What better music is there.....

[JS]

[Wombat]

If you can put up with the 1930s sound you can't do better than the Busch Quartet. Their version of the A minor quartet is one of my very favourite recordings of all.

Agreed. Especially on the late quartets, their readings are second to none. I prefer the Veghs to the Lindsays but both are good, as are the readings of the Quartetto Italiano.

[CHasR]

For me these two composers climb different peaks. Bach is orderly, serene, structured and logical without compromising content in any way: the perfect classicist. Beethoven is wild, romantic, passionate, otherworldy, pushing sanity as far as it will go: the perfect romantic. It would not be possible to create a work of art that combined the best of both; both achieve perfection, but of very different kinds.

Sebastian's deification really began with Felix Mendelssohn. In fact, this whole idea of past musics being held up as an artistic perfection belongs to the romantic notion that things were better then...
I somehow doubt that musicians playing Stamitz' premeires had as much great respect for the works of, say, Gabrieli as we do for Sebastian today. Yes the old masterpieces were there for them, tried and true, accessable, performed perhaps traditionally with a quaint period feel: but musicians are eminently practical and will move with current styles, be they 'music of the spheres' or 'musica mundana'...
I was taught that a good composer steals most of his material.
Legendary composers steal from themselves.
Sebastian, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, they all quote themselves quite a bit, don't they? I think so.
A just and objective evaluation of Sebastian's work must include his immediate predecessors and his (now-overshadowed) comtemporaries.
Anyone have trouble telling Telemann and Sebastian apart sometimes?
(GP Telemann: talk about a thief!!!)
The work envrioments of Telemann, Handel (who stole everything from Lully, who stole everything from Monteverdi), and Sebastian were demanding: always new cantatas, operas, concerti. Pressure! What better source for this sunday's overture than that comission from 3 years ago that never panned out? No time to compose for future generations...

Bach is orderly, serene, structured and logical without compromising content in any way: the perfect classicist.

He merely wants you to think that.
Sebastian's greatest achievement was the 'summing up' of music from (IMO) Machaut onwards. (before Machaut, we really deal only with monody: Polyphony becomes fundamental with the post-Machaut generation).

If I define Sebastian as a classicist, what does that make Haydn? Ultra-classic?
Look at the progression of the baroque: first a florid line here, then an equally florid bass there, next some ripieno, then by Sebastian's time a complete explosion of counterpoint, lines going everywhere, criss-crossing, demanding you, challenging you to find the fugal subject in all its myriad twists...then it all gets sucked up into a powerful unison statement. Sebastian's church music sounds like a 'lets-go-jump-in-the-river-praise-God' baptist revival next to the soulful contemplation of then-standard Palestrina, Morales, and Allegri.

It couldnt go anywhere else but into classicism. Listen to CPE Bach: it's kind of like a breakdown of his fathers work: Better yet, in JC Bach, we're clearly dealing with 'restraint' as artistic perfection: a reaction to the florid late baroque.

Now as for BEETHOVEN ...
he desires most dearly, above all else, a return to order; a release, an escape. To transcend. It is not given to him to do so.

[Wombat]

Sebastian's deification really began with Felix Mendelssohn. In fact, this whole idea of past musics being held up as an artistic perfection belongs to the romantic notion that things were better then...

But I don't believe that, Chas. I was talking about two ideals that Western concert music attended to. In the 20th century, Armstrong, Ellington, Parker, Robert Johnson and Coltrane climbed peaks that matter to me as much, possibly more, than those climbed by Bach and Beethoven. I heard a band less than a month ago combining jazz and European composition with world music and electronics that is climbing a peak right now.

I was taught that a good composer steals most of his material.
Legendary composers steal from themselves.

Everybody has their influences and the peaks look less stark when seen from the valley beside the smaller peaks and foothills around at the time. Robert Johnson used ideas from lots of blues musicians around at the time and earlier. Calling it copying doesn't do justice to the way he would make an idea his own. Calling it borrowing undervalues the source too much. We don't have a good vocabulary for talking accurately about the respective roles of tradition and genius in art.

BTW, who did Monk copy? And Schoenberg?

If I define Sebastian as a classicist, what does that make Haydn? Ultra-classic?

Not important for the way we are discussing great works on this thread, unless of course you want to put up a work of Haydn's and ask me to compare the peak he climbed with that climbed in the Goldberg Variations. My own feeling is that Haydn and Mozart climbed smaller peaks but they are different, they are distinctive and I would expect many to prefer them to Bach.

Look at the progression of the baroque: first a florid line here, then an equally florid bass there, next some ripieno, then by Sebastian's time a complete explosion of counterpoint, lines going everywhere, criss-crossing, demanding you, challenging you to find the fugal subject in all its myriad twists...then it all gets sucked up into a powerful unison statement. Sebastian's church music sounds like a 'lets-go-jump-in-the-river-praise-God' baptist revival next to the soulful contemplation of then-standard Palestrina, Morales, and Allegri.

