Who is your favorite classical composer?

[alpenglow]

I have too many favorites:
Bach, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Elgar, Medtner, Sibelius, Rachmaninov to name a few.

I agree with comments that Saint-Saens is under-rated, thanks Jean-Yves Thibaudet's performance of Piano Concerto #5 this summer at Tanglewood.

[alpenglow]

I would probably say Joseph Haydn, if you are specifically referring to the classical period. I've noticed that several replies are for composers that are from the Romantic period (Schumann, Brahms, Chopin, etc).

If you like Haydn, you might enjoy this series by WQXR.
https://www.wqxr.org/104-days-of-haydn-2023/

[Walkure]

Mozart first, and then Beethoven.
Anton Bruckner is also a favorite, but I totally get that he can be an acquired taste (big fan of his 3rd, 5th, 7th and 8th symphonies, plus his Te Deum).

I think you're the first one to put Bruckner up there. Not going by any strict definition of classical here, as I lean heavily Romantic.

My top 5, in no particular order: Wagner, Bruckner, Brahms, Mendelssohn, John Williams

Rounding out the top 10: Handel, Hummel, Dvorak, Schubert, von Weber

Honorable Mentions: Holst, Rachmaninoff, Rimsky-Korsakov, Charpentier, Cavalli, Widor

Also, E-flat major is the best key. C minor is a distant second and then there's everything else.

[snackdog]

Frank Bridge is a genius often overlooked.

[jandres12]

How about the "patron saint of mediocrity"? Salieri!

Probably works well for all the three fund indexers.

[TnGuy]

Bach


David

[ace_it]

Since my children study some instruments I have the chance to listen to classical music whenever they listen to / study music. One kid genuinely has the hobby to do this in leisure time.

In general I find myself enjoy many composers of "classical" music - the "classical" genre to me includes prehistoric, Renaissance, Baroque, classical, romance, impressionism... etc.

Based on the frequency I listen to:

1. Mozart: his music work can be easily distinguished by my ears. They are interesting and pleasant.

2. Beethoven: his music surprisingly has a huge variety of style, possibly due to his desire to rebel and innovate given his personal life circumstances. I like most but not all of his work.

3. J.S. Bach: very consistent Baroque style, again, most of them can be easily distinguished by my ears. Many pieces I love; some I find myself completely tune out.

Next is a long list of composers with some hits I like, but no one really captured my attention as frequently as the three giants listed above:
Clementi, Haydn, Anton Diabelli, Jan Dussek, Chopin, Brahms, Debussy, Tchaikovsky, Vivaldi, Saint-Saëns, Sergei Prokofiev, Fauré, Bartók, Dvorák, Edvard Grieg, Mendelssohn, Handel, Liszt, Giuseppe Concone, Rossini, Rachmaninov.


I have difficulty finding friends who admire or listen to classical music, hence it feels a bit "lonely" in that sense.

I appreciate the effort of my children and even more so their teachers, such that I get to listen to a wonderful collection of classical music.

[AlohaBill]

A vote for:
Beethoven 7th and 9th
Mozart
J.S. Bach
Vivaldi
Tchaikovsky
Modest Mussorgsky Pictures at an Exhibition
Verdi
Wagner
John Williams ?
Puccini
After I finish my rock sessions (Led Zep this week) while walking for an hour, I will start listening to classical again.

[obgraham]

Bach


David

This.
Everyone else follows along.

[TravelforFun]

Bach


David

This.
Everyone else follows along.

If I had to pick one, this would be the one.

TravelforFun

[Kagord]

Mahler, I even have a fan sweatshirt.

[JPH]

I don't see any votes yet for my favorite Dmitri Shostakovich.

[Harri88]

Dvorak
Vivaldi
Pachelbel - Canon
Tchaikovsky
Would you consider Samuel Barber a classical composer? Adagio for Strings is beautiful piece of music.

[ace_it]

-omit-

[johan_s]

Frank Zappa.

[nisiprius]

Personally, I love the marches of John Phillip Sousa, the waltzes of Johann Strauss, and the short, one could almost say humorous pieces of Leroy Anderson. They are short, accessible, and hummable, but they are by no means simple, and in my opinion their musical "vocabulary and grammar" are essentially similar to that of classical music.

[SmileyFace]

Charles Ives

[telecaster]

Brian May!

[tetractys]

Look up and see!

Well to me the classic style started with CPE Bach in Prussia, who was greatly influenced by Telemann and Quantz, and then J Hayden at Esterházy, and ended before Beethoven, who brought in the romantic style. My favorites that epitomize the style are Hayden and Mozart.

