Overrated, Overused, Overdone, underrated etc.

[Noah Chubb]

The Goldberg Variations. Extremely overrated, overused, overdone.

[Hamstray]

Overrated, Overused, Overdone:
i'm surprised no one mentioned Pachelbels Canon in d minor yet.

Smoke on the Water (also Ritchie Blackmore in general)

[XKYing2012]

Overrated, Overused, Overdone:
i'm surprised no one mentioned Pachelbels Canon in d minor yet.

Don't you mean canon in D major? But who cares what key its in, it's overrated anyway.

Personally, Clair De Lune (piano solo) is just OVERRATED. My friend loves it, but she only hust started piano, and can't see the finer points of Debussy (love the guy, love his music, love everything about him). Seriously, De Lune is alright one time, and maybe for the amateur, but not for piano only. It just HAS to have a violin, or a flute playing the melody. Without it, the piano (and I play piano myself) just can't BRING it out like a violin can, gently easing it out of the strings, or even a flute, or an oboe, caressing each note. Liszt could. Anyone professional could, but too many amateurs do it wrong, and now, all I hear are amateur performances of Clair De Lune with good recordings, or good performances with terrible recordings, or terrible performances with terrible recordings.

I NEED a good performance. LIVE. or at least evoking delight from me as Debussy does, would've done if he was still here, will always do.

[XKYing2012]

Fame doesn't matter... Most of today's famous musicians aren't good, they're just famous. Bach is famous because he was a genius..

totally agreed.

[Hamstray]

Don't you mean canon in D major?

yeah, sorry. been successfully avoiding it for so long now.

[XKYing2012]

Don't you mean canon in D major?

yeah, sorry. been successfully avoiding it for so long now.

It's one of the most annoying classical songs to date, other than fur elise.

[jamesketron]

Don't you mean canon in D major?

yeah, sorry. been successfully avoiding it for so long now.

It's one of the most annoying classical songs to date, other than fur elise.

Correct.

[deathgleaner]

BraHams, hands down. his music is just abominably boring and horribly written.

It's a pain that his music is still played in the concert halls toady.

[NLewis]

BraHams, hands down. his music is just abominably boring and horribly written.

It's a pain that his music is still played in the concert halls toady.

Why do you think it's horribly written?

[Rob Peters]

Reviving the topic by digging up some old sores...

BraHams, hands down. his music is just abominably boring and horribly written.
It's a pain that his music is still played in the concert halls toady.

Statements like this make my heart bleed, since I consider Brahms one of the towering geniuses of the 19th century. His music may be lack the opulent colors of his more "progressive" contemporaries, but seen from a composer's point of view, his music presents an ideal perfection that can only be compared to Bach. Sometimes I think of Bach and Brahms as the greatest composers of all time - in a pure technical sense. But I guess if you're not easily impressed by what can be called the abstract, technical qualities of music (the deepest "purest" quality, which is complemented by the other qualities like emotional communicability like the outer layers of an onion), his music can be austere and very "German" in its intellectuality.

The Goldberg Variations. Extremely overrated, overused, overdone.

Again, no real argumentation. I agree that there's been a sudden surge in popularity, but the piece certainly deserves it. Maybe you're thinking of the travesty they made of it in "Silence of the Lambs", or the Glenn Gould performances, which never have been my cup of tea, and probably accounted for the eccentric image of both music and performer.
But I saw a complete performance on TV just a couple of days ago, with a Russian pianist, whose name I forgot. I very much prefer hearing it played on cembalo (it's less of an acrobatic exercize and a fight of both hands for the same spot on the keyboard that way...) - but still, I was moved to tears. It's the combination of the abstract techniques, the perfect organisation and the rich fullness of the harmonies, which create an elysian feel, a sublime notion that "all is good in the world" (can't put it in words more elegantly.) And specifically the effect of the increasingly complex last variations beging followed by the etheral simplicity of the "Quodlibet", an effect that Beethoven achieved as well, in the last menuet of his Diabelli variations.

[NLewis]

Goldberg Variations is the most perfect piece of music ever composed, or at least very close to it. What's wrong with the Glenn Gould performances? I think they're fantastic.

[Rob Peters]

Goldberg Variations is the most perfect piece of music ever composed, or at least very close to it. What's wrong with the Glenn Gould performances? I think they're fantastic.

I shouldn't complain about Gould, since it was he who got me to love Bach's keyboard pieces in the first place (through his recordings of the WK I and II). Still, I grew to prefer performances by artists that don't put their own personalities in front of the composers'. In Gould' case I often have the feeling that I hear Bach filtered through Gould's eccentric personality. Matter of taste of course.

