Greatest Composers of All Time

Chayro and Charles1dad, Well stated commentaries on the current non-sustainable inherently wrong headed pour someone else's money down utterly ridiculous holes mentality. As has been stated, "Socialism works great until you run out of someone else's money." Now, back to the music. I could not live without Bach, Beethoven and Mahler. Charles1dad, add to the above recommendations Aaron Copland's piano concerto. Leonard Bernstein is the only one I ever heard get this piece right. It is just a gas. Might want to give that a try. Lenny was unique.

As someone who enjoys music of the Renaissance and other early periods, I just want to put in a good word for perhaps the greatest of all composers of early music, Anon.

Incredibly, he was a distinguished and prolific literary author as well.

Best regards,
-- Al :-)

Hi Chayro - I think we are mostly in agreement, actually. When I mentioned that classical was the best way to test a system, what I was actually driving at is that the type of person that is a total gearhead and is not really into music at all, as you described in your follow-up post to mine, is almost never a classical music fan. I think that there is a great deal of irony in that, since classical would actually show off their toys much more than whatever else they are blasting through their systems. As you say yourself, almost none of those type of guys are listening to classical. Classical music lovers who are audiophiles normally either have a very clear idea of what they want in equipment (as far as how they want it to sound), or they like to experiment, and don't really need suggestions from others. They also often have made more of an effort to train their ears in general, since classical music usually requires more careful listening anyway.

I would also say that this particular forum is a little unusual in it's relative lack of discussion of music period, not just classical. On just about every other board I visit, there is quite a bit more discussion of music than on this one, and much of it is indeed about classical. There's a really good jazz discussion going on on this board right now, but I've never seen a similar discussion about really any other type of music on this board. Just about all of the really good discussions on this board center around gear, or aspects of listening that concentrate on the equipment rather than the music itself. Although of course the main focus of this site is the gear, and I get that, for a professional musician like myself, the almost total lack of discussion of music itself on this board is pretty depressing.

Charles1dad - I highly recommend Jacques Loussier's The Four Seasons and the Brandenburgs albums over the Bach one that I have. His Chopin Nocturnes was by far my least favorite as it sounds pretty much all the same for something like 24 songs. I heard the Brandenburgs first on his album and then purchased the classical version for comparison.

I think it's pretty safe to put Bach, Beethoven and Mozart as the top three, far and away--and forget about rating them against one another.

I personally would list Baroque stalwarts such as Handel, D. Scarlatti and Telemann up there with many of the "also-ran" great composers of later years who seem to get mentioned.