nightspore
Group: Members
Posts: 4761
Joined: Mar. 2008 |
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Posted: Nov. 15 2009, 07:35 |
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| Quote (Holger @ Nov. 15 2009, 06:47) | | Quote (Olivier @ Nov. 14 2009, 23:21) | | For some reason, France didn't produce anything insanely great in music. No French Mozart, no French Vivaldi, etc. Ravel is not in the same league. |
Well, that's not really fair. France produced a lot of great music actually. While it's true that there seems to be no great French composer from the strictly classical (Mozart / Beethoven) period, Lully, Couperin and Rameau are very important baroque composers; Berlioz and Saint-Saëns are great romantic composers; Messiaen and Boulez are among the most important composers of the modern era; and, perhaps most significantly, Debussy was really revolutionary in his use of extended tonality, effectively laying the foundation for all modern music (not all by himself of course - other composers, including Ravel, also had a hand in it.  This was arguably the most fruitful period for French music overall.)
Last but not least, don't forget Satie, a very singular character in the world of classical music.
Whether any of these are "insanely great" is of course up for debate. Personally, I prefer most of them over Mozart or Vivaldi. |
Yes, Olivier would have had a better argument if he'd said Switzerland instead of France - the only Swiss composer of any note I can think of is Honegger. The argument goes that the more tortured a country's past, the greater is its art. Switzerland, so the same argument goes, with its neutrality has produced nothing more important than the cuckoo clock!
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That said, I have to admit that build-ups just give me the shivers up my spine every time that they reach the climax. Of course, there's people who can do that (the three you mentioned and others) and there's people who can't - and I'm not giving names here. 
