My favorite composer is Wagner, but I am also very fond of the piano music and symphonies of Beethoven, the masses and symphonies of Bruckner, the operas of Mozart and the non-operatic music of Weber.

Who is your favorite composer?

Handel's Messiah is my favorite. Bach I don't like, it sounds like written by computer. It sounds like conceptual or theoretical, without emotion.

Good thread this !

Mine is Mascagni.

Mascagni is "criminally underrated".

My favorite composer is Wagner, but I am also very fond of the piano music and symphonies of Beethoven, the masses and symphonies of Bruckner, the operas of Mozart and the non-operatic music of Weber.

Who is your favorite composer?

Wagner. Many others but not at that level. There is so much to enjoy and I can only suggest to people that if they like this kind of music, "classical," get out and listen to it in person. It's a hundred times better live than recorded. I cant explain why-- but it's not like rock which often sucks live. Its better live.

George Gershwin. "Bess, you is my woman now..."

Breathtaking, itz.

Bach, Beethoven, Wagner, Debussy, Tchaikovsky & Orff, in that order. Not that I'm extremely knowledgable of the genre by any means.

O Fortuna! is a song from the oratorio Carmina Burana which is used frequently in dramatic and violent movie scenes such as Wagner's Flight of the Valkyries. You may remember O Fortuna from the Doors movie or perhaps from the scene in Conan the Barbarian Conan and the two gooks do battle with Thulsa Doom's henchmen.

I had the pleasure of hearing Carmina Burana live many years back and it was awesomely majestic. Oratorio is right up there with Wagnerian musical drama at the pinnacle of performing arts.

Handel's Messiah is definitely the best Oratorio. It's incredible really, all the glorious songs of that work, such as "he shall make the crooked straight," and of course the final chorus.

Who is your favorite composer?

Bach (Brandenburg Concertos)

Yes Alex, It sounds computer created... BEFORE computers. A testament to his genius, IMO.

Great thread!

Mascagni? Then you must love opera as the guy hardly wrote anything else. A good friend is always trying to convert me to Mascagni and keeps sending me obscure operas of his - Il Picolo Marat, Guglielmo Ratcliff and Parisina lately. So far...I don't quite get it with his music.

My favorites are mostly specialists in vocal music:
Verdi
Rossini
Bellini
Donizetti
Liszt
Wagner
Chabrier
Lortzing
Berlioz
Beethoven
Haydn
Sullivan
Spontini
Cherubini
Catalani
Mercadante
Bach
and Schubert, Schumann, Chopin, Bruckner, R. Strauss, Mozart...

The golden streams of European music never run dry.

Bach (Brandenburg Concertos)

Yes Alex, It sounds computer created... BEFORE computers. A testament to his genius, IMO.

Great thread!

"Too many notes" - each footnoting itself. It's almost stammery, what I've heard. It's irritating.

I'm on RMac's page regarding Bach. Of course, I do have this major mathematical/programming side of me that is probably the main reason I never tire of Bach.

I do like other stuff, 'specially Wagner and the so-called Russian Nationalists.

All good stuff. Long live White music!

Bach (Brandenburg Concertos)

Yes Alex, It sounds computer created... BEFORE computers. A testament to his genius, IMO.

Great thread!

Beethoven, please. And some Romanticists - Schumann and Brahms.

.........Bach
and Schubert, Schumann, Chopin, Bruckner, R. Strauss, Mozart...

The golden streams of European music never run dry.

I have been to several recitals of Schubert lieder which I have enjoyed greatly.

here is a good resource for the lyrics. much of this is very gloomy stuff!

