<p>I think the day I decided I could really like Wagner after all was when I watched the first part of Meistersinger, the Met DVD under James Levine… such happy music.</p>
<p>Bach
Debussy
Copeland
Vaughan Williams
Puccini
Ravel
Tchaikovsky
Handel
Not in order - in order may be impossible</p>
<p>Well this is the year we are rocking the Ring in Los Angeles. So I am preparing myself to
love Wagners music. [LA</a> Opera presents Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen](<a href=“http://www.laoperaring.com/]LA”>http://www.laoperaring.com/)</p>
<p>My favorites:
Always a tie between Beethoven and Bach for the top spot (and James Taylor!) But I have favorite pieces from just about everyone else mentioned above. I’m sort of a beginner to classical music.
This week I heard for the first time Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade and I am in love.
How did I live this long without hearing it before?</p>
<p>Favorite composer? As a composer’s mom I would be derelict in my duty if I did not say my child!</p>
<p>I particularly loved playing Mozart’s clarinet concerto on the french horn. A real treat.</p>
<p>“I particularly loved playing Mozart’s clarinet concerto on the french horn. A real treat.”</p>
<p>wow, i would love to hear that!
and i’m joking, mozart’s clarinet concerto isn’t my favorite but it’s still a wonderful piece of music.</p>
<p>Least Favorite Composers:
- Schoenberg (I can’t stand serialism… I just see no art in it)
- Telemann (Again nothing of merit)
- Vivaldi (Four Seasons is one of the most overrated pieces of music ever)
- Wagner (I both love and hate Wagner… He has most truly incredible moments, and some throughly dull quarters of an hour…)</p>
<p>No art in serialism??? Nothing of merit in Teleman or Vivaldi!!! Don’t like Wagner!!! BAHH WHAT? </p>
<p>Anyway, after that outburst, here is my list of favorite composers for today (it changes by the day, easily): </p>
<p>Dvorak
Palestrina
Verdi
Mozart
Berlioz
Mahler
Strauss
Tchaikovsky
Brahms
Puccini
Schoenberg<br>
Glass
Chopin</p>
<p>Favorites: Ives, Bartok, Satie</p>
<p>Unfavorites: Well, the more I listen to this giant box set of Phillip Glass that my son has, the more I question whether there is anything to it at all.</p>
<p>Mozart, Debussy, Copland, Ravel, Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky, and Hindemith.</p>
<p>Lots of folks dismiss Vivaldi because they have been Four Seasoned to death, try something new.Check out Cecelia Bartoli’s Vivaldi concerts on YOUTUBE (especially Sventurata Navicella AND Sposa Son Disprezzata)</p>
<p>I’ve said this before- Wagner’s music makes me feel like I’m being hit on the head repeatedly. </p>
<p>Oh, yeah, Ives. I like him.</p>
<p>I think it is unfair to judge Vivaldi by the 4 seasons or Pachelbel by the Canon in D, because the music has been so overexposed and played. Both men wrote a lot more then those pieces, and many of them are close to brilliant (I love vivaldi’s guitar music a lot). To me that is like claiming Beethoven’s 9th symphony is junk, because the Ode to Joy has been used in countless movies and commercials…</p>
<p>As far as Wagner goes, I always like what is attributed to Mark Twain: “I have heard it said that the music of Wagner is better then it sounds” (though to be honest, Wagner’s music kind of grows on you, even if the man was as vile as they come)</p>
<p>I love Vivaldi. I played the 4-violin concerto with some friends this summer, and it was so much fun! Recently, a lot more Vivaldi music has been uncovered, and is going to be played/recorded. There was an article about in the NY Times earlier this year. I’m excited to see what they dig up!</p>
<p>^^ The difference is that while I like Beethoven 9, I’ve never liked the Four Seasons…
I did however look at the four-violin concerto which is very good.</p>
<p>@Hunt
Regarding Phillip Glass there is only one word… Koyannisqatsi…</p>
<p>Josquin des Prez, Bach, Shostakovich (string quartets), Corigliano, Lang (Little Match Girl Passion), and Reich (Different Trains). </p>
<p>(I am exposed to composers through my daughter, in the last few years, and she claims to be proud of me for these choices.)</p>
<p>^ I’m a composer as well, out of curiosity where is your daughter studying and what style music is her stuff?</p>
<p>Stravinsky.</p>
<p>Yank-
There is a really good piece about baroque music in ListenMusic magazine (an interesting attempt at a US based classical music magazine, focusing on making it more relevent). Vivaldi was a revolutionary, the list of first with him is pretty impressive. Among other things, he was responsible for the movement from concerto Grossi to solo concertos,moved from the heavy polyphany typical of the baroque era and replaced it with a single solo instrument, the tutti of the orchestra, and is credited with the concept of ritornello (i.e tutti plays theme, soloist plays their part, tutti comes back with a variation on the main them)…there are other things, but despite the snide crap about Vivaldi writing 500 versions of the same concerto, there was a lot there.</p>
<p>Unfortunately the 4 seasons has been overplayed, and generally by schlocky orchestras and bad violinists. If you hear it done live as a violin concerto, rather then as background music for a movie or toilet bowl cleaner, by someone good at it (I like Bell’s recent version of it, Sarah Chang’s on the other hand left me cold) with a good performing group (I think Bell did it with St. Martin in the Field), it sounds very different, or even better, with one of the dynamic early music groups:)</p>