Who is, in your opinion, the world's worst reputable composer?

It must be Cage, Glass. Beethoven sometimes lack true inspiration. If we want to be less severe, some of his melody's suck.

Originally Posted by Pieter Smal

It must be Cage, Glass. Beethoven sometimes lack true inspiration. If we want to be less severe, some of his melody's suck.

Yes, I'm sure you could teach Beethoven what music's really about....

By the way, I need to correct your grammar spelling. It's "melodies", "melody's" is a possessive noun, implying that the melody physically has a suck....

Moonwoman is craaazy, that's some sass ther sister. Etc Etc.

The Clinton thing, haha oh wow. I remember that and I've got nothing to do with the USA at all what so ever, but it was still loltastic. Also? Everyone who is new/won't read the 10 previous pages is going to drop by and say "lol (A MODERN COMPOSER) sucks, they don't write music I enjoy, therefore it's not even music. Or art. Or shit."

It's been happening for the last 10 pages though some people apparently hate non-modern things too, I'm still thinking this has to be the biggest idiot-trap thread ever at this rate. Just leave it to the interwebs and hilarity ensues.

The thing with Cage is borderline stupid at this point in the narrative, come on. The person is a historical figure, he's recognized by countless musicologists, BLAH BLAH BLAH, truth is it don't matter at all what anyone thinks of what he did, it's done and it's important. It's like trying to say what Napoleon did was not noteworthy, and we should as well forget about him, or any other given historical figure.

Lest anyone wants Robin here posting even more youtube videos and beating people up, I'd rather the hatin' stopped. I'm sad to suggest it, but someone should lock the thread before even more people have the chance to completely make a fool out of themselves and more gratuitous hating' goes on for no reason.

Originally Posted by SSC

It's been happening for the last 10 pages though some people apparently hate non-modern things too, I'm still thinking this has to be the biggest idiot-trap thread ever at this rate. Just leave it to the interwebs and hilarity ensues.

Actually I think this thread is interesting and shouldn't be stopped, simply because a few people voiced their opinions.

Personally, the fact that modern composers with newer ideas still cannot outshine composers who wrote music 200 to 100 in a popularity contest, even amongst composers, is very telling.

As for Williams stealing, rather than writing him off because a few bars of his work sound like the end of Mars, you'd do better to actually listen to his work. The Star Wars soundtracks are possibly the best films soundtracks ever scored (although I'm sure there are some equally amazing scores from bygone eras). Of course it's influenced by other works... isn't every single piece ever written except the first piece of music ever?

Originally Posted by SSC

Lest anyone wants Robin here posting even more youtube videos and beating people up, I'd rather the hatin' stopped.

Originally Posted by almacg

Personally, the fact that modern composers with newer ideas still cannot outshine composers who wrote music 200 to 100 in a popularity contest, even amongst composers, is very telling.

It'd be very telling if it was:

A: A fact.

B: Not a matter of taste.

Plus, blah blah, semantics, "outshine" blah blah means nothing. Stockhausen outshines the fuck out of Bach in complexity and elaboration in my opinion (Kontate, Klavierstück X, etc.) But I like Bach just the same, even if it's simpler, less ambitious, and more formulaic (LOL, irony!) You can't put everything in the same basket and expect it all to fit fine. You have to have some idea of music history, and the context where things happened. Obviously baroque composers had a fraction of the material we have now in terms of musical knowledge and research resources, so we can't expect them to do stuff like Ligeti did, etc etc. So, if they never had the chance to begin with, how do you know none of the baroque composers would've traded their good'ol palestrina counterpoint for clusters and 12tone music? We don't, we'll never know.

They never had the chance to do anything different so it's impossible to judge and compare across epochs like that with any degree of meaningfulness. It's like saying a 3 year old kid is not as good in mechanical engineering as a 40 year old dude with proper studies and years of experience. You can't simply compare shit like this. The kid at 3 years old is doing pretty fine for a 3 year old, but he hasn't had enough TIME to even begin to actually learn anything the 40 year old guy did. If we adapt this to reflect on music history, the 3 year old isn't AWARE that such thing as mechanical engineering even exists for the duration of his life. How can it even be possible to compare anything then?

I mean, sure, you like old music. I like old music too. But I'd think twice before claiming any objectivity on this sort of argument, as has been said a thousand fucking times.

Robin will now distribute some moar beatings.

haha! No I'm not going to claim any objectivity! That would be like one of those polls in the news, where they claim that 80% of the country favour this politician based on a polling of 100 random people!

Originally Posted by Justin Tokke

I'm adding John Williams to the list. One of the worst cases of plagerism I've ever scene.

(Just as an excercise, take the Star Wars film scores and some Mahler Symphonys and Holst's Planets in shuffle mode. Don't look at the iPod and try to figure out who wrote what. You'd be surprised what you come up with.

Doesn't that make Holst and Mahler suck, too?

Brahms!!! Definately Brahms! There are billions of composers I haven't heard yet, but Brahms is the only one that makes me fall asleep. If I were a Furby, I'd say: "Booooring!". I'm not a Furby but I still say "Booooring!" to Brahms...

First off, I'm not even going to touch whatever MoonWoman said. She/he/it (it's a painting!) is not worth it.

Originally Posted by almacg

As for Williams stealing, rather than writing him off because a few bars of his work sound like the end of Mars, you'd do better to actually listen to his work. The Star Wars soundtracks are possibly the best films soundtracks ever scored (although I'm sure there are some equally amazing scores from bygone eras). Of course it's influenced by other works... isn't every single piece ever written except the first piece of music ever?

I do agree with the last statement. There is no such thing as "first ever." It always came out of something before it.

Disclaimer: THIS IS AN OPINION!!!

I have listened to his score, almost the entire score from the Star Wars series. I write him off because he is ridiculiously unoriginal. Everything he writes was written before. Personally, the scores of Hermann and Alfred Newman are much richer and have more depth than Williams. Even Miklos Roszca (sp?) did more interesting stuff. A good composer takes something else and reworks it to make it sound new and fresh even though it may be the same thing, just in a different lens. Williams did not do this. He just copied the score from Mars, put it in 4/4 and got his check in the mail. Lucas should just have bought a CD of the LSO playing the Planets and used that. He would have saved a heck of a lot of money and 98% of movie-goers wouldn't have known the difference.

Originally Posted by spherenine

Doesn't that make Holst and Mahler suck, too?

No. As said above, Williams was not original.