Why have Germans dominated classical music?

[Fifty]

The undisputed greatest composer ever (by those in the know), Bach, is a German.

The two next greatest composers, Mozart and Beethoven, are both German.

Filling in the rest of the top 20 or so, you'd be filling out far more German names than any other, even if different people will put them in a slightly different order (Wagner, Haydn, Brahms, Schubert, Schumann, Handel, Mendelssohn, Mahler, Strauss), and even if the Russians would make a nice showing.

WHAT EXPLAINS THIS GERMAN DOMINANCE OF CLASSICAL MUSIC?

 

[Lillefix]

You obviously have a slightly broader definition of Germans than I do, since I would consider almost half of those Austrians.

But one of the most important reasons, is simply that there are many german speakers in Europe. Wikipedia says 120 million. That's Italy and France combined. Anyway, Vienna was the capital of music a couple of centuries ago, so that probably attracted and inspired many German speaking composers.

 

[Camikaze]

Religion, I think. When music moved on from just being sacred, to being a form of entertainment, composers in Protestant areas had more freedom in their work (similarly to how the Dutch managed to overhaul painting), both in terms of expectations of conformity and a change in the source of income. A lot of German areas were protestant, rather than the predominantly Catholic rest of Europe.

It's not a very complete explanation, though, given that Austria was a Catholic country, and a lot of good German music is sacred music, but it's probably quite a large contributing factor.

Or perhaps it was just a much more German thing to produce Sonatas and Concertos, rather than Italian operas, which aren't generally considered as good works of classical music.

 

[classical_hero]

Franz Liszt should be in that list, since he was one of the greatest composers of all time.

 

[Dudemeister]

he was hungarian though.

 

[classical_hero]

I know, but he still deserves to be amongst the best of the composers.

 

[Traitorfish]

I'd guess that the Holy Roman and Austrian Empires had something to do with it. Vienna was a major cultural centre for most of the pre-Modern era, and the presence of the Emperor and his various courtiers, ministers and general aristocratic lackeys meant that there was ample opportunity for patronage. I don't think it's any coincidence that, as Lillefix says, many of those on your list were Austrian Germans.
Presumably the "good showing" of the Russian's is similarly linked to the presence of a centralised absolute monarchy with a penchant for artistic patronage.

 

[Virote_Considon]

I dunno, man, I mean it makes no sense. You'd think that people who spoke a peasant language such as German would have much less of an impact on high-culture, especially music, and especially when compared to a peoples with a more refined, sophisticated language such as the French.

Of course, the answer is probably because the Germans dominate everything. Classical music was the real Second Reich.

 

[warpus]

WHAT EXPLAINS THIS GERMAN DOMINANCE OF CLASSICAL MUSIC?

According to wikipedia (the most reputable source in the known universe)

Performance of classical music repertoire often demands a significant level of technical mastery on the part of the musician

Furthermore,

Along with a desire for composers to attain high technical achievement in writing their music, performers of classical music are faced with similar goals of technical mastery, as demonstrated by the proportionately high amount of schooling and private study most successful classical musicians have had when compared to "popular" genre musicians, and the large number of secondary schools, including conservatories, dedicated to the study of classical music.

Classical Music started to get codified in the 1500s and played in the 1000s and at around that time there were a lot of Universities and centres of higher learning in Germany, Austria, etc.. I am going to guess that for some reason the good schools that taught the technical mastery of the composition & performance of classical music happened to be in the Holy Roman Empire.. probably mostly Vienna.

Also, the Germans love technical stuff, which is why they're so good at building cars and highways and sometimes tanks.

 

[Fifty]

I know, but he still deserves to be amongst the best of the composers.

I wasn't listing the best composers, I was listing all the GERMAN composers in the top 20. Of course, there are several non-Germans in the top 20.

With regard to Liszt, of course, everyone knows that while Liszt is the piano composer for the masses, Chopin is a composer's composer.

 

[Perfection]

Because it was a 18th and 19th century intellectual activity.

 

[Fifty]

I've been listening to a lecture on the history of piano and its leading me to think that two sort of historical "accidents" have a lot to do with it:

1) The fact that the Bach family are German (The Bach family, not just JS Bach, had an ENORMOUS impact on music).

2) The fact that Frederick the Great was German.

 

[LightSpectra]

I don't think a single accurate statement has been said in this thread so far. Though Traitorfish's post seems alright.

As to why Germans allegedly dominate classical music: are you sure that's the case, and it's not just that who we consider to be the great composers was dictated at a later point by German music historians? In the 18th century, it was generally thought that the French were the most artistically achieved; it's only retrospectively that we see a German/Austrian dominance.

 

[Fifty]

I don't think a single accurate statement has been said in this thread so far. Though Traitorfish's post seems alright. As to why Germans allegedly dominate classical music: are you sure that's the case, and it's not just that who we consider to be the great composers was dictated at a later point by German music historians? In the 18th century, it was generally thought that the French were the most artistically achieved; it's only retrospectively that we see a German/Austrian dominance.

