Your favorite classical composers/works?


Due to the recent flood of pop/rock/blues/jazz topics, I thought its about time for a classical topic.
Guess this could be a open forum for all things classical.
Here's a few ideas to touch on.
Future of classical in western culture?
Will the classical/romantic traditionalist composers survive in the comming decades, or will the 20th century composers/stsrting with Debussy, over take the previous classical forms in popularity?
Don't you want your kids to have at least some knowledge and interest in classical? Do you see yourself growing more interested in classical? Why classical has not made a more important impact on western culture, as we witness more money is spent on pop music than classical? In fact here in the states, I'd say more money is spent on all other music forms vs classical.
Does a culture's music reflect its life style and and reveal the culture's attitudes, beliefs, values?
bartokfan
For me, the high points of Telemanns music are very enjoyable but he wrote huge amounts of "wallpaper" as well. Lately I'm getting into Saint-Saens and Edmund Rubbra.
I'm mainly a jazz fan, but I have a few hundred classical CDs- used to be a season ticket holder to LA Symphony (during its doldrums 15 yrs ago). Favorite composers: beethoven, shostakovich and ives. This weekend had john Adams "fearful symetries" on ipod as well as magnatune free classical podcasts (and lots of talk radio, NPR etc).

classical music does not know how to market itself and has a hard time competing with the MTV rap phenomenon. standard rep classical is considered unhip and old fogey to most young people. new composers (adams, schnittke, arvo part, reich, ligeti, etc) get very little airplay or concert programming. so how to you generate new interest and bring in new blood? beats me. classical is likely to die the same slow death that the hi-end audio boutique shop is facing...
For all you R&R/blues/jazz fans looking to get a toe into classical and have been turned off by the popular romantic composers, none of which i am a fan of, except for 3 of Wagner's operas, ck out Pettersson/1911-1980 and Schnittke/1934-1998. Just try one work from each, Pettersson sym 7/BIS, and Schnittke concerto grosso 4/sym 5(the work is both a concerto grosso and a sym)/BIS.
I hope to see some postings next week from at least 3 or 4 of you guys.
I got into classical music relatively late in life (age 26), just on a whim, and discovered I really liked it. Particularly the late 19th century Romantic composers.

I think that classical music will survive just fine. After all, numerous cities have orchestras that are well attended. There is a segment of the population that still enjoys those performances.

But most important, classical music is often in the background in our society. Sometimes subtly, but noticeable nonetheless. We hear it on elevators, in cartoons, commercials, malls, and TV shows. (The TV shows, especially sci-fi shows, such as some of the Star Trek incarnations, have original scores for each episode. I would classify that as modern classical music. Just imagine those TV shows without that background music.)

Classical music still has a following in the Western world. It's not the forefront in pop culture, nor should it be; that spot is limited to the new and cutting-edge. 50 years from now rap music will be in the same place that jazz is right now: Still has a following, though not in the forefront.

Michael