Responding to Altimexis:
Richard Dreyfus played the second movement to his music appreciation class in the movie, Mr. Holland's Opus. It was just after his character had learned his son was deaf, so it had particular meaning to him. I love that piece. I love all of Beethoven's music, as well as music by Tchaikovsky, Greig and Rachmaninov. Although Bach's music is more mechanical and less emotional, I enjoy it nevertheless. He was, after all, a Baroque composer, as opposed to the Classical and Romantic composers that followed him. Beyond a doubt, Mozart was a genius and very prolific, but I find his music to be a bit formulaic. If you like Debussy, another great French composer worth mentioning is Saint-Saƫns. Gustav Mahler is another composer whose music has received more attention in recent years.
: Funny, but I have the same reaction to composers that you do. Some Bach is wonderful, but muc of it I can only take a few minutes of. But no one else has ever come close to writing music like he did. It's favorite trick for composition instructors in colleges to assign students to write a short piece that sounds like Bach. They come back frustrated like hell. It sounds easy, they say, but they can't do it.
I saw that Holland movie, but it was way too long ago for me to remember that he'd played that piece. It is a reamrkable piece. Try humming the melody of it and you'll see just how elementary it is.
I love all the composers you mentioned, and even more. Mahler was considered almost unlistenable when I was young. Now, his music is in the standard repertoire. Tastes change and develop with time. Mahler was a genius. Long-winded, but a genious. I tend to favor the Romantic composers.
Gershwin's Piano Concerto in F is a particular favorite of mine, but it's generally played only in pops concerts, whereas it's a true classical piece. Leonard Bernstein wrote some symphonies that I'm not all that fond of, but his musicals, particularly West Side Story, are memorable. Philip Glass is worthy of mention as a great 20th century composer, but his music treads a fine line between minimalist and monotonous.
Perfect description of Glass's music. Minimalistic music drives me nuts, and I turn it off quickly. It's awful to my ear. Same thing over and over, chaning maybe one note in a chord now and then. I'm glad that phase didn't last long. There are wonderful composer working today. You have to mention John Williams, although I always say I like his movie scores better than his concert music.
The music of the 50's was before my time, although I do have an Essential E lvis album in my collection. I didn't care for him or understand people's obsession with him, but he did perform some memorable songs such as Love Me Tender. I have all of the Beatle's albums in high-res audio. The originals have some of the worst stereo mixing possible, with the voices coming from one speaker and the instruments from the other. Imagine that - playing guitars on the left side and singing on the right? The recent remasters are much better. I'm not sure how I feel about the use of AI to recreate John Lennon's voice from an original recording though. The use of AI is a very slippery slope.
I was in high school when Elvis hit the airwaves. Yes, he did have some beautiful ballads. But there were several male singers with great voices back then. I think Elvis became the big star he was for the personna he played more than his actual singing.
So, yeah, I have very broad musical tastes and have spent more money than I care to think about purchasing enough high-res downloads to listen continuously for nearly half a year. Even the best streaming services don't come close. At least I'm not as crazy as the fanatics who scour record stores and the internet and spend $500 on original pristine copies in vinyl. With narrower tastes, think of how much money you've saved, Cole.
I didn't actually save it. I have well over 200 CDs of classical work, composers from John Adams to Richard Wagner. Just bought different ones from the ones you bought. With the technical changes in my lifetime, I've gone from records to tapes to CDs, often buying stuff I have in other media. Annoying.
Perhaps someday I'll be able to download a French horn duet by Freddy and James.
I'd hope so, except they're fictional. C