[Charles Joseph]

Vivaldi
Bach

And I am going to step out of the box and say Andrés Segovia for his transcription of so many classical works intended for other instruments to classical guitar. I was fortunate to see Segovia perform twice and I shall never forget it.

[johan_s]

Philip Glass

Michael Nyman

(warning: extreme pretension alert!)

I’ve been enjoying listening to James McVinnie’s albums playing Glass. Counterpoint most recently and The Grid prior.

[Nicolas]

Edvard Grieg

Grieg for me too though I like many others. But he’s at the top.

[zie]

Clara Schumann, hands down the best.

[Nicolas]

Mozart first, and then Beethoven.
Anton Bruckner is also a favorite, but I totally get that he can be an acquired taste (big fan of his 3rd, 5th, 7th and 8th symphonies, plus his Te Deum).

I think you're the first one to put Bruckner up there. Not going by any strict definition of classical here, as I lean heavily Romantic.

My top 5, in no particular order: Wagner, Bruckner, Brahms, Mendelssohn, John Williams

Rounding out the top 10: Handel, Hummel, Dvorak, Schubert, von Weber

Honorable Mentions: Holst, Rachmaninoff, Rimsky-Korsakov, Charpentier, Cavalli, Widor

Also, E-flat major is the best key. C minor is a distant second and then there's everything else.

I think Brückner’s fourth symphony is his best. I don’t much like the others, but that one’s good.

[windaar]

A great thread to bring back to life.
Stravinsky
Debussy
Ravel
Bartok
Ives
And yes, in measured doses, at the right times, and with the right understanding, Schoenberg.

[windaar]

Frank Zappa.

Yes, absolutely; he brought the spirit of Varese into the late 20th c.

[Nicolas]

A favorite is Franz Lizst, especially his Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2. There are many variations on it, but strangely enough, I think one of the better ones is in an Academy Award-winning "Tom & Jerry" cartoon, "The Cat Concerto."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbxArVlS5tU

Then you must watch this performance:
Liszt: Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 — Khatia Buniatishvili

[quantAndHold]

Mozart. Followed by Bach.

I mean, I like Beethoven, but the fact that Beethoven never wrote a flute concerto strikes him from the list.

Signed,
A Flute Player

[UpperNwGuy]

Gustav Mahler.

[JayB]

Brahms, mainly for his chamber music

Bach, mainly for his absolutely sublime sonatas & partitas for violin as well as his cello suites

[22twain]

I keep track of my music collection (all classical) in a MySQL database. One of the things I figured how to do is generate a list of composers, sorted by the total length of my recordings of their music.

Unfortunately, the database is offline now because I'm transitioning to a new Unix setup (virtual machine in Parallels Desktop on an iMac). I have a database dump in the form of SQL statements that will recreate and re-populate the tables when I get MySQL up and running again. I did save the results of a composers vs. length search from several years ago. I don't expect the results would be much different today. The top six were:

1. Sibelius (I'm half Finnish-American, so I glommed onto him when I started listening to music in high school, and have been almost obsessive about collecting recordings of his music. Thanks to the Swedish label BIS for recording everything he wrote! I also have about a couple dozen sets of his symphonies, along with a lot of other stuff.)

2. Haydn (All those symphonies, in three complete sets; and complete sets of piano sonatas, piano trios, string quartets, operas and oratorios.)

3. Beethoven (Symphonies and concertos in multiple sets, and the Brilliant Classics Complete Beethoven edition on 85 CDs, which I bought new for about $30 several years ago, thanks to a pricing error on Amazon that lasted for only a couple of days before they corrected it.)

4. Bach (Complete cantatas, organ music, etc.)

5. Mozart (Complete symphonies, concertos, string quartets, etc.)

6. Nielsen (Carl, the Dane; I discovered him early on in connection with Sibelius because they were born in the same year and at one time were often paired together. Multiple recordings of most of his music except for his songs which I don't think have been systematically recorded yet. I still remember sitting in a listening room in my college's music library more than 50 years ago, hearing his Third Symphony ("Sinfonia espansiva") for the first time, in a recording conducted by Leonard Bernstein. Not with the NY Philharmonic, but with the Royal Danish Orchestra, which obviously knew their Nielsen! If you don't know Nielsen, I suggest you start with this recording.)

[I suppose I might as well reveal that my avatar is a caricature of Nielsen from an album cover.]

After these six, there's a big step down, by about 50% in total length per composer, to the next tier, which includes composers like Brahms, Wagner, Mahler, Grieg, Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, Dvorak, Shostakovich, R. Strauss, Messiaen, Villa-Lobos, Bruckner, Schubert, Rautavaara,... Still a healthy representation, but not like the Big Six.

