Who is the best composer of all time? Look inside please!

Go study his Preludes and Etudes and you'll see that Chopin's stylistic breadth is actually much more varied than that of most of his contemporaries.

which might say more about the time than anything else.

Course I haven't studied anything in depth, so I'm just starting scraggy.

at least chopin's name finally gets mentioned. >.>

i personally really like his music. :D

Bach's contrapuntal knowledge owns any other composer out there. 'Nuff said.

Eh...?

Well maybe...

But Mendelssohn's definitely up there, and his harmonic language/orchestration skills were pretty sweet too.

I'll say again:

Mahler!

I only meant that all of Chopin's pieces are quite clearly Chopin. The pieces themselves, and their personal style can very, but Chopin is Chopin. That isn't an insult, but praise of him. I really love Chopin's music...

I think I'll listen to some now...

Yay Chopin!!! :D

Eh...?

Well maybe...

But Mendelssohn's definitely up there, and his harmonic language/orchestration skills were pretty sweet too.

MENDELSSOHN!!!!! :D

Johann Sebastian Bach

Those who disagree are just being atheistic.

Johannes Brahms is my top composer. Although I haven't listened to a lot of his music, what I have listened to has moved me and inspired me more than any other composer. With Brahms you can never tell what hes doing until he reveals it to you, and then when you hear it makes more sense than Bach or Mozart. Brahms keeps me on the edge of my seat waiting for every single note (I think I might be obsessed:O).

Here's a name that hasn't come up much:

Shostakovich.

The nature of this thread means I can take a "my opinion is right" stance and say things that even I disagree with if I over-think them, so huzzah! for this thread's creation!

His 8th String Quartet is probably my favourite piece of music. The emotion is very strong, and the way he uses his signature to tie the piece together is amazing. Wherever the piece is heard, it's really hard not to sit still and just listen. From start to finish, it's all emotion. It's incredibly sad in some parts, and bitterly sarcastic in others. Everything an angsty teenager needs!

Johannes Brahms is my top composer. Although I haven't listened to a lot of his music, what I have listened to has moved me and inspired me more than any other composer. With Brahms you can never tell what hes doing until he reveals it to you, and then when you hear it makes more sense than Bach or Mozart. Brahms keeps me on the edge of my seat waiting for every single note (I think I might be obsessed:O).

i agree with half of what you said.

hmm looking inside myself and telling who's the best composer?

easy!!

ME! hahah :P

seriously, the best composer ever is just the one that moves us more than other and tells us what other doesn't, but there's not a true best composer.

they are all great on their own way, in their own time period.

so for me:

the winner of -the best of all time with "ex aequo" - is

MUSIC and THE HUMAN BEING/CREATIVITY

Madrid, huh?

You Spanish were never the best english speakers.

HAHA

*high fives M_is_D*

Um.. I don't know if its okay to post the TWO best composers in history, but I can't choose one:

F.F. Chopin

J.S. Bach

are both No. 1 for me, although it was a tough choice.

I just joined this forum, mostly to engage in an active community. Ironically, this appears to be a long dead thread. If I find a new one in this vein, I'll post there, but shoot...if I were to pick one just now, it would have to be Gustav Holst.

Some of the most imagination packed music I've ever heard, with such an English sound. The often massive and rapid progression of many horns together in his music is rare, but not unique to him, Stravinsky is one that does something similar, its so impressive the way he does it, and he has the strings dancing with the powerhouse horns. But it feels more liberating and flowing than Stavinsky, plus it has that unique tonality to it that Holst invented, the modern English sound, plus the "space/war" sound that had been developing for a while. Holst is perhaps the fullest sound I can think of along with Dvorak, it has incredible substance and yet it is incredibly agile. My jaw gapes at certain progressions in the fast movements of his ballet stuff for "the perfect fool". The Planets are not a rip off of le Sacre de Printemps by Stravinsky, he borrowed ideas from Stravinsky and Schoeberg, but his music is very original. He compiles all the best I've heard from different composers, without overdoing it, and adds his own "english" spin to it. Egdon Heath is one of the finest pieces of gradeur I've ever heard. Plus, he's the most Eastern sounding Western composer I can and rapid strings, I can mellow it out and bask in his slower pieces like Neptune, Egdon Heath, and Venus.

