Who’re the perfect composers ever? We requested 174 of at this time’s main composers that very query and right here, in their very own phrases, we current the fascinating outcomes and who they assume needs to be topped the best composer of all time.
How the well-known composers had been scored
‘Making choices in regards to the “biggest” this or that’s at all times problematic,’ replies composer Brian Ferneyhough, when BBC Music Journal asks him to call his biggest 5 composers in historical past. And, to be truthful, he has some extent. Can one actually examine figures who had been writing music 800 years aside? Or weigh the intricate craftmanship of a two-minute piano piece up towards the grand imaginative and prescient that goes right into a four-hour opera?
Nonetheless, when confronted with the identical query, Ferneyhough gamely named his prime 5 biggest composers – as did 173 different main composers from throughout the globe.
To make clear issues, we set out the factors for greatness as follows:
- originality – to what extent did your chosen composers take music in new and thrilling instructions?
- influence – how significantly did they affect the musical scene each in their very own lifetime and in years/centuries to come back?
- craftmanship – from a technical viewpoint, how brilliantly constructed is their music?
- sheer enjoyability – fairly merely, how a lot pleasure does their music provide you with?
He we current the High 50 well-known composers, in descending order, with every well-known composer personally appraised by a type of who voted for them.
The 50 greatest composers of all time
50 Sergei Rachmaninov (1873-1943)
Russian virtuoso pianist, gifted melodist and one of many greats of late-Romanticism
John Rutter says:
Rachmaninov belongs to the aristocracy of composers. He by no means wrote a chunk of music until he had one thing to say and he by no means repeated himself; he by no means outstayed his welcome. No two of his piano items are alike, every one creates its personal world. He lays his soul earlier than us in music just like the Second Symphony, but it’s noble as a lot as passionate.
His melodic invention is to die for, his harmonic flavour delicate and immediately recognisable, his orchestration wealthy but by no means cloying. He has the present of constructing his music appear as if he’s talking simply to you.
Beneficial recording:
Rachmaninov: Piano Concerto No. 4
Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli (piano); Philharmonia/Ettore Gracis (1957)
EMI 567 2382
Learn our assessment of this recording right here.
49 Robert Schumann (1810-56)
German Romantic composer whose unstable thoughts spawned advanced masterpieces
Bent Sørensen says:
Bach and Mozart write good music, however there’s a fragile high quality to Schumann’s perfection. I grew up listening to violin concertos, as a result of my father performed the violin. There’s one thing about Schumann’s Violin Concerto; the music jogged my memory of myself. I really feel near Schumann, each personally and professionally.
Beneficial recording:
Schumann: String Quartets Nos 1-3
Doric String Quartet
Chandos CHAN 10692
Learn our assessment of this recording right here.
48 Pierre Boulez (1925-2016)
Serialist, modernist, conductor and founding father of Ensemble intercontemporain
Dai Fujikura says:
Boulez is just the perfect! Musically talking, not solely was he ground-breaking on the time, however his concord and sonority are at all times attractive – in case you slice his music, each bit is gorgeous. He has accomplished a lot for different composers, too, constructing establishments and shaping how up to date music is programmed in regular orchestral live shows.
Learn opinions of Boulez newest recordings right here
47 Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179)
Theologian, mystic and now a saint, Hildegard composed sacred monophony
Jessica Curry says:
I first found Hildegard’s music by way of the rave scene – Orbital’s 1991 trippy monitor Belfast makes use of an exquisite pattern of O Euchari and I used to be immediately hooked. I finally discovered what the pattern was and Hildegard has remained a continuing companion ever since. As with all the perfect music, I believe it’s not possible to explain her work – it’s one thing that merely has be skilled. I’m a staunch atheist and but someway her music is a chic style of the divine.
Hildegard von Bingen is without doubt one of the most well-known medieval composers ever and one of many biggest feminine composers of all time
Learn opinions of Hildegard von Bingen newest recordings right here
46 Thomas Tallis (c1505-85)
English composer recognized greatest for his sacred polyphonic choral works
Gabriel Jackson says:
From ornate Marian effusions to syllabic settings in English, Tallis’s music encompasses all the range of types that had been required of a Sixteenth-century English composer as a result of frequent modifications of monarch (and, due to this fact, faith): it’s ecstatic, propulsive, luminous, florid (or easy), with a harmonic richness and melodic grace that may be very particular.
Whether or not easy four-part homophony or the advanced micropolyphony and dazzling sonic spectacle of Spem in alium, every part a composer curious about choral music must be taught might be discovered right here.
Beneficial recording:
45 Erik Satie (1866-1925)
Satie was an authentic thinker, dadaist, artist, pianist and creator of furnishings music
Gerald Barry says:
Simply as Beckett withdrew from Joyce to carve his personal world, Satie withdrew from Debussy to carve his. He got here out of nowhere – nothing like him earlier than or since. No marvel he wrote ‘furnishings music’ (background music). His music is Issues As They Are. His Vexations, to be performed 840 instances, may as effectively be performed one million instances.
