20th Century Composers

Film scores are not music ??? Thanks Tarando for proving my point with your comment. What I meant about John Williams being like the others; is the others composed what they did, when they did because that is where the money was then. They were just making a living. It was their profession.

A lot of the classic music played in the concert halls today is actually ballet or opera music (show tunes). Many have not be performed with dancers or singers in a long long time. Most classical concerts begin with a "Overture" from some pre-20th century show of some kind. Mozarts 21st Piano concerto is called "Elvira Madigan" (the name of a movie is was in).

In their day Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, Brahms, and most of the others were not held up on the lofty pedistal we put them on today. Bach was all but forgotten until Felix Mendelssohn revived his music in the 19th century. Mozart got no respect probably until the very early 20th century. Brahms in his prime was considered too old fashion to ever amount to anything long term.

Rossini works as I mentioned were performed as entertainment at gambling casinos (not the MET like today). Rossini got a fixed fee plus a percent of the house take the night of his shows. Can you image him alive today performing his operas in Las Vegas? Would you predict he would become an opera legend based on that.

Go to the store and you'll find recording by Orchestras around the world of movie and other music by people like Elmer Bernstein, Eric Korngold, Miklos Rozsa, Bernard-Herrmann, Richard Rogers. Even Prokofiev and Shostakovich composed film scores.

There are recordings already of John William's movie music arranged into concert suites, even by foreign orchestras. Leonard Slatkin is on record as saying some of John's marches in a few movies, are as good as anything composed by John Phillip Sousa.

right. But in the long run it's WHAT THEY COMPOSED that matters, the value of the compositions,, not just the fact that they "did their own thing". Everyone from pure hack to genius can do their own thing, make a living, whatever, but that's not what we care about (not what I care about anyway). What I care about is the product. And if I look at Beethoven's product--what he wrote--it's in a league altogether different than John Williams--maybe not simply because the latter wrote movie music, but for many other reasons. And maybe John Williams is the equal of Sousa...so what?--in terms of comparisons to Beethoven, they are both marching in the wind.

Listen to Live at Fillmore by the Allman Brothers Band - Dickey Betts - "In Memory of Elizabeth Reed"

Allan Holdsworth, Robert Fripp, Jimi Hendrix, Sonny Sharrock, John McLaughlin, Frank Zappa and Carlos Santana may not have inflenced composition as much as Stravinsky, Monk or Mancini*, but those 7 guys sure found some cool ways to extend the vocabulary of electric guitar playing.

*(corny or not, you couldn't get away from his stuff, and it got stuck in the brain). If you snag the 1st Oranj Symphonette cd you might be surprised at how much Mancini contributed to the ol' memory bank.

Sugarbrie - I'm with you on all your choices. I would like to add a few that are conspiciously missing:

Jean Sibelius
Claude Debussy (could be considered 19th Century but a truly influential and original composer of the modern era)
Maurice Ravel (among the best orchestrators of any period)

The most influential composer of the 20th Century and the greatest in my book is Igor Stravinsky