Bernard, I agree. Although ranking composers on subjective terms is hard, I think it is possible to rank a composer's technical abilities at composition. (Hey, Bach is number one again! Maybe there is more to this than we know!)

I laughed uncontrollably.

Brendan, as far as having an impact on twentieth century composers and even composers now, Debussy has more of an impact than Brahms, and I still believe that he was indeed more important.

Why do you think otherwise?

There is far too much conservativism in Brahms' music for it to be nearly as interesting as Debussy's.

Well, first of all, the book was written in 1992.
As it turns out this guy's wife gave him hell for NOT placing Rach in the top 50.
He states in the book that his decisions were based on popularity and contribution to musical development, and his own subjective assessment.
To assess popularity he looked at the New Schwann Record and Tape Guide to determine how many works have been recorded for each composer and also looked at radio station polls.
Here is a quote from the book. "Of famous composers who didn't make The List, such artists as Benjamin Britten, Aaron Copland, Francis Poulenc, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Henry Purcell, and Leonard Bernstein were given about a page each in Schwann. Arnold Schoenberg, a big favorite of many music people because of his influence on composition, also got a little less than a page. And Josquin des Prez and Orlandus Lassus, important Renaissance composers, had only a few lines. Many assessors would include some of these composers and, consequently, displace a few of mine."

So yes, maybe Benedict has a good point. Maybe we should form our own poll...based on contribution to musical development and our own likes/dislikes.
I do agree with what Elena said regarding Brahms...don't shoot me!

Bleh.

I wonder if they have a book ranking world's most greatest classical pianist instead of a composer category.

We're forgetting something very important here - the kind of late-romantic contrapuntal music written by Brahms and Wagner had an enormous effect on Debussy.

So even if Debussy did have a greater impact than Brahms, without Brahms, the Debussy we know would never have existed.

So one wonders, which is more important, the chicken or the egg? And does the answer depend on which came first?

Wonderfully put, EH! Orlando Gibbons replied with something about how "tonality, forms and aesthetic" don't translate into "emotional substance". While I agree with this, I feel that contributing to those areas, while perhaps not providing a profound emotional substance (and I'm not saying that Debussy didn't!), most certainly would have a larger impact on those who would dish out that substance later on; Debussy helped to create more tools that are allowing composers now to create such substance than Brahms did, in my opinion.

The fact that Gluck, who has been all but forgotten, appears on the list in position 32 while Rachmaninoff isn't even on the list is either the height of extreme bias or absurdity.

:D <>

It's unfair to place composers in a list to say who is the best. All of the composers made their contribution to music, and all are talented in their own right.

No.8 is a bit of a surprise. At least one American got in (unless we also count 15).

You off no substantiation for that. The only thing that I will grant Debussy is that he knew how to manipulate the French language in his songs. Otherwise, his orchestration is cumbersome and redundant, he wrote almost no melodies in ANY of his compositions, Pellias is over-wrought at the very least, and his harmony is predictable, almost always using the same modes and same sequences/patterns.

What makes Brahms superior is one simple thing: direction. His music always clearly pursues a goal, unlike Debussy's aimless meanderings. And nothing that Debussy wrote even remotely comes close to the German Requiem or the Four Serious Songs.

For the "Brahms was the admitted torch-bearer of Beethoven" crew, Debussy acknowledged several times during his life that his own music came directly from Grieg's. Mendelssohn, Schumann and Liszt all looked back to Beethoven in their own compositions, as did Tchaikovsky to Mozart and Chopin to Bach. Even Messiaen said that his biggest musical influence after Wagner was Mozart. Learning from the past and expounding upon it in no way makes a composer conservative.

The fact that Berlioz or Vaughan Williams are on there baffles me. I've listened to plenty of both and silence would be a much better alternative for me.

As for fruit, pomegranates take the top spot.

Mike

The flaw with Mr. Goulding's list such as this is that it's promarily subjective. Beauty is in the eye (or ear) of the beholder, after all.

As for Rachmaninoff not being in the top 50, well I'm sure his estate is crying...all the way to the BANK!

Sixty years after his death, Rachmaninoff remains popular with audiences because his music reaches them emotionally, and while it is fashionable in some circles to sneer at Rachmaninoff's old-fashioned "gushing" melodies and "swirling" harmonies, his music will be a repertoire staple for generations to come--long after most of the stuff touted by the intellectual crowd is in the dustheap.

Wanna play a dirty trick on a violinist friend? Tell him the long lost violin concerto by Rachmaninoff has finally been published, and watch him wet his pants in excitement.

I think it is safe to say that Brahms and Debussy are absolute opposites. Debussy loathed the old "German romantic school", while Brahms obviously held a deep admiration for such older musical values. If one listens to Debussy while searching for things that are alien to his style, such as the absence of "Melody" and the "meandering" form, one will miss what Debussy is, its like comparing oranges to apples!

Dang, I wet *MY* pants thinking that was true and I don't even play the violin!! :p

Gluck, however, was extremely popular in his day and exerted an enormous influence on compositional trends. Although his music is rather uninteresting to us, he was DA MAN back then.

(FWIW, I hate Gluck, but being the musical history nerd I am, I have to grant him a place of importance....)

Oh, and if I may weigh in on the Brahms/Debussy argument, which of the two do you think most influenced the following:

Copland
Berg
Barber
Stravinsky
Bernstein

I would submit that each was influenced by both in certain ways.

