Anthony Tommasini explores the qualities that make a classical composer great, maybe even the best of all time.
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Join the discussion.Left, 1. Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750). From top left, 2. Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827), 3. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 — 91). 4. Franz Peter Schubert (1797-1828). From middle left, 5. Claude Achille Debussy (1862 — 1918), 6. Igor Stravinsky (1882 — 1971), 7. Johannes Brahms (1833 — 97). From bottom left, 8. Giuseppe Verdi (1813 — 1901), 9. Richard Wagner (1813 — 83), 10. Bela Bartok (1881 — 1945).
I am about to reveal my list, though as those who have been with me on this quest already know, I’ve dropped hints along the way. And the winner, the all-time great, is ... Bach!
To step back for a moment, I began this project with bravado, partly as an intellectual game but also as a real attempt to clarify — for myself, as much as for anyone else — what exactly about the master composers makes them so astonishing. However preposterous the exercise may seem, when I found myself debating whether to push Brahms or Haydn off the list to make a place for Bartok or
Monteverdi, it made me think hard about their achievements and greatness.
Ah, greatness. Early on I received a friendly challenge from a reader (“Scott”) who questioned the whole notion of greatness in music. He cited the title essay in
“Listen to This,” a collection of astute, lively writings by
Alex Ross, the music critic for
The New Yorker and my good friend, which was published last year (Farrar, Straus & Giroux). In this essay he argues that the very term “classical music” makes this vibrant art form seem dead. Indeed, as he writes, “greatness” and “seriousness” are not classical music’s defining characteristics; it can also “be stupid, vulgar and insane.”
All true. Yet what came through in the comments from readers and, I hope, my articles and videos is that for most of us these composers are not monumental idols but living, compelling presences. Just as we organize our lives by keeping those we love in a network of support, we do something similar with the composers we rely on.
I was moved by how many readers could not wait to share their lists of favorite composers, whom, naturally, they also considered the greats. Even many of those who dismissed the exercise jumped right in: “This is absurd, of course. But here’s my list. And don’t you dare leave out Mahler.” Or
Berg. Or Ligeti. Or, from one Baroque music enthusiast, Albinoni!
As a longtime champion of contemporary music, I was gratified to receive so many objections to my decision to eliminate living composers from consideration. Still, for me there was no other way. We are too close to living composers to have perspective. Besides, assessing greatness is the last thing on your mind when you are listening to an involving, exciting or baffling new piece.
So humbled by the discerning music lovers who wrote in, I now offer my own list. And remember: my editors gave the go-ahead for this project on condition that I go all the way and rank my 10 in order.
My top spot goes to Bach, for his matchless combination of masterly musical engineering (as one reader put it) and profound expressivity. Since writing about Bach in the first article of this series I have been thinking more about the perception that he was considered old-fashioned in his day. Haydn was 18 when Bach died, in 1750, and Classicism was stirring. Bach was surely aware of the new trends. Yet he reacted by digging deeper into his way of doing things. In his austerely beautiful “Art of Fugue,” left incomplete at his death, Bach reduced complex counterpoint to its bare essentials, not even indicating the instrument (or instruments) for which these works were composed.
On his own terms he could be plenty modern. Though Bach never wrote an
opera, he demonstrated visceral flair for drama in his sacred choral works, as in the crowd scenes in the Passions where people cry out with chilling vehemence for Jesus to be crucified. In keyboard works like the Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue, Bach anticipated the rhapsodic Romantic fervor of Liszt, even Rachmaninoff. And as I tried to show in the
first video for this project, through his chorales alone Bach explored the far reaches of tonal harmony.
The obvious candidates for the second and third slots are
Mozart and
Beethoven. If you were to compare just Mozart’s orchestral and instrumental music to Beethoven’s, that would be a pretty even match. But Mozart had a whole second career as a path-breaking opera composer. Such incredible range should give him the edge.
Still, I’m going with Beethoven for the second slot. Beethoven’s technique was not as facile as Mozart’s. He struggled to compose, and you can sometimes hear that struggle in the music. But however hard wrought, Beethoven’s works are so audacious and indestructible that they survive even poor performances.
I had an epiphany about Beethoven during the early 1980s when I heard the composer Leon Kirchner conduct the
Harvard Chamber Orchestra. He began with a Piston symphony, a fresh, inventive Neo-Classical piece from the 1950s. “La Mer” by Debussy came next, and Kirchner, who had studied with Schoenberg and had a Germanic orientation, brought weighty, Wagnerian intensity to this landmark score, completed in 1905. The Debussy came across as more modern than the Piston.
After intermission
Peter Serkin joined Kirchner for a performance of Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto that brought out the mysticism, poetic reverie and wildness of the music. The Beethoven sounded like the most radical work in the program by far: unfathomable and amazing. I’m giving Beethoven the second slot, and Mozart No. 3.
Four?
Schubert. You have to love the guy, who died at 31, ill, impoverished and neglected except by a circle of friends who were in awe of his genius. For his hundreds of songs alone — including the haunting cycle “Winterreise,” which will never release its tenacious hold on singers and audiences — Schubert is central to our concert life. The baritone Sanford Sylvan once told me that hearing the superb pianist Stephen Drury give searching accounts of the three late Schubert sonatas on a single program was one of the most transcendent musical experiences of his life. Schubert’s first few symphonies may be works in progress. But the “Unfinished” and especially the Ninth Symphony are astonishing. The Ninth paves the way for Bruckner and prefigures Mahler.
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