Columns Retired Columns & Blogs |
Bruce Springsteen!!
Many "Greatest Composers of the 20th Century" lists would include Copland, Gershwin, et al, but could also include Roy Orbison, Lennon-McCartney, and Scott Joplin. Who is <I>your</I> favorite?
Samuel Barber or Paul Hindemith. Anyone who thinks that people who only write down words are composers don't know what a composer is, in the musical sense. That person is just a poet. It's much more difficult, in my 4th-year music-major opinion, to sit down at a desk and write actual notes: quarters, eighths, whole notes, whatever. So those two have my vote for best of the 20th century.
It's impossible for there to be a "Greatest" composer in this century, just as it was impossible in the last century. However, my list would include Copland, Thomson, Moross, Vaughan Williams, Walton, Arnold, Debussy, Ravel, Stravinsky, Shostakovich, Korngold, Rozsa, Herrmann, Waxman, and Goldsmith.
To me, "favorite composer" would mean someone who wrote fun and/or interesting and/or extremely pleasurable music, with grandiloquent historical significance optional. So many fine 20th-century composers from whom to choose. Funny you should mention Aaron Copland . . . he's the one! Close behind would be Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Lennon-McCartney, and Jimi Hendrix.