It couldnt go anywhere else but into classicism. Listen to CPE Bach: it's kind of like a breakdown of his fathers work: Better yet, in JC Bach, we're clearly dealing with 'restraint' as artistic perfection: a reaction to the florid late baroque.

This is interesting and quite accurate, I think, but not really in tune with the way we were talking about great music in this thread.

You can look at great peaks in splendid isolation; that's what we were doing. Or you can look at those peaks in the context of the smaller peaks and foothills around them. That's essential for a certain kind of understanding but I wouldn't want it to take over from the other way of looking. Both seem indispensible but need to be kept firmly in their place. One gross example of people insisting on asking the wrong kind of question is the search for the first rock and roll record—this is like searching for a mountain in an area containing nothing but gently rolling hills and insisting it must be there if only we look harder. But stressing borrowing and continuity to the point where individual genius falls out of the picture altogether seems to me equally perverse—this has happened with Robert Johnson and I think the attempt to demystify has reached the point of diminishing his achievements. All some revisionists see is gently rolling hills when there is a mountain right in front of them if only they'd look.

[SteveShaw]

There will always be a degree of subjectivity when talking about these chaps. Beethoven's was an almost incredible journey from the Haydnesque early period, through an explosion of wit and invention in the middle period, to some of the most sublime achievements of art in the late period, and all this in 20 years of chaotic personal life and ill-health. If you don't think it was given to Beethoven to transcend, then I don't know what you're hearing when you listen to the late quartets, the sonatas Op.109-111 and the Diabelli Variations. Not everything does it for me. I lament the fact that he wasted two of his most creative later years on the Missa Solemnis, and the Ninth Symphony is a bit of an ungainly monster (though I love it!). His very last work, the Quartet in F, seems slighter in many ways than the other late quartets, but when you reach the Lento you are hearing the most perfect, simple and transcendent music of all.

But the man who achieved the most in my view was Mozart. I think it is a great mistake to see his achievements as smaller peaks (actually, this peaks-and-troughs stuff doesn't do it for me at all!), possibly because his works in most forms are shorter and more numerous. He needed to create music to live from day to day and monumental stuff was largely a closed door (arguably with the exception of his operas, which was an exceptionally popular form at the time, a fact which he fully exploited). Apart from the fact that he almost single-handedly developed the concerto form into that which we've known ever since (and composed at least a dozen of the most sublime examples to boot), he virtually reinvented opera and, especially in his later works, he planted the seeds of romanticism (G minor quintet and symphony, piano concertos in D minor and C minor, finale of the Jupiter symphony - revolutionary if anything ever was!) He stood at the crossroads of Western music in a way that Bach or Beethoven never could, and he was just the man to be there. It's interesting that Haydn was still composing in his witty, avuncular but ultimately very conservative style more than a decade after Mozart's death. If we could dig him up and ask him, I'm certain he'd say that it was Mozart who laid the groundwork for the Romantic era to come, and that Beethoven was the only man to whom the mantle could be passed (he said almost as much when he first heard the Eroica symphony) .

As for this copying and stealing stuff, I prefer to think of it in the way Sir George Grove described it in the 19th century when he spoke of the golden chain which connected the great composers to each other.

[CHasR]

But the man who achieved the most in my view was Mozart. I think it is a great mistake to see his achievements as smaller peaks (actually, this peaks-and-troughs stuff doesn't do it for me at all!),

As for this copying and stealing stuff, I prefer to think of it in the way Sir George Grove described it in the 19th century when he spoke of the golden chain which connected the great composers to each other.

yes I wanted to avoid bringing Wolfgang up completely;(might as well bring up Schubert now also)
I agree that the topography analogy is a waste of effort.

Ive had to analyze, critique and perform many works by each of these guys at one time or another. The closer one looks, the more it becomes aparent that they cant be completely understood in isolation as has been suggested...they can be appreciated, yes, but to fully comprehend the inner-workings of the compositional structure, the work's intent, one cannot ignore the chain of events leading to the masterpiece's creation; and what works that masterpiece subsequently influenced.
Is it more fullfillig to gaze at a single star, or a whole galaxy?

Schoenberg was a full part of the late romantic tradition; listen to Verklarte Nacht and you'll hear a logical extension of Wagner, Strauss, Mahler. Arnold was the last of the direct line. Tear a page out of the score of 'Moses und Aaron' and compare it to a page out of a Mahler symphony.(Telemann + Sebastian?)
Schoenberg felt the language was exhausted and went dodecaphonic.
Berg tried to soften the transition by utilizing the thick heavy orchestrations in the Strauss/Mahler mold. Actually, parts of Elektra and Salome are far more atonal than what the 2nd Vienesse school was doing.
Hindemith had yet another solution: its like dominoes, all linked.

[Ro3b]

I love the earlier Gould Goldbergs, and I value A Love Supreme above almost all other music, but I listen to Mastodon a lot more than either. I scale the heights occasionally, but I live on the slopes.