It may go on till the world ends. Its unknowability, inscrutability and thriller permits that. His magnificent Socrate is like somebody strolling round a room considering out loud, dictating to a poignantly indifferent typist.
Extra like this
44 Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928-2007)
German modernist; supporter of serialism; author of digital and aleatory music
Rolf Hind says:
That Stockhausen is on the entrance cowl of The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper album merely attests to his large attain within the Twentieth century. His personal Gesamtkunst consists of language, expertise, dance, house and the planet. Stockhausen each benefited from the timing of his beginning (large funding in German radio stations, orchestras, expertise) and suffered for it (the challenges of being German within the Twentieth century) to imbue all influences in his music.
Like the nice obsessive German Sanskritists of the nineteenth century, he has come again from the brink with the important thing to extraordinary messages, discoveries from earlier than, and maybe past…
We named Stockhausen one of many biggest German composers of all time
Learn opinions of Stockhausen newest recordings right here
43 Stephen Sondheim (1930-2021)
Stephen Sondheim was an American composer, music author and director specialising in musical theatre
Paul Mealor says:
The very biggest composers are in a position to maintain us in our darkest moments in addition to making us snigger and filling us with pleasure. For me, Sondheim is a type of.
From essentially the most intense and sensible large-scale, dramatic constructions (corresponding to Sweeney Todd or Assassins) to the lightest of melodies (A Little Evening Music), and from the only of chords (Into the Woods) to essentially the most dense harmonies (Follies), he has all of it. He’s intelligent with out tricking us, and by no means ‘writes down’ to us.
We named Sondheim one of many greatest musical theatre composers
42 Oliver Knussen (1952-2018)
The British conductor and composer was a well-liked Aldeburgh mentor
Charlotte Bray says:
Above all, it’s the craftsmanship that makes Knussen’s music vital. Each observe and marking he made on the web page was impeccably heard. No piece was full till every part was exactly in place. His music is completely authentic and thrilling, infused with a way of journey and wit, and can encourage for years to come back.
41 Harrison Birtwistle (b1934-2022)
A part of the New Manchester College, Birtwistle combines fantasy and modernism
Eleanor Alberga says:
Birtwistle’s music speaks in a voice completely its personal. The countless re-invention and improvement as his music unfolds, along with the depth of the contrapuntal textures, take the ear on an totally unpredictable but at all times fully immersive journey. Gawain and The Minotaur, the 2 operas I’m most acquainted with, enveloped me in a primeval soundworld. I felt viscerally amazed and brought to a greater ‘place’ in consequence.
We named Harrison Birtwistle one of many greatest English composers of all time
40 Edward Elgar (1857-1934)
Elgar is Britain’s symphonic grasp with a pure ear for craving melodies
Christopher Gunning says:
Is it even attainable to envisage the English countryside with out listening to Elgar? To take particular person items, I might say that every one the variations of his Enigma Variations are good – not simply ‘Nimrod’ – and it is without doubt one of the best examples of that format ever written.
Elgar’s First Symphony, in the meantime, is without doubt one of the most profoundly optimistic issues that has ever been written. It’s a piece that goes again to Brahms, or most likely pre-Brahms, and has that fantastic mixture of lyricism on the one hand and actual emotional striving on the opposite.
39 Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901)
Italian operatic grasp whose enduring arias are beloved the world over
Qigang Chen says:
The 5 composers I voted for all have one thing in widespread: they had been unconcerned with maintaining with the most recent fashions and had been comparatively free of outdoor affect. They had been, briefly, totally particular person. Verdi’s age coincided with the peak of Austro-Germanic rationalist dominance in philosophy, literature, and music, however he did with out such wonderful guiding ideas.
He had no thinker pals, however was a typical man, a farmer who retired to the countryside. True inventive vitality exists independently from the affect of worldly energy, and Verdi’s music has this type of explicit high quality.
38 Richard Strauss (1864-1949)
Richard Strauss was a ate-Romantic composer of richly scored tone poems and heady operas
Colin Matthews says:
It’s all too straightforward to miss Richard Strauss’s significance, however within the exceptional sequence of tone poems spanning 25 years, from Don Juan to the Alpine Symphony, he confirmed each an orchestral mastery and a exceptional capability for invention and structural innovation.
The operas Salome and Elektra are as stylistically superior as virtually something being written within the first decade of the Twentieth century. The music of Strauss’s final years – beginning with Capriccio in 1940, encompassing the 2 wind serenades, the Second Horn Concerto and the Oboe Concerto, and culminating within the 4 Final Songs – is among the many most good music of all time.