[madcapellan]

Brahms absolutely is the most overrated composer in all of classical music, but that just means that there's a huge disparity between how good he is and how good people think he is. Somehow the name Brahms has a mystique that captures people who assume he must be good, because hey, he wrote that lullaby. It is better to say that Brahms might be a great composer, but he did not write great music. Perhaps being typically German, he overthought things way too much, as his worrying about not being able to follow Beethoven in writing a symphony was absurd. What's worse is that instead of using his own talents, he was basically a second-rate Beethoven who tried to copy the older composer's style without understanding why Beethoven wrote as he did. A large amount of Brahms' style can be found in the first movement of the Eroica, from the major chord arpeggio melody to fooling with 3/4 time to make it seem like any other beat than what it actually is. The rest can be found in the 9th, with the triplet thing at the end of the third movement and especially the allusions to the finale. These play the first five notes of a major scale in the patter D-E-F#, F#-G-A, which Beethoven did in the second movement of the 9th before more or less introducing the famous Ode To Joy chorus the same way.

Brahms just wasn't a good melody writer when it comes down to it; certainly not on the same level as his contemporary Dvorak. Most of his best pieces are ones where he didn't write the melody to (Variations On A Theme By Haydn, Hungarian Dances). This includes the Academic Festival Overture, and this may be blasphemous, but it's by far his best work. Instead of being the focus, all of his little quirks add to the substance of the piece. It's his one work where he didn't take himself seriously, and it demonstrates the greatness that Brahms was capable of as a result. Unfortunately, he had to prove he was a serious composer seriously with the terrible Tragic Overture whose only tragedy is destroying everything Brahms had achieved with Academic Festival. Brahms didn't get a lot of things from Beethoven despite trying to copy him, of which the most obvious are the emotion and not taking his music too seriously. There is no emotion in Brahms' music whatsoever, and he never had fun with the listener in the way Beethoven did (like in the Eighth Symphony). He is not an "academic" composer, he is a self-serious and self-important one.

It continues to amaze me that not only is Brahms popular, but that he is often many people's favorite composer. There is no good reason for this, as his music is mostly a bland imitation of a Romantic style he apparently wanted little to do with. I guess there's a lot of appeal in music that tries hard not to offend and pushes no boundaries. It's also hard for me to understand anyone believing that form makes music good. Form is nothing more than a necessary evil that may not be all that necessary at times. Music might have only been a science at some point, but Beethoven changed all that. He solidified that music was about personal expression and an art form. There is none of this to be found in Brahms. It's amazing that he put Beethoven on a pedestal when he treated him like the worst thing to ever happen to music. He wrote like he longed for an alternate history where Beethoven didn't exist, and all anyone cared about was following the rules. Brahms was a reactionary that represented everything that was wrong with classical music pre-1800. That people think of him as one of the top composers of all time must only be on reputation and the fact that his last name starts with a "B". If you really think he was a better composer than Beethoven, then that is just factually wrong and I question how much music you've actually listened to.

Bach is probably overrated too, but at least he has good pieces and was the best composer of his era. Even if he might have been the only one keeping the Baroque period alive at some point, at least he contributed to progressing music in the Brandenburg Concertos and Well-Tempered Clavier. "Innovation" is not a word anyone will ever associate with Brahms. Of course, the top head-shaker as to popularity continues to be Schumann. He wrote no good pieces and had an extremely bland and unspectacular romantic style. Apparently writing lieder and having a hot wife is all it took to be famous in those days, because there is no explanation why Schumann continues to be remembered at all as a composer. Especially when it's commonly thought that he was a terrible orchestrator. Brahms had talent as a composer that he almost always chose not to put to good use. Schumann's only talent was stupidly destroying the one thing he was good at through "finger exercisers". The man was an idiot and a questionably talented composer who produced zero pieces worth remembering. So why exactly he is on concert programs again?

[Rob Peters]

*sigh* I don't even know how to reply to this.
I was prepared to do a detailed critique of your post, but the fact that you present your personal preferences as the Absolute Unquestionable Truth and the garbled argumentation that you use to "prove" your right made me back off. Not gonna invest half an hour of my time trying to convince and convert someone who smothered any chance of a fruitful discussion by erecting a brick wall of prejudices.

[cypressdome]

Wow! Madcapellan if you weren't a regular contributor here I'd swear you were a troll with a response that just seems so unbelievable.

Brahms just wasn't a good melody writer

and Schumann

was an idiot and a questionably talented composer who produced zero pieces worth remembering

I've got to vote with Rob Peters on this one--there probably isn't anything anyone could say to convince you of the worth of those composers. In my opinion, the musical world would be so much poorer without the symphonies and concertos, and the chamber, instrumental, and vocal music of Brahms and Schumann.

Cypressdome