[Wombat]

But the man who achieved the most in my view was Mozart. I think it is a great mistake to see his achievements as smaller peaks (actually, this peaks-and-troughs stuff doesn't do it for me at all!),

As for this copying and stealing stuff, I prefer to think of it in the way Sir George Grove described it in the 19th century when he spoke of the golden chain which connected the great composers to each other.

.........
I agree that the topography analogy is a waste of effort.

Oh really? I might agree if I saw so much as a tiny shred of evidence that either of you had grasped the points I was making with the help of that metaphor.

Ive had to analyze, critique and perform many works by each of these guys at one time or another. The closer one looks, the more it becomes aparent that they cant be completely understood in isolation as has been suggested...they can be appreciated, yes, ....

Who suggested that? This thread was about appreciation right from the very first post. Nobody has been talking about 'complete understanding', whatever that is.

Is it more fullfillig to gaze at a single star, or a whole galaxy?

This is a false dichotomy. You don't have to choose, nor should you unless
you have extremely circumscribed and temporary objectives.

Schoenberg was a full part of the late romantic tradition; listen to Verklarte Nacht and you'll hear a logical extension of Wagner, Strauss, Mahler. Arnold was the last of the direct line.

I didn't say Schoenberg (or anybody else) can't be located in a tradition. The question I asked was who did he copy. Coltrane can be located within a tradition without there being a single plausible exhibit for the role of being someone he copied.

[SteveShaw]

But the man who achieved the most in my view was Mozart. I think it is a great mistake to see his achievements as smaller peaks (actually, this peaks-and-troughs stuff doesn't do it for me at all!),

As for this copying and stealing stuff, I prefer to think of it in the way Sir George Grove described it in the 19th century when he spoke of the golden chain which connected the great composers to each other.

.........
I agree that the topography analogy is a waste of effort.

Oh really? I might agree if I saw so much as a tiny shred of evidence that either of you had grasped the points I was making with the help of that metaphor.

Oh, I grasped 'em all right. I was just doing that bad-mannered thing of straying from the point to make different ones. It's the pub and it's what people do after a couple of pints. Easy, tiger.

[Wombat]

.........
I agree that the topography analogy is a waste of effort.

Oh really? I might agree if I saw so much as a tiny shred of evidence that either of you had grasped the points I was making with the help of that metaphor.

Oh, I grasped 'em all right. I was just doing that bad-mannered thing of straying from the point to make different ones. It's the pub and it's what people do after a couple of pints. Easy, tiger.

No worries, Steve. If it had just been your comment, I'd have let it go through to the keeper.

[rh]

BTW, who did Monk copy?

James P. Johnson.

[Wombat]

BTW, who did Monk copy?

James P. Johnson.

That's a bit of a stretch, rh.

[SteveShaw]

The trouble with this talk of who copied whom is the word copy. If you mean lovingly emulate until finding one's own individual voice, say just that. That's what most composers do. That's what Sir George Grove meant by the golden chain. Both Schubert (finale of the Great C Major Symphony) and Brahms (finale of first symphony) blatantly "copied" phrases from The Ode to Joy theme of Beethoven. So who's complaining? Not me, and not Beethoven from beyond the grave I suspect. It's been alleged that Beethoven nicked that tune from somewhere else too! Copy has too many pejorative undertones to be a useful word in our context, like copying your homework on the school bus. If you really mean copy without merit, say plagiarise. Beethoven used one theme four times, in a country dance, the Prometheus ballet music, the Eroica Variations and the Eroica Symphony, so he copied off himself three times I suppose. It's the spirit in which the "copying" was done that matters. All composers (and musicians generally) have to emulate at least in part those whom they admire that go before. They st_nd on the sh__ld_rs of gi_nts. I propose an end to the use of the word "copy!"

[rh]

BTW, who did Monk copy?

James P. Johnson.

That's a bit of a stretch, rh.

IIRC the major influences TSM acknowledged were Ellington and JP Johnson -- James P was a neighbor of the Monk family in Manhattan and TSM doubtless heard a lot of him growing up. Definitely a lot of stride influences come out in Monk's solo playing.

Just to say, though Monk was unique, he didn't emerge from a vacuum, and his music can be seen as a development of currents in jazz which came before him.

[Wombat]

IIRC the major influences TSM acknowledged were Ellington and JP Johnson -- James P was a neighbor of the Monk family in Manhattan and TSM doubtless heard a lot of him growing up. Definitely a lot of stride influences come out in Monk's solo playing.

Just to say, though Monk was unique, he didn't emerge from a vacuum, and his music can be seen as a development of currents in jazz which came before him.

You're completely right about that, rh. I think other deep influences would have been the gutbucket blues and church music.

On Steve's idea of not talking about copying, for the people we have been discussing on this thread it's a very good idea. But one problem is that some musicians never develop their own voice, never transcend their influences. I suppose most composers like that get forgotten almost immediately. But, in jazz, some instrumentalists build lifelong careers out of being little more than copies of one of the greats. Although I can't think of anyone Coltrane copied, dozens of younger tenor players copied him. To insist on some other word for it would be to insist on a euphemism.