Little things mean a lot

If they honor _my_ favorite composer's birthday on May 12, I'll really be impressed.

Gabriel Fauré!

Aw, you're just glad it wasn't Brahms (also born May 7). Then again, if I had to choose between an elegant ballet and a chubby, bearded guy smoking a cigar, I think I'd have chosen the same. Long live 'em both!

I never knew that Tchaikovsky was such a tortured soul; this birthday profile of him suggests he committed suicide as a result of peer pressure, over his sexuality. Why does great music seem to require that the composer be struggling?

(http://www.findingdulcinea.com/features/profiles/t/pyotr-ilyich-tchaikovsky.html)

Aw, you're just glad it wasn't Brahms (also born May 7). Then again, if I had to choose between an elegant ballet and a chubby, bearded guy smoking a cigar, I think I'd have chosen the same.

Posted by: johnmontanari | May 7, 2010 10:01 AM

Not I. I've never found Tchaikovsky's music for the concert hall interesting. The strictly symphonic music shows a great mastery of orchestration and little else, and the concerted works are never better than treacly. There is a reason why the violin concerto was played with cuts for many years. I find he speaks better in his chamber music, but his best scores are those for the stage.

Brahms never wrote for the stage, but excelled in every other idiom in which he composed. He had a complete mastery of form; Tchaikovsky, on his best day, couldn't have dreamed of writing the passacaglia which closes the fourth symphony of Brahms.