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]