner worked in as well to great success.


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## Winterreisender (Jul 13, 2013)

Of course Beethoven is also a master of thematic development, so much so that he can even make an excellent set of variations based on an utterly non-distinct theme. I enjoy the anecdote (which I hope is true!) about the Eroica Variations (also Eroica Symphony mvt. 4) that this melody originated out of a piano duel with rival composer Daniel Steibelt: an unimpressed Beethoven heard one of Steibelt's compositions, took the score and placed it upside on his piano rack, hammered out the opening notes and then improvised around it for an hour... and these notes became the Eroica theme. The moral of the story is that Beethoven's thematic development is masterful, even when dealing with mediocre material.


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## HaydnBearstheClock (Jul 6, 2013)

Don't forget about Haydn (had to put in my 5 cents  )


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

HaydnBearstheClock said:


> Don't forget about Haydn (had to put in my 5 cents  )


Haydn is a very important one, possibly the one who really started the whole idea of _really_ developing the development section in sonata form. In his "Joke" quartet, the first movement is derived from a four bar melody heard at the start and what he did in the development section he called "thematic elaboration," giving contrapuntal treatment to various short snippets of the four bar melody, which is now known as "motific development." So in a way he was the big granddaddy of development of this sort in sonata form.


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## peeyaj (Nov 17, 2010)

Who best develop themes? Thanks PB for pointing it..


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## Schumann (Aug 12, 2013)

_Random Order_

Bach
Beethoven
Mozart
Schubert
Schumann
Mendelssohn
Chopin


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## Andreas (Apr 27, 2012)

The development of themes seems to me related to the form of theme and variations. Schubert was very fond of this form, however I think his handling of it is different from that of, say, Beethoven. Schubert seems more interested in casting different lights on a given, somewhat fixed structure, whereas Beethoven (or Brahms, or Schoenberg) seems to be more interested in taking a structure apart and reassembling it in manifold ways.

The different lights in Schubert correspond to his use of harmony and key relationships. They need to be more varied and divers if the thematic material remains relatively intact. Schoenberg, at the other end oft he spectrum perhaps, did not have harmony and keys at his disposal anymore, so the variation depended on the transformation of the musical substance. If one attacks Brahms for not being adventurous enough in his use of harmony, it might be because he relied primarily on thematic variation instead.

One could say, however, that Schubert's themes are too beautiful to subject them to any development. He often used them as complete, self-sufficient melodies rather than raw material or embryonic cells. The intensification of Schubert's themes, his kind of development, demanded different means.


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## Garlic (May 3, 2013)

Schoenberg for me, he brought together the best of Mozart and Brahms.


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## LindnerianSea (Jun 5, 2013)

I will throw Sibelius into the pool. Not the most orthodox way of thematic development - that is, the cell-like motif development (it would be actually grateful if someone could actually explain to me what this means) - in which root motifs develop into grandeur themes. In a similar sense, I would also cast my vote on similar composers who adopted this cellular development technique such as Martinu and Holmboe ...


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## Roi N (Oct 22, 2013)

The best developer is Haydn. I mean, he is the defenition of the word. He develops themes everywhere - the second and third themes are variations (which are developments) of the main theme, the bridges are the development of the theme, and so is the coda. Now, for the development part itself - there Haydn focuses on a tiny part of the theme, one that no one even noticed, and builds a momumental development with it (the first movement of his final symphony is an excellent example). 
His great developments are everywhere - Quartets (Op. 33 No. 2 and 3, Op. 76 No. 2), Symphonies (82, 93, 98, 101, 104), Piano Sonatas (No. 47, No. 50, No. 60, No. 62), it doesn't matter what medium.
As for Beethoven, you guys are too willing to put him everywhere. He was a developer, yes, but towards the end of his life, his themes started to control him. And that's pretty bad is you're a developer. A great example of that is his 9th symphony (the first movement in perticular) - you can see that he lets the theme go wherever without truely controling him.


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## Novelette (Dec 12, 2012)

Roi N said:


> As for Beethoven, you guys are too willing to put him everywhere. He was a developer, yes, but towards the end of his life, *his themes started to control him*. And that's pretty bad is you're a developer. A great example of that is his 9th symphony (the first movement in perticular) - you can see that he lets the theme go wherever without truely controling him.


My apologies, but what does it mean to be controlled by a theme?


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

Andreas said:


> One could say, however, that Schubert's themes are too beautiful to subject them to any development. He often used them as complete, self-sufficient melodies rather than raw material or embryonic cells. The intensification of Schubert's themes, his kind of development, demanded different means.


Yup, it seems to me that the most melodically gifted composers often prefer not develop their themes too much. They really write songs rather than themes, and those very often cannot really be meaningfully developed. Another composer that comes to mind in this regard is Borodin.


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## lupinix (Jan 9, 2014)

I'm not sure if the OP means something like "which composer uses the best themes"
or maybe "which composer is best in development of themes", which could mean either the most extensive use of motifs as found in beethoven, liszt, brahms, schoenberg among others, or most favorite developments to your opinion, most hidden, most surprising, most variating, etc


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## Roi N (Oct 22, 2013)

Novelette said:


> My apologies, but what does it mean to be controlled by a theme?


When developing a theme, it is essential that _you _craft the theme. A well controlled theme leads to a fantastic development, well-modulated. However, if the theme controls the composer, there are far less modulations and they are too obvious. The length of the modulation is also affected by the ability of the composer to control the theme - the development may be too long (making it not interesting) or too short (making it even less interesting).


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