Branching out from Sibelius and Nielsen, I've pretty well covered the Nordic countries (Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Iceland) and the Baltics (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania).

I've been collecting this stuff for more than 50 years, first on LPs and cassettes, then on CDs and now downloads.

[LittleMaggieMae]

Do Gilbert and Sullivan count?

[4nursebee]

I think it was when I was still in high school, perhaps just a few years out, I had a job at a mall working for a large department store (Picture Sears, but not that one). My department was in luggage and stereos. I had only an hourly pay, others that had been there longer had some commission component of paychecks. I recall three full time employees and a handful of part timers, one of whom was a teacher from my school. I was holiday help for one Xmas, worked maybe two months, mostly weekends with maybe an odd short shift in the evenings. They had 3-4 CDs to play on the equipment to demonstrate, I really liked one of them and that is what I used to demo the equipment and the sublime beautiful sound. When I picked up my last check I was able to see a tally of sales by employee, I was # 1. I was naïve and fresh, not a bit of coercion in my bones at that point, it really was the music selling the system. Thus, the answer that immediately came to mind was:

Vivaldi (four seasons)

[Dantes]

The word "favorite" does not seem quite right, but the composers I have been most intensely interested in have varied over time.

• Brahms, in earlier days, because his works seemed dense and perfect - characteristics that I am not as interested in now.

• Liszt - an extremely varied composer. His sonata, particularly, achieves so much using so little. There is a fascinating 3 volume biography of him by Alan Walker. I think Alfred Brendel, in response to an interviewer's question, said that Liszt was the composer he would most like to have dinner with.

• Shostakovich. And to add another book recommendation, "Shostakovich - A Life Remembered", by Elizabeth Wilson - its basically a collection of reminiscences by Shostakovich's contemporaries, and a great source of info.

• Philip Glass. I still remember when I first heard Metamorphosis on the radio.

But there are so many great composers.

[backpacker61]

Not all from the classical period but I like
Edward Elgar (particularly the 'Enigma Variations')
Ralph Vaughan Williams
Francois Couperin (harpsichord)
John Dowland, Sylvius Leopold Weiss (lute)
Thomas Tallis (choral)
Turlough O'Carolan (harp)

[ruhigste]

Antonin Dvorak

[brawlrats]

Not all from the classical period but I like
Edward Elgar (particularly the 'Enigma Variations')
Ralph Vaughan Williams
Francois Couperin (harpsichord)
John Dowland, Sylvius Leopold Weiss (lute)
Thomas Tallis (choral)
Turlough O'Carolan (harp)

I assume you've heard it if you list RVW, but Vaughn Williams' "Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis" is a fabulous piece of music.

[backpacker61]

Not all from the classical period but I like
Edward Elgar (particularly the 'Enigma Variations')
Ralph Vaughan Williams
Francois Couperin (harpsichord)
John Dowland, Sylvius Leopold Weiss (lute)
Thomas Tallis (choral)
Turlough O'Carolan (harp)

I assume you've heard it if you list RVW, but Vaughn Williams' "Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis" is a fabulous piece of music.

Yes, and I like 'The Lark Ascending' very well, too.

[A440]

The question for me is too broad. It would be easier to answer what composer of each style period (e.g Baroque, Classical, Romantic, etc) and even what form during that period.
For example:
-Baroque Period: J.S. Bach was master of writing the fugue. I also prefer his concertos over Vivaldi's. But, he never wrote any operas, so Handel has the preference in that genre. I also like that Bach was a family man, with 20 children (most of which did not lived to adulthood) and seemed to be frugal. He would have made a great Boglehead.
-Classical Period: F.J. Haydn was the "father of the symphony". He had a great "gig" working for the Esterhazy's and retired with a pension, but kept working and became a celebrity in London, much like Handel did before him. If it weren't for being overshadowed by his student and friend W.A. Mozart, he would be better known today. Too bad his marriage didn't work out, but divorce in those days was a big "no...no".
-Romantic Period: Composers had their own individualistic style. Wagner was a real S.O.B., but was maybe the most influencial composer ever. Listen to highlights of his Ring Cycle https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgzZ_nLOJJE
(or all 15 hours if you wish) and you will hear his influence on John William's movie music. IMHO, Tchaikovsky wrote music for ballets better than anyone. As a pianist myself, Chopin ("the poet of the piano") wrote some of the most challenging and beautiful music for the piano, and almost exclusively for this instrument. Liszt wasn't too shabby either and he was maybe the first "rock star". Too many other greats during this period from which to choose.
-Impressionist: I love the piano music of Debussy and have played most of it. He was also a rebel while studying at the Conservatoire de Paris, much to the chagrin of his teachers there. Ravel would be a close second
-Contemporary: Gershwin for incorporating elements of Jazz, Copland for his use of American themes, and Stravinsky's ballets ( I especially enjoy Petroushka).

