Talk:List of composers
From Academic Kids
Should this page only list 'classical' composers? Should the list be divided according to periods (as on the classical music page)?
Where are all the gals? --User:Juuitchan
- OK - I put in Beach, Boulanger(s), Dring, and Fanny Mendelssohn. Oh, and I'd already put in Maconchy and Lutyens. Do you know of any more? David Martland 08:27 Dec 6, 2002 (UTC)
I'm going to try and get rid of all the "unclassified composers" by putting them in the right category. I've deleted the "impressionist music" division, because it's too vague to really be useful. It might be good to put it back as part of an alternative classification system for classical composers according to style rather than period (eg, impressionism, avant-garde, expressionism, and so on). This might be a good way to break up the too-large-to-be-useful "modern composers" section.
A question: do the one-letter lists of composers serve any purpose at all (Composer/G and its chums)? I assume they can be deleted once the composers on them have been properly classified on this page, yes? --Camembert
I wonder whether it's more useful to have the composers listed alphabetically as the periods are quite arbitrary. For example, Beethoven could be easily argued to be a classical composer, especially in his early period. Alternatively they could be classified by nationality or century of birth. --andrewthorne
I would say by period or century. The whole "by country" thing opened a whole can of worms on "nationality" vs "culture" on the list of authors page, and as it currently stands is a hideous mess, which I can't fix for fear of edit wars -- Tarquin
Yes, this is a chewy problem indeed. I don't think an alphabetical list is very useful - the search function (either wikipedia's or a browsers "search in page" thing) makes alphabetic lists redundant, it seems to me. But there are problems with other classifications, too - "by country" is a problem as Tarquin indicates: is Gustav Mahler Bohemian, Czech or Austrian? Is Igor Stravinsky Russian, Soviet, French or American? "By century" is fair enough, and non-controversial, but also not especially informative, particularly when you get to the twentieth century; Philip Glass and Arnold Schoenberg are/were both 20th century composers, but that's where the similiarity ends. "By period" or "style" or whatever you want to call it, is better, I think - most composers are pretty clear-cut cases (Wagner is clearly romantic, Bach is clearly baroque), and for those that do cross boundaries, I think it's not only acceptable, but very useful to put them in all suitable categories. So Beethoven should be listed under both Classical and Romantic, Schoenberg under Romantic and "modern", and so on. By the way, if anybody fancies trying to split that big "modern classical" group into more meaningful and managable classifications (minimalist, serial, etc), then that would be great (I'd do it myself, but I'm too lazy). --Camembert
It's not always easy to draw lines as to who should be in - and who not. However, I have included several of the French spectralists - Grisey, Leroux, Hurel, Murail in the modern list. Time will tell whether they should remain! David Martland 08:18 Dec 6, 2002 (UTC)
OK, I'm going to go back on what I said earlier and say that we should divide the list up by century of birth. The reason is that the "period" or "style" divisions are too complicated. What is John Williams? Is Nielsen modern or romantic? Sibelius? I'd say they were both romantic, but chronologically, they're 20th century. Can Brian Eno be considered a classical composer? Better known for pop, certainly, but he did some things which are close to Christian Wolff, and he was classical for sure. So I'm going to rearrange the list according to century of birth and make no distinguishment between baroque and renaissance, popular and classical. If people want to make more style-specific lists, they can do it at baroque music, ragtime music, and so on. --Camembert
OK, but let's not completely lose the style/genre association. How about listing the genre after the name? If there is more than one they fit in or a similar ambiguity, list both. --Amillar
Absolutely - what I'm planning to do is this: move the lists as given here now to their respective genre pages (I've started on this already); then rearrange this list in chronological order; then annotate the list so it will say "Ludwig van Beethoven (1770 - 1827), often regarded as the first Romantic composer" and "Terry Riley (dates), minimalist compsoer noted for works such as In C" or something similar. Sound OK? --Camembert
I've added a first draft for an English Wikipedia article on the Austrian-German composer Franz Schreker. Since I'm not a professional musician, English is not my mother language and this is my first Wikipedia article at all, any improvement of the draft is appreciated. --Jürgen
Film Music Composers
Hi!
Suggest/advise you add Elmer Bernstein to your list of Film Composers. www.elmerbernstein.com
Thanks!
Lisa
- Done. Thanks. Isomorphic 00:37, 6 May 2004 (UTC)
Composer from a Humanities point of view
In English these days students are taught that a composer is anyone who creates a text of any form (print, film, audio, music etc). Do we need to expand this page to include that?
