Last week the Proms came to a great big classical music end. Plenty of fine music was played but the event failed, once again, to answer the age-old question: Who is the best classical musician ever? And no, the answer is not Johnny Greenwood. With the BBC dodging the question like a bunch of politically correct cowards, I thought I'd wade in with some well-informed wisdom.
10. Benjamin Britten
Benjamin Britten is like the navy: he's known for patriotism and being profoundly into the sea, but his main concern is the desperate love a man can feel for another man (preferably a fisherman). We have to remember that Britten lived in a pre-Brokeback Mountain world. Men couldn't just knowingly suggest "taking a trip up the mountain" to each other and be sure that they were being completely understood. Their only option was the sea. A man would suggest a nice hearty swim to a comrade and then, once out of sight of the shore, he would set upon his companion. That's why Britten set his operas in Suffolk. There's sea there.9. Oliphant Chuckerbutty
In fact his full name was Soorjo Alexander William Langobard Oliphant Chuckerbutty. And he was an organist at the Angel cinema in Islington.
8. Karlheinz Stockhausen
When I saw Stockhausen play, along with about 300 other people, he told the audience that there were only 15 people in the world who understood what he did. This is a man who scored a piece of music for a string quartet, four video cameras, and four helicopters, so he was probably right. I mainly just kept thinking about who those 15 people might be. Concert pianist Alfred Brendel? The helicopter teacher at Stockhausen's local flight school? God?7. Claude Debussy
Debussy invented the kind of slow, unusual piano music that eventually became the beatnik musings of jazz guys like Bill Evans and Keith Jarrett. Thanks a lot Claude.6. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Vladimir Putin recently admitted that, in his gentler moments, he likes to throw on some Tchaikovsky and watch bears from the local zoo fight each other. This personal nugget would no doubt have soothed the troubled spirit of the Russian composer who, plagued by depression, drank a bucketful of cholera ridden water and writhed his way to a painful death.5. Henry Purcell
The 17th century English composer, who would go on to be happily ripped off by Pete Townshend (who admired him for his melodies) was known for his carousing. After a high spirited night out at the theatre, in which Purcell challenged a local actor to an "organ joust" (basically: who can play Organ faster), the composer came winding his way home to find that his wife had locked him out. The "baroque badger," as his friends knew him, stumbled out into Dean's Yard, next to his home in Westminster, and died of exposure (although some say it was tuberculosis and others say a fox ate him).4. Johann Sebastian Bach
Are you into endlessly rising and falling scales? Are you a fan of precision and repetition so mathematically tight it would confuse even the guys who play car designers in adverts? Are you a fan of Matt Damon and his work in the Bourne franchise? Then you'll be a fan of Bach and his Harpsichord ultimatum.3. Josh Groban
Tears. Rolling. Down. My. Cheeks. That's all I need to say about this guy.2. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Don't we all wish Amadeus could "rock" us? Falco may be Austria's greatest living musical genius, but Mozart is its greatest dead musical genius. He was the punk of the 18th century European Royal family, performing classical monkey court scene, dealing out perfectly harmonized musical balls of truth to the Man before he succumbed to a mysterious illness that almost certainly wasn't but could perhaps have been caused by the abhorrent sexual relationship he may but almost certainly did not have with his sister, Nannerl. Incest induced syphilis aside; Mozart made the famously good-natured Salieri jealous of his musical prowess, so he must have been pretty great. Also, his music is so pleasing. Many are the times I've nearly drowned as a result of listening to Mozart in the bath. A watery grave… you can't ask a composer for much more than that.1. Ludwig Van Beethoven
Or can you? According to all the highbrow people who are highbrow about classical music, you can. If listening to Mozart is like sucking a pleasing, soporific sweet, then listening to Beethoven is like eating a challenging steak. Would crucially important 20th century philosopher Theodor Adorno have written his book Beethoven: The Philosophy of Music about Mozart? No. He would have called it Mozart: The Philosophy of Music. And he wouldn't have bothered. Because he knew that while Mozart is for putting farmyard animals into a trance and making unborn children cleverer, Beethoven is for tackling the vital questions of life and death: Who are we? What is life? Where are my Mozart CDs?OSCAR RICKETT
10. Benjamin Britten
Benjamin Britten is like the navy: he's known for patriotism and being profoundly into the sea, but his main concern is the desperate love a man can feel for another man (preferably a fisherman). We have to remember that Britten lived in a pre-Brokeback Mountain world. Men couldn't just knowingly suggest "taking a trip up the mountain" to each other and be sure that they were being completely understood. Their only option was the sea. A man would suggest a nice hearty swim to a comrade and then, once out of sight of the shore, he would set upon his companion. That's why Britten set his operas in Suffolk. There's sea there.