http://www.recmusic.org/lieder/s/schubert.html

I like...almost breathe classical, and of course I adore Beethoven. He really didn't write anything bad. Even his so-called 'bad' pieces like The Ruins of Athens and his ballet The Creatures of Prometheus are great. One of his earliest pieces, Musik Zu Einem Ritterballet written when he was a teenager, shows a lot of strength. But I tend to relax with the baroque. It is pure music, very melodic and peppy, especially the trumpet/woodwind concertos, and I'll say my favorite composer is Telemann. He was a friend of Bach and handel, and I think his music is always fresh, tuneful, warm, and human. He was one of the first composers to use folk melodies (Polish, esp.) in his music, and Telemann incorporates a lot of french and italian features in his works, but gives them his own unique, warmth. I really find him more inventive than Bach. Telemann was actually more revered when they were alive, and Bach only got the job of Kapellmeister at leipzig because Telemann turned it down (after he negotiated a raise in his native Hamburg so they'd keep him). It's been said Telemann is a 'morning' composer, fresh and inspiring like the dawn. I agree. He also has the Guiness record for having written the most music. Also, I'm discovering American composers like Chadwick, Beach and others...they're looked down on now because their music sounds too 'German'...of course this is to praise Gershwin and Copland over and over. One composer I've discovered is John Antes (about 1790), an American-German composer who wrote a fine series of string quintets and trios that sounds very Haydnesque. I also like a lot of Scottish and English folk music and dances, as I dance with an English/Scottish group.Also there's John Phillip Sousa, but I like his operettas and songs and music other than marches. He wrote 14 operettas and a hundred songs, and his autobiography Marching Along is a lot of fun to read. He had four children "I don't believe in race suicide', he wrote.

Hi A.E. I like the Schubert symphonies the best of his music as they are cheerful, colorfully orchestrated and packed with good tunes. Lieder and chamber music doesn't do a lot for me, same thing for most solo instrumental music unless it is for the piano. The voice and the piano are what I listen to the most. Voice meaning opera and church music, and just about anything for the piano. A few songs I really like - some by Schumann and Liszt and a couple by Schubert. Maybe if there were not so many Schubert songs....but there are.

Except for a few pre classical things like the two Monteverdi operas, I really get into music with Haydn and lose interest with the dawn of that most terrible of centuries - the 20th.

I see what you say (in that informative and interesting post of yours steven clark) about Beethoven. Many is the time that I have defiantly defended the Choral Fantasy, which I persist in loving. Piano and singers...a natural for me. What infectious, irresistible joyousness and outrageous construction. Beethoven's lesser pieces are better than most other people's top-drawer stuff. Of course like everybody else I love Fidelio, but can see why he only wrote the one opera as actually Cherubini wrote all the best Beethoven operas, and while Beethoven was mostly still a youngster too. Beethoven didn't have to write any more operas as Cherubini had already written them.

I also agree completely about the flak the German trained 19th century guys take. That's the same reason why so many Brit composers are routinely written off, including my favorite Brit composer, Sir Arthur Sullivan.

Interesting you should mention that kike fraud Copland. One of the movies he scored was on Turner Classic Movies a few nights ago - a big reputation Paramount picture The Heiress (very, very overrated). What a laughable score, which was basically a series of lazy variations on a lousy 19th century parlor song - all minor key and droopy and sounding exactly as dreary as everything else that guy ever wrote.

As the words to the Choral Fantasy say (to a tune that I cannot get out of my head for a month after every hearing - that is how great that melody is): Harmony makes the world go round.

PS - Telemann sure was prolific, but then so too was Bach and I doubt that Telemann produced as much offspring as Bach did.

The musical geezer from Malvern, what was his name; Elgar.

Elgar's elegiac compositions present a vision and the quintessence of England, through the power of his musical creation alone.


http://www.elgar.org/welcome.htm

http://www.naxos.com/composer/elgar.htm

http://www.elgar-festival.com/elgarbreak.html

I agree. Elgar is a strong, English composer, and so is Gustav Holst. He really uses a lot of english folk tunes, like his Brook Garden suite and St. Paul's Suite. Even the Planets, with Jupiter, is more British than interplanetary. I've been digging up older English music. I always love Purcell. Very strong melody, and folk roots. Dido and Aeneas really great opera, and only one hour long...which is why I like it. A lot of minor composers forgotten. One is Samuel Wesley (18th century), nephew of John Wesley, the Methodist. His symphonies very mozartean. Also John Field...very good piano music and concertos. Back to Telemann...he was much more forward-thinking than Bach, and also preferred to live in Hamburg because he felt more at home in a republic. I listen to our local classical station, and boy, they sure peddle Copland-Bernstein-Gershwin...gets tiresome. Glad to have seen the modernism of Schoenberg and others pretty much repudiated. In concerts, overwhelmingly the older music wins hands down, but 'new' music is always forced on people, but concerts try to 'jazz up' things in order to win over younger audiences. Some new stuff is good, but much is toneless and repetitious, and overly intellectual, like atonal masturbation.

say Gott I just saw Beethoven's Fidelio at Chicago Lyric.

