Beethoven’s Music was Simple, Rhythmic Modes, Automorphs and Middle Eastern Music

Well then I better start practising I didn't realise it was such a common thing, very interesting.

Originally Posted by Seraphim

Genius is not a product. Music is a product and there are a million different reasons why we like or dislike certain products.

Genius is a mental capacity. To imagine the kinds of things that Mozart, Bach, Handel, Beethoven, etc were able to imagine one needs a kind of mental capacity (genius) that is truly extraordinary. Those composers would not have been able to produce what we see as their best music if they lacked that seemingly superhuman capacity a math genius mght be able to calculate a cube root faster than a calculator.

That's pretty funny, considering that a lot of these composers' contemporaries could also as well be called geniuses since, well, Bach directly copied a lot of his early style right off Buxtehude and Pachelbel, ETC ETC. Mozart took CPE Bach and the Galant Style and sorta went in that direction (later coming back to counterpoint thanks to Bach and, well, age.) All composers wrote what they COULD write based on the time they lived and influences they had.

Like Marsbars said, with experience and practice things become a lot clearer. All the "magically unimaginable" stuff start being quite imaginable if you've been exposed enough to the same influences. Sure, you'll never write just like Mozart because you are not Mozart. But who's to say that's something bad or undesirable? If anything it's realistic.

It's also very unrealistic to talk about Mozart this way because Mozart's actual compositions tell a very different story. He was no "genius", and rather, he was someone who studied and worked his way into composing everything he did. After a certain point in his life, he was composing much less music than before because he began seeing an evolution in his own style. As the compositional problems he approached became more and more clear, the time needed to write each piece also increased since he was unsure of what to write, what direction to go for. He looked at Bach for inspiration and experimented mixing things. The results can clearly be seen in the late pieces for keyboard, which speak for an entirely different Mozart than the "flowing, automatic" one that everyone is used to.

Less genius, more human.

If one looks at it with perspective and knowledge, it's easy to see why modern composers' output is usually summed up to a fraction of what Mozart, Bach, Händel, etc did. As evidenced by Mozart's approach to his own compositional questions and problems, the less systematic and formulaic you write your music, the longer it takes to write anything at all since there's nothing to write it but you the entire way. Mozart may have thought up the melodies, but his cadences are not really his. They come from a tradition which he simply took and wrote. His structures are also not really "his" so much as a combination of what was going on and Haydn's influence.

The handling of dissonance, dynamic, range and orchestration were not really "his" but a reflection of what was going on in that particular sphere of influence. The interesting thing is knowing what he did with those influences, rather than assuming he suddenly pulled his entire style out of his ass like some apparently imply.

So really. Only a fool would consider Mozart anything more than the sum of his actual work and what he actually left behind. He himself emphasized studying and diligently practicing as the source of his creativity and handwork.

If you don't want to believe what he said, and if you want to ignore the actual evidence presented by his entire body of work, as well as the history behind the evolution of his style and the influences he had, then fine.

But it's just a shame that someone who's history, pieces and influence are of such interest is glossed over entirely on the prospect that he's just a "genius" and that's about it.

It's a lot easier to name something as unreachable than it is to actually reach it. It's also, well, shamelessly lazy and surely Mozart would've been very disappointed with this attitude towards his music.

PS: I've met people, on the subject of fugue improvisation that can improvise entire baroque suites from scratch. Hell, even a Mozart-like Sonata, or any such piece. I met a dude that could improvise in style of Chopin for crying out loud. If you're an organist or a harpsichordist you will inevitably end up improvising what to the untrained ear seems "very complicated" by virtue of practice. Just like a teacher I once had said, if you play enough Gigues/Sonatas/? you'll end up being able to write them just as well. And really, I don't need to look very far for a lot of examples of this exact thing. There's also a lot of other ways to get acquainted with a style enough to manipulate it. It's just a matter of hard work and perseverance.

Originally Posted by QcCowboy

On the other hand, people with the requisite training in music, will be able to differentiate between which aspects of their initial reaction is subjective and based on personal experience, and which are based on analytical process.

True, they would be better able at looking at different aspects of a composition and examine the techniques behind them, but in the end, when it's about a judgement of quality, it's still subjective. In contrast to a person who can merely say "I liked it" or "I hated it" they might be able to describe the nature of the instrumentation, the form, the harmony, the dramaturgy, etc. but they still couldn't give an objective judgement of quality. You can say "the instrumentation is extremely thick and the textures opaque and always similar. It is harmonically very simple and formally incoherent." But there's no objective criterion to determine whether these aspects make the piece good or bad.

