departed our world who would it be? We have lost some incredibly talented artists, often under tragic circumstances. If it were possible to have an encore I would vote for Janis Joplin. You?
Emily Remler. If you are into great jazz guitar you know who she is. She was an incredible talent. So sad. Get all of her vinyl on Concord. Great stuff and recorded well.
I would love to hear new music again from Tom Petty and Freddie Mercury two legends who wrote and performed some wonderful music. I have built my system around their music it sounds amazing.
Picking one artist would be far too difficult. So, please pardon my short and very incomplete list: Aretha Franklin Otis Redding Elvis Presley John Denver Buddy Holly Michael Jackson Richie Valens Stevie Ray Vaughn Waylon Jennings Buddy Rich Miles Davis John Entwistle & Keith Moon
Beethoven is a very "masculine" composer. His music is unusually muscular, if you know what I mean. Bach's music sounds like it came from a source above the plane of humans imo. I sometimes feel like I am in the presence of that source while listening to his music. I consider that a spiritual experience, and it can be overwhelming.
My genius friend (seriously. He was programming at Hewlett Packard in Mountain View, CA, and they wanted to find out just how smart he was. The IQ test came back genius. He wasn't the type to speak the number. They made him head of programmer training) was (RIP) what guys like Bill Maher don't understand: both really smart, and a "believer". Ya know, Einstein "believed" (knew, actually ;-) in a creator. Knowing as much about the physical universe as he did, I believe it was obvious to him that it didn't create itself.
Similarly, the "rules" governing music (taught in music theory courses) are there by design. Humans didn't create them, they discovered them. And no one more than J.S. Bach. He is considered the Father of Western Music.
Not everyone shares your unbounded enthusiasm for either one. I certainly don’t.
He lost me as soon as he brought a religion in as a prerequisite for understanding the music. That's really an insult to Bach. Real art is universal and transcends time, space and culture.
It does roxy54, and I don’t disagree. I was in a band with a real fine bassist who really didn’t like Baroque music, but loved 19th and 20th Century stuff (Beethoven, Wagner). JSB to him sounded too mechanical, too stiff and regimented. I can see why one would feel that way, but the composer’s chord structures, melodies, harmonies, and insane counterpoint just thrill me to death.
It’s no different in Popular music. Some listeners hear a Brian Wilson song and just don’t get why Paul McCartney considers him The Master. Another listener may hear only the voices of the not-so-hot Beach Boy singers (apart from Carl Wilson), while I hear the spectacular chord progressions in his best songs, and his use of inversion (the bass not playing the root note of the chord, but up a third or fifth. James Jamerson---with whom McCartney credits opening his mind to the possibilities in bass playing---uses inversion brilliantly in "What Becomes Of The Broken Hearted". It’s unadulterated J.S. Bach!).
bdp24, I don't think you're being argumentative, and I understand that many brilliant people respect him greatly as a genius. I own several discs of his music myself. I made my comment because Schubert has demeaned other music repeatedly in the past, implying that it was without musical worth. I think that this mostly applied to the rock genre. My point is that even though some music composers have both amazing technical acuity in their compositions as well as the ability to evoke emotional responses from listeners, many composers and songwriters of much more humble technical abilities are able to evoke the same emotional responses, and it is narrow minded to dismiss their work. I hope that makes my response more clear.
Not meaning to be argumentative, but "J.S. Bach is better than all mentioned put together" is not just "one man's narrow minded opinion." There are a great many other composers who shared that same narrow-minded opinion, as do a fair number of other music lovers, myself included.
I was turned on to JSB by the smartest human I have known in my life, a music major and graduate of The University Of California at Riverside, known for it's excellent music department. He also loved Mozart and Beethoven, but put J.S. Bach on a pedestal above all others. Genius on his level comes along only once every few centuries.
"J.S. Bach is better than all mentioned put together !"
One man’s narrow minded opinion. All human creations are fascinating by their very nature, and each is appealing to someone. There are countless profound musical creations by many minds. You believe J.S Bach trivializes most if not all others. Good for you schubert; but that is your fiction, not actual fact.
loomis---One thing about living in L.A. is you see artists all over the place. When I lived in Burbank a couple of blocks from both the NBC studio where the Tonight Show is filmed and where the Warner Brothers Records offices are located, there was a now-closed restaurant named Mo's, just over the border in Toluca Lake (right next to the Bob's Big Boy where David Lynch used to sit all night drinking coffee and writing Eraserhead, it is said!). One night I was my way out of Mo's front door just as another guy was on his way in. Our eyes met, and he gave me the "Hey man" nod and a hint of a smile. I nodded and smiled back, and just after we passed realized it was Elliott. He did himself in not long after that. Too bad, he was one of the cool ones of his generation.
Luciano Pavarotti , though the big guy wasn't always my first choice in any given role, his big smile and magnetic persona lit up the world like no other artist. ONE of a kind that I miss greatly !
Paco de lucia, the greatest flamenco guitarist. And, of course, El Camaron de la Isla - the greatest flamenco singer. Last ten years of their careers there was nothing to write home about though. Same with Miles Davis. But they were all the very best, I miss them.
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