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Talk:World History Lecture Nine (view source)
Revision as of 22:47, April 6, 2009
, 22:47, April 6, 2009→Non-German 'Great' Composers
::::* Many of the greatest composers in music history were from the area now known as Germany. But it is untrue to claim that most great composers were German, unless you ignore Vivaldi, Mozart, Haydn, Schubert, Chopin, Verdi, Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky, Debussy, Mahler, and dozens more. --[[User:Eoinc|Eoinc]] 18:31, 6 April 2009 (EDT)
::::* Many of the greatest composers in music history were from the area now known as Germany. But it is untrue to claim that most great composers were German, unless you ignore Vivaldi, Mozart, Haydn, Schubert, Chopin, Verdi, Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky, Debussy, Mahler, and dozens more. --[[User:Eoinc|Eoinc]] 18:31, 6 April 2009 (EDT)
::It makes no difference to me what Eoinc's point of view is, because both you and he have gone very far-afield of the subject at hand. You seem to misunderstand my objection, by attempting to read a political motivation behind it. But this is not politics or religion, this is about great music. And being a musician with a passion for the subject myself, it's simply my belief that there are embarrassing riches of great music in the repertoire, a lot of it by Germans, a lot by Austrians, and greatness as well from the French, Russians, and Italians too. To me, the relative greatness of my favorite composers is so hard to quantify as to be irrelevant. As a student of music history, I also have dealt with the issue that since musicians moved around frequently (no differently from today), speaking of a composer's nationality is less useful than organizing it by musical centers: i.e. Vienna, Paris, Leipzig, London, etc.
::If I wasn't clear enough about my objection in the last post, let me re-state it here: to assert that the best composers were all German is a gross over-simplification at best, and accuracy matters. That's all.
::Does anyone make the claim that the greatest painters were Flemish? Of course not, because there were various centers of artistic activity all over Europe across a 400-year period. No one tries to compare El Greco to Caravaggio, much less to Monet. Similarly, I don't know of anyone who tries to compare the greatness of Debussy to the greatness of Brahms, because they both represented the perfection of a certain aesthetic ideal, but were very different in their aims.
::My point is, there are many more accurate ways you can express your point, which is indeed based on truth: that there was a golden age of music based in German-speaking countries which occurred in the 18th and 19th-centuries. I simply can't understand why you insist on such an unnuanced assertion, when there is so much evidence to the contrary. Is it such an odious compromise to qualify your statement so that other great composers fit? [[User:JDWpianist|JDWpianist]] 18:47, 6 April 2009 (EDT)