Joe Hagedorn wrote:

>So what are we doing here?  Someone suggests a composer is bad and then a
>whole bunch of people write back in the composers defense?

That's about it, but there's always the possibility that meaningful
discussion will result from this process.  However, I wouldn't bet on
that happening.

>I often thought he (Schumann) just wrote his piano music for little
>old ladies.

I like to listen to Schumann when I don my wife's clothing; too bad
it doesn't fit (too short and too much material in the chest region).
Regardless, I still look like a "hunk".  Pictures available upon request.

There is some opinion that Schumann's music is "pretty"; I think it's much
more.  He wrote some outstanding solo piano works, a piano concerto I would
hate to be without, excellent symphonies, and vocal works with orchestra
that I snap up whenever they're recorded.  There's also his lieder which,
although I don't fancy the genre, is very highly regarded.  When I listen
to Schumann, I feel many emotions, but I've never felt that the "little old
ladies" were shuffling into my home.  What would music for "little old men"
sound like?

>I've always liked the way clarinets sound, but who wrote good clarinet
>music?

Many composers wrote fine works for clarinet:  Reicha, Crusell, Finzi,
Stanford, and Fuchs, just to name a few.  Moving upward to masterful
clarinet works, my favorites are Mozart's clarinet concerto/clarinet
quintet and the Brahms clarinet quintet and the two clarinet sonatas.

Don Satz
[log in to unmask]