The Most Underrated Composer
 

What do you guys think. I think personally is Josquin Des Prez. He was a Renaissance Composer and wrote varations on Gegorian Chants and also Masses. He mastered polyphonic harmony using mostly imiatation. It's really good music if you like Choral stuff. His music is hard to find also, but it's worth it if you do. So who do you guys think is the most underrated?

Chopin. his pieces are excersises in simple elegancy.

..beethoven

^^^
is not underated. He is probably the most famous. sheesh.

Erik Satie
 

Erik Satie. Its still hard to find a lot of his music besides the overdone (but still lovely) Gymnopedies & Gnossiennes. Socrate, Parade, Sports et Divertissements, and other works are hard to find...

~ josh

Chopin, on the other hand... :B

Anyways...

I'm going to agree with Fool on the Hill, Erik Satie is really up there. Conlon Nancarrow, too...despite his jumps in popularity, I never really hear much about him.

Johan strausse

I spelled that incorectly but i had a kick ass piano song by him, and my music teacher said he didnt exsist.. he might be popular tho

OK Frank Zappa. His classical pieces are phenomenal and disgustingly underated.

Definitely going with Bach and Beethoven, I mean, who the hell knows them?







/sarcasm.

debussy

stravinsky, schubert

While I'm not a Zappa fan, I will agree his pieces are viciously unappreciated and he deserves more I think. But as far as composers that I like go, thats a tough one.
Victor Bruns may be a big name on my list.
Beethoven, Chopin, Debussey and Bach, I'd hardly consider them underappreciated (ESPECIALLY BACH AND BEETHOVEN)

Gustav Mahler?

Mahler pffft. I think he's overrated.
Kalevi Aho-severely underrated. Simon Proctor too. Come on, Serpents and Contrabassoons and Tubas need love too-we're the black sheep of the orchestra. :(

PS. i take that back-Schoenberg is SEVERELY underrated-he's a goddamn genius-so is Toru Takemitsu-I know way too many classical composers lol

Chopin isn't underrated. He's excellent and he gets plenty of credit for it.

Paganini is very underrated. He's a virtuoso.

Junior
 

Johan Strausse Jr

I think Sergei Rachmaninoff, Dmitri Shostakovich and Erik Satie are underrated, but I'm probably not knowledgeable enough about classical to have a truly educated opinion on that.

I still need to hear more Bartok, Liszt and Schoenberg.

Chopin

Krzysztof Penderecki

Beleive it or not, I'm gonna go with a film composer on this one...Matt Gates.

Hildegard von Bingen

You never hear Rossini's name mentioned with those of Bethoven, Bach and Mozart. I am going with him.

I second that. Who else could get kicked out of a music school for composing "radical harmonies."

Following his Oscar snub I'll also say Johnny Greenwood.

Max Richter

probably because Beethoven and Bach actually broke some new ground and Mozart was his main influence


I think Haydn is quite under-rated in relation to the greats. you'd think the father of the symphony would have more status in the music world


mmMMmMmm Quinten

Alexander Scriabin. A very gifted but eccentric man who was into mysticism and who died pretty young, but he created some truly innovative and breathtaking music.

ht tp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Scriabin

I am going to suggest that Paul Hindemith is the most underrated composer of all time. He is respected. But no where near the degree to which he deserves. Scriabin' music is emotional, but it doesn't "go" anywhere, IMHO.

Rossini? Debussy? Von Hildengard? Haydn? They all get the level of respect they deserve, IMHO.

First name on this thread I haven't heard of, which means he is at least underrated by... well, me. Any titles to suggest?

Just a wild guess with the name, but could he be associated with The Five or is he a later period?

I think Robert Schumann is very underrated, he is remembered as being very eccentric and for ending up in a mental institution but he wrote some very beautiful music. His friend Brahms was one of his biggest supporters and helped him and his family a lot but in the end his insanity cut his career way too short.

I think Scriabin wrote a piece called "The Divine Poem" and I have a 3 CD set of his solo piano works but other than the fact he was from Russia and a friend of Sergei Rachmaninov he is not widely known.

Any friend of Rachmaninov can't be half bad. I'll definitely check him out. Thanks.:thumb:

Just did: whoever wrote about him on wikipedia is certainly a big fan. Primary Rusian Symbolism figure. Great...

Hello all. It is wonderful to see so many composers' names mentioned. I would just add a few. Names I haven't seen mentioned but written some of the most amazing music: Faure, Respighi (sp?) Massenet, Rimsky-Korsakov, Prokoffief.

Shostakovich is one of my favorites. How he survived under Stalin and still managed to produce "political music" was just short of miraculous. Then again, that's just my opinion.

Hi Clavis, I'm not sure if Shostakovich is underrated, I'm a big fan of his music and like you I respect him for being a voice of culture and hope and for producing great work under the most difficult conditions. There's a little history text in one of his symphonies, the 1905 I think, where he attends the premier of the work and afterwards Leonid Brezhnev asks..."How come you don't write happy joyful music? Of course the ruling party officials didn't realize that Dmitri was using his music to protest the internal struggle going on in his beloved Russia. He had many opportunities to defect to the west, but he always returned home to continue his composing, plus he was a true Russian patriot, so despite being at odds with the politicians he still cared for his people too much to abandon them completely. Anyway, he was very popular in the 50's and 60's but you may be right that not as many people value his great legacy today.

Vivaldi gets no respect for someone who wrote some of the most beautiful and influential music of his era.

I know he is well known to hardcore fans of classical music, but outside of that?

Probably Mozart, Beethoven and Bach. Underrated all of them.

I'm not sure I understand why you chose 3 of the most famous well known composers as underrated?? Are you saying because you like them so much that other people value them less than you do? Or that your contemporaries don't know and recognize their colossal contributions to the music that we enjoy even centuries later?

Sarcasm.

:laughing:, Okay sarcasm it is, figures the one obvious possibility and I didn't suggest it. Sarcasm aside Do you have a composer you think is underrated, or are you just having some fun with us classical music fans?;)

I don't know. I'm not heavily into classical, and though I really like Chopin, he's underrated to the general public but most classical music fans know Chopin.

I agree. I had to put up with my pianist friend shoving Chopin and Listzt down my throat every chance he could, but they finally began to grow on me. Chopin's piano compositions are fairly schismatic but entertaining all the same to listen to. I think Handel is up there too, a lotta people disregard him because he was a religious fanatic but he was truly a great composer.

I dont know if I would call him underrated, because in the classical guitar realm he's known. But outside of classical guitarists not many do, so I'm gonna go with Leo Brouwer.