The only concept for an "objective" judgement of a piece that seems more or less adequate to me is "does the result correspond to the intent of the composer?" I find it adequate, but not entirely sufficient, personally. Not even to mention the problem of generally not knowing the intent of the composer in the first place. So in the end we're still stuck with lots of subjectivity.

Originally Posted by QcCowboy

There are countless examples of organists who regularly improvise fugues at the organ. It's nothing absolutely stupendous, it's part and parcel of the training.

I've met quite a few church organists for whom improvising a fugue, on the fly, is nothing any more complicated than sight reading any piano score is for me. So training and skill ARE important factors.

Let's try and not confuse "things that *I* can't do" with "things that only super-humans can do".

We have plenty of people who are at least as learned in composition, practiced just as hard if not harder (and with far more experience) as anyone in this forum, such as Tchaikovsky, Schubert, Mendelsohn, Brahms, Beethoven, who held up Mozart, Handel, Bach, etc as geniuses.

Yet, we have people in this forum continue to insist that they (or at least their teachers) are better placed to judge the abilities of Mozart, Bach and Handel than Tchaikovsky, Schubert, Mendelsohn, Brahms, and Beethoven.

I can't prove that that these fellow forumites are wrong. However, most would reckon that such a tall claim would take some proving.

Originally Posted by SSC

That's pretty funny, considering that a lot of these composers' contemporaries could also as well be called geniuses since, well, Bach directly copied a lot of his early style right off Buxtehude and Pachelbel, ETC ETC. Mozart took CPE Bach and the Galant Style and sorta went in that direction (later coming back to counterpoint thanks to Bach and, well, age.) All composers wrote what they COULD write based on the time they lived and influences they had.

Like Marsbars said, with experience and practice things become a lot clearer. All the "magically unimaginable" stuff start being quite imaginable if you've been exposed enough to the same influences. Sure, you'll never write just like Mozart because you are not Mozart. But who's to say that's something bad or undesirable? If anything it's realistic.

It's also very unrealistic to talk about Mozart this way because Mozart's actual compositions tell a very different story. He was no "genius", and rather, he was someone who studied and worked his way into composing everything he did. After a certain point in his life, he was composing much less music than before because he began seeing an evolution in his own style. As the compositional problems he approached became more and more clear, the time needed to write each piece also increased since he was unsure of what to write, what direction to go for. He looked at Bach for inspiration and experimented mixing things. The results can clearly be seen in the late pieces for keyboard, which speak for an entirely different Mozart than the "flowing, automatic" one that everyone is used to.

Less genius, more human.

If one looks at it with perspective and knowledge, it's easy to see why modern composers' output is usually summed up to a fraction of what Mozart, Bach, Händel, etc did. As evidenced by Mozart's approach to his own compositional questions and problems, the less systematic and formulaic you write your music, the longer it takes to write anything at all since there's nothing to write it but you the entire way. Mozart may have thought up the melodies, but his cadences are not really his. They come from a tradition which he simply took and wrote. His structures are also not really "his" so much as a combination of what was going on and Haydn's influence.

The handling of dissonance, dynamic, range and orchestration were not really "his" but a reflection of what was going on in that particular sphere of influence. The interesting thing is knowing what he did with those influences, rather than assuming he suddenly pulled his entire style out of his ass like some apparently imply.

So really. Only a fool would consider Mozart anything more than the sum of his actual work and what he actually left behind. He himself emphasized studying and diligently practicing as the source of his creativity and handwork.

If you don't want to believe what he said, and if you want to ignore the actual evidence presented by his entire body of work, as well as the history behind the evolution of his style and the influences he had, then fine.

But it's just a shame that someone who's history, pieces and influence are of such interest is glossed over entirely on the prospect that he's just a "genius" and that's about it.

It's a lot easier to name something as unreachable than it is to actually reach it. It's also, well, shamelessly lazy and surely Mozart would've been very disappointed with this attitude towards his music.