37 William Byrd (1543-1623)
Tudor England’s choral nice William Byrd additionally composed dozens of refined keyboard works
Bob Chilcott says:
It took me some time to understand what a beautiful composer Byrd is. As a younger chorister the considered singing his ‘Nice’ Service crammed me with horror. Years later I listened endlessly to a recording of this piece by The Tallis Students and marvelled at its sonority and the tumbling counterpoint of the Nunc Dimittis. I later got here to know his Introduction motet Vigilate. There are tactile, sensual and deeply human parts in his music that transmit superbly to the circulate of breath and to singing strains.
36 Anton Webern (1883-1945)
Anton Weburn was a twelve-tone serialist and key member of the Second Viennese College
Howard Skempton says:
What’s extraordinary is the integrity of Webern’s music. It has a kind of magnificence and power in itself. It’s virtually as if he’s considering music like a mathematical method, making an attempt to work out what it’d unlock. He reveals the opportunity of a unique musical panorama.
That’s what excited me once I first heard the Six Items for Orchestra in my late teenagers – I grew to become conscious that there was a wholly new means of composing. He influenced the post-Warfare technology, the serialists, experimental composers and, past that, the minimalists. His attain has been extraordinary.
35 Edgar Varèse (1883-1965)
Electro-acoustic pioneer and creator of ‘organised sound’
Brian Ferneyhough says:
Varèse’s Octandre was the primary ‘up to date’ work to make a deep and lasting impression on me when, aged 15, I got here throughout a partial recording in school. It struck me as unsentimental, sharp-contoured and authoritatively capricious. As a wind participant, I may recognize its talent in stretching every instrument simply past its regular consolation zone, whereas its intersections of advanced rhythmic and colouristic patterning appeared brilliantly realised.
A few years later, I wrote a piece primarily based on the precise ensemble utilized by Varèse, plus a solo violin. I’ve by no means understood why the Octandre instrumentation by no means grew to become a regular mixture, corresponding to that of Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire.
Beneficial recording:
34 Morton Feldman (1926-87)
American composer who experimented with notation and length
Shiva Feshareki says:
Feldman’s music has its personal aesthetic and tempo. On the time of creation, his work appeared fully impartial, but someway it fashioned a bridge between many faculties of thought. In my thoughts, his music is like an intricate tapestry, which will get magnified till you expertise each factor of the work.
It requires dedication and focus, as usually his compositions final many hours. However finally, it’s as if the music has shifted your perspective on actuality. You’re modified, and also you assume and really feel with a broader perspective.
Beneficial recording:
33 Alban Berg (1885-1935)
A part of the serialist collective, Berg’s music is full of ciphers and codes
Outi Tarkiainen says:
Alban Berg introduced into life the theoretical innovations of the Second Viennese College, creating 12-tone serialism that was not solely technically masterful and internally coherent, but in addition highly effective in expression and filled with inventive pleasure.
His music is a vital hyperlink between eras – his kinds and teleology are trendy but firmly drawing from the Romantic custom. Not like within the second half of the Twentieth century, at this time’s up to date music is once more daring to take advantage of many parts from the Romantic period, and so Berg’s affect continues to be totally related.
Beneficial recording:
32 Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-93)
Ballets and biographical symphonies are on the coronary heart of this Russian Romantic’s work
Joby Talbot says:
For those who had been to greet some aliens who had landed and wished to know what classical music appeared like, you possibly can do a lot worse than level them within the route of Tchaikovsky. To me, rising up, it was simply the quintessential, lovely, extraordinary, poetic and melodic orchestral and vocal music.
Tchaikovsky was clearly the grasp of melody, however I additionally love the heart-on-sleeve emotional palette and the rhythmic factor of his music. You take a look at the dynamic markings within the scores; he has every part from ppppp to fffff! As a child taking part in in orchestras it was like working a marathon, however at all times with a way of inclusivity, enjoyable and mischief.
We named Tchaikovsky one of many greatest Russian composers of all time and one of many biggest ballet composers ever
Learn our opinions of the most recent Tchaikovsky recordings right here
31 John Cage (1912-92)
Chief of the American avant-garde; inventor of the ready piano
Gavin Bryars says:
For me, John Cage was one of many two main artists of the Twentieth century – the opposite being Marcel Duchamp. Each questioned what can depend as artwork and each pursued their questioning to essentially the most elementary degree, in Cage’s case by way of the rigours of his musical and philosophical considering.
He took music again to the situation of zero with the so-called silent piece 4’33”, however with a lightness of spirit that one may by no means discover in different areas of the avant-garde. I first met him in 1966 when he carried out in London with Merce Cunningham.
Witnessing the invention and magnificence of their collaboration, I knew that this was what I wished to do, shifting away, as I used to be, from what I felt had been the confines of jazz and free improvisation. Cage’s music is continually stunning, usually baffling and at all times liberating.