Oh, but I love Aaron Copland soo much as well, he's the American Holst, but totally different. I don't care if that breaks the rules, I said I picked Holst didn't I, but I had to mention Copland.

Having also just seen this thread, I am also going to chime in.

Like many other people here, my favorite composer d'jour is... Beethoven.

First, someone earlier stated that Beethoven was great because there is a "beethoven perspective" and he didn't even know it. Balderdash. Beethoven was an incredibly cosmopolitan man who was very aware of his impact on music and artistic communities. As he stated to a prince who wanted Beethoven to become his court composer "Princes will come and go, but there is only one Beethoven." Few other composers had such a sense of their purpose in the evolution of music.

Second, Beethoven was a master of musical form and motivic development. Beethoven used both long-form and short-form when writing his symphonic movements and piano sonatas. Some of his pieces use large "theme complexes" which rely on tonal center or similarity of motives for unity. Other pieces are nearly monothematic, showing the influence of Hayden on his musical development. Beethoven has several characteristic motives and treatments that appear in many of his works, such as the "sigh" motive, the use of horn calls, and the funeral march/dirge motive, which is best shown in the 7th Symphony, mov 2, but also appears in the Ab-minor piano sonata (or is it Ab Maj? I forget right now). This sort of musical cataloguing and self-borrowing may have originally came from composers such as Handel (who, as one of the few "English Greats", enjoyed success after other late Baroque composers such as JS Bach fell into obscurity between the 18th and 19th centuries. Interesting side note - Bach actually died as a greatly disliked composer and was shadowed by his own son [CPE Bach], who was likely a greater influence to Beethoven [late-beethoven excluded] than JS Bach would have been), but it was used later with great success by Wagner in his organization of the leitmotif and Mahler in his shameless recycling of material.

Third, Beethoven had very little respect for society. As a composer, he was (that I know of) the first that had no interest of being a court musician or seeking benefactors and supported himself off of commissions and resulting sales. One might remember that while Beethoven succeeded in this, Mozart died in almost complete obscurity and horrible poverty. He showed very little respect for authority figures or for traditions of courtship or nobility. Though he was conscious of his audience and aware of his influence, he did not pander to them and sought as much distance as possible.

maybe this will ressurect this thread, although i wish we could talk about our choices some.

I hear an unrivaled amount of pathos in Scriabin's music. He manages to be evocative and completely unique.

I really, really want to go with Schubert. His music is endlessly inventive, rhythically captivating, and intricate.

That said, I think Mozart is gonna have to be the pick. He was exceptional across ALL genres. He moved the historcial musical dialogue forward, and expanded the expressiveness of symphonies, chamber works and the concertos. His musical knowledge and craftsmanship is unparalleled.

While I recognize Beethoven's genius and many great gifts to music, I find him weak in vocal composition, at least compared to Mozart. And a little self-indulgent, beyond any consideration of the evolving nature of composition at the time.

Of course, this kind of question is so subjective, and almost imposible to really answer!

Mozart.

Best ever?

Andew Lloyd Webber.

[/sarcasm]

Ralph Vaughan Williams. To begin with, I'm an anglophile, and a sucker for vaguely celtic-sounding melodies. Also, I like how unabashedly populist he is. There's isn't a shred of pretension in his music, everything's simple and melodic (at least at first listen), even at the expense of form, his fantasias being a prime example. It's all so direct and accessible to even an uninitiated listener that you can listen to it for hours at a time without getting tired.

It's true, he does.

Well, I wouldn't say "completely". But otherwise, it's true, he does.

While I aspire to enjoy all types of (classical) composers from medieval to contemporary, at this time my favorite composers are Bach and Chopin, which is interesting because Composer283 holds (or held) the same opinion. But between the two composers, I'd have to say Bach is my favorite for now; his music is so incredibly profound and deep it's just amazing. I refer especially to his organ music in the minor keys.

Has anybody here heard of 'Allan Pettersson'? He wrote 15 (or 16?) rather dark and hopeless symphonies. I like the mans works, and I'm just throwing a new (?) name out there for anybody that's interested.