Composers Forum is a daily web log that allows invited contemporary composers to share their thoughts and ideas on any topic that interests them--from the ethereal, like how new music gets created, music history, theory, performance, other composers, alive or dead, to the mundane, like getting works played and recorded and the joys of teaching. If you're a professional composer and would like to participate, send us an e-mail.

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Wednesday, July 12, 2006
Mirror, Mirror on the wall, who’s the Rockin’est of them all?

One of my college English professors, William Spengemann, once remarked in class that "the entire world can be divided up into things that suck and things that rock." Recognizing the validity of that observation, I have undertaken a research project into classical music which, since it employs Science, is sure to be entirely valid. By searching the worldwide compendium of all knowledge (i.e. Google) for "X Sucks" and then "X Rocks" (where X is the name of a composer) and recording the number of hits for each search, we can assign a numerical value to the suckitude and rockitude of any composer. (I should note that composer Alex Reed helped with some of the research, and can be credited with one of the most important finds.) Here are some of the results:

"Beethoven Sucks": 516
"Beethoven Rocks": 1820

"Mozart Sucks": 438
"Mozart Rocks": 3050

"Bach Sucks": 556
"Bach Rocks": 2730

Somewhat disappoitingly, we also found that "Sousa" rocks 472 to 17, "Ravel" rocks 1520 to 2, and "Vivaldi" rocks 438 to 70.

Moving into the 20th century, "Schoenberg" rocks 13 to 5, "Bartok" rocks 223 to 36, "Stravinsky" rocks 53 to 3, "John Cage" rocks 4 to 3, "John Zorn" rocks 52 to 19, "Stockhausen" rocks 56 to 13, "Steve Reich" rocks 3 to 2, and "Philip Glass" rocks 14 to 5. On the other hand, "Milton Babbitt" sucks 3 to 0. "Elliott Carter" turns up under neither search, so let me be the first person in the universe to declare that "Elliott Carter Sucks."Stepping back to a few more general terms, we find that while "Classical Music" rocks 109 to 91, and "Minimalism" rocks 551 to 198, "Serialism" sucks 4 to 0, and "Twelve Tone Music" sucks 2 to 0. Heh. "Insure the supremacy of German music," my eye!

You will have noticed by now that very few composers Suck more than they Rock, and those that do tend only to have a small handful of data points – indeed, finding an exception to that rule turned out to be quite difficult. But what about Chopin? I think he rocks, but the numbers tell a different story:

"Chopin Rocks": 498
"Chopin Sucks": 2920

The people have spoken.
posted by Galen H. Brown 2:06 AM


 


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