30 Witold Lutosławski (1913-94)
The sensible Polish composer and conductor was a famend orchestrator
Sebastian Fagerlund says:
I grew to become acquainted with Lutosławski’s music in my early teenage years. His Livre pour Orchestre has since then remained one of many scores I recurrently return to and wherein I at all times discover one thing new. In Lutosławski’s orchestral works there’s a masterly management of the conception of time by way of the manipulation of timbre, texture and musical shapes and arcs.
What strikes me above all is what a humane composer he’s. Even in essentially the most aleatorically superior and texturally advanced sections, his music communicates with such directness. The music additionally feels concurrently playfully inviting, in addition to extremely expressive and acutely demanding of 1’s full consideration.
Beneficial recording:
29 Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953)
Prokofiev was a Russian composer who balanced Romanticism with a tough modernist type
Gabriel Prokofiev says:
I assume folks will assume I’m prejudiced to decide on my very own grandfather, however I believe my selection is justified. Prokofiev has an unmistakable sound, such a novel voice, significantly in his catchy but quirky melodic writing and authentic strategy to concord; it’s virtually not possible to mistake him for some other composer.
Prokofiev managed to proceed composing thrilling melodies proper up till the Fifties when virtually all different Twentieth-century composers had moved away from tonally rooted themes. His melodies nonetheless sounded recent and new.
Plus, after all, his music has had a large influence – Peter and the Wolf (one of many greatest items of classical music for kids) and Romeo and Juliet particularly have turn into a part of the worldwide musical canon past simply the realms of classical music.
28 Charles Ives (1874-1954)
Approach forward of his time, the American composer invented trendy music
Morten Lauridsen says:
Ives was presumably essentially the most authentic composer in historical past, whose affect was solely felt years after his astonishing works grew to become recognized – a pioneer in new instructions for orchestration, musical type, concord, textual content setting (particularly his 114 songs), rhythm, piano writing, tuning and extra, predating many composers who later experimented in these areas. His Three Locations in New England particularly stays a surprising mannequin of his improvements.
27 Philip Glass (b.1937)
First-wave minimalist and composer of hypnotic movie music and opera
Oliver Davis says:
Regardless of the extraordinarily assorted types of Philip Glass’s output over time, as quickly as you hear his music you immediately comprehend it couldn’t be anybody else: his harmonic language is that particular and he has a unprecedented present for melody.
Although minimalism is now a really accepted style, I ponder how tough it will need to have been as a younger composer within the Nineteen Sixties to reject the assumed modernist path set by the likes of Stockhausen and Boulez, and as an alternative begin a brand new genus of music.
It will need to have taken huge conviction and self perception. The result’s a novel and lasting repertoire of beautiful music that has credibility and common enchantment. His enduring affect can’t be underestimated.
26 George Gershwin (1898-1937)
Gershwin was a flexible American composer-pianist who melded jazz and classical
Carl Davis:
Gershwin is, for me, the primary nice American composer, whose profession path adopted a trajectory from Tin Pan Alley song-plugger into Broadway musicals and inevitably Hollywood movie musicals.
His jazz-infused Rhapsody in Blue premiered on the holy grail of classical music, Carnegie Corridor, and whereas his wonderful opera Porgy and Bess could have opened on Broadway, it will definitely reached the Met and the Royal Opera Home. Above all, there’s the music itself: an incredible achievement. His distinctive type by no means fails to each intrigue and transfer me.
25 Franz Schubert (1797-1828)
Schubert was an Austrian Romantic famed for his profound music cycles and elegant sonatas
Stephen Hough says:
There are various causes we would contemplate a composer nice: innovation and originality, or the sheer consistency that ends in many masterpieces.
However for me, Schubert’s distinctive stature, alongside these traits, is his means to talk to the human coronary heart in all its fragility and vulnerability. With out sentimentality or falsehood he reaches past the ears of his listeners to their hearts. We sense that he empathises with the deepest longings of our souls, but someway nonetheless respects our boundaries.
After his physique started to interrupt down in sickness, his inspiration took flight. It was a excessive value for him, however for us, left together with his miraculous works, it’s a trove of priceless treasures.
We named Schubert one of many biggest Austrian composers ever and one of many greatest Romantic composers of all time
24 Leos Janáček (1854-1928)
Janáček is without doubt one of the biggest Czech composers ever who memorialised folkloric traditions by way of magical music
Anna Meredith says:
I’ve at all times returned to Janáček’s music over time. There’s loads of technical talent and his ear for orchestral color and pacing actually bounce out to me, however I believe it’s the boldness that I really like, the theatricality and selection in his Sinfonietta, the humour in one thing like The Crafty Little Vixen, the large dramatic shapes of the chamber items. I believe I as soon as heard him described as a ‘composer’s composer’, which I agree with as a result of I don’t know any composers who don’t like his music.