Karen Matilla gave a great performance. Other than that it was forgettable.

Not the favorite opera I've ever seen either.

Not long, month from now or so, and I will be at their Ring Cycle productions! Or most of them.

But as if to correct for this indulgence, next season they are doing Carmen with a nigger and a jew in the title roles (Graves and Shicoff). Which means I will NOT be in attendance.

lyricopera.org

I like something by most of the German composers, including Bach and Händel and Marschner, but I simply cannot stand Brahms and I am not very fond of Schumann at all.

Elgar is also lovely sometimes, but I have not listened to a non-German composer voluntarily all year.

Cavallieria Rusticana by Mascagni is beyond written description.

Listen to the Pearl Fishers sung by tenor Jussi Bjorling and baritone Robert Merrill and written By Bizet. Unfortunately, Merrill died fairly recently.

Got to tip my hat to Mozart as well :)

Opera ? Yes I love the stuff ! My favourite tenors being Caruso and Bjorling.



Mascagni? Then you must love opera as the guy hardly wrote anything else. A good friend is always trying to convert me to Mascagni and keeps sending me obscure operas of his - Il Picolo Marat, Guglielmo Ratcliff and Parisina lately. So far...I don't quite get it with his music.

My favorites are mostly specialists in vocal music:
Verdi
Rossini
Bellini
Donizetti
Liszt
Wagner
Chabrier
Lortzing
Berlioz
Beethoven
Haydn
Sullivan
Spontini
Cherubini
Catalani
Mercadante
Bach
and Schubert, Schumann, Chopin, Bruckner, R. Strauss, Mozart...

The golden streams of European music never run dry.

Fidelio is a strange opera with two acts that don't seem to fit together very well. The first act can turn off a lot of people (all that operetta like twittering by the second leads and the unfunny funny stuff with Marzelline (?)falling for Leonora when she's dressed as a guy).

But the second act is really great, going from one riveting dramatic number to the next. I don't like it when conductors insert the Leonora #3 between the prison trio/duet and the choral finale as the entire act builds a lot of momentum and that overture stops it all dead. But even so there is hardly any music in the second act that is not worthy of Beethoven at his best with the trio and then the following duet just about as sublime as music gets. The final choral stuff is on the same level, too.

Often I forget there even is a first act to that opera. When I listen to it, I usually just play the second.

If Beethoven had known anything about dramatic construction, he would have written more operas. Cherubini's operas have the same sound and also the grave seriousness as act II of Fidelio, but they have more variety and are much more logically constructed and dramatically paced. Beethoven loved Cherubini's operas - in fact, I believe Beethoven considered Cherubini to be the greatest living composer. Though he liked some of Beethoven's music, Cherubini wasn't nearly as enthusiastic about Beethoven as Beethoven was about Cherubini. Later, Wagner felt virtually the same way about Spontini (revered his operas, especially Vestale, anyway), who also didn't return the compliment.

I've heard that Graves is a total dud as Carmen. And it calls for major exertion of 'jew logic' to conclude that Neil Shicoff can sing at all anymore. All he did was scream during that rotten Juive at the jew york met. Maybe he will wear daddy's prayer shawl during Carmen in place of singing. Anyway, Carmen is not a favorite of mine no matter who is singing. Nice tunes and plenty of them but somehow it has always seemed superficial and trashy to me. I'm pretty suspicious of French operas in general unless they were actually written by Italians - Lully, Cherubini, Spontini, Rossini, Donizetti and Verdi all wrote the best French operas with only Rameau, Berlioz and Chabrier doing anything on the same level (sometimes) as the Italians writing in french in France. French opera mostly strikes me as a lot of frippery. Eek, what a racial, national, cultural stereotype!

