The greatest?

(originally published March 5, 2011)

Today I'm taking a little time away from my own thoughts (for the most part) to offer the results of a very interesting two-week project undertaken in January by New York Times music critic Anthony Tommasini.  We are constantly inundated by "Top-Ten" lists, be it on Letterman, in sports, celebrities, you take it.  Of course, in football there is a Top 25, on the celebrity scene it's the list of 50 sexiest people, the film institute's list is 100 titles long--right?  It's much easier to come up with a larger group than a smaller one.  Tommasini (and many of his readers concurred) that a list of either five or 20 would have been simpler than a top ten.

Tommasini did make things in a way a bit easier, much to the chagrin of supporters of both early and late music.  From the very beginning of his project http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/arts/music/09composers.html he established a firm set of ground rules, which specifically included:

"I am focusing on Western classical music. There are compelling arguments against honoring this classification. Still, giants like George Gershwin, Duke Ellington and Stephen Sondheim are outside my purview here. And on the assumption that we are too close to living composers to assess their place and their impact, I am eliminating them from consideration.  Finally, I am focusing on the eras since the late Baroque. You could make a good case for Josquin or Monteverdi but I won’t. The traditions and styles were so different back then as to have been almost another art form. I’m looking roughly at the era an undergraduate survey of Western civilization might define as modern history"

Of course this closet critic is upset at both ends of the spectrum, as I believe that Josquin was probably the most significant composer of his era, and I probably base that upon a handful of pieces; I believe his Ave Maria...Virgo serena to be the epitome of beauty, expression and sanctity in music.  And what about the greats of our time?  Such a list would not include Elliot Carter (of course I might not either) who is still composing at the age of 100!  And exactly what would the criteria rest upon?  A composer's output?  His/her ability to compose in a diversity of genres?  The impact on his/her contemporaries and lasting influences?  The possibilities are endless and the study generated a great deal of banter in the comments section following each of Tommasini's subsequent articles, which focused upon significant composer's of a given era, place in history, genre, etc.

But cutting it down to ten composers he did:  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/23/arts/music/23composers.html?_r=1  For those, not desiring to peruse the New York Times, I'll give away the entire list here; remember, this is the opinion of one individual critic, not the Times itself, nor even me.  In fact, I'm sure that my list would be different (and equally as daunting to write--that's why I'm glad that someone else took the mantle).  For me, I am constantly bombarded with the question--what is your favorite music?  The answer for me is a simple one:  whatever I happen to be preparing and studying at the moment, because that is the music in which I am immersed.  But on to the Greatest!  All of the quotations are from Tommasini's article.

1.   (is it really a surprise):  JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH:  "for his matchless combination of masterly musical engineering (as one reader put it) and profound expressivity."

"The obvious candidates for the second and third slots are Mozart and Beethoven. If you were to compare just Mozart’s orchestral and instrumental music to Beethoven’s, that would be a pretty even match. But Mozart had a whole second career as a path-breaking opera composer. Such incredible range should give him the edge." 

2.  (now they start to get more difficult, eh?):  LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN  "I’m going with Beethoven for the second slot. Beethoven’s technique was not as facile as Mozart’s. He struggled to compose, and you can sometimes hear that struggle in the music. But however hard wrought, Beethoven’s works are so audacious and indestructible that they survive even poor performances."


3.  WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

4.  (hold your breath!):  FRANZ SCHUBERT:  "You have to love the guy, who died at 31, ill, impoverished and neglected except by a circle of friends who were in awe of his genius. For his hundreds of songs alone — including the haunting cycle “Winterreise,” which will never release its tenacious hold on singers and audiences — Schubert is central to our concert life....Schubert’s first few symphonies may be works in progress. But the “Unfinished” and especially the Ninth Symphony are astonishing. The Ninth paves the way for Bruckner and prefigures Mahler."

(Maestro says:  So poor old "Papa" Haydn, so instrumental (pardon the pun) in the development of the string quartet, piano trio, as well as the symphony (I insist that w/o Haydn there would have been no Beethoven) bites the dust.

5.  (We've not even reached 1830 and have few spots left):  CLAUDE DEBUSSY:  "With his pioneering harmonic language, the sensual beauty of his sound and his uncanny, Freudian instincts for tapping the unconscious, Debussy was the bridge over which music passed into the tumultuous 20th century."