Nevertheless, that assertion may make his music look like one thing to be admired or studied, however I believe he’s a lot extra instant than that. It takes loads of talent to jot down in a means that sounds so instinctive and recent, however that want to speak the id of every second is one thing that’s impressed me.
We additionally named Janáček one of many greatest opera composers ever
23 Carlo Gesualdo (1566-1613)
Murderous Italian choral composer with a style, too, for twisted harmonies
Elena Langer says:
I first heard Gesualdo’s music whereas finding out on the Moscow Conservatory and feeling suffocated by conference: previous polyphony, Baroque, dodecaphony… Why did his 400-year-old music sound so recent, stunning and timeless?
Unbiased, passionate and flouting the principles, Gesualdo discovered the right musical means to specific his tortured soul. Sliding chromatic voices at all times react exactly to their textual content, constructing into virtually Wagnerian harmonies. The best composers communicate the musical language of their instances however rework it to say one thing vital and distinctive. His madrigals are like actually intense quick operas.
22 Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951)
Father of serialism, beautiful orchestrator and revered music theorist
Brian Elias says:
Schoenberg’s concepts have been immeasurably influential and his legacy nonetheless impacts us at this time. His bravery and integrity are second to none; he found a brand new system of composition that has since proved to have its limitations however, on the similar time, he initiated new and radical methods of fascinated about how music is and needs to be composed. For therefore many composers of my technology, works corresponding to Pierrot Lunaire and the Three Piano Items Op. 11 stay pinnacles of inventive creativeness and originality.
Learn our opinions of the most recent Schoenberg recordings right here
21 Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958)
Pastoral scenes and Tudor influences are to the fore on this English composer’s output
David Bednall says:
For me, the ability of Vaughan Williams’s music is its emotional directness and expressive energy. His soundworld is so distinctive that instantly who the composer is, and but it appears infinitely variable – merely examine his Fourth Symphony together with his Fifth, for instance.
It additionally has that high quality of seeming to be very private and for all its technical brilliance and talent, it was written so that you can perceive. There’s additionally that unbelievable means to mix the traditional and new into a novel combine which is neither one or the opposite however may solely be RVW. The Fantasia on a theme of Thomas Tallis is the obvious instance of this.
We named Vaughan Williams one of many biggest English composers of all time
Learn our opinions of the most recent Vaughan Williams recordings right here
20 Frederic Chopin (1810-49)
Polish Romantic whose colossal output remodeled the piano repertoire
Jake Heggie says:
Just some notes and it’s him: a singular, indelible, impressed soul whose profoundly lovely, courageous, impeccably crafted music resonates throughout time and tradition. Is there anybody like Chopin? He didn’t write symphonies or operas; he knew the place his items lay and relentlessly explored the technical and expressive prospects inside that realm.
He has been the gateway and inspiration for hundreds of thousands of pianists, academics and composers of all stripes. His humanity walked me by way of the hardest instances of my life: my father’s suicide, popping out throughout the AIDS disaster, the hand harm that modified the course of my life. Chopin was at all times there with me.
Learn our opinions of the most recent Chopin recordings right here
19 Steve Reich (b.1936)
American minimalist, knowledgeable crafter of unpolluted strains and propulsive melodies
Stewart Copeland says:
Steve Reich might be considered the saviour of recent classical music. Someplace in the midst of the Twentieth century, the concept took maintain amongst even the perfect composers that music sophistication equals ache. Reich himself began with mental excessive idea, however then landed on one thing that allowed him to take a unique route: easy magnificence. His minimalism eschews guidelines of construction, type, contour and rhythm.
Learn our opinions of the most recent Reich recordings right here
18 Johannes Brahms (1833-97)
A Romantic composing large of wealthy, ripe textures and winsome melodies
Mark Simpson says:
The perfect of Brahms exists within the moments when he transcends his grounded, earthy sense of being and take us to the next state of non secular consciousness – the passage between the human and the non secular world. He was in essence deeply human but in addition had a developed non secular facet that he had entry to. It’s this striving for the next state of expressive consciousness that I take most from his work.
Learn our opinions of the most recent Brahms recordings right here
17 Kaija Saariaho (b1952)
Finnish composer working throughout electro-serialist and spectralist fields
Anna Thorvaldsdottir says:
Kaija Saariaho is without doubt one of the monumental composers of our time. There are such a lot of fantastic issues that may be mentioned about her music, particularly her nice items for bigger forces – lots of that are private favourites. As well as, I really feel that the highly effective presence of her music over time has been significantly vital as a task mannequin for youthful generations, not least for younger ladies in music that discover inspiration and encouragement in such a compelling composer. This multifaceted affect will, no doubt, stick with it to form the music of the long run.
Learn our opinions of the most recent Saariaho recordings right here
16 Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)
Symphonic pioneer who performed a key function within the improvement of chamber music
Rodney Newton says:
The daddy of the symphony and the string quartet, ‘Papa’ Haydn laid the foundations for the event of those kinds, and his inventiveness and originality had been the inspiration and mannequin for numerous others.
