Most Controversial Composers

So I am making a list for my youtube channel over the top ten most controversial composers. This list is for composers who are controversial due to their music, their ideas, or their actions. It includes composers who may not be controversial today but would have been during their life time, as well as composers who became controversial as more information was made known. However, I need your help in finalizing my list. So far my list is as followed:

1. Iamus and its sibling  Melomics109
2. Richard Wagner
3. Mamoru Samuragochi
4. Arnold Schoenberg
5. John Cage
6. Carlo Gesualdo
7. Brian Ferneyhough
8. John Adams
9. Ludwig Van Beethoven
10. Pierre Boulez

I would like to know what your opinions are on who and where they should be on this list. Who do you think desires to be the most controversial composer?

Surprised Stravinsky didn't make it.  I think any composer that has a premiere of a new work causing a riot should get on the list.

I would like to know what your opinions are on who and where they should be on this list. Who do you think desires to be the most controversial composer?

Short answer: any avant-gardist ranging from 1910-1960.

Slightly longer answer:

1) Arnold Schoenberg.

2) Richard Wagner.

3) Igor Stravinsky.

4) Ludwig van Beethoven.

5) Gustav Mahler.

6) John Cage.

7) Pierre Boulez.

8) Karl Stockhausen.

9) Brian Ferneyhough.

10) The Beatles.

Bonus answer: Antonio Salieri.

Another bonus answer: any female composer of any era before 1980.

I don't believe Stravinsky was THAT controversial. The riot was mainly due to Ninjinsky's choreography and had less to do with the music. I believe the current most controversial composer is probably John Adams, due to the fake BS outrage over the MET's production of his Klinghoffer opera. 

It's an esoteric list. Brian Ferneyhough? Am I suppossed to look this guy up?

I read that Debussy beat his wife. I guess she didn't see the point in all that snowflake jazz.

John Lennon was tracked by the FBI, so he was pretty controversial.

Richard Wagner for being anti-semetic. But Hell, that's half of Europe these days.

Milli-vanilli for lip synching ...

What's the point of this list?

It's an esoteric list. Brian Ferneyhough? Am I suppossed to look this guy up?

 

I read that Debussy beat his wife. I guess she didn't see the point in all that snowflake jazz.

John Lennon was tracked by the FBI, so he was pretty controversial.

Richard Wagner for being anti-semetic. But Hell, that's half of Europe these days.

Milli-vanilli for lip synching ...

 

What's the point of this list?

This list is mainly just a typical top ten list you would find on youtube. Nothing too serious. My original criteria are composers who wrote music so out their and unusal even by the standards of their contemporaries (i.e. composer too avant garde for other avant garde composers), composers who had radical philosophies (like Wagner and his anti-Semitism), or composers who did things that were shocking, criminal, or put into question their body of work (composers who may have murdered someone or faked who they were). 

I dare say Schoenberg was arguably the most Controversial of all-time.  One of the reasons for his "atonality" (a term he disliked) was so "people could talk about German music for the next hundred years."  I think he succeeded

I dare say Schoenberg was arguably the most Controversial of all-time.  One of the reasons for his "atonality" (a term he disliked) was so "people could talk about German music for the next hundred years."  I think he succeeded

I would agree with this statement. I'm no musicologist, and my knowledge of music history has some gaping holes in it, but I would go so far as to say that there hadn't been such a dramatic advancement (not as in 'better'; just move toward modernism) or shift in styles or thought or attitudes toward music as with Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique. Hauer should get some credit here for his twelve-tone ideas that were ultimately overshadowed by Schoenberg's system. One could maybe argue that it was an idea waiting to happen...