[JayDee37]

Hmmm, tough one!

Probably Dvorak, Beethoven, Telemann, Smetana for certain moods, and it seems like most folks are allowing Gershwin and Copeland, so them too. How is ragtime classified? I've always loved that as well.

[22twain]

-Contemporary: Gershwin for incorporating elements of Jazz, Copland for his use of American themes, and Stravinsky's ballets ( I especially enjoy Petroushka).

To me, it seems odd to refer to these guys as "contemporary". Gershwin died in 1937, Stravinsky in 1971, and Copland in 1990 (but he stopped composing in the early 1970s).

John Adams is still active. Wikipedia lists works by him in 2022 and 2023. Steve Reich and Philip Glass wrote stuff in the 2010s.

[nisiprius]

Charles Ives

I can't really say I like his stuff... I keep trying to acquire the taste but haven't... but I will admit to some dumb tourist pleasure some years ago, when we were in the Stockbridge area for an Arlo Guthrie concert, in parking the car at a parking lot alongside the Housatonic at Stockbridge, just so I could be parked there while playing my CD of Charles Ives' "The Housatonic at Stockbridge."

[nisiprius]

Do Gilbert and Sullivan count?

Not Gilbert, the lyricist, in a literal sense. He is quoted as having said "I know two tunes. One is 'God Save the King,' and one isn't."

Sullivan... interesting question. Like the people I mentioned (Sousa, Johann Strauss, Leroy Anderson), he certainly is a classically trained musician, using classical music vocabulary. When I was growing up in the 1950s there was a big push on to sell classical music to the masses under the rubric of "music appreciation:" Deems Taylor, Sigmund Spaeth, Walt Disney's Fantasia. And part of it was always assertions that radio and TV ought to play more "operas and operettas." Did "operettas" only mean pseudo-serious composers like Sigmund Romberg and Victor Herbert? I think it would include Gilbert & Sullivan, which I think has the proper aura of capital-C Culture around it.

Sullivan longed to make his mark as a Serious Composer of Grand Opera, and all his friends, to say nothing of Queen Victoria, kept urging him to do so. He did write one opera Ivanhoe. It didn't stink--I've heard bits and scraps of it--but you couldn't call it a success, either.

Anyway, I guess Sullivan counts, although none of the music he's famous for are in long forms.

[Fallible]

Not all from the classical period but I like
Edward Elgar (particularly the 'Enigma Variations')
Ralph Vaughan Williams
Francois Couperin (harpsichord)
John Dowland, Sylvius Leopold Weiss (lute)
Thomas Tallis (choral)
Turlough O'Carolan (harp)

I assume you've heard it if you list RVW, but Vaughn Williams' "Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis" is a fabulous piece of music.

Yes, and I like 'The Lark Ascending' very well, too.

Agree on both pieces by Williams and think the Toronto Orchestra's version brings the "Fantasia" out best, in particular the intricate violin/viola duets.

[beernutz]

Townshend

[Nicolas]

-Contemporary: Gershwin for incorporating elements of Jazz, Copland for his use of American themes, and Stravinsky's ballets ( I especially enjoy Petroushka).

To me, it seems odd to refer to these guys as "contemporary". Gershwin died in 1937, Stravinsky in 1971, and Copland in 1990 (but he stopped composing in the early 1970s).

John Adams is still active. Wikipedia lists works by him in 2022 and 2023. Steve Reich and Philip Glass wrote stuff in the 2010s.

If the composer was alive during your lifetime then by definition he or she is your contemporary. So Stravinsky and Copland are my contemporaries while Gershwin is not.

[Turbo29]

Bach
Telemann
Handel
Hayden
Corelli

[A440]

-Contemporary: Gershwin for incorporating elements of Jazz, Copland for his use of American themes, and Stravinsky's ballets ( I especially enjoy Petroushka).

To me, it seems odd to refer to these guys as "contemporary". Gershwin died in 1937, Stravinsky in 1971, and Copland in 1990 (but he stopped composing in the early 1970s).

John Adams is still active. Wikipedia lists works by him in 2022 and 2023. Steve Reich and Philip Glass wrote stuff in the 2010s.

If the composer was alive during your lifetime then by definition he or she is your contemporary. So Stravinsky and Copland are my contemporaries while Gershwin is not.

They were all contemporary composers when I was in college back in the day.

[Jonesee]

Mozart
Bach

I like Mozart so much my Labrador Retriever was named Mozart's Shadow. He went by "Mo".