Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Do you think there will ever be another great composer?

I think bennevis is right on. Everyone likes music they can connect to on some level. Most people, however, want music they can hum along. Composers disconnected from the reality may be taught at universities one day but few people (if any at all) will ever attend a concert of their music.

Took a long while for his name to pop up! Morricone, Grusin ... they re still alive. So JW can t be the greatest film composer alive.

I don't think time affects greatness or not. I couldn't care less if Uvstolskaya is forgotten in 10 years time . She ll always be one of the greatest in the 20th century to me. While Williams will be a very competent copyst whose music will never irritate but will never move m either.

If that link was there all along, my apologies.

Williams the greatest? Please ... Nino Rota ... Even Chaplin ... Morricone ... Max Steiner

I have to learn to avoid threads like this entirely. It's much better for the wellbeing of both my furniture and my forehead.

Given the restrictions on the definition of "composer," this is like arguing about who is the greatest player in double A minor league baseball.

John Williams is definitely not as good as whoever wrote and arranged the music for Hello, Dolly! (1969 film version)

That stuff is genius.

But the question pertained specifically to that 'restriction'. I didn't ask who the great musicians of our time are. I know they exist, obviously. I asked about the contemporary-classical scene in specific.

Yes, the greatest player of the minor leagues of music!

I consider Bernard Herrmann one of the all-time great film composers as well.

I'll take a stab. By your classification, the answer seems to be "no".

To say contemporary and classical in the same breath is the answer, in my opinion.

Contemporary is defined as "happening, existing, living, or coming into being during the same period of time"

Classical music is defined as that from the 'Common Practice Period', generally agreed to be 1600-1900.


The word 'great' to me doesn't just apply to the talent required to produce the music, but also to the level of awareness required to be recognized by 'civilization'. It also applies to achieving 'greatness' in the era to which the endeavor is actually relevant. From a popular perspective, 'classical' music composed now attempts to emulate another time/era. So, while it may be good, better, or even genius from an academic/musical standpoint, that music is not authentic. It's actually not contemporary, either. It references a period that was ONCE popular music. A heady thought for sure, but something to ponder.... if there really should be folks currently writing 'classical' music. If you compose it today, it's just, well, ....music. Mozart didn't call himself a 'classical music composer'. He was a composer.

To me, that's why you get contemporary composers extolling some deep and other worldly meaning to their music. They are attempting to advance a concept or create a new 'genre'. I love and appreciate classical music. It's doubtful anyone new will come along with such profound affect.

The evolution of this question seems to then ask... "are there any genres of piano/orchestral music today that will achieve the same 'greatness' as from the common practice period?"

With all the outstanding gangster-rap songs hitting the street... sadly I think not.

I agree, and to that extent I would quibble with how most of the posts are expressing it.


Remember, it was me who first mentioned Williams, and I didn't say that at all. I put it speculatively in the future tense, like how you want these things.


(not showing who it was who said it, in the interests of his furniture and forehead)

For one thing, I thought the concluding thing in "Close Encounters" -- it was sort of like a "chamber symphony" -- was in itself pretty close to great: the music in its own right, and how it matched the scenario of different civilizations finding their communication through music. Call me sappy but it was one of my most moving musical experiences ever, including everything.

There will never ever be another Beethoven- he was in a class of his own.

That is true of everyone who ever lived!

The times are changing, that much is certain. As RBMusik pointed out, the famous composers of the past centuries did NOT consider themselves "classical", nor were they considered that by any stretch of imagination. Back then, education was scarce and only the most talented, gifted individuals were given education in the music theory area.

Now, in the era of technology that does pretty much everything for you, anyone can write music (to that extent, I saw a funny pic not long ago describing quite well the evolution of music composition and who can do it -- in 1700 it was the brightest minds on Earth, then through the centuries to 2000 when any owner of iMac can do it). One cannot help but wonder what kind of music the composers living in the 18th century would have written, had they had the tools and possibilities we have nowadays. Something tells me it would sound different.

At any rate, regardless of what debrucey's self-righteous attitude can or cannot digest, I do consider Williams and a handful of other composers great and I believe Williams has earned at least a bit of respect for himself from the contemporary orchestral music world for some of his works, like Schindler's List. I'm not saying every single of his works was a masterpiece in itself but to call him a plagiarist is unjust and derogatory at the very least.

Oh, and as for me, my favorite composer now is Thomas Bergersen, a young talent from Norway currently writing amazingly imaginative tunes for his production music company called Two Steps From H_e_l_l (silly filter changes that to "heck"...). You can look him up, YouTube is full of his stuff and the album "Two Steps From Heaven" might be a good start. His music is often very far from "classical" music but that's only for the better as far as I'm concerned. He's great in my books.

Actually, no, there are very many definitions of and interpretations of the word " classical ". Music from the so called Classical period is just one of many.

Writing like, or in the style of, these classical composers would be called neo-classisism. The question of the thread would then have to be changed to " Do you think there will ever be another great classic-style-period-style c.q. neo-classical composer?"

However, that is not the question posed by the thread. In fact, the question posed is not even " Do you think that there will ever by another great classical composer" but " composer " in general.

Kreisler has, yet again, provided perhaps the most satisfying answer.

Three meanings of the word " classical " that I believe would be very interesting to insert into the thread head and to continue discussing are:

1) in an idiom which most listeners would classify as belonging to the genre of art music, set apart from pop music;

2) the art music produced in, or rooted in, the traditions of Western liturgical and secular music, encompassing a broad period from roughly the 11th century to present times;

3) A work of art of recognized and established value judged over a period of time to be of the highest quality and outstanding of its kind.

I wonder if the OP could tell us the name of the most recent composer he knows of that he considers great.

As far as great composers currently getting wide distribution and attention for piano music, Carl Vine and Lowell Liebermann are the two who come to mind. Magnus Lindberg recently wrote a concerto that was premiered by Yefim Bronfman with NYP. James MacMillan also has a couple of new concerti published by Boosey & Hawkes.

And there are plenty of great composers whose piano output is limited:

Chen Yi, David Maslanka, Kevin Puts, Jennifer Higdon, Mason Bates, Max Richter, Nico Muhly, Carter Pann, etc...

I think there are a lot of factors that contribute to why we haven't found the next Chopin or Beethoven. I think people don't look very hard. I think the lack of sheet music retailers make it difficult to browse. Concert artists don't program/champion a lot of new music. Looking at the 10 recitals presented by the Chicago Symphony during the 2013/2014 season, we have:

Denk - Bach
Schiff - Bach
Trifonov - Stravinsky, Ravel, Schoenberg, Schumann
Kissin - Schubert and Scriabin
Uchida - Beethoven
Andsnes - Beethoven
The Labeques - Gershwin, Glass, Bernstein
Lugansky - Rachmaninoff, Franck, Prokofiev
Ax - Brahms, Dean, Mazzoli
Feltsman - Haydn, Schubert, Prokofiev

So...in ten recitals, there are only three living composers represented and only two new commissions (both from Ax.)

A better question to ask might be:

If another great composer appears, will anybody bother to notice?

Good question. Maybe it's that people are not really that open to anything new. They have grown to recognize and love the old masters and sort of prefer/seek out concerts of their music. The new artists are therefore in a difficult position because they have to compete for their place under the sun while they really should not need to do that at all. There is plenty of room for new talent.

Or am I wrong?