Problems with this section (Agnosticism)

by Frank Paris , Saturday, October 31, 2009, 21:34 (5501 days ago) @ dhw

"I can't go back beyond Mozart and Schubert. For consistently spine-tingling beauty, I turn to Beethoven, Brahms, Berlioz, Wagner, Tchaikovsky, Sibelius...I guess you'd have to sum me up as a Romantic."-Hmmmm. Bach defined the essence of music, and you can't get into it? Weird.-I used to love Wagner and still love Die Meistersinger but I've let politics interfere with the rest of his music.-I love all the other Romantics you list, and I'd include Schumann in that group and some of the eastern Europeans (Dvorak and Borodin), but the Romantics are not my focus. -What about Carl Neilsen? He's sort of Romantic, and one of my favorite composers. What about Rossini? I have a couple dozen of his operas and have been enraptured by him since I was 20 years old and first heard the Barber of Seville on short wave radio in the Air Force. Much of western European Romantic music I find boring, however.-There's lots of 20th century music that I also love: all periods from Stravinsky. Prokoffiev and Shostakovich are two of my favorite composers. I used to like serial music (Schoenberg), but lost interest in it when I started having those "experiences" I've been talking about. Now the only thing of Schoenberg I like is Gurre Lieder, quintessential Romantic music! I also like Benjamin Britten and Vaughn Williams, and Walton.-The list actually goes on and on.