A lot of the criticisms of Mozart on this thread I find to be true moreso of his piano works than of his chamber music. I do enjoy his string quintets, and the clarinet quintet is a gem. And the slow movement of his clarinet concerto gets me every time.

As for Ligeti...I get that a lot of what he did was groundbreaking, and is very interesting from a theoretical perspective. Still, listening to any of his pieces is an excruciating experience for me.

I am about to reveal one of the stunning weaknesses of my musicianship, namely, the inability to convey theoretical ideas with anything approaching technical language or scholarly precision. That said, here's my take on the Mozart bashing:

I think, in part thanks (weirdly) to the minimalist avant-garde and also neo-tonality, we are past the point (thankfully) in which a composer's harmonic ideas can seriously be considered the totality of what his music is "saying".

When harmony perhaps seemed a limitless pool from which new ideas, more advanced and daring modulations and connections were being drawn by the decade, perhaps saying, "Well, that piece was really just I-IV-V-I-vi-IV-V-I" offered a useful perspective in helping professional composers to work out more and more harmonic possibilities. But that approach, after decades of fruitful yield, finally exhausted itself in the abyss of atonality. While the ideas leading up to that point are not invalidated by the dead end of tonal harmony, I think it is probably time to view tonal harmony not so much as an outlet of creative innovation, but as a rather well-developed palette of colors from which to draw desired effects.

Thus, rather than simply critiquing a composer for using a limited harmonic palette, we should instead ask whether he uses that palette effectively. Or indeed, whether there isn't a certain beauty of concision and simplicity in a limited vocabulary that would be spoiled by the more complex vocabulary.

Think of what Poston is able to achieve without a single accidental. Romantic chromaticism would wreck "Jesus Christ the Apple Tree." I think it would also wreck Mozart's charm.

Simple and elegant is hard. Elizabeth Poston was a one-hit wonder. So, really, was Paul Manz (and that one hit is one we love in spite of itself). At some point, there's this inspiration thing that happens or doesn't, and it's out of our control as composers; we make the thing as well as we can, and it either has or hasn't that je ne sais quoi.

that one hit is one we love in spite of itself

Call me Didymus as well on this one, JQ. Its invention (or convention) can be as tedious as the Thompson "Alleluia."

Here's the problem: it's not up to you. THE CHURCH has been using those pieces continuously. It hasn't seen fit to ban orchestral Masses, and certainly not nice little motets like the Mozart Ave verum.

Actually, in my parish where I am DM, it is up to me. However, the CHURCH is notoriously fickle and hypocritical. It has decreed appropriate music for centuries, it just doesn't follow its own rules. The Ave Verum I can live with.

http://www.forstercountry.org.uk/index.php/introducing/elizabeth-poston

I do enjoy select movements from Mendelssohn's "Christus" at Christmas.

Sorry to continue the Mozart pile-on, but I have to get this out of my system:

I think the biggest issue with criticizing MOZART is the overly reverential attitude toward Him and His music. To say the one dislike any work of MOZART is deemed to be blasphemy of the highest order. If someone says that they don't particularly like certain (or even all) works of Beethoven, or Bach, or Vivaldi, or Schutz, or Haydn, or Schubert, or Mendelssohn, or Stainer, or Vaughan Williams, or any other composer that ever set pen to paper, no one seems to care: after all, everyone is entitled to their own opinion and taste. But to say that one dislikes even a single bar of MOZART automatically elicits the response that one must be jealous of His talent, or a philistine, or any other silly response. MOZART is treated with greater reverence by many than the God that created Him.

Also: just as an example of the boringness I find in Mozart: look at the first movement of the Sinfonia Concertante for Violin and Viola, KV. 364 (composed in 1779). The first four minutes are quite possibly some of the most boring music I've ever heard: four dreadful minutes of suspensions, roulades, arpegios, tremolos, trills, and Manheim rockets, most of it over either an E-flat or B-flat pedal-point. The music doesn't seem to go anywhere until he hits a theme at around 4 mins, (the tune "ba-dah, ba-dah, ba-dum-dum-dah," that everyone seems to remember) a good theme, and then he does next to nothing with it before going into more dreadful coloratura, and it goes on like this for 14 minutes (just the first movement). And this is supposed to be a masterpiece! Why? Because it says MOZART on the title.

I'm sure that if you found an obscure piece by Mozart and put, say, Eybler's name on it and showed it to a musician, and asked their opinion, they'd probably (figuratively) tear it to shreds and explain why Eybler wasn't a good composer; and vice versa: take a piece by Eybler, and put Mozart's name on it, and the same person will praise it for its originality, vitality, charm, forward-looking-ness, and any other epithet that is usually showered upon the almighty MOZART.

