Best 20th century composer?

[monolith94]

Porgy and Bess... I don't know - I didn't like it, but I think that may have been the singer's fault, not Gershwin's.

[Straybow]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov
Gershwin can't be dismissed as mere ear candy…

I can only guess that you don't understand the term "ear candy." It means the music is so rich it is intoxicating and you go back to it again and again.

If anything, Berg … audibly indistinguishable from completely randomized atonal music.

Or "completely randomized atonal performances = crap.

[Straybow]

monolith, opera is opera. If it's in your native language it helps, but many people would much rather just have a concert (ie, just sing the good songs and leave out the melodic storytelling).

I have a test CD that has a singer named Leslie (the editor's wife) singing Summertime. It sounds like she is just off-key enough to sound wrong, but still within vibrato range. My friends and I like to play it for people to see how long they last before begging to have it stopped. We call it the "Leslie test."

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by Straybow

Originally posted by Boris Godunov
Gershwin can't be dismissed as mere ear candy…

I can only guess that you don't understand the term "ear candy." It means the music is so rich it is intoxicating and you go back to it again and again.

"Eye candy" means something that is pleasing to look at, but ultimately hollow and unfullfilling beyond the outward appearance. That's why dumb models and empty spectacles are called "eye candy." So to me, "ear candy" is the same. Sounds really catchy and instantly pleasurable, but devoid of substance. This would describe the vast majority of pop music, musical theater (esp. Lloyd-Webber and Fosse), and a good deal of forgotten B-grade (or less) classical music.

Lakme is ear candy. Carmen is art.

[Straybow]

Boris baby, you're thinking so hard the gears drown out the music. You need to re-read the Eric Bergel quote in your sig.

Not that I would disagree with you about 90% of the music market (I can't say I've even hear of Lakme).

[Grrr]

Gorecki .

[Agathon]

Ligeti???

I voted for Stavinsky because I don't think Mahler counts as a 20th century composer.

Anyway, Gershwin is not ear candy. Even Rhapsody in Blue (LSO - Previn) like the Bartok Concerto for Orchestra is a piece I never tire of, and I don't know why.

And I don't think anyone would say that Satie is a great composer, yet I always find his Gnossienes refreshing, again I don't know why - there's not that much to them, but nothing else sounds that way.

[Straybow]

[looks back at first response on 13th]

That's exactly what I mean. In fact, that's almost exactly what I said.

Everyone I know uses the term "ear candy" very differently from you guys.
Obviously we are right, and you are ignora-mooses.

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by Straybow
Boris baby, you're thinking so hard the gears drown out the music. You need to re-read the Eric Bergel quote in your sig.

Not that I would disagree with you about 90% of the music market (I can't say I've even hear of Lakme).

I didn't disparage "ear candy," just gave a definition of what I thought it meant. I can enjoy cheap tunesmithing as much as the next person. There's nothing wrong with enjoying music just because it has a catchy melody/rythm/whatever.

But if I am in the mood for "serious" music, it sure isn't going to be Fosse.

Lakme is a 19th-century French opera by Leo Delibes, who was far better known (deservedly) as a ballet composer. It's a maudlin piece of kitsch, full of the phony Orientalism that was popular in Europe at the time. But there's some catchy tunes in it, like the very famous Flower Duet. Then again, it has the atrociously showy and vapid Bell Song... *shudder*

[Static Universe]

Vangelis.

[Ned]

No Puccini?

[Straybow]

Art is emotive. Science isn't. A good typesetter tries to control the perceived continuity of word spaces across many lines of print—the "rivers"—to keep from distracting the eye from the text. It takes serious composition techniques like painting yet it isn't art. A painting is eye candy, or it is nothing.

Schonberg admitted that mathematically interesting theory doesn't make good listening. We don't buy recordings of fingering exersizes. "Serious" listening is emotive even if it isn't bubbly fun.

Eye candy is good in a computer game, but because a game does something it isn't enough to be eye candy. Ear candy is the music that reaches your soul and not merely your mood. There's there there.