Which composer do you feel most "at home" with?
Which composer do you feel most comfortable with?
A lot of times we talk about our favorite composers, or most difficult music to play, but which composer always seems to bring you comfort and just "connects" with you?
52 replies
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This is a difficult one. It is sometimes difficult to separate love with comfort in playing music. Think that perhaps Faure is this composer for me. It just always sits well in my hands.
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I spent some time considering all the composers listed at the top of this thread. The easy answer for me was that I "connect" with 25 of these. This means that I would choose to spend my time learning anything from these composers. However, since I am becoming more aware of time running out, I realize too that it would be difficult to even exhaust the possibilities of just one of these great composers at a high level.
The music and composers I "connected" with from the beginning have always been from this group of 25 (well, maybe it took many years to grow into some). The question is why? For me, it simply comes down to something deep and unspoken from within my soul. I prefer and pursue music that is deep, profound, and intimate. This means naturally that the best music is typically in a minor key. What's the point of happy music? If it doesn't provoke tears, passion, consideration of unanswerable questions, sturm und drang or even stir up some fire and brimstone from within me I would feel terribly unfulfilled after investing countless hours in the interest of music.
The composers that I feel the most closest to and "connect" with on an intimate level are Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin, Liszt, Rachmaninov, Schubert, Schumann, and Tchaikovsky (in alphabetical order, only). I will choose to spend 80% or more of my time with these composers until the end even if I am lucky enough to only learn a small sliver of it. Contained here is more treasure than I will ever dig through.
So these nine composers are the ones I feel most at home with. Time period wise, early to mid-nineteenth century is exactly where I prefer to be.