As with JS Bach, the fecundity of Haydn’s output and its vary is staggering. From the viewpoint of sheer enjoyment, he has few parallels – his humanity bubbles out of each work. And as a fellow composer as soon as suggested me, ‘If you wish to be taught to jot down melodies, research Haydn!’
Learn our opinions of the most recent Haydn recordings right here
15 Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-75)
Publish-Romantic composer of large-scale symphonies, orchestral works and opera
Danny Elfman says:
My first encounters with Shostakovich turned my musical perspective the other way up. His Eighth String Quartet, as an illustration, hit me with such drive. The opening four-note motif made an immediate connection to me because it developed into essentially the most soulful and heartbreaking melody I had ever heard.
Then, the way in which he twists and turns that motif, exposing and hiding it all through the quartet, appeared like an not possible magic trick… slowly winding down on the finish to depart simply the pure unadorned melodies, with a sense of pristine, lovely hopelessness. As I bought deeper into his music, I discovered sure parts coexisting: ardour, impeccable craftsmanship, enthusiasm which might be virtually giddy, darkness bumping into humour and pure soulfulness that enriches the world of the listener.
Learn our opinions of the most recent Shostakovich recordings right here
14 Béla Bartók (1881-1945)
Hungarian people music clashes thrillingly with angular modernism
Michael Berkeley says:
Bartók is for me an unsung hero. His six string quartets are the best cycle since Beethoven’s and in them he revolutionised writing for string devices. However the extraordinary sounds he achieves are totally natural and essential to the sensibility of the music. On a bigger scale, I might like to see two masterpieces coupled in a double invoice on the Royal Opera Home, with the opera doing Bluebeard’s Citadel and the ballet doing Miraculous Mandarin – each scores of terrifying energy and imaginative and prescient.
Learn our opinions of the most recent Bartók recordings right here
13 Olivier Messiaen (1908-92)
In his music, the French composer appears to serialism, gamelan and birdsong
Roxanna Panufnik says:
Through the years, my admiration for Messiaen has grown and grown – from my first publicity to his kaleidoscopic concord throughout my music faculty days to electrifying dwell performances of his timeless Turangalîla Symphony in later years. His spirituality seers by way of my soul as his majestic and ethereal chords mix and morph in reverent church acoustics.
Then I found he, like me, had synaesthesia (which, for him, meant he noticed colors when he heard sounds) and my attraction to his music made much more sense. Fortunately, he has left us such an epic physique of labor, I’ve a lot extra discovering to look ahead to.
Learn our opinions of the most recent Messiaen recordings right here
12 Jean Sibelius (1865-1957)
Brooding Finnish landscapes and historical folklore captured in vivid color
Anthony Payne says:
My college’s gramophone society as soon as placed on the Koussevitzky recording of Sibelius’s Second Symphony and it blew me away. On the time, I couldn’t say why, however the musical language spoke to me in my then state of partial ignorance. There’s one thing northern and highly effective about Sibelius. Nevertheless it’s the concept of narrative development in his music that basically grabs me – the way in which he begins with an thought or a motif and permits it to develop.
Within the Seventh Symphony, the trombone solo returns thrice, every time altered; you’ll be able to recognise the fabric all through and listen to it rising. Sibelius additionally makes references to classical kinds, however they’re fully newly aligned, as within the first motion of the Second Symphony or the tone poems corresponding to Tapiola, which I believe is without doubt one of the nice works of all time.
Learn our opinions of the most recent Sibelius recordings right here
11 Benjamin Britten (1913-76)
English composer of choral works, opera and music; Aldeburgh competition founder
Cheryl Frances-Hoad says:
The primary ‘trendy’ music that I keep in mind discovering was by Britten – as an eight year-old making an attempt to play his Tema ‘Sacher’ on my cello. Ever since, his music has enthralled me, and it’s usually to his scores that I’ll flip to for compositional ‘recommendation’. To me, his music is the right marriage of emotion and craft, with each compositional factor working collectively to contribute to the music’s expressive energy. If I had been solely allowed to hear to at least one piece for the remainder of my life, I might select his Les Illuminations.
Beneficial recording:
Learn our opinions of the most recent Britten recordings right here
High 10 classical composers of all time
10 Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643)
The Italian whose musical fertility remodeled each musical style
Eric Whitacre says:
Monteverdi was a maverick and visionary, single-handedly altering musical paradigms. His contribution to the event of an entire new style, opera, was incalculable. Human emotion grew to become a supply of inspiration and music a method to specific human passions. Abandoning educational guidelines and musical preconceptions, he created ground-breaking works for many years, bridging Renaissance and Baroque – apparently effortlessly. Above all else, Monteverdi wrote supremely well-crafted and deeply lovely music that could be a pleasure to listen to.