Offenbach's works should be burned.

Offenbach's works should be burned.

Offenbach’s operettas kind of remind me of dirty toilet paper. The very talented jewish 'French' conductor Rene Liebowitz recorded La Belle Helene and Orphee Aux Enfers in the 1950s and the performances have been recently reissued on CD. The Belle Helene is the best I've ever heard and it is so true to the material as to be positively frightening. Every note is a dirty joke and there is nothing the incredibly suggestive 'French' singers say or sing that isn't filthy by implication. In this performance when somebody sings 'Hi, how are you' you KNOW what they really mean is 'can I butt fuck you' or will you give me a blow job while wearing a French Maid's uniform and stiletto heels'...if you know what I mean. It is one of the most amazing performances of anything I've ever heard.

Fidelio is a strange opera with two acts that don't seem to fit together very well. The first act can turn off a lot of people (all that operetta like twittering by the second leads and the unfunny funny stuff with Marzelline (?)falling for Leonora when she's dressed as a guy).

But the second act is really great, going from one riveting dramatic number to the next. I don't like it when conductors insert the Leonora #3 between the prison trio/duet and the choral finale as the entire act builds a lot of momentum and that overture stops it all dead. But even so there is hardly any music in the second act that is not worthy of Beethoven at his best with the trio and then the following duet just about as sublime as music gets. The final choral stuff is on the same level, too.

Often I forget there even is a first act to that opera. When I listen to it, I usually just play the second.

!

I couldnt articulate that as well as you did, or I would have. Thanks.

My only other thought was that the "dressing up as a boy thing" was oddly appropriate for today's opera audiences who are notoriously filled with queers.

The final chorale was wonderful, but having seen the broadway play Les Miserables it reminded me of that way too much. Spirit of 1848, revolution, brotherhood of man, and all that judeo-masonic claptrap. Clearly that was a theme in the opera, and the last scene recollected Les Miserables staging of the barricades-- visually-- and I found that annoying. But, it was the glorious Beethoven choral music at the end, themes notwithstanding, that made it worthwhile.

...........


I've heard that Graves is a total dud as Carmen. And it calls for major exertion of 'jew logic' to conclude that Neil Shicoff can sing at all anymore. All he did was scream during that rotten Juive at the jew york met. . .......

I'd like to see Carmen, and I could probably tolerate Graves, but that ugly mug of Neil Schicoff, which adorned the cover of Opera News in his "La Juive" getup, makes me want to vomit. No way could I pay for that displeasure. I'd rather drive a nail through my foot.

Aye, but sometimes we have to understand that women were banned from appearing on stage.

'Juliet' must have been played by some ugly looking buggers. :eek:

Wilhelm Richard Wagner: he was and is the prophet of our sacred Ario-Germanic race.

Aye, but sometimes we have to understand that women were banned from appearing on stage.



At that time (the ban on females appearing on stage) the fashion for female voices became an important issue. Many boys were castrated just before puberty (right before their voices changed) if it was thought they had a good voice and any chance for a career. Thought totally illegal (a capital crime in Italy I believe) this practice was done on almost an industrial scale throughout the 17th and 18th century. Most of there poor ex-guys never had any career at all. But the few who did became perhaps the most celebrated singers in history. Of course this constitutes men singing male (and female) roles…but what men, and with female voices with a power and strength impossible in real women.



Then, after the practice of castrating boys went into decline and eventually ended, composers had a legitimate need for the vocal distribution they needed. Sometimes that called for extra female voices but in dramatic situations that only called for one female role. So trouser or travesti roles became quite prominent in the late 18th and early 19th century. Cherubino in Nozze di Figaro is the most famous example in Mozart, there are many, many such roles in Rossini operas right through to William Tell (Jemmy), a few in Donizetti and even one in Verdi (Oscar in Un Ballo in Maschera). Even Wagner used a travesti part in Rienzi (Adriano). Of the major 19th century opera composers only Bellini never wrote a travesti role (unless I'm forgetting something).



