If you could...

1) Have a lesson with any composer

2) Watch any composer improvise

3) Be a "fly on the wall" of any composer during the composition of one of their masterpieces

4) Eat dinner with any composer

5) Go out on the town with any composer

Who would they be?

1)JoelW
2)Polyphonist
3)Polyphonist
4)Myself
5)Myself

1. Chopin, partly just in order to meet him, but also to see his approach to composition, which resulted in such strikingly original music.

2. Bach; I would want to watch him improvise a six-part fugue.

3. Beethoven. I would be curious to see the struggle, the revisions, the emotions, the thoughts, and safely out of reach of his temper!

4. Liszt, partly because he knew everyone and partly to probe him on the secrets of piano technique.

5. Mozart. He was a famous party animal and a night on the town would give an opportunity to get to know this consumate musical genius and see what made him tick.

Chopin


The Polish guy who left for Paris


George Sand's guy


Frederic


Teresa Carreño

1) Liszt
2) Mozart
3) Chopin
4) Chopin
5) Lorde

Scarlatti


Bach if he does the fugue thing...


Scriabin


Brahms


Sibelius

1) Have a lesson with any composer?

Not Czerny. No, no, no. Please, not Czerny.

Ah, Bach. (Ahhh, Baaaccchhhh.) I'd hope it would be a long, extended lesson--like summer camp. Or, as an adopted son.

2) Watch any composer improvise?

Beethoven. Without a doubt. I've always been curious about that.

3) Be a "fly on the wall" of any composer during the composition of one of their masterpieces?

It's a tie. Brahms, to observe the unfolding of expressive drama and to wonder at the depth of soul that might be telegraphed through facial micro-expressions and subtle body language cues; or, Debussy, to observe the scrupulousness of his notations as they happened in the making.

4) Eat dinner with any composer?

I was going to say Mozart, but then realized that it would depend on the menu. Rat cheese on moldy crusts w/ cholera water, or, perhaps, feast?

Hmmm... On second thought, maybe Czerny. Lots of questions to ask--especially about what he did with the manuscript of the "Moonlight Sonata," (so called).

Ummm..., Okay..., Uh...., On third thought, I think I'll go with Handel. Paucity or abundance... Caution to the wind!!!... I know that I know that I know that I'd like to have a heart to heart with Georg Friedrich in the intimate setting of a meal by candlelight. Handel. Final answer. (Hope he speaks English.)

5) Go out on the town with any composer?

I was going to say Beethoven because it might be fun to get into a bar fight to save him from himself for posterity. (Your welcome, everybody. Not saying what year it was... Really, you're welcome.). But...

Final Answer, I think I'll go with Jimmy Van Heusen. Same reason as no. 4. I'd like to express my appreciation for Jimmy's music--all of those unpredictable harmonic turns of phrase and phenomenally sensuous bridges. And, I'd love to have the length of time of an evening to get to know him better as the kind of person who consistently came up with that kind of excellent stuff.

Joel,
Can we answer this poll more than once? Or, is this like the troll at the bridge--we get one chance at it and if we get it wrong we are charred to a crisp?

Maxwell Janis, Scriabin, Kabalevsky, Rachmaninoff... I got a million of 'em. With reasons. (OK., well, maybe five.)

There's a J. J. Fux joke in this somewhere!

1) Bartok
2) Beethoven
3) Handel
4) Saint-Saëns
5) Fanny Mendelssohn

Yes. You can add your own categories too if you want.

This would basically be my answer, Mark. So maybe we should both do one without Chopin at all? I'll start.




Tchaikovsky


Bach


Beethoven


Debussy


Mozart

1) Beethoven
2) Beethoven
3) Beethoven
4) Definitely not Beethoven ... um, Paul McCartney?
5) Billy Joel

1) Have a lesson with any composer
Franz Liszt
2) Watch any composer improvise
Art Tatum
3) Be a "fly on the wall" of any composer during the composition of one of their masterpieces
Alkan
4) Eat dinner with any composer
Hamelin
5) Go out on the town with any composer
Liszt

I take it you like Chopin?

1. Bach
2. Bach
3. Mendelssohn (dude came from a rich family, probably ate well?)
4. Alkan
5. Bernstein or Mussorgsky

I think we should add a new category: composer to get stoned with.

