 | |
 | |
News by E-mail |
 Is it all about luck?June 27, 2009 at 7:43 PM This week, while waiting for my shift to start at work, I waited out in the car and was listening to WXXI's classical music channel on the radio. They always have fine music, and I enjoy listening. Most of the composers I know, Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn, Tchaikovsky, and Wagner among others. Usually if I had not heard of them, they are contemporaries and new on the classical music scene. The other day they played Carl Friederich Abel's Symphony no. 3 in Eb major. It was marvelous, though I had never heard of this composer oddly enough, so I looked him up when I got home. I have listened to most of the works I could find by him and they are great, personally I think they are the quality of most of the composers names above. I starting thinking, "Why had I never heard of this guy before?" He was obviously a talented composer, and a contemporary of Bach. Is composing and music in general mostly about luck? The only reason Abel is known as well as he is today (which I don't think is that much, but I may just be ignorant) is because that third symphony was accidentally mismarked and originally published as Mozart's. Is music today the same way? There are plenty of great players out there, do certain ones become famous because of luck, or is there another factor to it? From Pauline Lerner
Posted on June 28, 2009 at 6:08 AM There is certainly more than musical talent involved. There are credentials involved, things like who you studied under, how much your mentor championed your cause, how influential your mentor is, your stage presence and image, which of the international competitions you've won, etc. The winners of the competitions are those who appealed to the judges most, not necessarily the best musicians. I'm sure that luck is an element, too. From Manuel Tabora
Posted on June 28, 2009 at 10:12 PM Well, remember that even the good ol' J. S. Bach was forgotten for quite a while, until Mendelssohn (I believe) came along and revived that music, performing one of Bach's oratorios. Also, bach in the day (:-P) nobody performed music by dead composers. I believe the reason for this is because composers worked for the church or noble patrons and they composed music as needs for it arose, so they were playing new music all the time. With your particular composer, after he died his music probably ceased to be heard and a widespread revival may have never happened. There's also other reasons why some composers stand the test of time better than others. There's a lot of composers from the classical era whose music sounds much like Haydn or Mozart, however any music theorist can list you a number of reasons why Haydn and Mozart are considered vastly superior to their peers. Actually I don't think luck has too much to do with it. From Nigel Keay
Posted on June 29, 2009 at 6:13 AM While there's been plenty of time to consider who were the better composers from the baroque, classical etc. periods (the historical filter), the number writing music has grown exponentially since then. There's tens of thousands of people writing music today, so I don't really think it's possible any longer in terms of absolute quality for one or two to be identified out of all the rest as being the greatest, given the diversification of styles. Certain contemporary figures have risen to prominent positions but there's no doubt that others also merit the attention in the same way, aside from the fact that we don't have the historical distance. This entry has been archived and is no longer accepting comments. |
Music Giveaway
SearchAbout RichardRichard Hellinger is from Shortsville, New York. Biography
Blog Archive2009: Jun. 2007: Nov. Oct. Sep. Aug. Jul. Jun. May Apr. Mar. Feb. Jan. 2006: Dec. Nov. Oct. Sep. Aug. Jul. Jun. May 
|
Printer-friendly version