Finally, there is the prurient factor. This is most noticeable in operetta, particularly those of Offenbach who used such roles constantly. In the 19th century, when women were heavily draped in public, such roles (similar to ballet) were a way by which men could publicly ogle leg, thigh and tits. Often the costumes for such roles were tight and form fitting and the legs were entirely naked except for tights. This was most prevalent in Paris - the great whore of Europe - as Wagner called her at the time of the Franco Prussian war.



After one early work (Thespis) in which there is a trouser role, Gilbert and Sullivan publicly avowed the practice saying that they would never write such a part again; that they would write a new kind of operetta in which the public hopefully would be amused, charmed and delighted but in which propriety and decency would never be outraged. That was in direct reaction to Offenbach's sleazy works. And they succeeded too, as the Sullivan operettas are, by far, the most elegant and refined (while being delightful and intensely musical) examples in the entire genre, I think. The Danish ballet choreographer August Bournonville had similarly reacted to the sleaze factor in ballet by decreeing that in his works (the greatest ballets ever written) the girls would have dresses short enough to allow them to dance freely, but long enough to preserve decency. Which they do – the costumes in Denmark for the Bournonville ballets are markedly longer than those used for other ballets in other companies in other countries.



The queer thing in the arts in America. First, there is no culture in America...in fact; I don't really think there is any America - it died sometimes around the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, our last honest and upright leader. In the US, opera is an exotic import that with typical vulgarity we set out to show those Europeans that we can do bigger, better and louder than they can. It of course attracts a small body of people who are there because they really love it, and that I'm sure includes plenty of queers as well as heterosexuals. But the majority in opera audiences in the USA are cultural tourists, or queers who are there because it's prestige and outside the American norm, or the elites who go because it is a status symbol to do so. They say right out at the shit hole that calls itself the Metropolitan opera, that the reason they are doing so disastrously badly in recent years is that after 911 the tourist busses no longer stop at that poured concrete monstrosity to disgorge their hordes of picture snapping Japanese and Iowans. They go to the Broadway musicals now, instead.

I havent had the chance to listen to much classical because I've only recently been getting into it. However, I do enjoy Mozart's Moonlight Sonata quite a bit. Err, atleast I think its Mozart.

Check out Rachmaninoff. if your into pianos,this guy hit some notes that you would think he had 8 fingers on each hand,great stuff,and lets not forget Tchaikovsky.

If your just getting into classical music.I highly recommend both of them.

The 1912 Overture is truly a masterpiece,with cannons.

182 Overture. I need to check my posts better,lol

The1812 Overture,damn I'm gettin a new keyboard,this thing is pissin me off.

........
The queer thing in the arts in America. First, there is no culture in America...in fact; I don't really think there is any America - it died sometimes around the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, our last honest and upright leader. In the US, opera is an exotic import that with typical vulgarity we set out to show those Europeans that we can do bigger, better and louder than they can. It of course attracts a small body of people who are there because they really love it, and that I'm sure includes plenty of queers as well as heterosexuals. But the majority in opera audiences in the USA are cultural tourists, or queers who are there because it's prestige and outside the American norm, or the elites who go because it is a status symbol to do so. They say right out at the shit hole that calls itself the Metropolitan opera, that the reason they are doing so disastrously badly in recent years is that after 911 the tourist busses no longer stop at that poured concrete monstrosity to disgorge their hordes of picture snapping Japanese and Iowans. They go to the Broadway musicals now, instead.
....
Well, that was a good read. Thanks. And I revile the Met under the pervert Jew.

I go regularly in Chicago and it's mostly older folks, senior citizens, like my mom, widows, who go even more than I do, and plenty of middle aged people, and occasionally younguns. But always there are plenty of queers. I tell you how I got involved. My dad (rip) had a Greek-American cousin, pretty remote, who had a fair to middlin career. She became a prof and taught somewhere, and from her he caught the opera bug. He tried to support opera outside the big shitties here in flyover-- because that is where he lived. Flyover. You know, in a town the size of 100,000 in Germany you can support a small opera company, why not here? Well you know why, but that doesnt stop people from trying time to to time. Anyhow, I have a childhood friend who got into it pretty deeply. Deep enough I wont say more than that. Along the way we have learned to enjoy it ourselves and our friend has dragged many of us into it. Young people I know who like to go regularly usually have somebody in their family who studied music.

