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Simply put - you are not your music. It is an extremely fallacious and dangerous thought which has lead some fine leaders such as the Nazi's to deem Mendelssohn "degenerate" art, the former USSR deem many composers betrayers of the party who deserve the camps, or Peter Phillips who supported the Catholic Church in England by writing music for its liturgy at a particularly bad time and was imprisoned. The mistake made was when leaders saw these composers' musics as somehow representing an "object" against their state rather than a complex person who may or may not share the state's ideology. However, although one is not their music, one cannot separate the impact various parts of their lives have upon what they produce. It is just a slippery matter of what compartments of their lives may have had influence upon their composition. Broadly, where you live, how you are raised, what you do and whom you spend most of your time with, all influence the act of composition. As to your "willpower" , a more palatable intellectual position is what role their music composrs thought it had in society. For Mahler, each of his symphonies were his own personal sagas in sound - and an exploration of the orchestra's timbral possibilities - plus he had at his disposal a top flight orchestra to conduct. Wagner's music was in part an expression of his nationlistic pride and also a more altrustic motive to develop a classical music better connected to German mythology and history. Bach wrote a majority of his works for the church to serve a very specific function and to understand the motivation of his works requires a good solid knowledge of Lutheranism. Beethoven was incredibly influenced by the philosophy of the French Revolution --- but also was very much a working musician - he wrote for the crowd in part - albeit a wealthy crowd who supported his explorations. For these examples I skim only the very surface. If this is what you mean it is not viable to compare one composer to the other, rather the arena to look is a history of aesthetics. But again a composer is not a music filled spirit who comes down from heaven or hell or whatever netherworld to dispense his aural beautitudes. No, a composer is a human being who happens to enjoy writing music. He or she enjoys it more if they are paid for it. Once you realize that, you may see how vacuous you opening thread reads. Possibly, you need to look at the aesthetics of music in one specific area - what has been considered the predominant function of music through a particular epoch? I raise this as your division between the Baroque/Classical composers and the Romantics does point to a manifestqation of a change in aesthetics due to a transformation of what society considered the main functions of music - a transformation one can point to starting as early as the late 16th century.

Look at what Bach did: transposition, invertion, retrograde, diminution, etc. Put it in a fugal passage, change the texture, change the instrument if possible. Beethoven is really the master of development so look at scores to see what he did to his initial motives.

1) Prokofiev 2nd 2) Bartok 3rd 3) Bartok 1st 4) Ravel Left hand 5) Poulenc Two pianos Rachmaninoff for me (I said for me) is like soap opera tears... Hold it HOLD it haha, is my opinion only.

Hm. I think that it's hard to judge, since aesthetics have changed so much between epochs that maybe to you it seems like they're not showing much, but at the time they were very radical. Think JS Bach's B minor mass for example, or his organ pieces which are rather wild (G minor prelude and fugue, for example.) I guess we can still speculate about it, but the truth is historically someone like CPE Bach was extremely radical, yet in contrast to Beethoven or Liszt he seems extremely tame, though it's hard to argue CPE Bach's music (other than being hugely influential) was not a result of his personality and composition questions, his music reflected a LOT of his character, I'd say.

I agree. I do NOT support or approve of any kind of censorship (locking threads, etc) when the intent of the thread was legit. I do NOT think you're trolling, regardless of whatever my personal opinion of your posts may or may not be, therefore you are in your right to attempt to explore your points and discuss them in this forum and I'm here to make sure you can do just that without all the drama.

At a certain level, all instruments become difficult. For starters, though, probably double-reed instruments.

I play pipe organ, I'm even building one, making one is hard, but control the low E on Soprano Sax is way harder, not a single person on earth has an idea WHY that note is so difficult to sustain without warble, but is truly demanding on perfect embouchure, you even have to soap the read before you play... any super acoustics engineer here ?