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© Copyright 1997, Jim Loy
Listen to Debussy's Clair de lune or one of Chopin's Preludes. Is one of these the greatest piece of music, ever? No, something like Beethoven's Symphony No. 3 makes these little piano pieces seem insignificant. They are beautiful, and even great, but not as "great" as other, more substantial works. In fact, the Chopin's (or Debussy's) collection of 24 Preludes make up a coherent "piece" which is much "greater" than any individual Prelude. Let me list a few candidates, with some of my opinions:
Wagner's Der Ring Des Niebelungen: Four long operas, representing one coherent story. No other great piece can compete in size. The operas are amazingly interrelated. By several criteria, this is the greatest musical work ever.
Beethoven's Symphony No. 9: Some of Mahler's symphonies can compete in size and power (and maybe even in "greatness"). But, I think this symphony is the greatest symphony, and the greatest piece of concert music. It is written for orchestra and choir and solo singers. Other truly great symphonies: Beethoven's Symphonies 5 and 3, Brahms' Symphonies 1 and 4, Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 6.
Handel's Messiah: An oratorio, perhaps not as great as Bach's St. Matthew Passion, but it beats anything else that is written in English.
Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier: Several of Bach's works (The Art of the Fugue, for example) can compete with this one.
Vivaldi The Four Seasons: Four violin Concertos, which together are greater than any one concerto.
Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake: Deciding which of Tchaikovsky's ballets (also Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker) is greatest ballet is a matter of taste. Swan Lake is the biggest and grandest of them all. Stravinsky ballets compete with these.
Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1: There are quite a few piano concertos which can actually be the thrill of a lifetime. Tchaikovsky's is my choice as the greatest showpiece of all. Grieg's Piano Concerto in a minor is another candidate. I like a few others even more (Liszt's Piano Concerto No. 2, for example), but they are probably not as great.
Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto: I think that this is the only violin concerto which can compete with the greatest piano concertos as a truly thrilling experience.
Mussorgsky's Pictures At An Exhibition: I think that this piece is the greatest individual piano piece (the Ravel orchestration of this piece is much more popular than the piano version). A few Beethoven Sonatas compete with this piece.
What is the greatest 20th Century piece of music? There are several, which I think can compete with most of the above great pieces:
Shostakovich's Symphony No. 5: I like Prokofiev's Symphony No. 5, much better. But, Shostakovich's is considered greater. Schoenberg's Verklärte Nacht, Sibelius' Symphonies, and Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra are also great orchestral pieces.
Stravinsky's Le Sacre du printemps (The Rite of Spring): Stravinsky's Firebird (as well as some of Copland's ballets) is prettier, but this one is greater.
Górecki's Symphony No. 3 (Symphony Of Sorrowful Songs): Personally, I think that this is one of the two or three greatest (and most beautiful) pieces of music ever.
I'm having trouble deciding on the greatest piece of chamber music. I'll choose Schubert's Trout Quintet, although a few Beethoven Quartets are good candidates, and I like Tchaikovsky's Souvenir de Florence (sextet). The liner notes of one album said that it was flawed, as it was a quartet with added instruments; another raved that it was a true sextet which could never be mistaken for a quartet.
Maybe I should defend my choice of Wagner's Ring des Niebelungen, as the greatest piece of music ever. Wagner was something of a jerk, egotistical and anti-semitic. But, much of his music is nice to listen to.
The Ring is something amazing. It is huge, for one thing, four very long operas. It is about a magical ring which is cursed to destroy whoever owns it. The stories are very well written, with many clever plot twists. For example, it is very clever how we are shown that Siegfried, after having tasted the dragon's blood, can hear the truth when his companion Mime speaks lies. The basic structure of this huge tragic story is circular, it ends exactly as it begins.
The amazing feature of the Ring is the use of what are called leitmotivs. These are melodies which are associated with characters and objects. Every important character, and every important object, in the whole series of operas, has its own melody. When someone (or some object) is mentioned or even thought about, you hear that person's melody, so that you too will think of that person (or object). And some melodies are related to other melodies. The melody for Siegmund's sword Nothung is nearly identical to that of Wotan, who left the sword for Siegmund to find. The melody for Walhalla (the home of the gods) is turned upside down, when Walhalla is destroyed in the end.
What it amounts to is that the complexity, of the interwoven ideas, is staggering. There is no other piece of music to compare.
I watched it again recently. Parts of Siegfried do drag on and on, as Siegfried and Brunhilde declare their love for close to an hour.
P.S. I once had a dream, in which I composed a beautiful piece of music. When I woke up, I remembered the tune. I was sure I had heard it before, but I couldn't remember where. About a week later, I discovered that it was from Schubert's Trout Quintet.
A silly sequal to Der Ring des Niebelungen is the fantasy novel Expecting Someone Taller, by Tom Holt.