Sung composers that you just "don't get"

[Peter1953]

Almost all (sung and unsung) composers who wrote atonal music. Almost, because I love Alban Berg's VC for its haunting atmosphere.
And yes, all those composers who wrote such very predictable music. So boring, like Amphissa expressed so clearly (I disagree about Liszt). One sung name? Haydn. One unsung name? Ries in his symphonies (how different I judge his solo piano music and his concertos). Mea culpa.

[jerfilm]

What was it one critic said of Richard Strauss's music?  "There's less there than meets the ear....."  haha

But I like Strauss. 

I don't get 12 tone, atonal, serial music.  Period.  No, I don't care for Reger either.

Jerry

[ArturPS]

I really dislike almost everything I've heard post-1900, excepting some Mahler (still getting into the symphonies) and Strauss. There are things I like post-1900 but if you call if modern, I'm 95% sure I'll hate it with a passion. Also, Ravel is right there in the bottom with Grieg (from my previous reply).

There is much to Mozart that I don't get or simply don't like. I have a nice CD of night music from HM (with Andrew Manze) that ends with the Musical Joke. It's a joke I don't care for and would like not to have heard. I like the symphonies (not all), the concertos (idem) and the quartets, couldn't care less about the sonatas.
I understand how people don't like Haydn, but well played Haydn will blow Mozart out of the water. I rank the London Symphonies right there with Beethoven's 1st and 2nd. His late quartets > Beethoven's Op.18, his late sonatas > Beethoven's first opii (sp?).

I still have no liking for Tchaikovsky's 1st and Manfred Symphonies or his 1st concerto. Liszt is interesting to play, not much else there. Chopin doesn't do it for me, I have no respect for his concertos, I like to play his music, but not much to hear. I really don't get how Chopin ended up in the "sung" list and Hummel got shafted.

But Grieg... don't get me started on Grieg.

[alberto]

I don't like Paganini (even if I have to recognize he was influential for very great composers - not violinists-composers).

[Alan Howe]

Almost all the virtuoso violinist-composers wrote a lot of dross. Naxos: STOP RECORDING THEM!!!

[TerraEpon]

For starters?
-Bruckner. Outside of his beautful acapella choral music it just prods and prods
-Most of Brahms, including the first three symphonies, German Requiem, Alto Rhapsody, the majority of the piano music, etc etc.....just so boring
-Mahler outside the first symphony. Like with Bruckner, it doesn't do anything for me, despite some other composers who are compared to him that I *do* love

And then there's a lot of both Bach and Beethoven I just find a bore as well, though I love much of those composers works as well....

I could go on but won't.

[Jonathan]

Anything atonal just drives me mad and I really can't get Mahler either (and I have tried).  I also agree about Grieg although one or two of the Lyric pieces are ok.
I'm sure I'll think of others...

[JimL]

There is much to Mozart that I don't get or simply don't like. I have a nice CD of night music from HM (with Andrew Manze) that ends with the Musical Joke. It's a joke I don't care for and would like not to have heard. I like the symphonies (not all), the concertos (idem) and the quartets, couldn't care less about the sonatas.
I understand how people don't like Haydn, but well played Haydn will blow Mozart out of the water. I rank the London Symphonies right there with Beethoven's 1st and 2nd. His late quartets > Beethoven's Op.18, his late sonatas > Beethoven's first opii (sp?).

I believe the word you're looking for is, believe it or not, "opera".  But that would be confusing.

[dafrieze]

My instances of "not getting it" tend to be of a composer's specific work(s) rather than of a composer per se.  I enjoy most of Cesar Franck's organ music, but his symphony leaves me absolutely cold.  And while I love Brahms's symphonies, choral works and concertos (with the exception of the 2nd piano concerto), I really have a hard time sitting through most of his chamber music, piano music and songs.  I don't have any real difficulties with atonality or twelve-tone music - those are languages, and it all depends on how the composer handles the language.  I do enjoy Birtwistle and Maxwell Davies.  The only two composers whose music I dislike tout court are Philip Glass and Elliot Carter. 

[X. Trapnel]

Britten. Not that I don't understand or like a small amount of it (mainly Grimes and before), but the Anglo-American instance that he's the greatest English composer since Purcell is baffling to me. Nothing of his pallid, semi-persuasive music convinces me that he's remotely comparable to Elgar or Vaughan Williams in either magnitude or universality of achievement (and no I don't close my eyes and think of England when I listen to these latter two; they are greater than that) or so vastly superior to Walton and others of that generation that we needn't talk about it. Every hotshot composer out of the UK (I'm writing from an American perspective, so perhaps inaccurate?) is immediately hailed as "the new Britten" before being cast aside to make a clear path for the next NB. No talk ever of a new RVW, but that's becuase we've been taught by our cultural betters (the same who panned the Gothic last month) to lower our expectations of what music might be and mean.

[semloh]

This thread is testimony to the diversity of tastes - I am left completely stunned that someone who loves music could not 'get' Mahler, who plumbed the depths and heights of emotion, or be utterly dazzled by Britten's sheer genius in his Frank Bridge Variations or Young Person's Guide, and Gershwin - half my life has been spent whistling, humming or singing his music ..... and so it goes on....

OK - now my confession - Tchaikovsky! utterly meaningless, repetitive, empty-headed, crash-bang-wallop, confused drivel, all fancy wrapping and no contents. (dives for cover!)

[X. Trapnel]

For sheer genius I'll take Frank Bridge himself. Compared to the utterly shattering Oration, the War Requiem seems to me just so much finger-wagging, above-the-fray moralising that adds nothing to the anger and compassion of Owen's poems.

[kolaboy]

Gershwin. Can't bear a single note of his music.

You are to be pitied.

I think not. A maintaining of basic standards is not a pitiful pursuit. At any rate, opinions were solicited and I offered mine in the spirit of participation. I'm not personally insulted when someone's personal taste doesn't jibe with my own - though I might have been in my formative years.

[X. Trapnel]

My conclusion after many years of listening to Glazunov is that he wrote a sort of Russian Symphony Minus One eight times, the One minused being memorable thematic material or in the case of the Fifth (the only one I like) good, though rather short-winded tunes. Only compare him to Kalinnikov in this regard or, to choose a non-Russian parallel, Atterberg whose vein of melody was inexhaustible. I do like Stenka Razin though.

[eschiss1]

I like quite a lot of music out of court for many people in this forum ("history" having decided that Schoenberg was off his rocker in thinking that his music was evolutionary rather than revolutionary; I agree with the composer on that point, though) but I no more expect people to convince me that I am mistaken for this than I expect to convince people who have come to considered opinions about these or other composers I enjoy, appreciate and respect that they are mistaken for not doing so. It's not that sort of thread, peeps.  Be marshmellow- I mean, mellow, please