Why?

I intended to post this in the "Composer Depot" forum, but that one is read-only, and the Mozart and Rachmaninov sub-fora won't work, but here goes:

I think there should also be forums for the following composers:

Leonin
Perotin
Guillaume de Machaut
Gilles Binchois
Guillaume Dufay
John Dunstable
Johannes Ockeghem
Martin Praetorius
Heinrich Schütz
Claudio Monteverdi
Giovanni Palestrina
Orlando di Lasso
Georg Frideric Handel
Johann Sebastian Bach
Joseph Haydn
Carl Maria von Weber
Gioacchino Rossini
Franz Schubert
Robert Schumann
Franz Liszt
Antonin Dvorak
Giuseppe Verdi
Anton Bruckner
Gustav Mahler
Carl Nielsen
Igor Stravinsky
Sergej Prokofiev
Aram Khachaturian
Erik Satie
Claude Debussy
Maurice Ravel
Charles Koechlin
Dmitri Shostakovich
Paul Hindemith
Arthur Honegger
Francis Poulenc
Darius Milhaud
Edgard Varèse
Olivier Messiaen
Bernd Alois Zimmermann
György Ligeti
Arnold Schoenberg
Anton Webern
Alban Berg
Bela Bartok
Ralph Vaughan Williams
Charles Ives
Pierre Boulez
Henri Dutilleux
Milton Babbitt
Karlheinz Stockhausen
Luigi Nono
Bruno Maderna
Alfred Schnittke
Sofia Gubaidulina
Philip Glass
Steve Reich
John Adams
Hans Werner Henze
Toru Takemitsu
Elliott Carter
Leonard Bernstein
Aaron Copland
Samuel Barber
Giacinto Scelsi
Harrison Birtwistle

Once I think of more, I'll add them... Seriously, why a sub-forum for Rachmaninov? There are dozens of composers more important and more competent (and more deserving of a dedicated sub-forum) than him. I like the idea of the "Composer Depot" itself, but having dedicated sub-fora for certain more (Beethoven) or less (Rachmaninov) talented composers looks rather silly to me.

What an amazing list! I don't think you left anyone out! Oh...you should have CPE Bach in there. He was the most talented of the Bach sons, and a real rabble-rouser.

...having dedicated sub-fora for certain more (Beethoven) or less (Rachmaninov) talented composers looks rather silly to me.

This is subjective, surely. Rachmaninov's "Vespers" alone makes him as worthy of a place on the list as half the other guys you have there. It's the crowning glory of Russian Orthodox liturgical music, and no one before or since has written anything better - not even Bortniansky (whom I greatly respect) or Tchaikovsky. I can't even bear to listen to it sometimes, it's so indescribably beautiful and deathlessly great.

Once I think of more, I'll add them... Seriously, why a sub-forum for Rachmaninov? There are dozens of composers more important and more competent (and more deserving of a dedicated sub-forum) than him. I like the idea of the "Composer Depot" itself, but having dedicated sub-fora for certain more (Beethoven) or less (Rachmaninov) talented composers looks rather silly to me.

Ok, I was doing some thinking. This category of "composers" would be to hard to upkeep. I mean, there are just way to many composers, and I have a feeling there would be many blank topics. I am thinking about changing this category to just plain old "repertoire" to narrow down the subcategories big time. There would be hundreds of subforums and this is going to look pretty messy. Sometimes I have to lay out things in order to see if it will work, or not work...and I see that this category isn't going to work. But don't worry. I will keep the same idea, just it will be alot less messier.

I want one more category: chamber music.

This recategorisation is an experiment to see if we can increase the post rate even more. While it runs the risk of further fragmenting posts, devoting subforums to more specific topics may prompt people to come up with new ideas and start more discussions. If it doesn't go well, we'll go back to how it was before.

Originally posted by J. Lee Graham@Jul 20 2005, 05:31 PM
[b]This is subjective, surely.Â* Rachmaninov's "Vespers" alone makes him as worthy of a place on the list as half the other guys you have there.

I've just suddenly remembered hearing an exquisite performance of those a couple years back in Vancouver. Must go track down who performed it...

* goes hunting on Google *

I want no categories!

I guess you should go back to the way it was before, no one seems to use these forums!

You seem to be forgetting some of the mighty Opera composers...

Puccini
Bellini
Saint-Saens
Offenbach
Delibes
Leoncavallo
Strauss (R and J for that matter)
Wagner
Massenet
Gluck
Ponchielli
Giordano
Donizetti

...who am I missing?

...who am I missing?

These come to mind:

Gioacchino Rossini (oh my GAWD...how could anyone leave him off? At least as good as Donizetti in the early 19th Century Italian School)
Luigi Cherubini (pathetically underappreciated)
Domenico Cimarosa (ditto)

At this juncture, I need to inject some humour:

Rossini, in addition to being a great composer, was also a gourmet chef and a gourmand (a person who loves to eat), as well as being a very funny/witty man. Here are some quotes attributed to Rossini:

"In my whole adult life, I have only wept twice: once when I heard Paganini play the violin, and again when I saw a truffled turkey fall into the water a boating party."

"You know, this fellow Wagner has some wonderful moments, but some incredibly dull quarters of an hour." (Rossini lived long enough to hear some of Wanger's operas, and many of us echo his sentiments)

Trivia: Rossini (in his capacity as gourmet chef) is reputed to have created the classic dish "Tournedos Rossini" (tenderloin of beef with truffles and pate de foie gras on toast rounds...it's delicious).

Another humourous quote, this time from Donizetti about Rossini:

When told that Rossini had written an entire opera in 10 days, Donizetti replied dryly: "That bastard Rossini always was a lazy son of a bitch."