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In fact his full name was Soorjo Alexander William Langobard Oliphant Chuckerbutty. And he was an organist at the Angel cinema in Islington.
8. Karlheinz Stockhausen
When I saw Stockhausen play, along with about 300 other people, he told the audience that there were only 15 people in the world who understood what he did. This is a man who scored a piece of music for a string quartet, four video cameras, and four helicopters, so he was probably right. I mainly just kept thinking about who those 15 people might be. Concert pianist Alfred Brendel? The helicopter teacher at Stockhausen's local flight school? God?7. Claude Debussy
Debussy invented the kind of slow, unusual piano music that eventually became the beatnik musings of jazz guys like Bill Evans and Keith Jarrett. Thanks a lot Claude.6. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Vladimir Putin recently admitted that, in his gentler moments, he likes to throw on some Tchaikovsky and watch bears from the local zoo fight each other. This personal nugget would no doubt have soothed the troubled spirit of the Russian composer who, plagued by depression, drank a bucketful of cholera ridden water and writhed his way to a painful death.5. Henry Purcell
The 17th century English composer, who would go on to be happily ripped off by Pete Townshend (who admired him for his melodies) was known for his carousing. After a high spirited night out at the theatre, in which Purcell challenged a local actor to an "organ joust" (basically: who can play Organ faster), the composer came winding his way home to find that his wife had locked him out. The "baroque badger," as his friends knew him, stumbled out into Dean's Yard, next to his home in Westminster, and died of exposure (although some say it was tuberculosis and others say a fox ate him).
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Are you into endlessly rising and falling scales? Are you a fan of precision and repetition so mathematically tight it would confuse even the guys who play car designers in adverts? Are you a fan of Matt Damon and his work in the Bourne franchise? Then you'll be a fan of Bach and his Harpsichord ultimatum.3. Josh Groban
Tears. Rolling. Down. My. Cheeks. That's all I need to say about this guy.2. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Don't we all wish Amadeus could "rock" us? Falco may be Austria's greatest living musical genius, but Mozart is its greatest dead musical genius. He was the punk of the 18th century European Royal family, performing classical monkey court scene, dealing out perfectly harmonized musical balls of truth to the Man before he succumbed to a mysterious illness that almost certainly wasn't but could perhaps have been caused by the abhorrent sexual relationship he may but almost certainly did not have with his sister, Nannerl. Incest induced syphilis aside; Mozart made the famously good-natured Salieri jealous of his musical prowess, so he must have been pretty great. Also, his music is so pleasing. Many are the times I've nearly drowned as a result of listening to Mozart in the bath. A watery grave… you can't ask a composer for much more than that.1. Ludwig Van Beethoven
Or can you? According to all the highbrow people who are highbrow about classical music, you can. If listening to Mozart is like sucking a pleasing, soporific sweet, then listening to Beethoven is like eating a challenging steak. Would crucially important 20th century philosopher Theodor Adorno have written his book Beethoven: The Philosophy of Music about Mozart? No. He would have called it Mozart: The Philosophy of Music. And he wouldn't have bothered. Because he knew that while Mozart is for putting farmyard animals into a trance and making unborn children cleverer, Beethoven is for tackling the vital questions of life and death: Who are we? What is life? Where are my Mozart CDs?OSCAR RICKETT
