You might think that the Classic 100 this year is just a question of what positions Bach, Mozart and Beethoven will occupy in the top three.
And let’s face it, when we’re told that Mozart Fixes Everything, that Bach’s music is the Everest for performers, and that Beethoven embodies the brotherhood of Man, who’s going to dare argue?
But this year’s Classic 100: Composer isn’t an institutional vote about historical greatness.
It’s a people’s vote. It’s about what YOU think, and the composers that YOU love. And it may just throw up some surprises, as Martin Buzacott explains in this three-part series.
Johann Sebastian Bach
So many leading musicians instantly nominate Bach as the greatest composer. Beethoven called him the "immortal god of harmony." Brahms said that "to study him is to find everything you will ever need in music." And Robert Schumann said "music owes as much to him as religion does to its founders." And of course, the Passions and the B minor Mass are sublime, and the Brandenburg Concertos are legendary. But have you ever sat through a complete evening of the Cello Suites? It can be a slog, especially after the second interval. And how many of the cantatas can you get through before starting to flag? Put yourself to the test. Listen to nothing but Bach for an entire day before casting your vote for him as the greatest-ever composer.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
He’s without question the bookies’ favourite to top the Classic 100 in 2019, so let’s not waste time talking about the beauty of his most famous works, which few would dispute. Let’s go instead to some statistics. Mozart wrote 41 symphonies but only 8 of them are performed regularly today. In other words, less than 20% of them. Not exactly an astonishing hit-rate. And what musical schools of thought or genres of musical composition did Mozart start? Maybe none. He just did the existing stuff better than others. Before voting for him, consider this: take Mozart out of the equation and would Beethoven have still existed? Answer, yes. Take Haydn out of the equation on the other hand and could Beethoven have existed? Answer, no. And one final point. Not a single work by Mozart made the wide-ranging Classic 100: Dance last year, and he hasn’t won an open-to-all-comers Classic 100 countdown in the past 17 years. Does that sound to you like the inevitable winner of this year’s countdown?
Ludwig van Beethoven
For some, the mere fact that Beethoven wrote the notoriously execrable Wellington’s Victory may be enough to rule him out of contention. Sure, his greatest music probes the depths of our humanity, and his triumph over deafness is inspiring, but do you sometimes find him to be, well, maybe a touch bombastic, even belligerent? Downright curmudgeonly in fact. All that turbulent changing of emotion and berating us over and over. It’s quite easy to hear "We are not amused" in his music, despite his popular Rage Over a Lost Penny. Maybe doing all that hack-work arranging hundreds of Scottish folksongs made him lose his ability to lighten up. Whatever, no one disputes his greatness, but top three? Maybe, maybe not.
Franz Schubert
Who is the only composer who has achieved four of the top five places in an open Classic 100 field? Schubert’s your man, blitzing the Classic 100: Chamber Music a decade ago. By the age of just 17, he’d already created an entirely new genre of music, the German lieder, something that neither Bach, Mozart or Beethoven ever achieved at a similar age. And to this day he’s still considered the greatest songwriter in classical music, his songs like "Gretchen at Her Spinning Wheel" and "The Erl-King" unsurpassed and true miracles of music. So, according to you, he’s classical music’s greatest chamber music composer, the greatest songwriter, and then there are the symphonies, some of them also among the greatest ever composed and almost all of them still played regularly. And he died at just 31, younger than Bach, Mozart and Beethoven, and indeed all his competitors. Has there really ever been a greater composer?
George Frideric Handel
He was German by birth, but he slayed them in Italy and then became a musical monster in England. And to this day, just about everything Handel composed sends the spirit soaring. It just wouldn’t be Christmas without the Messiah, and Handel operas are now the mainstay of early opera companies and many of the mainstage companies too. And just listen to those arias! Things like "Lascia ch’io pianga" and "Ombre mai fu" can make grown music-lovers weep like those of no other composer. And that’s before we even get to the other great oratorios, the miraculous Concerti Grossi, the Water and Fireworks Musics, and the chamber pieces. He was a classical music hit-maker with the Midas touch, never bettered, and his reputation only continues to grow three centuries on. In other words, a potential winner.
Josef Haydn
They don’t call him ‘Papa Haydn’ for nothing, and historically there has surely never been a more influential composer. Without Haydn, there would be no symphony as we know it today, and no string quartet or piano trio either. He basically took their embryonic forms and turned them into musical genres that composers are still using in the 21st century. Mozart adored, emulated, and dedicated music to him, Beethoven studied with him, and even today, orchestras play his music as training drills, because it contains the essence of everything we think of as classical music. Look at Haydn’s 107 symphonies and try to name a bad one. Not a single one, as the current multi-orchestra project to record all of them ahead of Haydn’s 300th anniversary in 2032 attests. And then there are the glorious cello concertos, The Creation, and even the curious baryton trios are chamber music gems. The guy remains the direct forebear of everything we love in instrumental music today, and as such makes a compelling case for greatest composer ever.
Stay tuned for part two, where we check the form of Saint-Saens, Mahler, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Tchaikovsky and Ravel.
Voting is open for the Classic 100: Composer from 5 April to 20 May 2019.
Martin Buzacott presents Mornings on ABC Classic.