In a video on YouTube about Schoenberg's (wonderful) piano concerto, Mitsuko Uchida talks about how Debussy's rebellion of traditional harmony was to kind of chuck it out the window and leave it behind, while Schoenberg grabbed it with both hands and actively fought against it. He was a big deal, and other people of (roughly) the time (like Stravinsky, Mahler, Scriabin) have kind of lost their shock-value or controversy, in my opinion. While they're not universally admired, their works hold solid places in the repertoire. It's been 100 years and Schoenberg is still a point of contention for many people, I'd say. 

After Schoenberg, the next BIG one for me would be Milton Babbitt... I'm surprised he didn't make the list already, and I have lately been obsessed with his work. His Three Compositions for Piano, as I recall, was the first piece to use "total serialism" or whatever you want to call it, apparently coming in a few years before Frenchmen like Messiaen or Boulez (rightfully on the list). I have come to be really fascinated by his stuff. I can't say I understand it or get it, but his string quartets (the second and sixth in particular), clarinet quintet, and even his first piano concerto are at the very least extremely interesting if not downright enjoyable. 

But he still seems to garner quite a lot of spleen from music critics and musicians who see (hear) him as nothing but a bunch of noise. The same I suppose could be said for Boulez and many others who worked with serial techniques; I just picked him because he was (by some accounts) the earliest adopter of the idea. I still find Boulez's works hard to warm up to. Babbitt far more approachable, to me. 

Aside from those already mentioned, I'd say Ferneyhough and Finnissey are good contenders; I find their works wholly unintelligible, but then again... haven't given them much effort. Same goes for Stockhausen, Reich, Berio, Schnittke. 

Great topic, by the way. 

As an early musicky suggestion, I'd like to vote for Claudio Monteverdi for basically reinventing music and having massive arguments with contemporary theorists.

Also, Gilles Joye composed a mass based on the name of his favorite prostitute :P

(also henry VIII)

I know she doesn't necessarily generate the same talk and attention as others on this list, but I feel like I should mention her anyway just on principle: Galina Ustvolskaya.

She had a pretty unusual style even for the avant-garde. She didn't start any riots or hate any Jews, but she was a weird one for sure. There were certainly those among her contemporaries who disliked her and her music. Of course, that's true of a lot of composers so that alone may not say much.

Like I said, I'm mentioning her on principle. I just like trying to spell her name! :P

I'm not sure if controversial is the right term to describe him but Sorabji was an eccentric for sure both personality wise and in regards to his music.  I find it completely incomprehensible but he has his hardcore admirers. 

I would agree with this statement. I'm no musicologist, and my knowledge of music history has some gaping holes in it, but I would go so far as to say that there hadn't been such a dramatic advancement (not as in 'better'; just move toward modernism) or shift in styles or thought or attitudes toward music as with Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique. Hauer should get some credit here for his twelve-tone ideas that were ultimately overshadowed by Schoenberg's system. One could maybe argue that it was an idea waiting to happen...

In a video on YouTube about Schoenberg's (wonderful) piano concerto, Mitsuko Uchida talks about how Debussy's rebellion of traditional harmony was to kind of chuck it out the window and leave it behind, while Schoenberg grabbed it with both hands and actively fought against it. He was a big deal, and other people of (roughly) the time (like Stravinsky, Mahler, Scriabin) have kind of lost their shock-value or controversy, in my opinion. While they're not universally admired, their works hold solid places in the repertoire. It's been 100 years and Schoenberg is still a point of contention for many people, I'd say. 

After Schoenberg, the next BIG one for me would be Milton Babbitt... I'm surprised he didn't make the list already, and I have lately been obsessed with his work. His Three Compositions for Piano, as I recall, was the first piece to use "total serialism" or whatever you want to call it, apparently coming in a few years before Frenchmen like Messiaen or Boulez (rightfully on the list). I have come to be really fascinated by his stuff. I can't say I understand it or get it, but his string quartets (the second and sixth in particular), clarinet quintet, and even his first piano concerto are at the very least extremely interesting if not downright enjoyable. 