Part of the problem is the atomization of America: people dont "get together." They are always in little pods. Isolated and alone. Whether it is single folks, or nuclear families that are in their own little isolated homes in the suburbs. People dont "get out." and when they do, it's an isolated thing like a movie. Now, a concert of any kind, rock to classical, is more of a social function than a movie. Even better, musical drama such as opera or broadway type shows. Those makes for good "events" which should ALWAYS be followed by socializing with other friends and couples who have seen the show over appropriate beverages and foods! You need cities to do this. The only cities outside of big shitties where you have this kind of social opportunity are university towns. Universities in the USA, for all their warts, are becoming like islands of culture amidst a sea of decay. They're becoming like Benedictine monasteries after the collapse of the Roman Empire. Little reserves of learning and higher culture. True, they are also loci of Jewish poison-- but many boats float on their waters.

Anyhow, I just wanted to share some of these thoughts. We have talked about the topic for years and look forward to meeting others who care.

Music is an opinion. What do we like ?

I know that todays music has no tunes.

GK Chesterton mentioned in his piece............. and they know no tunes !

This is far reaching. How did he know ?

For me, Mascagni taps into that 'white reservoir'.

I havent had the chance to listen to much classical because I've only recently been getting into it. However, I do enjoy Mozart's Moonlight Sonata quite a bit. Err, atleast I think its Mozart.
It's Beethoven... And I also find it very enjoyable. Good taste!

Actually Beethoven's sonata 14 in C sharp minor. it picked up the name 'Moonlight', but it fits. You'd probably like Mozart's sonata in A with the Rondo Alla Turca. As for opera, A good American opera is by Moore...The Ballad of Baby Doe. It's a kind of folk opera about a man falling in love with a younger woman, but comments about puritanism, man's hopes of immortality, and the silver/gold debate of the 1890's. A lot of fun to listen to, but most opera companies don't like it...not 'artsy' enough, and perhaps too heterosexual and down-home American.

One thing (obviously not related to classical music) that irritates the hell out of me is the way American crowds at popular music concerts simply will not shut the fuck up, even for a moment. It's inevitable that delicate passages in quiet songs will be accompanied by whistles, hoots and stupid bitches shrieking "I LOVE YOUUU!!!".

Modest Mussorgsky.

Or if you count liturgical music (and you've have to be completely tone deaf not to), Gregorio Allegri.

I can't believe no one's mentioned Paganini.

http://www.paganini.com/nicolo/nicindex.htm

A musician's musician; a composer's composer. UNPARALLELED composer for strings.

What does Gott think of him?

I like the concertos a lot and the etudes in small doses. They are so intense that a little goes a long way with me. But what I like best about Paganini is that he's the direct inspiration for Liszt's transcendental piano technique and I love piano music, Liszt's in particular. All I really like are Italian and German (and a few French) operas, the classical and romantic symphonic repertory, religious music, and the literature for the piano.

No mentions of child prodigy 'Fred' Chopin in this thread ?

This cannot be allowed. :cool:

Handel's Messiah is my favorite. Bach I don't like, it sounds like written by computer. It sounds like conceptual or theoretical, without emotion.

Check out the harpsichord cadenza to Brandenberg #5 and see if it doesn't affect you emotionally.

Tastes are different, but for me this moment reflects the urgency and desperation of our White struggle in less than 2 minutes.

Overall B'berg #5 is my favorite.

It sounds like a White man flirting with then fucking a White woman.

No mentions of child prodigy 'Fred' Chopin in this thread ?

This cannot be allowed. :cool:

He was a jew hater you know.

That's the thing, isn't it? There's Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a theme of Paganini Op. 43 and many, many others. Excepting Beethoven he's probably the most influential composer of the early 19th century, but he's not too well known outside of music circles.

