Most people have knowledge of one or more persons who are excessively
emotional.  Those persons tend to exaggerate the emotional impact of
events, cry often for little reason, and generally have a negative impact
on others who are trying to maintain some balance in their lives.  In the
realm of music composition, excessively emotional composers tend to write
in an exaggerated fashion for the sake of exaggeration; the over-wrought
musical passages do not have any reasonable foundation or make any sense.

This excessively emotional music can be most readily found in the composers
of the Romantic era.  The two composers, in my opinion, who best represent
this type of music making are Liszt and Tchaikovsky.  Their music is loaded
with over-wrought passages of indulgent emotionalism without any provision
of a foundation for taking that route.

Of the two, I have to pick Liszt as the most indulgent because of a
combination of his personality and music-making.  Except for the last piano
works he composed, Liszt's music most reminds me of a petulant child who is
always going over-board in his declamations.  Any other opinions?

Fortunately, there are over-emotional classical music lovers who eat up
this type of music.  No matter what type of music, one can usually find an
appropriate person to match it up with.  To some degree, you are what you
listen to.

Don Satz
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