What do you think are the particular qualities of the music of the "great&q!

What do you think are the particular qualities of the music of the "great" composers....?

that sets them apart from the rest?

F'rinstance, why are Beethoven's concerto's considered so much better than, say, Hummel's? What qualites set Mozart's symphonies apart from Schubert's? And so forth.

More consideration will be given to answerers who employ complete sentences, and more importantly, complete thoughts, with opinions well supported.

2 weeks ago
Steve: Was Bach an innovator? He was criticized by his contemporaries for writing in "the old style". He was an anachronism. Was Mozart an innovator? Why do you think HE perfected the "classical" style -- what about Haydn, who personified it?

Bearcat: Read the Question. I asked what YOU think. I can find and read tons of essays.

2 weeks ago
Scots Pines: I'll take a hayp'ny from you before a pound sterling from most others.

2 weeks ago
A soupçon indeed, Mr. CubCur (who's answer was long awaited). Ah that I could give two best answers.....

There appears to be a soupçon of mischief mixed into the phrasing of your question, Glinzek? :-)

A soupçon that has tempted quite a few replies to concentrate on the greatness (or otherwise) of *composers* -- among which, I enjoyed Scots Pines' very much indeed -- while it is the qualities in the *works* instead you appear to want to concentrate on.

Before anything else, I have to take issue with your illustrative premise that Beethoven's (piano) concertos are considered in the manner you describe, compared with those of Hummel. When do you speak of, and so regarded by whom? Between 1805 and 1850, Hummel's were held in incomparanbly higher esteem, and were of far profounder influence on (piano) concerto composition by one, or even two generations of (pianist-)composers commencing their careers at that time. (It was this that caused Brahms such public grief with his, he having taken his lead from Beethoven instead.) It took the tenacity and grit of an incomparable advocate, Franz Liszt, at the time to force the musical world's attention back to Beethoven's achievement by insisting on public performance of the c-minor, op. 37, in particular, frequently at the explicit expense of his own concertante output, for which public demand was infinitely greater, and financial return commensurately higher. Schubert benefitted from similar eloquence and advocacy on Liszt's and Schumann's part, and Bach from the tireless efforts of Mendelssohn, Schumann, LIszt and Chopin, each within their own sphere of influence, likewise. That's greatness in selfless service of others' greatness. And it doesn't only apply to events of a century and a half ago: without similar, tireless advocacy in the 1930s of, among others, an Edwin Fischer and a Fritz Busch, for example, the course of events in the process of returning Mozarts' concerto achievement to its rightful place of pre-eminence it enjoys now might simply not have occurred at all, or certainly been delayed very much further still.

To list the contributive elements of a work's greatness has been done many times, and the useful, if a little wilfully contentious <s> article that Bearcat pointed to contains a set of 10 criteria that I can't find much exception with -- though I do with how they are applied at times <g> -- but to regurgitate them in a form principally similar here, would be pointless. Instead, let me add the criterion I find missing in so many discussions of this, and one which I am inclined to give greater weight than any of the others, singly or combined. The extent to which (a) great work(s) end(s) up reflecting it's/their quality and influence embedded in the (great) creative output of others, both of contemporaries and successors, sometimes even centuries later. Bach's instrumental polyphony and architectural sense, as well as Bellini's 'estase', in Chopin; Haydn's quartet practice and Handel's choral handling in Mozart; the eclecticism of Mahler in a Berio and an Ives; 15th and 16th century polyphonists' practice in Brahms; Chopin's figurative precision and harmonic control in Debussy; Brahms' formal and expressive experimentation in Schoenberg, and through him the entire second Viennese School; Bellini's motivic expressiveness and architecture in both Wagner and Liszt; Wagner's almost all pervasive impregnation of several generations that followed, on and on and on...

Once you care to do this 'flea-hopping' like I just did, at length, you will gradually see a cavalcade of greatnesses emerge that curiously coincides with what history has also flagged up as being possibly of such quality, though of course there are terrible omissions at times. There is, after all, no greatness that can be reflected if there is no one there to receive and recognise it. What greater recognition of any greatness, than to be reborn, time and again, within the fabric of the work of others who have recognised that greatness and unhesitatingly acted upon it of choice within the very fabric of what they themselves have wrought which, presumably, they hold dear above all?

That criterion will do me just fine...