Favourite Composer(s)?

Who is your favourite composer?

My favourite composer at the moment is Koichi Sugiyama, the composer who is famed for composing the music to the Dragon Quest games. He has been frequently called "The Father of VideoGame Music" and he deserves this title. Even within the tiny limits of the NES soundchip, he was able to compose wonderful works that became masterpieces when he orchestrated them. His main musical influences are that of J.S. Bach and Handel, and he composes at least one work per soundtrack that is in their style, which sounds remarkably authentic. There are a few fugues across his huge musical opus, if you search hard enough. He is also known as a wonderful orchestrator too, as shown by his DQ Symphonic Suites and the outstanding Orchestral Game Concert Series. If you want to start listening to VGM, the OGCs are a great place to start.

As for a Classical composer, I can't really say at the mo because I've only been listening to piano music recently. I'll say Ravel for the moment.

Video game music? Koji Kondo, the composer behind the Mario theme, recognised by 2/3 of the world's population (apparently). His work for the Zelda series is also wonderful.

Other than that, I like film composers such as Thomas Newman and Don Davis, Ravel of course, Steve Reich (probably my main influence)...the list goes on. But those came to mind first.

Other than that, I like film composers such as Thomas Newman and Don Davis, Ravel of course, Steve Reich (probably my main influence)...the list goes on. But those came to mind first.

I like Thomas Newman too. He's probably one of the more creative movie composers out there that still pulls off a good score that works with a movie. As far as movie composers go, I will always love Howard Shore; however, when you're judging movie composers it's often really difficult to differentiate the skill of the composer from the overall quality of the movie.

My favorite classical composers would be Ravel, Mozart, Shostakovich, and Frederic Rzewski. This latter composer is still alive and if you haven't heard his music you owe it to yourself to hear him.

My favorite classical composers right now come from the Bach family. I mean the whole Bach family...not just one of the members in specific...the whole family! I love the simplicity of their music and how it flows. It's just beatiful. :(

If I had to pick...I would have to pick Rachmaninoff. Something about his music makes me feel really good in a not-so-creepy way. But right now i'm really into Holst. :(

My favorite classical composers right now come from the Bach family. I mean the whole Bach family...not just one of the members in specific...the whole family! I love the simplicity of their music and how it flows. It's just beatiful.  :(

I never thought of the whole family as a unit that way, but you're quite right. Talent ran in that family in the blood, and their impeccable musical training honed it to perfection. There isn't one of them I haven't enjoyed listening to and/or performing.

I have a lot of favourite composers, but no one really stands out anymore.

My greatest influences have been Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven and the other 18th and early 19th Century Classicists. There are many other composers from Ars Nova of the 14th Century to our own day that I enjoy and appreciate...too many to list.

As much as I love the music of the Classicists, I find that I'm sick of listening to the same 200 or 300 pieces constantly regurgitated. The other day, I turned on the radio, and Mozart's "Jupiter" Symphony was playing. I almost put the car out of gear trying to smack off the radio...I just couldn't listen to another performance of that piece, though I revere Mozart. I don't know yet whether anyone else feels that way, but this feeling has become a driving force for me in trying to accomplish two things:

1. reviving the music of other competent (if not "great," whatever that grotesquely subjective term means) Classicists; and

2. writing new - entirely new - music in the Classical idiom, and perhaps other idioms from the past.

I refuse to submit to the popular notion in academia that, to paraphrase one of my college professors, "everything that could be said in the idioms of the past has been said, or change would not have occurred." This is rubbish. Change in music happens organically because someone (like Beethoven) has an idea. The Classical period was actually one of the shortest in musical history, and it's primarily represented in the standard literature by the music of half a dozen men, great though they were. No one has been able to convince me that Classicism or any other idiom has played itself out. In my own work I may not be breaking new ground, but I am defitely saying something entirely new and personal in an old idiom.

Originally posted by J. Lee Graham@Jul 9 2005, 12:31 PM

I refuse to submit to the popular notion in academia that, to paraphrase one of my college professors, "everything that could be said in the idioms of the past has been said, or change would not have occurred."

I have to agree with jacob and J. Lee about classical methods of composing. Its allways good to know them, but allways experiment with as much new ones as possible.

As for the favorite composer, i'd have to say Stravinsky, Tchaikovsky and Dvorak are my biggest infuences. Thats and i'll put them as my favorites, mostly because they composed for everything - the orchestra, chamber ansamble, solo etc....(not like bach who motly composed for keybord intruments).

I also like Chopin, Prokofiev, Mussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov (well most of the russian school guys anyway...)

not like bach who motly composed for keybord intruments

Hi Wolf. If you haven't already, listen to some of Bach's several hundred surviving cantatas (secular and religious) and many instrumental works before you think of him as merely a keyboard composer. The old boy wrote for just about every instrument available in his day (and played most of them himself) as well as every ensemble conceivable then (and even some that weren't...hence the six Brandenburg Concertos).

