For me its got to me Mozart and Bach.
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Tchaikovsky. Currently listening to Borodin though.
Bach, definitely.
I don’t care for later composers; I love the elegant-yet-complex structure of early/ier music and I have yet to find anyone who can explain to me precisely what I mean by that.
I have a huge mental blind spot when it comes to music theory; I don’t understand a damn thing about it and likely never will, so I can’t put this in actual smart-people words.
But Bach (along with a number of earlier composers) sounds immensely fucking clever, like he’s carrying on a conversation on three different levels at once, and somehow doing counterpoint down the timeline instead of across it, even with an unaccompanied cello.
Whereas your beethovens and mozarts of the world seem to use ten times as much sound and fury, or ten times as many twiddly bits… to say very little at all. If you boiled out all the redundancy, all the structures would collapse and you’d have nothing left over.
If anyone knows what the fuck I’m talking about and is able to translate, I’ll be eternally grateful.
Bach was a baroque composer, you are hearing the difference between baroque and classical music. You are getting at counterpoint used in baroque and homophony used in classical composition. Counterpoint has multiple independent but interrelated voices or musical lines going at once and homophony is basically the opposite where all voices or musical lines move together in a harmonic progression.
I’m super impressed with what you recognize I’ve had to do some digging and reading to even start to hear what you picked up on naturally.
I’m not just talking about counterpoint, though. (funny story, my introduction to baroque and early music started after I went frantically searching for counterpoint after seeing an old Ethel Merman movie on TV as a kid.)
Counterpoint is all brain-tickly, but the real payoff for me is… uhh. Patterns that are obvious in retrospect, but weirdly hard to predict ahead, given how simple they are. You can get this all the way back to plainchant, and the more basic the construction, the more impressive it is.
Conversely, once you scrape off all the drama and fussy bits off most classical composers, you’re left with something very basic indeed. You pull the ends, and for all its loopy squiggling, it doesn’t actually make a knot.
Meh. I not words good. There’s a concept there, but I lack the tools to reason about it.
I thought your very basic indeed video would be the pachelbel rant.
No, I do understand what you mean and it’s the same thing I like about the baroque music. It’s almost like modern house music, the kind where they take one riff and play it out fifty different ways, it is sort of trancey and doesn’t yell at you for attention, it pulls instead of pushing.
I get what you’re saying! Never was great at music theory either, but Bach indeed uses a lot of techniques in his composing to create the layers you’re referring to, where there is clarity but complexity. Sometimes it’s a melody mirrored or reversed, sometimes it’s the way themes repeat across and within parts, sometimes it’s a well timed key change, but there’s an often mathematical approach to the composition that you don’t find in other composers (or at least, done as well). I find Bach to be a bit boring to play, but it’s like violin comfort food lol.
There’s a reason Bach is on Voyager’s golden record 3 times.
Ling-ling! (violin) David Fray (pianist)
Shostakovich, particularly his 7th (The Leningrad) Symphony which will always have a special place in my heart.
Recently listened Shostakovich for the first time a couple months ago and it was amazing!
Vivaldi and Erik Satie
For me, Handel: Mozart is reputed to have said of him, “Handel understands affect better than any of us. When he chooses, he strikes like a thunder bolt.”[159] To Beethoven he was “the master of us all… the greatest composer that ever lived. I would uncover my head and kneel before his tomb.”[159]
Shostakovich, Dvorak, Stravinsky, Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky…I guess I have a thing for the Eastern Europeans, lol. I’m a violinist and idk how to explain it really, but it’s like the Eastern European composers understand the feel of the instrument better. Or maybe the way I play is just more aligned with that style. Either way, I find their pieces are more fun and dynamic (and sometimes, also challenging) to play.
Bach - Brandenburg Concertos (esp. #3) Vivaldi - Four Seasons (Spring) Mozart - Eine Kleine Nachtmusik Howard Shore - Concerning Hobbits
Pretty standard/popular pieces, I think, but I like what I like! LOL
Beethoven was a badass. Fucker was deaf and still wrote bangers like the Moonlight Sonata.
Has to be Debussy and Chopin for me.
Same for me and I would add Eric Satie on that list.
Rachmaninoff and Beethoven probably.
gotta love the Rach-man
Which piece is your fav from him? I’m still exploring classical.
Tchaikovsky was Victorian rock music.
A few years ago I unexpectedly got into French baroque music after hearing some Jean-Baptiste Lully. Mainly overtures and dances and te-deums. This stuff is great! Melodies catchy as hell, rhythms much more accessible than classical and romantic music. It’s from 350 years ago! Just listen to a compilation, the pieces are all pretty short and accessible.
I always felt like Beethoven rocked pretty hard too.
Igor Stravinsky, Chris Rouse, Alfred Schnittke, Witold Lutoslawski, and Gustav Mahler are probably my top 5 composers.
My favourite living composer is probably Elena Kats-Chernin.
Favourite dead composer is definitely Beethoven, but I’ve been getting very into Shostakovich lately.
Lauridsen, especially this collection: https://open.spotify.com/album/6FJTo2DbWQhDJDwl1gVMfS?si=ugwLyvceRn6qhSzzkpBPWw&context=spotify%3Aalbum%3A6FJTo2DbWQhDJDwl1gVMfS