Meanwhile, the early Missa Brevis in G, KV. 49 (composed in 1768), is a concise work for chorus, soloists, and string orchestra. It is a juvenile work, but shows promise of things that will come later in mature works like the Great c-minor Mass of 1783, and the Requiem, (like the Mendelssohn String Symphonies) and has some nice figures (like the ending of the Hosanna sections), and the Agnus Dei reminds me a bit of the Agnus from the Schubert G Major Mass. He gets to where he needs to go with seemingly minimal effort, as opposed to the Sinf. Conc. where it take for ever just to get going, and the whole Mass is over in just about 18 minutes.

I do like Verklarte Nacht.

Friede auf Erden is very good stuff, too. What's fun is the leitmotif consisting of the first two notes of "Credo in unum Deum" and then their augmentation--identical to Beethoven's "Credo" intonation from the Solemnis.

Damned difficult to sing, though. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htD1Oyxsct0

They do a good job.

The Requiem is one of the maybe five orchestral Masses I'd ever want played in church. The others are the Schubert Mass in G and any non-flashy, non-warbly Missa Brevis settings.

Mendelssohn is wonderful. Especially his organ music. For me, he blends the colour and expression of Romanticism with the economy of the Classical style and the attention to complex structure & thought-out inner voices of the Baroque.

Is he perfect? No. But does he point towards perfection, moderating the excesses of each style and bringing out its strengths? Yes, I think so.

This, for instance

Or, if you walk a bit slower (not that the instruments are at all comparable...):

This one

And how can an early-music partisan fail to find him a friend in this?

Herr, sei gnädig

Tchaikovsky, Carl Orff, and Leonard Bernstein.

The noisemakers of the early-mid 20th century and the guys who wrote the ditties that cling to modern hymnals like a toenail fungus I won't call composers.

I live in a musical deficit of a diocese

Are you speaking of San Diego?

Oft has it been said, and oft repeated not far above here, that Vivaldi wrote the same concerto a thousand times.

How thankful I am that a certain Gershwin fellow only wrote his Rhapsody in Blue once - in fact, I wish he hadn't written it at all.

now GERSHWIN i like!

As far as sacred music composers of the Renaissance, I really have found I don't care for Aichinger.
Lasso's music is so-so.

I also sadly, can't say I am a fan of Kevin Allen's choral music, but mostly from the perspective that even for a decently skilled volunteer choir like mine, each year to pick up a previously learned piece of his, you feel like you have to start all over again at square one. (Sorry!)

I agree that M. Lauridsen's music ends up sounding all the same, and doesn't strike me as music that should be used for the mass/liturgy. Just for concerts.

Most of Hassler's choral music I haven't really found much use for either.

I will say on the flip side, that I HAVE discovered a love for Anerio's choral music, as well as Lotti motets. We do a lot of Victoria, Palestrina, Croce, and Ravanello music here. Croce and Ravanello pieces have worked well when we have been shorter on time to learn larger, more complicated pieces, esp. in the spring.

Yeah, Where's Gesualdo? (See if you can spot him. Before the Carabinieri get ahold of him!)

Hindemith.
Even the right notes sound wrong

I'm older than nearly all of you ... and I have always enjoyed Hindemith. As an oboist, I greatly enjoy his oboe sonata. And "Mathis, der Maler" (Matthias, the Painter) is quite an operatic undertaking ... the Symphony "Mathis, der Maler" being a fabulous orchestral work:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsHGntqx5Yw

Even the right notes sound wrong.

An interesting assertion. I've noticed in learning music such as Hindemith's or Messiaen's that, even though it's really devilish to get one's intellect to apprehend or become accustomed to the particular harmonic vocabulary, one can, after a while, recognise right readily a 'wrong note' and can't tolerate it.

There is one chord, and one only, in Messiaen's Transports de joie, that is actually written as an A-Major 6-3 chord and sounds as one. What an anomaly this is in music in which there is not one chord or note that hasn't been enharmonically altered, that was implied by its predecessor or predicts its successor! Yet, one knows immediately if a note is 'right' or 'wrong'. Fascinating!

Well, Melo, since Luzzaschi got his first organ gig when Gesualdo was a year of age,

Darn you Quick! I dunna check every tought I hab widda Google before I-uh post eet.

,,,taste rather than quality.

I, for one, would have difficulty assigning these to different, or opposing, categories.
One, it seems to me, implies the other.

(Unless one is one of those annoying sophomoric types who likes to drag that haggard old de gustibus shiboleth around and toss it in here and there and everywhere.)

not only mozart, but beethoven too! call me whatever you like... others have here. have at it. just take note... A LOT of people don't like mozart.

M. Jackson,

Regarding all the arts I have different thoughts about both objective quality and my own personal enjoyment.

I like Austen rather more than she deserves, Melville rather less.

Hopkins rather more, Whitman possibly less.

Art appeals differenly to different minds. I don't think admitting this is adolescent, but mature.

Art appeals differenly to different minds. I don't think admitting this is adolescent, but mature.