Originally posted by J. Lee Graham@Jul 14 2005, 09:13 PM

Hi Wolf.

First of all, let's not call them piano works. The piano was invented in Bach's lifetime, but he only played a piano once in his life, and refused to play one again, calling it a "barbaric" instrument.

Second... Bach is known to have played the violin and viola; in fact, because orchestras were almost never conducted in that era, Bach frequently played viola in his own orchestras. IIRC, he also played the transverse flute and the trumpet (the Baroque natural trumpet, of course).

Third, Bach's choral works easily dwarf his keyboard output.

Originally posted by J. Lee Graham@Jul 9 2005, 10:31 AM

As much as I love the music of the Classicists, I find that I'm sick of listening to the same 200 or 300 pieces constantly regurgitated.

I've been avoiding dinner over the course of this trip. Have a look at why:

Sunday - Pastoral Symphony

Monday - Four Seasons

Tuesday - Mozart 40

Wednesday - Air on the G String

Yesterday - nothing, thankfully.

(I love the Jupiter Symphony, but only because I didn't hear it until I was 16, somehow.)

As for favourite composers...I'm not sure. * grins * I keep finding new ones!

My favorite composer is probably Frank Zappa.. I like John Cage a good deal to.. and Charles Ives.. and John Zorn... Sun Ra to... idk.. I like too much stuff.... but those are some favs

Are you the onion master?

My ten favorite music composers are:

1.)John Towner Williams :D

2.)Sir Edward Elgar :D

3.)J.S. Bach :D

4.)Sergei Rachmaninoff :wub:

5.)Ralph Vaughan-Williams :D

6.)George F. Handel :D

7.)Claude Debussy :happy:

8.)Peter I. Tchaikovsky :(

9.)Maurice Ravel :happy:

10.)Gustav Mahler :(

Ravel is my favorite composer. There isn't a single piece by him that I dislike.... I think each is a masterpiece!

I especially like his attention to detail in every aspect of composition - one of the most detailed composers to have ever lived.

Ravel is my favorite composer.  There isn't a single piece by him that I dislike.... I think each is a masterpiece!

I especially like his attention to detail in every aspect of composition - one of the most detailed composers to have ever lived.

I'm appreciating Ravel more and more as time goes on.

Detail. Indeed. I think he was to 20th Century music what Christian Dior was to couture. If you've ever seen a "New Look" Dior dress or evening gown, you'll know what I mean.

Guys,

James Newton Howard is by far and away my favorite. Sorry for brining up an old thread... lol.

Chris

I'm gonna attend the old school and say that Beethoven is by far my favorite. Although by no means is every work of his a masterpiece, so many pieces are so completely original, fiery, heartfelt and revolutionary that no one will ever match him in my book.

But Vivaldi, he's just great. Bach of course is always the inexaustible stream. Mozart was pretty decent too (ha! man am I pretentious). I've recently taken a liking to Chopin. As for nowdays, John Williams has some incredible stuff, and not just Star Wars and Indiana Jones.

I've only been into classical music and composing for a few years, so I haven't heard tons of stuff from every composer yet, which makes it very hard to judge.

My favorites for VGM are Yasunori Mitsuda (Xenogears, Chrono Trigger) and Nobuo Uematsu (Final Fantasies all the way up to at least VIII). For classical, I prefer Stravinsky, Ravel, Gershwin, Debussy, and Bach. Mozart is too hard for me to like! Though he did write some good stuff.

I'm going to have to say Malcolm Arnold. Easily he has the most influence on my music.

My favorite composers - no surprise at all here - are probably Brahms, Mendelssohn, and Borodin (not so much for his symphonies and string quartets as for his early chamber music!)... I also really like Shostakovich (though his influence on my music is almost nil), Beethoven, Schubert, Bloch, Villa-Lobos, and Martinu.

I definitely enjoy digging up music that isn't heard often but deserves to be... that's catapulted Joseph Rheinberger into my list of favorites (the current lack of attention to his work is almost criminal), along with Niels Gade and Charles Knox.

Sergei Rachmaninoff (Piano Concert #2)

John Williams (Hook, Empire Strikes Bach in particular)

Danny Elfman (Batman, Nightmare Before Christmas in particular)

Ralph Vaughan-Williams (everything, almost)

Sergei Prokofiev (Montegues and the Capulets)

Peter Illyich Tchaikovsky (Pathetique)

Ron Nelson (Everything, but Homage to Passacaglia and Homage to Macheaut in particular)

John Williams (Hook, Empire Strikes Bach in particular)

:unsure: Funniest typo ever

* laughs *

Completely missed that one.