But he still seems to garner quite a lot of spleen from music critics and musicians who see (hear) him as nothing but a bunch of noise. The same I suppose could be said for Boulez and many others who worked with serial techniques; I just picked him because he was (by some accounts) the earliest adopter of the idea. I still find Boulez's works hard to warm up to. Babbitt far more approachable, to me. 

Aside from those already mentioned, I'd say Ferneyhough and Finnissey are good contenders; I find their works wholly unintelligible, but then again... haven't given them much effort. Same goes for Stockhausen, Reich, Berio, Schnittke. 

Great topic, by the way. 

My head hurts when I listen or talk about Babbitt.  My theory teacher, Andrew Mead, was a direct disciple of Babbitt.   His music/philosophy is a continuum of Schoenberg.  

There's something about Babbitt's music that fascinates me. I don't pretend to 'understand' it or to be able to hear the relationships or constructions built on aggregates (like in his Composition for Four Instruments) but just yesterday I bought what I believe to be the only recording of his Transfigured Notes (the piece that the Philadelphia Orchestra commissioned from him and tried to premiere and canceled the premiere of three times. Interesting story, that, but anyway. It's captivating. I've listened to it ten or fifteen times so far, and while it sounds... a bit like nonsense, there is something alluring about it. 

And yes, Babbitt's works stem directly from the legacy Schoenberg left. He took the baton (literally and figuratively?) from Schoenberg and brought the idea to new extremes. I have trouble warming up to Boulez's works, but I keep going back to Babbitt. 

He's just about the only ultramodern composer I can stomach, at this point, though. Most of the others are a challenge yet. 

Luderart. But here the controversion comes due to overconfidence against the skills.

Well, suddenly YC has its own share of controversial composers.

Can we talk about Boulez for just a minute? He's still alive. He'll be 90 next month. 

I've been on this Babbitt thing lately, but at least Babbitt recognizes his "composer as specialist" ideas and techniques and isn't holding his breath for the general population to stop buying Nicki Minaj and start buying Babbitt. I find that respectable and realistic. 

Boulez's statement that "The aim of music is not to express feelings but to express music," sounds poetic and even purist, but when it comes down to listening to him actually explain his philosophy about music and what he thinks it should be, I find it actually like, angers me. I want to say it is in this interview (or some other one of his on YouTube) where he begins to talk about how the entire history, the legacy of art of the past like, four hundred years being too sentimental, too nostalgic, too emotional and that it should all be destroyed and that 'art' should be free from emotion or sentimentality. I find that to be such a radical statement... it does call to mind the disappointment he had with Messiaen for Turangalîla for being 'too romantic.' 

On the other hand, one has to acknowledge that he is a musical genius. While I know very little about his works, and have only begun to warm up to one (his second piano sonata) and don't really..... care for them (or know enough about them, but more, I suspect, the above philosophy is at play), I can say some of his recordings are superb. His Mahler cycle (recently released, or soon to be released) split between Chicago, Vienna, Cleveland, and Staatskapelle Berlin (and the tenth in London) has some gems, if you're amiable to his surgical, cold, sterile conducting style (again, perhaps a product of his emotionless approach, and excellent for score study, kind of the anti-Bernstein). 

I just think it's an interesting dichotomy, that he's so clearly talented, but those 'talents' that others perceive he doesn't seem to value. And in contrast to Babbitt above, it's almost like he's expecting the world to jump on the Boulez Bandwagon and do away with feelings. All the feels. Thoughts?

I was not aware that he was making such statements. I'm not exactly holding my ear to the ground listening for this stuff, so I'm largely oblivious to it all. But man! That IS a radical statement. And also one I disagree with. I mean I know I tend to think that music shouldn't rely too much on sheer emotion to appeal to people, but this is much more extreme. You know what I've been taught about people who are that extreme? That they're spiritually out of balance. He clearly needs a hug. Someone send him a box of feels with a teddy bear and good Belgian chocolate.

And do it now, before he dies.