Berg is a good case in point. Even in the piano sonata we find a very rigorous adherence to classical form and structure (thanks Brahms!) but a leaning towards whole-tone influenced harmonic structure (thanks Debussy!)

After listening carefully to DeBussy's "Reverie" this afternoon on two great pianos and one mediocre one, comparing voicings, I'd be inclined to rank him substantially higher--in my top five (and as my favorite, but not above Beethoven whose complex genius overwhelms). I realize any point of view on this discussion is largely personal taste (the fruit list is entirely apt), but DeBussy is always fresh to me. "Reverie" could have been composed yesterday. Beethoven's work is wholely different in character, but similarly timeless. He very nearly "rocks".

Bach and Brahms by comparison seem quite staid and dated by a sort of non-interesting sort of familiarity from the first listen to the last, regardless of who's performing. (I've tried. Have a shelf full of LP's. Hate 'em all.)

An exceptionally talented friend who can play literally anything beautifully gave me 14 CD's of her Bach and Brahms performances recently. I just gritted my teeth and thanked her. And just kept shoving DeBussy and Beethoven sheets in front of her so I could hear her play something actually good instead. I did listen to her CD's once, but I could only think "what a waste of talent" and "I'll never listen to those again".

Beethoven's work and DeBussy's inspire me to work hard. If I ever get good at enough at their stuff, I'll tackle some Chopin that's been gathering dust these 20+ years.

Chickgrand,

So is there really nothing of Bach's that you consider "good"? You would say all his music fails technically and aesthetically?

It is difficult enough to imagine anyone thinking this of Brahms with anything approaching good reason, let alone Bach. Your friend should be congratulated - you are definitely missing out...

David

I'm fairly promiscuous, I love just about everything which falls under the "Classical Music" categorization, and a number of musical styles outside that genre.

But...I've never been able to get into Telemann.

Brendan,

Well put. I am mystified by those that think Brahms' music is boring. I can't think of anything by Debussy that has the same emotional impact as many of Brahms' last 20 piano pieces.

Ryan

Comparing the respective "greatness" of composers like Debussy and Brahms is almost too subjective. Once again, it depends on your criteria of how the author - or the posters here - are rating composers. To take Kreisler's apples and oranges analogies, it's more like sirloin vs. vichyssoise to compare Brahms and Debussy.
Certainly Debussy was a very important composer. He was one of the most influential composers of piano music in the early 20th century, the only other composer that had as much influence on early 20th century piano technique - IMVHO - is Bartok, and that is not even beginning to talk about how important Debussy's orchestral music is.

It's true that Brahms composed much of his music using classical forms, but he still composed in a romantic style, and his compositions seem conservative to some, but they were actually quite innovative. He was one of the most important 19th century composers of chamber music, and influenced later composers like Dvorak, Wolf, Mahler, Strauss, and others.

Also, should a composer being influential or innovative constitute the main criteria in assigning "greatness," or should it be the artistic quality of their compositions - or some combination of the two? If you assign greatness solely on the basis of innovation, would Mozart be as high on your list - ahead of earlier classical era composers who did more to develop sonata-allegro and other classical forms?

I think it is easy in some cases to say that certain composers are less great than others - Mendelssohn was not on the same level as Beethoven, for example - but other composers are much harder to compare because either their respective styles are so different, they lived during vastly different stylistic periods, or they were on a level that was very close.

At the end of the day, when we have all the composers ranked in a nice little league table, the questions that might come to mind is: Why did we bother?

You have impeccable taste!

It's hard for me to really get involved with the Brahm's vs Debussy argument because I'm not all that fond of either composer.
I do think, however, that we can come up with a ranking that is NOT completely subjective. If we take into account that composer's contribution to the overall development of music weighed equally with our like/dislike for his music, I think that would produce some interesting results.
For example; overall, Chopin's music appeals to me a little more than Liszt's, but I feel that Liszt contributed more to the development of music. So I would probably put Liszt a notch or two above Chopin.
Beethoven is my absolute favorite composer. Bach I feel contributed more than anybody to musical development. So on my list these two guys get the number 1 and number 2 spots.
If we each rank our top 10 composers we could then extrapolate to come up with the top 50.
Anyone want to take a stab at it?

OK, I can see what you're saying, but still: I think Mozart was definitely the "god" of the classical form -- specifically the Austrian classical form. Others may have developed the styles before him, but I think he really provided an *ideal template* of the music. Anyone who can take a form and bring it to a new level of "perfection", IMHO, is worthy of a top-50 title.

I think you might have missed my point, which was one cannot only use a measure of how innovative or influential a composer is in order to assign greatness. Classical forms were well established by the time Mozart came along by composers such as CPE Bach, WF Bach, Stamitz - of the Mannheim school - and Haydn. With the possible exception of Haydn, none of those others approached the level of Mozart as a composer. Clearly Mozart was one of the greatest composers of all time, but his greatness was in the artistic quality of his music, and not so much as an innovator. He lived in the later part of the Classical era, when compositional style had almost an obsession with structural clarity. Mozart, although he wrote beautiful pieces that remain monuments of artistic achievement, did not deviate from the classical style very much. So, my point in using Mozart as an example is, revolutionary ideas, and innovation leading to a change, in large or small ways, in how future composers approached music - which describes Debussy - should not be the sole criteria people use to assign greatness.

Alright; sorry for the misunderstanding. I agree completely that it should not be the sole[/b] criteria, but I think it should definitely be one of the most important. Second to perhaps your point of "artistic quality". Thanks for clearing that up.