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

I'd be intrigued to hear everyone's answers! Let's keep the discussion open, but I'd rather people referred to composers who are likely to be known to other members of the forum. I'm still torn between a handful of composers. . . .

Bach, he was terrible

.........

Beethoven - utterly incompetant.

John Cage.

Seriously. Come on.

John Cage.

Seriously. Come on.

This better be in jest too, or I might have to mess somebody up :angry:

:P

Glass.

Ticheli anyone?

Ticheli anyone?

I disagree. Ticheli is quite skilled and actually has a very unique style in his music. Like him or not, he's good people.

This better be in jest too, or I might have to mess somebody up :angry:

:P

Right. Anybody who can write a bunch of rests has to be a genius.

P.D.Q Bach? from what I have heard anyway....

Glass?? I love Glass. :(

Shame on you.

I disagree. Ticheli is quite skilled and actually has a very unique style in his music. Like him or not, he's good people.

With Ticheli, you either love him or hate him. Some people hate Postcard, but I love it. If you haven't heard it, you can go here:

http://manhattanbeachmusic.com/audio/postcard-ms.mp3

You can tell people would either love it for hate it. No in between with this. He has some pieces that are more....clean, I guess. Not all of his pieces are like this. We're playing this piece right now in band, and it is really fun.

Either way, he is really talented.

Right. Anybody who can write a bunch of rests has to be a genius.

Here we go again... I like how everyone who bashes Cage ignores every other piece of music he wrote

Here we go again... I like how everyone who bashes Cage ignores every other piece of music he wrote

Like the genius works for prepared piano? I'd rather hear silence.

Well for me the obvious answer is John Williams (along with most other film composers - Howard Shore getting particular mention for what is almost plagiarism of Sibelius in "Lord of the Rings")

If we are going for proper composers however, I would definitely nominate Pachabel.

P.D.Q Bach? from what I have heard anyway....

P.D.Q. Bach is a god among men, and my personal homeboy in every sense of the word.

However, if I had to pick a composer proper, it'd be Schoenberg. 12 tone theory is just a bad idea for one all-important reason...

While it might be true that music and math are intertwined, with 12 tone theory, you start losing the music, and getting too much math.

Also, he is trying to be delibriatly as random as possible!!! How is that supposed to be musically appealing in any way?

P.D.Q. Bach is a god among men, and my personal homeboy in every sense of the word.

However, if I had to pick a composer proper, it'd be Schoenberg. 12 tone theory is just a bad idea for one all-important reason...

While it might be true that music and math are intertwined, with 12 tone theory, you start losing the music, and getting too much math.

Also, he is trying to be delibriatly as random as possible!!! How is that supposed to be musically appealing in any way?

While there will always be people who hate 12 tone music, how is maths random? :huh:

I'm sorry, and I have a feeling that many of you going to start throwing oversized boulders and flaming torches at me for this, but I can't stand mozart. Or glass for that matter.

Well for me the obvious answer is John Williams (along with most other film composers - Howard Shore getting particular mention for what is almost plagiarism of Sibelius in "Lord of the Rings")

If we are going for proper composers however, I would definitely nominate Pachabel.

Are you still living in the 20s or something? Why are film composers not "proper" composers?

:O

And how is Lord of the Rings like Sibelius? It all sounds very Celtic and melodic to me. If anything, I think those film scores would have been better if they were more Sibelian!

Are you still living in the 20s or something? Why are film composers not "proper" composers?

:O

And how is Lord of the Rings like Sibelius? It all sounds very Celtic and melodic to me. If anything, I think those film scores would have been better if they were more Sibelian!

So many of the atmospheres and soundworlds evoked in Lord of the Rings sound to me like Sibelius. If you want a specific example, listen to the coda of the 1st movement of the 3rd symphony (particularly at the start of it), then tell me that Lord of the Rings isn't Sibelius. While there are other influences, LOTR music still sounds like regurgitated Sibelius to me (though admittedly this may be because Sibelius is personally my favourite composer and as a New Zealander I have been exposed to those films a huge amount).

In general though, film composers to me very rarely produce anything original, new or revolutionary. When I listen to a new composition in the concert hall I hear it as an original composition. When I listen to a film score I only think of the pieces it sounds awfully similar to. This may just be because copyright requires film composers to have an original sound for each score (meaning they steal other people's sounds), but it still really annoys me when film composers get huge credit for regurgitating someone else's work in a heavily edited way...