Ah, the possibilities, but for me, Peter Warlock (less musically sounding than Philip Heseltine) is the man! The guy was just out there and reportedly after toking up to Liszt's Vallée d'Obermann, he shouted 'stop!, it is too evocative, I was THERE!'

But sometimes I think a good puff of mellow pot might help one's approach to Liszt. There's so much stuff going on, but if you only listen to his music in the context of his great contemporary Chopin, then you're not going to get it.

For me, Scriabin.

considering the above scenario proposed above involves illegal drugs (at least in many parts of the world still) I think we should stick to the original. Also why would you want to ruin your limited time visiting a composer under the influence of some substance that is clouding you touch on reality? I would not want anything to interfere with such an experience.

I can see why many people would shake their heads at that, but I say, well said. It's my core reason for never having done anything.

I will say that having lived the first 38 years of my life completely sober including alcohol, and then experimenting a little:

1) if you drink alcohol and have ever been drunk you have done something, so please, the piece of paper saying it's legal doesn't make it any less of a drug, and

2) I am completely sober again because none of it interests me very much, but I am a much better person for having delved in a little. In fact, when my son (now 4 years in recovery) got addicted to drugs, my experimentation aided me in helping to communicate with him in a way that saved his life.

Ignore the poster who raised that if you don't like it. But I can see why getting stoned with someone with a huge creative soul might be captivating.

BTW I did include alcohol, but I guess I spun it a little, because I have 'done' it but never been under that kind of influence.

After much thought, I think I'd choose Chabrier, because he was a riot to be around, and getting baked with him would probably be quite memorable.

Other candidates I was considering were Stravinsky (because his verbal wit might undergo an interesting shift), Dvorak (because he was such a lovable fellow), Szymanowski (he knew how to appreciate altered perception), Berlioz (because of his imagination), and Webern (just because I wonder what would happen).

Does that mean what I think it does?

He wore glasses.

No.

Maybe he practiced remote viewing, a mental procedure for transferring perceptual information across time and space. It was developed by the United States military and used for espionage purposes.

Alkan
Joplin
Alkan
Joplin
Messiaen

Please, people. Paint a picture. Give some reasons!

?

Maybe. Over the years, I've read a lot of recording liner notes, reviews, and articles about him, and it seems to me there have been a good number of passing references to some kind of drug use, but usually nothing very specific (besides alcohol and nicotine, both of which he used to excess). I've read that he had cocaine and morphine with him when he died, but those could have been there because of his illness. Or, maybe not.

And too, there's the music from his middle period. It often suggests altered states that might involve narcotics, to me anyway. It's hard for me to imagine that he could even have written something like the dreamlike ecstatic music of the 1st violin concerto without at least some knowledge of drugs like opium or hashish. But maybe that's just me...I don't know for certain that there is a connection of that kind, only that he apparently was doing something more than cigarettes and alcohol at some time during his life.

okay I'll explain myself.
1) Have a lesson with any composer
Franz Liszt
2) Watch any composer improvise
Art Tatum
3) Be a "fly on the wall" of any composer during the composition of one of their masterpieces
Alkan
4) Eat dinner with any composer
Hamelin
5) Go out on the town with any composer
Liszt

Liszt was known to gladly offer lessons to anyone he thought he could help, refused to take payment and seriously ruined his health all to teach students. That is some serious passion. He also of course was perhaps the greatest master of the piano ever. (also I would ideally then have a chance to document and thus preserve his unpublished treastie on harmonies of the future)

I feel Tatum has some of the best and most absurd improvisations, but I agree Joplin would likely be great as well.

Alkan's Concerto for Solo piano is in my opinion the greatest work for piano ever written, its texture, demands for technique and featuring of elements from all sorts of music is amazing.

Hamelin is a good composer as well as a pianist, he just strikes me as a really great person, and I can still fantasize that it could actually happen. He seems to have nearly unlimited insight on some very obscure but wonderful works.

Liszt because he got to all the parties (I could never go to one on my own will) and would likely dazzle everyone with his pianistic abilities.

Chopin
Chopin
Chopin
Chopin
Chopin

No doubt it would be priceless to do any of those with Alkan, Beethoven or Liszt, but man... Chopin without a second's hesitation.

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