Your Favorite Composers

[Chas]

Billy Strayhorn, aka "Sweetpea". He tops my list.

[video=youtube;Tjc7mu9leYw]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tjc7mu9leYw[/video]

[video=youtube;UQJybhk47xU]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQJybhk47xU&feature=related[/video]

Duke Ellington.
[video=youtube;BaxUDQ3H-fA]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaxUDQ3H-fA[/video]

Hoagy Carmichael.

[video=youtube;4KPsazjoRpg]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KPsazjoRpg[/video]

 

[martinsantos]

A very hard question. We are talking only about popular/american, aren't we?

So I choose:

1- Gershwin
2- Porter
3- Richard Rodgers (when with Lorenz Hart)
4- Ellington

 

[Yeps]

The Americans more relevant to this board:
George Gershwin
Leonard Bernstein
Erich Korngold
Cole Porter

Some moderns:
Adam Guettel
John Adams
EDIT: Ennio Morricone! How could I forget him. Also Howard Shore.
Some old dead guys:
Verdi
Rossini
Glinka
Stravinsky
Berlioz
Bizet -- Almost forgot Bizet, can't do that, he is fantastic.
Rimsky-Korsakov
Richard Strauss (not Johann Sr. or Jr. They are annoying)
Puccini
there are others, but you grasp the general trend. I like exciting music.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Porter
Gershwin
Kern
Rodgers and Hart
Warren and Dubin
Robin and Rainger
Gordon and Revel
Razaf and Waller
Carmichael
Loesser
Kalmar and Ruby
DeSylva, Brown, and Henderson
Donaldson

Pretty much all of them Broadway/Hollywood composers of the 1920-35 era, the peak of American popular music. (Yes, I know Berlin isn't here. Some of his tunes I like, but in general I find him overrated. And Ellington is in a class by himself.)

 

[martinsantos]

Lizzie,

The "Brown" is Nacio 'Herb' Brown?

Not my "top four", but like a lot his music. And always just loved his (probably) first hit, "When Buddha Smiles".

 

[LizzieMaine]

Not the same brown -- Buddy DeSylva, Lew Brown, and Ray Henderson, a team that turned out a long skein of successful shows on Broadway before going to Hollywood in 1929 to make several excellent musicals at Fox, including the wonderful "Sunnyside Up," and the immortal "Just Imagine." Nacio Herb Brown ought to be on my iist though -- he did some gorgeous work with Arthur Freed at MGM during the early-talkie period, including most of the tunes that were later exhumed for "Singin In The Rain" in 1952.

 

[Dapper Dave]

My favorites are Gershwin and Kern

 

[fluteplayer07]

Modern composers: Eric Whitacre, Hans Zimmer, Howard Shore, Michael Nyman, and Andrew Lloyd Webber.

 

[HadleyH]

Pretty much all of them Broadway/Hollywood composers of the 1920-35 era, the peak of American popular music.

Second and third that!

They were all master craftsmen each with an expression of his own " gifted artists who put the words and the music in the mouths of millions."

It's them who are and will forever be my favorite composers.

 

[davidraphael]

Jazz age:
Gershwin
Kern
Porter


Arvo Paert
Igor Stravinsky
Serge Prokofiev
Beethoven
Gabriel Faure
JSBach
Philip Glass
Shostakovich
Messiaen
Durufle
Vaughan Williams
Gustav Holst
Delius
Michael Nyman
Penderecki

soundtrack guys:
Bernard Herrmann
Max Steiner
John Williams
Miklos Rozsa
Carl Stalling
John Barry