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You, and some others around here, clearly dislike me. That's okay. I'm not trying to rub anyone the wrong way, but sometimes that's just how things go. I recommend you try to take what I say a little less seriously, or just hide my posts if they bother you that much. No need to get upset every time I speak. I personally think I have worthwhile things to say sometimes, but you are entitled to your own opinion of me.

Make it a great day!

Like, for one thing, I assumed (and assume) he was tongue-in-cheek grinning/kidding about "insane."

I assumed everyone would take that for granted when I wrote it. Obviously I'm not actually insulting people's sanity for disagreeing with me about music.

Yes.

And anyway, BTW, another thing I assume is that some people literally might think we're literally insane for saying Chopin is the greatest of all composers ....and I'm fine with that, because maybe we are!

In a nice way.

Oh, stop feeding the troll!

I'd like to know how carefully crafted posts expressing my honest thoughts constitutes trolling. Isn't name-calling against the rules around here anyway, Mr. Bruce?

Bruce -- He isn't.
Of course, impressions may differ, but all I can say is, if that seems relatively like trolling to you, you've lived a fairly charmed internet life!

If you are looking for emotion in baroque music, don’t look to Bach, look to Vivaldi. Unfortunately though wrote little to none for keyboard as far I know.

Also Schumann is firmly in my top 10 composers. I hear excessive creativity in themes and colours. I suppose to some this is schizophrenic, but I think in line with the period where expression > form.

I don’t understand the hate. Very puzzling, and I find it curious how much energy people are putting into their Schumann opinions! If you don’t like it, maybe you should be focusing your energy elsewhere, rather than waging a (futile) war!

In a way, we all are really a little bit insane... We are all trapped with our filters through which they experience the world, and that includes musical taste. We don't even know why we like the music we do. We just know we like it. Any kind of rationalization of why one likes so and so music can't explain why they like the individual components of that music which cause them to like that music...

With Chopin, you and I are on the same wavelength. Two other people might come along who are convinced Chopin is dull... Are both sides just insane?

Oops!

There was a whole discussion about feeling 'emotions' from music some time ago and not everybody said that they felt them. In fact, it got a bit emotional at times:
http://forum.pianoworld.com/ubbthreads.php/topics/2984761/emotional-response-dont-have-one.html
I think the romantic composers were more overt in appealing to emotions, but didn't invent music that appealed to one's emotions. For example, Mozart did so; many of his slow movements in concertos - piano, clarinet, well and others I guess and his symphony no41 does a sterling job at tugging on the emotions (pathos as far as I'm concerned, really) - and there is of course excitement, exhileration and so on. Beethoven was pretty good on the emotional front too. To me the biggest difference is there seems to be a preponderance of 'romantic' emotion from the 'romantic' composers - not that I'm complaining, I rather like it.

The problem with this sentence: Music, whether baroque or romantic, is just "sonically moving forms", as Hanslick (a romantic era critic) said. Expression of feelings exist only in the listeners. It's not inherent in the music; it's what listeners get. I don't know if a baroque-era listener would have liked romantic music; or if they would have reacted like romantic-era listeners would have after listening to Webern, Stockhausen or Boulez for the first time.

This proves my point: You can only say what makes you feel the tragedy. But it's not possible to make a universal statement about what people feel when listening to certain types of music.

Supporters of the Doctrine of the affections would probably beg to differ.

I think Mozart and many other composers wrote music that is just as expressive as anything else composed after them, using a different style. It is just you who are more sensitive or biaised toward Chopin. And going back in music history, expressiveness as a primary goal was already the moto of the late renaissance and early baroque composers. For example this famous madrigal by Gesualdo.

https://youtu.be/6dVPu71D8VI

The difference between romantic composers and earlier music lies in a number of different areas, but expressiveness is not the main one.

Chopin gets a lot of criticism for his orchestral writing in the concerti but I think the Zimerman recordings show he knew exactly what he was doing and people were interpreting it incorrectly for many years.

Here I can add a few, the thread is pretty long, so those might be doublets.

DISCLAIMER: Those aren't necessarily my opinions and I formulated them as black and white and unpopular as possible. So before you lose your calm, relax, this is a thread about unpopular opinions. Those are all opinions of people that I heard expressed though, so I'm not making them up either.


- Einaudi is really good and did more for the classical community then people give him credit for

- Most classical music (not the era, everything pre 1900) is actually not really good, we just chose to listen to the interesting parts but that's maybe 10% of the music that was produced, probably even less

- As a whole, the quality and complexity if classical music as compared to modern music it vastly overrated, mostly because of part two. If you would compare classical genius with modern genius and classical trash with modern trash the picture would be very different

- Even though operas have usually good music, the stories are often worse then modern telenovelas.

- And a last and brutal one: Lot's of people who listen to classical have less interest in the music then in separating themselves from other people. They don't really care about music, they mostly care about feeling superior to people who don't listen to classical.

So here you go, a valuable contribution to this thread I hope, unless you heard those all before, but I unfortunately can't read 23 pages of discussion right now. At least tell me Einaudi already came up

Edit: Unpopular in the classical community. I do realize that especially the last one is very popular for everyone else. Probably have to add that though, those people do exist I found that most enthusiasts including myself really do care about the music. A lot. So much maybe that it might seem fake from the outside.

^ All those are the prevailing opinion among people who dislike (or at least are not so keen on) classical music which constitutes the vast majority of people today. So, not unpopular at all.

Well we are obviously talking about unpopular opinions in the classical community. I don't like composer XY wouldn't count as unpopular otherwise, because most likely the vast majority of people don't like said composer, since as you said, the vast majority of people don't like & listen to classical music.

Even saying "I don't like Beethoven" won't really be unpopular, because while he is one of the most famous composers, still the majority of people would just say "no thanks, I don't like classical music".

In this case the only really unpopular opinion would be "I enjoy classical music", because that would put you into a small minority only surpassed by "I enjoy modern classical music" (the atonal one, not the Einaudi one). Globally spoken that is a really unpopular opinion, but here in this forum, probably not at all.

Edit: Also, all those opinions have been expressed to my be serious classical enthusiasts. Often in the break in concerts. man I miss when I could go to concerts

P.S. Just noticed your “edit” (I had the page preloaded on my phone earlier). Well, I doubt ANYONE in the classical community would share ANY of the opinions, so they are not even unpopular, they are rather absurd opinions stated for the sake of stirring controversy IMO. I understand the thread about unpopular opinions in a way that the unpopular opinion is one that can also be defended in a way. However those are just some controversial accusations that are way too vague to be justifiable besides the point of “they are my opinion, deal with it”.

I can quite assure you there are more people that think like this then you think. Especially the "I hate those posers that don't really care about the music" part I heard pretty often in breaks of concerts. But yea, it's unpopular, that's the whole idea behind it.