That is why I don't regard film scores as genuine compositions and why I see the need to nominate film composers as the world's worst reputable composers.

In general though, film composers to me very rarely produce anything original, new or revolutionary. When I listen to a new composition in the concert hall I hear it as an original composition. When I listen to a film score I only think of the pieces it sounds awfully similar to. This may just be because copyright requires film composers to have an original sound for each score (meaning they steal other people's sounds), but it still really annoys me when film composers get huge credit for regurgitating someone else's work in a heavily edited way...

Who says a composition needs to be original, new and revolutionary to be any good? I agree, some film composers go too far in their borrowing of ideas. The similarity between parts of Zimmer's Gladiator score and Holst's Mars from The Planets is uncanny; so much so that I can't believe it is a coincidence. But blatent examples like this are rare and are not a good enough reason to tar all film composers with the same brush.

Film scoring is an incredibly complex process and film composers are probably the most versatile composers in the world; a good film composer can write music in almost all styles without losing their own sound. John Williams, for example, is a master of his trade; it might not be the most original music but there are few better than him at getting the atmosphere exactly right at the right moment. And technically his music is well composed. In short he knows what he's doing and that's why he's been at the top for so long.

Film scoring isn't about revolutionary music (although it can be). By comparing film scores with concert music you're comparing apples with oranges and that's not fair. They're composed for different purposes and one is not inherently worse than the other because of this.

That is why I don't regard film scores as genuine compositions and why I see the need to nominate film composers as the world's worst reputable composers.

Yep, completely disregard an entire profession and an entire body of works stretching back almost a century, that's sensible. :unsure:

Are you seriously dismissing John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith, Ennio Morricone, John Barry, Korngold, Elfman, Fenton, Herrman (!) etc. and saying they were some of the world's worst reputable composers?

Furthermore, would you not regard film scores by the likes of Vaughan Williams, Prokofiev, Copland, Shostokovich, Glass, Walton, Bernstein and Arnold as geniune compositions?

The line is a blurry one. Be careful before you dismiss a whole genre of music and a whole generation of composers. I don't have a problem with you nominating a particular film composer or even two or three in this thread, but the fact that you "see the need to nominate film composers as the world's worst reputable composers" suggests to me you know little of what you're talking about - ironic given your username!

P.D.Q. Bach is a god among men, and my personal homeboy in every sense of the word.

However, if I had to pick a composer proper, it'd be Schoenberg. 12 tone theory is just a bad idea for one all-important reason...

While it might be true that music and math are intertwined, with 12 tone theory, you start losing the music, and getting too much math.

Also, he is trying to be delibriatly as random as possible!!! How is that supposed to be musically appealing in any way?

Schoenberg was just the start of a splurge of musical activity through serialism that did incur maths and statistics that ended up too often as undifferentiated sound across a span of time, unless very careful consideration was given to how the root material would pan out to determine the structure. Some composers achieved limited success but mostly it has fallen into disuse these days.

Some critics of the 50s/60s declared that Schoenberg "missed the trick" by only considering a pitch row, where Webern began to consider time and other parameters of "the note".

M

WAGNER!!!

While it might be true that music and math are intertwined, with 12 tone theory, you start losing the music, and getting too much math.

I suppose you hate fugues?

Well for me the obvious answer is John Williams (along with most other film composers - Howard Shore getting particular mention for what is almost plagiarism of Sibelius in "Lord of the Rings")

If we are going for proper composers however, I would definitely nominate Pachabel.

I am sad now. This comment makes me very sad. :sadtears:

John Williams is a genius! And Pachabel's Canon in D is my favorite baroque piece!

Well for me the obvious answer is John Williams (along with most other film composers - Howard Shore getting particular mention for what is almost plagiarism of Sibelius in "Lord of the Rings")

A sad comment, as it reflects more a lack of knowledge of Williams' oeuvre than any sort of ralistic assessment of his work as a composer.

To blithely dismiss "most other film composers" in this way is... ill-advised.

BUT, to share my own opinion on this thread, I'd say either Andrew Lloyd Webber (does that count?) or Elliot Carter.