Learn our opinions of the most recent Monteverdi recordings right here
9 Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)
French impressionist notable for his vibrant pianism and use of repetition
Judith Bingham says:
Each musically and as an individual, Ravel has at all times appeared extraordinarily mysterious to me. He jogs my memory of the French Baroque painter, Watteau (whose work impressed him) – intensely lovely, however the image’s that means is at all times barely out of attain. Le Tombeau de Couperin, written throughout World Warfare I to memorialise pals who had been killed and within the interval of his mom’s decline and dying, may be very light-hearted, as if he wished to wind again time.
In fact, all his music is extremely authentic: the timbres are used to enchant. He has the weird talent, perhaps not intentionally, of writing music that may be listened to with equal satisfaction by adults and kids.
Learn our opinions of the most recent Ravel recordings right here
8 Richard Wagner (1813-83):
Composer of epic, large-scale operas; inventor of Gesamtkunstwerk
Jonathan Dove says:
The dimensions of Wagner’s creativeness is overwhelming. The Ring particularly is an immense imaginative and prescient of a piece that lasts greater than 15 hours (plus intervals), and he had the tenacity and self-belief to spend 26 years writing it. He created spectacular musical imagery of unsurpassed vividness, and had a revolutionary strategy to reminiscence and time. Whether or not you discover his music poisonous or intoxicating, you’ll be able to’t ignore it.
Learn our opinions of the most recent Wagner recordings right here
7 Gustav Mahler (1860-1911)
His mighty Romantic symphonies embrace the entire of humanity
David Matthews says:
Mahler composed a few of the biggest symphonies since Beethoven, written with an astonishing command of all features of compositional method. Mahler was a Romantic, however he couldn’t share Beethoven’s early Romantic optimism; his is a contemporary strategy, filled with doubts and uncertainties but infrequently falling into despair. The seek for that means isn’t absent, and in addition to its passionate striving, Mahler’s music is commonly filled with uninhibited pleasure. Because of this I believe it has such enchantment in our personal darkish time.
Learn our opinions of the most recent Mahler recordings right here
6 György Ligeti (1923-2006)
The Hungarian-Austrian avant-gardist and polyrhythmic pioneer
John Casken says:
Ligeti is a most intriguing composer, and one whose creativeness is nearly limitless. Together with Lutosławski within the Nineteen Sixties, he confirmed us how you can hear afresh to concord and beguiled us with magical textures. He teases and performs with our expectations in a weird world of unusual juxtapositions, tragi-comic extremes and intentionally faltering mechanisms.
At one second the music is inside our grasp and the subsequent it’s out of attain. I really like the enjoyment and enthusiasm however, on the similar time, the pathos and profundity of the Horn Trio, and the lamenting and ghostly ocarinas within the Piano Concerto are virtually insufferable. His Études for Piano, in the meantime, appear to mirror one thing past human notion. Right here, and in so many different methods, he touches on the very human query of ‘what’s actual and what’s not?’.
Learn our opinions of the most recent Ligeti recordings right here
5 Claude Debussy (1862-1918)
Creator of lyrical melodies, poetic piano works and chamber music
Jennifer Higdon says:
Mild and air imbue the areas between the notes of Claude Debussy’s music. At the same time as a younger youngster – lengthy earlier than I began down the trail of music – his works would at all times carry me to a standstill. I used to be totally fascinated by what felt like some kind of magic, descending on the air. Now, as somebody who works in the identical area, I’m able to say that Debussy’s music feels like a lightweight breeze, leaving a mild impression however with sufficient presence to nonetheless encourage me to cease and hear – the artistry of this ‘insurgent’ composer nonetheless sounds recent.
Learn our opinions of the most recent Debussy recordings right here
4 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-91)
Prodigious and prolific, the Austrian composer outlined the Classical period
Augusta Learn Thomas says:
To me, Mozart’s works have an inevitability that’s pure and sincere, humane, human, infinitely compelling, wealthy, sonorous and technically fabulous; his music is at instances humorous, at instances gut-wrenchingly shifting. In some ways, the physique of labor that poured out of him in his transient 35 years of life appears like pure magic, and it’s unbelievable how such a younger man was in a position to assimilate the deepest riches of music and its prospects.
But his works are so recent: he’s not simply understanding music historical past and regurgitating it – his works sound like him, whilst his type developed and blossomed. And his affect on the following historical past of music is totally profound.
Learn our opinions of the most recent Mozart recordings right here
3 Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Straddling Classical and Romanticism, his wide-ranging music dominated his period
John Corigliano says:
As a composer, my purpose is to attain the right stability between the visceral and the cerebral parts in my music. This can be very vital to me that the listener is drawn into the drama of my work, however equally vital that there are numerous layers of fabric that may be found with repeated listening. There are various nice composers that attempt to obtain this purpose, and a few come very near it.