6.  IGOR STRAVINSKY:  "During the years when “The Firebird” and “The Rite of Spring” were shaking up Paris, Stravinsky was swapping ideas with his friend Debussy, who was 20 years older. Yet Stravinsky was still around in the 1960s, writing serial works that set the field of contemporary music abuzz. One morning in 1971 I arrived at the door of the music building at Yale, on which someone had posted an index card with this simple news: “Igor Stravinsky died today.” It felt as if the floor had dropped out from under the musical world I inhabited. Stravinsky had been like a Beethoven among us."

(Maestro says, I keep wondering which composer future musicians will consider to be the Beethoven of the 20th century.  It's hard to think of anyone but Stravinsky.)

Now in one heck of a conundrum, Tommasini writes,  "I’m running out of slots. In some ways, as I wrote to one reader, either a list of 5 or a list of 20 would have been much easier. By keeping it to 10, you are forced to look for reasons to push out, say, Handel or Shostakovich to make a place for someone else."

7.  (Only four spots left):  JOHANNES BRAHMS:  "...at his best (the symphonies, the piano concertos, the violin concerto, the chamber works with piano, the solo piano pieces, especially the late intermezzos and capriccios that point the way to Schoenberg) Brahms has the thrilling grandeur and strangeness of Beethoven." 

(Maestro:  I'm not sure that the author goes far enough.  Please inform me of a bad piece by Brahms.  He held himself to the highest of standards (thanks in no small part to Schumann's coronation of him as the next Beethoven) and I think he understood his place in history.  It is said that be burned twenty (!) string quartets before he wrote one worthy of performance.  One has to wonder how many potential masterworks were reduced to ashes.)

"But the dynamic duo of 19th-century opera, Verdi and Wagner, aimed high. As I already let slip, they both make my list. That a new production of a Verdi opera, like Willy Decker’s spare, boldly reimagined staging of "La Traviata" at the Metropolitan Opera, can provoke such heated passions among audiences is testimony to the enduring richness of Verdi’s works. A production of Wagner’s “Ring” cycle has become the entry card for any opera company that wants to be considered big time. The last 20 minutes of “Die Walküre” may be the most sadly beautiful music ever written.
But who ranks higher? They may be tied as composers but not as people."

8.  GIUSEPPE VERDI:   "Though Verdi had an ornery side, he was a decent man, an Italian patriot and the founder of a retirement home for musicians still in operation in Milan."

9.  RICHARD WAGNER:  "was an anti-Semitic, egomaniacal jerk who transcended himself in his art. "

AND THERE IS ONLY ONE SLOT LEFT:  Who will make the cut?  "One slot left. May Haydn forgive me, but one of the Vienna Four just had to go...My apologies to Mahler devotees, so impressively committed to this visionary composer. Would that I could include my beloved Puccini.  I was heartened by the hundreds of readers who championed 20th-century composers like Ligeti, Messiaen, Shostakovich, Ives, Schoenberg, Prokofiev and Copland....Then there is Berg, who wrote arguably the two greatest operas of the 20th century. His Violin Concerto, as I explained in my first video, would make my list of top 10 pieces.   I received the most forceful challenges from readers who thought that pre-Bach composers simply had to be included, especially Monteverdi. Though Monteverdi did not invent opera, he took one look at what was going in Florence around 1600 and figured out how this opera thing should really be done. In 1607 he wrote “Orfeo,” the first great opera. His books of madrigals brought the art of combining words and music to new heights. The Monteverdi contingent is probably right."

AND FINALLY, NO. 10:  BELA BARTOK:  "I made my case for Bartok, as an ethnomusicologist whose work has empowered generations of subsequent composers to incorporate folk music and classical traditions from whatever culture into their works, and as a formidable modernist who in the face of Schoenberg’s breathtaking formulations showed another way, forging a language that was an amalgam of tonality, unorthodox scales and atonal wanderings."

(Maestro says:  now what if we attempted to come up with a list of the top ten living "classical" composers?  But I would propose that it be the effort of a group of musicians, critics, conductors, composers instead of a single critic who has an admitted passion for the music of Benjamin Britten.  That might be fodder for another article or even a dissertation?  Hmmmm.  Sounds interesting.  Stay tuned.)

WHAT'S NEXT?  I ACTUALLY HAVE NO IDEA WHERE MY BRAIN WILL GO...