What makes a great piece of classical music?

Question

Thanks to all :-). I look forward to your responses.

-Chaser

Answer 1

It's subjective. However, if you have a lot of musical background and training. the ability of the composer to show his compositional techniques, which include all the elements of music.

For example: A wonderful set of melodies, varied in remarkably interesting ways, fabulous harmony, interesting use of rhythm, orchestration ( if not for piano solo), proper use of tempo, dynamics, articulations, knowledge of musical structure and form, and the list is endless.

However, even Beethoven hated his ODE TO JOY, the finale from his 9th symphony which we all revere today. Beethoven said it was compositionally weak. He is absolutely correct is this assessment. Hoever, the melody is so amazingly simple and magnetic, that, in the setting he chose to employ, it works fantastically.

I think the tv, radio, movies, cartoons, etc have promoted certain pieces and led them to all star greatness. Think of what Disney did to little Mickey Mouse as The Sorcerer's Apprentice. That piece never would have made it so far on its own, although it is really good. Great? It's subjective.

Different eras bring different criteria to judge greatness as well. YOU cannot listen to a Mozart Symphony with the same ears for porcehstration,. for example, as a Wagner opera.

Answer 2

What ive always told people who just don't get it is this. Ive been in a modern day band and its hard to get 4 musician's to play good together. Now imagine 50. classic music is the most simple,complex, mathematical sounds we have ever produced. I think a study was done where people were shown movie clips with classical arrangements to them vs without and ask them which ones they liked and where most striking to them. of course they picked the classical without realizing it but yet they will never put mozart into their mp3 players.I do feel that times are changing and people are opening up to more forms of art and music.

Answer 3

Years ago the german actor Maximilian Schell was interviewing Leonard Bernstein.
B.: "Beethoven never composed an immortal pure melody like Bellini, didn't leave a single, real fugue like Bach and couldn't handle human voice properly like Mozart. And yet he's the greatest". S.:"So what makes him the greatest ?" B.: "The form".
We have an instinctive tendency to identify talent as something wild, and form as a restriction. But what really sticks to the ear and sits forever in mind is the sense of a powerful seminal idea developed, contrasted, resolved in all its facets and sides. Take Beethoven's 3rd, start listening and in exactly 15" you have all you need in place: the potent, napoleonic theme is there and that's it. Like Michelangelo said: the David was already inside the marble, all I did was taking the exceeding away. That is form. Instinctive sense of form was in Mozart, but also in Saint-Saens, in Verdi; Haydn, who had to write professional music daily for his master, invented a form, as a help and not a restriction, where to pour ideas industrially. The sturm-und-drang talent doesn't apply to music. Even undisciplined artists like Berlioz and Liszt wrapped their ideas in a form. That makes them great not less than their borderless talent does.

Answer 4

A song that invokes a variety of different emotions. If you can get a group of people together to hear a song, or play it, and they can all find meaning in it, especially if it means something different to each person, then the song has served its purpose. I'm a musician myself, and I have played songs that have just been so moving that they have actually brought me to tears. It sounds almost ridiculous, but that's the kind of power that great music can have over me!

Answer 5

A piece that does that certain something to me. When I go out and buy it you know it did that something for me. I could listen to it over and over again. An example of this was when the Amsterdam guitar trio came out with the guitar rendition of Vivalds' "Four Seasons" for classical guitar.

Answer 6

3 things (but I apply this to all music)

emotion
complexity
catchiness

Answer 7

A piece that can exude different emotions.

Answer 8

Good dynamics, articulation, tempo, and all appealing to what you like.

Answer 9

a mind that has been to hell, heaven, and back