Yes, unlike all the inaccurate statements in this thread, it is clear that the collective aesthetic judgment of everyone in the world has been dictated by German music historians and, in fact, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner, Haydn, Brahms, Schubert, Schumann, Handel, Mendelssohn, Mahler, Strauss, Bruckner, Telemann, Gluck, Hindemith, Strauss, von Weber, and others are nothing special.

 

[LightSpectra]

Yes, unlike all the inaccurate statements in this thread, it is clear that the collective aesthetic judgment of everyone in the world has been dictated by German music historians and, in fact, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner, Haydn, Brahms, Schubert, Schumann, Handel, Mendelssohn, Mahler, Strauss, Bruckner, Telemann, Gluck, Hindemith, Strauss, von Weber, and others are nothing special.

I didn't say they were nothing special. That would be bizarre, because my personal favorites are Bach and Haydn. What I said was that they're generally considered to be more special than their contemporary French composers, save for maybe Lully. Truth be told, unless you've actually analyzed a great deal of the lesser known music of the era (which is doubly hard because obscure classical music is almost never performed and expensive to get prints of), can you really say for a fact that the aforementioned musicians are really better without appealing to what people in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries have chosen to remember? You know that Bach was highly obscure amongst classical musicians until his music was praised by Spinoza, right?

Furthermore, your diction regarding what is "classical music" is all over the place. Either you're referring to the genre of "classical music" but failing to mention artists from the medieval and renaissance periods (coincidentally, I think St. Hildegard von Bingen was the best pre-classical musician and she was German, but in those periods, the people often remembered are Spanish and Italian), or you're referring to the "classical era" equivocally and are erroneously placing romantic-era and modern-era musicians in the same category. So when your definitions are unclear, it's quite easy to ignore counter-examples, which leads to experimenter's bias.

 

[Fifty]

I didn't say they were nothing special. They're generally considered to be more special than their contemporary French composers, save for maybe Lully. Truth be told, unless you've actually analyzed a great deal of the lesser known music of the era (which is doubly hard because obscure classical music is almost never performed and expensive to get prints of), can you really say for a fact that the aforementioned musicians are really better without appealing to what people in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries have chosen to remember?

Yea, man, you're so right. One would have to listen to every piece of music ever made to be able to conclude that Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner, Haydn, Brahms, Schubert, Schumann, Handel, Mendelssohn, Mahler, Strauss, Bruckner, Telemann, Gluck, Hindemith, Strauss, von Weber and others are any good. Otherwise its just experimentser bias

your diction regarding what is "classical music"

No, actually it isn't :lol How do I use it inconsistently anywhere? I'm obiously referring to the term as its generally used, rather than to the classical period!


Basketball fan: Jordan is the best ever
LightSpectra: Have you seen every human who has ever lived and judged their basketball skills?

 

[North King]

Seems like a one-sided presentation of things. It's easy to make a fairly long list of superb Russian composers, as was noted in the OP, but there were also a number of fantastic French composers, great Italians, and pretty much any country, even the tiniest, has a good composer to call its own, some of which surely fit into the top 20 (Liszt, Dvorak, etc.).

More importantly, and as LightSpectra already mentioned (but was ignored), this supposed "German dominance" has an extremely limited temporal scope. Apparently we restrict "classical music" to the Classical and Romantic eras only. Go before them, and the Italians, French, spanish, and English pop up more prominently than the Germans. Go into the modern era and off the top of my head the only "German" (actually Austrian) who really prominently figures is Schoenberg.

You're also really limiting yourself in sub-genre, leaning very heavily towards symphonic or quasi-symphonic composers.

All in all, this is rather like taking a list of German composers and marveling that they're all German.

 

[Traitorfish]

Perhaps it's simply that the music produced in that era and style, which was dominated by Germans, happens to appeal most successfully to modern aesthetic values? It would be worth examining similar lists of "greatest composers" compiled at different points in history.

That's not to suggest that the music of the era and style in question doesn't possess some level of universal resonance, of course, or that Fifty's list is mere contemporary fashion; it just seems to me that the "average" aesthetic values of any given culture at any given time are not necessarily objective, at least not entirely.

 

[Fifty]

Seems like a one-sided presentation of things. It's easy to make a fairly long list of superb Russian composers, as was noted in the OP, but there were also a number of fantastic French composers, great Italians, and pretty much any country, even the tiniest, has a good composer to call its own, some of which surely fit into the top 20 (Liszt, Dvorak, etc.).

More importantly, and as LightSpectra already mentioned (but was ignored), this supposed "German dominance" has an extremely limited temporal scope. Apparently we restrict "classical music" to the Classical and Romantic eras only. Go before them, and the Italians, French, spanish, and English pop up more prominently than the Germans. Go into the modern era and off the top of my head the only "German" (actually Austrian) who really prominently figures is Schoenberg.

You're also really limiting yourself in sub-genre, leaning very heavily towards symphonic or quasi-symphonic composers.

All in all, this is rather like taking a list of German composers and marveling that they're all German.

Wow, and I thought you studied this stuff!

Moderator Action: Warned for flaming.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[North King]

Wow, and I thought you studied this stuff!

I am in awe of your debate skillz. If I didn't know better your condescension might fool me into thinking you actually had a rebuttal hidden away.

Moderator Action: Responding to that sort of posts doesn't get you anywhere.