Who is, in your opinion, the world's worst reputable composer?

actually, I think that most composers' reputations are ruined through mass hysteria and over-performance of their 'most popular' works.

Exactly what I think....

But as for the thread title, I would never call any composer "bad" or "worst".

Why does this thread never die? ;(

I quite agree, EldKatt. But forgive me, I cannot resist the invitaion to register my "worst."

As per one prefessor's dictum that I not downgrade a composer until I'd heard everything, I confess that I have heard all of Johannes Ciconia's 60 or so works, and have read score on some.

They're terrible. Completly dicomfited polyphony, rendered in a bland, flat modal style with elementary rhythms and poor text underlay. His one hit, "O Rosa Bella," I'm certain is misattributed; perhaps it's really Landini.

Ciconia is "reputable" in that he is very early for a named composer of polyphony who has a portfolio of reasonable quantity. He represents the generation between Machaut and DuFay, that's like 1380-1420. It begins dominated by Italians - Francesco Landini and Zacara da Teramo; John Dunstaple arrives to usher in the common triad towards the end of that period. This was the final floweing of homophony-free polyphony, and includes the ars subtilior, Solage, the others in the Chantilly Codex and the composers in the Old Hall Ms, most of whom have only one or two works.

Ciconia's cream rose to the top only because his name represents a period of time where we have poor representation of named composers; there are no other ma. Ciconia's harmonic technique is wayyy inferior to Machaut and doesn't even come close to the likes of Dunstaple or DuFay. His isorhythmic motets are especially bad, the combined texts working themselves into a meaningless, Dadaistic jumble of Latin.

That is why he's my pick for worst, although he's still better than some 19th century composers of parlour music that I've seen. None of these are, however, reputable.

Uncle Dave

Sorry, make that:

there are no other major Franco-Flemish composers of this timeframe.

Please dont shoot me but i dont like John Rutter as a composer. I haven't listened to a lot of his music but what I have listened to it all sounds the same,IE his requiem. I do like a few of his smaller Choral compositions.

Bach is often referred to as the composers' composer, I guess because of his comprehensive/encyclopedic knowledge of the music before him and of his time, his technical know-how

and the incredible high standards of basically anything he ever wrote - apart from those "youthful" keyboard pieces that not everybody likes ;)

You think Bach is one of the worst composers? :huh:

You think Bach is one of the worst composers? :huh:

Well, isn't his opinion valid? :P

I'm too dumb for this thread :(

I really do hate Sondheim right now...

Well, isn't his opinion valid? :P

His post is sort of ambiguous, like he misunderstood the thread topic...

Otherwise, I don't see as his reason being any reason why he's the worst??? ??? No clue.

I mean, um. He said good things about him! A bunch of them!

?????