There are additionally many nice composers which have little interest in this delicate stability. However for me, Ludwig van Beethoven is the one composer that makes music so pressing that one is straight away drawn to it, so highly effective that one can hardly resist it and but so richly layered that one won’t ever completely plumb the depths of its wondrous constructions. There isn’t any one like him.
Thea Musgrave says:
For an instance of what excites me about Beethoven, take the final motion of his Eighth Symphony. It begins in F main then immediately the music is interrupted with a startling and unexplained C sharp performed forte. The music then resumes virtually as if nothing has occurred! The ‘clarification’ solely comes within the coda a number of minutes later – a beautiful instance of ‘long-range’ harmonic planning. This led me as a composer to think about even my non-programmatic music in dramatic narratives and gestures.
You may learn our opinions of the most recent Beethoven recordings right here
2 Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971)
Russian iconoclast whose built-in strategy to artwork has stood the check of time
Mark-Anthony Turnage says:
I suppose in some ways I’m obsessive about Iggy (as Hans Werner Henze used to name him). Each observe is so superbly positioned; nothing jars or is superfluous. It strikes me, as a result of like Bach it’s so exact. I really like the concord, the Russian inflected melodies, the power and brilliance.
Whether or not it’s the serene chords that transfer with the bass line on the finish of Symphony of Psalms, the keening on the opening of Symphonies of Wind Devices and every part in between, together with the a lot maligned neo-classical works, it’s all fantastic. As a composer he’s there in my life, looming over me however by no means an amazing presence; at all times cheeky and inspiring. His music makes me so completely satisfied, particularly on darkish days. I really like Igor Stravinsky.
Edward Gregson says:
The Ceremony of Spring has proved to be the true beginning of modernism, greater than Schoenberg’s music ever was. And, quite like Picasso, Stravinsky continually reinvented himself and his musical language, although his type remained fixed – his twelve-tone system sounds as Stravinskian as any of his earlier work. There aren’t many composers since who haven’t been influenced by his inventive creativeness. He’s the godfather of Twentieth-century music.
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And the best composer ever is…
May the perfect composer on this planet be anybody else aside from JS Bach? Johann Sebastian Bach tops the record with music of breathtaking brilliance.
1 Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
All hail JS Bach, whose spirit dwells in virtually each observe written since his dying. With supreme contrapuntal talent, Bach sculpts music of good type and stability, bestowing it with an emotional energy that has echoed by way of the centuries. From the aching fantastic thing about the cello suites and the bewildering ambition of the keyboard works to the dramatic drive of the cantatas, nobody has, and will presumably, come near Bach‘s genius
Steve Reich says:
Bach to me is the best composer who ever lived, the genius who created essentially the most lovely counterpoint I’ve ever heard, plus the fundamental aria of the Goldberg Variations the place I’m lowered to tears. I first heard Bach’s Fifth Brandenburg Concerto as a youngster in 1950, shortly after first listening to Stravinsky’s The Ceremony of Spring. The 2 items set me on my means. As a scholar, together with everybody else, Bach’s four-part chorales had been important to my research of concord.
A lot later, I studied his Cantata No. 4 whereas composing Tehillim. You may hear my indebtedness to Bach’s second motion when listening to my third. They each have call-and-response construction in addition to completely different instrumental doubling of the voices to make clear the decision from the response. Extra just lately for me, the Fifth Brandenburg served as a mannequin for the Concerto grosso, the place a number of devices are soloists – it prompted my Music for Ensemble and Orchestra the place there are 22 soloists, all common members of the orchestra.
Erkki-Sven Tüür says:
It could be seen as virtually a cliché amongst music lovers to think about Bach a king of music, however for me it was an apparent selection. What strikes me most in Bach’s work is how completely his music is structured when it comes to mathematic precision. The great thing about its internal structure reveals a type of cosmologic order, a contact of the divine.
I’m amazed by the unbelievable synergy of the counterpoint and concord and the way in which that the horizontal and vertical are linked right into a coherent entire. Alternatively, with none particular data of those technical features, the purely sonic results of his music touches the listener deeply in essentially the most mysterious means.
Unsuk Chin says:
Bach’s music shows nice feelings and fiery temperament, whereas being the very best conceivable summit of composition as an mental artwork. It’s a synthesis of previous music and the creations of his personal time in addition to a daring imaginative and prescient of the long run. As much as Bach, musical works disappeared after a premiere or, at the least, after a composer’s dying.
Bach was too grand to be ignored. Nice musical minds as various as Beethoven, Chopin, the masters of jazz, Boulez – and numerous others – are unthinkable with out Bach’s legacy. The avant-garde composer Mauricio Kagel famously quipped that ‘not all musicians consider in God, however all of them consider in Johann Sebastian Bach’.
Learn our opinions of the most recent JS Bach opinions right here