I did a reasearch paper in college on Paganini. My brother plagiarized it so he could graduate from high school. I got an A+. He got a C-, just enough to graduate, his teacher knew it wasn't his work, but didn't want him for another year.

Paganini was on of the first "pop" stars. Unlike today's pop stars, he was a tremendous musician. He had a hell of jew nose.

Did you know that Europeans already have a national anthem?
It is Ode to Joy from Beethoven's 9th symphony.

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/078124.html

I'm reading this book by Esteban Buch and despite a bit of cursory Nazi bashing it has been very illuminating. It has a Chapter on Nazi Germany's affecton for the 9th Symphony.

Schiller's poem, when applied to Whites only (as he probably assumed having African and Asian as brothers as being ridiculous) serves as a nice edifying sermon for those of the European persuasion. Beethoven music makes it magical

I think I've heard of Chopin's alleged anti-jew sentiment. Can you elaborate?

I don't have an answer to the question but it (the question) started me thinking about a related European-genius-composer and the jew. One of Chopin's friends and contemporaries in Paris was the GREAT Italian composer Vincenzo Bellini (one of my very top favorite composers). Both Chopin and Bellini were young, handsome and sensitive and wrote similarly elegiac music with long, long melodies of surpassing, hypnotic beauty. There was no sense of competition between them as Chopin wrote almost only for the piano and Bellini wrote almost only for voice and orchestra. They very much liked each other and each other's music. There are numerous stories about the two of them playing their music together, for each other. They both died young.

It is relative to Bellini's death that your question jolted my memory. After the gigantic success of I Puritani, which most unfortunately proved to be his last opera, Bellini was invited to relax at a country villa outside Paris owned by a young 'British' banker and his wife (who was really his mistress).

When poor Bellini took sick at the banker's villa, the banker closed the villa and left, leaving Bellini alone in his bedroom with only a solitary attendant in the house, who came in to check on the poor guy once or twice a day. A non specialist hick doctor was also allowed it, but again only occasionally. No friends and no other doctors were allowed in and Bellini was not allowed to be moved to a hospital where specialists could have treated him. Bellini died alone and in agony in that cold and deserted mansion. The banker had not allowed any news of Bellini's illness to be communicated to the composer's family in Catania and they recieved the news not that he was ill, but that he was dead.

Bellini might have died of his illness anyway, but then again, perhaps professional medical treatment would have saved the life of one of the most original and talented composers of that or any other time. Even at the time, the almost insanely cruel actions of the banker were considered so bizarre and heartless as to be criminal. But then again, that's what 'British' bankers are like when their name is Levys.

I think I've heard of Chopin's alleged anti-jew sentiment. Can you elaborate?
A reviewer at Amazon had this to say:

Chopin's personality really comes through in his letters. You can see his charm and his sense of humor but also his snobbery and nastiness. It also seems pretty clear that he was an anti-semite, although Mr.Szulc tries rather desperately to rescue him from that charge by saying that Chopin really just didn't like the Jews in the music publishing business, because he felt they were trying to cheat him! He really didn't mind "other" Jews. Unfortunately, Chopin is quoted about 4-5 times making anti-semitic remarks but no examples are given of him having anything nice to say . . .

Handel's Messiah is my favorite. Bach I don't like, it sounds like written by computer. It sounds like conceptual or theoretical, without emotion.

Bach is one of the most spiritually emotional composers to ever live. His "Art of the Fugue" is one of the most elevating emotional spiritual masterpieces of Western Culture. The conceptual/theoretical is at base driven by spiritual emotion and this needs to become a fundamental revelation to the materialistic psuedo-semites who pass for white people today if we are to progress.

Enthusiasm gentlemen is not jumping around to some negro face-fart music, it is the long drawing out of the soul in to higher realms of consciousness. A leader spiritually elevates his followers and creates in them an ethusiasm; for the leader is the bearer of a seed, an idea, conceptual/theoretical/visionary, which he plants in the soil of his followers.

*sigh* WIll you ever de-jew?

Your comment is pretty disgusting.