PS: I've met people, on the subject of fugue improvisation that can improvise entire baroque suites from scratch. Hell, even a Mozart-like Sonata, or any such piece. I met a dude that could improvise in style of Chopin for crying out loud. If you're an organist or a harpsichordist you will inevitably end up improvising what to the untrained ear seems "very complicated" by virtue of practice. Just like a teacher I once had said, if you play enough Gigues/Sonatas/? you'll end up being able to write them just as well. And really, I don't need to look very far for a lot of examples of this exact thing. There's also a lot of other ways to get acquainted with a style enough to manipulate it. It's just a matter of hard work and perseverance.

You're confusing style with substance. Any one that calls themselves a composer should be able to mimic just about any style. If not they need to do more study, pick a different field, or at least use a more accurate description, such as "sound painter."

Originally Posted by almacg

Well then I better start practising I didn't realise it was such a common thing, very interesting.

Many consder someone who has 100th percentile (a loose description since thats not actually possible) talent in a certain area to be a genius. Unfortunately, true genius in fields like music require such distinction in more than one area. The probability of that kind of talent is very small.

All this seems to be assuming that "genius" is a term with a clear definition, whereas I see it as fuzzy enough to border on meaningless. Since you seem to be approaching this in a rather scientific manner, would you mind providing a clear definition of what exactly "genius" means to you?

Originally Posted by EldKatt

All this seems to be assuming that "genius" is a term with a clear definition, whereas I see it as fuzzy enough to border on meaningless. Since you seem to be approaching this in a rather scientific manner, would you mind providing a clear definition of what exactly "genius" means to you?

From the Oxford English Dictionary

AskOxford: genius

genius

/jeeniss/

• noun (pl. geniuses) 1 exceptional intellectual or creative power or other natural ability. 2 an exceptionally intelligent or able person.

The reality is that some people are simply better at certain things than others. Some people can hit a 95mph fast ball. Most people, no matter how much training they have, will not be able to hit one that's faster than 85mph. Hitting a 95mph fastball requires superior ability (not all if it mental) in more than one area. It's not just reflexes (actually, reflexes only play a small part in it), but visual processing that includes spatial tracking and projecting future relative position in time and space, physical coordination (again, related to a certain type of brain power), and of course, the muscle speed and appropriate tendon elasticity required to accelerate the bat. In fact, there's more involved but this is hardly the time or place for a dissertation on the subject and I think this sufficiently conveys the gist of it.

I also have the OED. I asked what you mean when you say "genius". The definition you link to does not touch upon your criterion of "[requiring] distinction in more than one area".

Originally Posted by Seraphim

We have plenty of people who are at least as learned in composition, practiced just as hard if not harder (and with far more experience) as anyone in this forum, such as Tchaikovsky, Schubert, Mendelsohn, Brahms, Beethoven, who held up Mozart, Handel, Bach, etc as geniuses.

Yet, we have people in this forum continue to insist that they (or at least their teachers) are better placed to judge the abilities of Mozart, Bach and Handel than Tchaikovsky, Schubert, Mendelsohn, Brahms, and Beethoven.

I can't prove that that these fellow forumites are wrong. However, most would reckon that such a tall claim would take some proving.

OH?

I said this before, I'll say it again. You're not defining genius in any concrete way as how it applies to music. Such as, for example: "Genius is anyone who can write 20 sonatas in 2 minutes!" Otherwise, well, none of your arguments hold water since "genius" is whatever you want, and conveniently you can also disqualify genius perceived by others by the same standard. Really lame!

And, who the hell cares if Schubert or Brahms thought X and Y were geniuses? That's still just an opinion even if the people saying it are famous.

You really need to clear up what you define as genius (and how it DIRECTLY and CONCRETELY applies to music composition) otherwise this is all just nonsense.

As for your claim "However, most would reckon that such a tall claim would take some proving" You never really explain HOW that can be proved because you never establish, again, what genius means according to YOU. The only way to counter your argument is to know what the hell your argument IS!

And, uh, I can't PROVE that Mozart was or wasn't a genius because of the subjective term in use (see above). But, I did elaborate why I thought he wasn't a genius in my OPINION. You have failed to really state your case.

In fact it sorta makes me feel silly that I'm even engaging in this seeing as you have absolutely no idea of what you're talking about; your only real counter to my elaboration on Mozart's history and analysis is "PSST anyone should be able to do it!" and you even go as far as to say people who can't should as well be called something other than "composers."

Fail.