R obert Schumann

The quintessential Romantic composer. His music is the most German sounding of all. He was a genius in all genres, producing masterpiece symphonies, especially his 3rd, nicknamed “the Rhenish,” for its triumphantly Bavarian quality, his chamber music, especially his Piano Quintet, a monument in the history of music, and his Piano Concerto in a minor, perhaps the finest ever written. His finest works are the Piano Quintet, and the Piano Concerto. He is also well regarded for his huge quantity of vocal music.

Franz Schubert

T he greatest songwriter of all time, and the second greatest master of melodic, lyrical composition. Schubert had a natural mastery of all the forms of the day, but loved songs the most, and wrote them so quickly that as soon as he was finished with one, he threw it to the floor and grabbed another sheet of paper to start another. He wrote “Hark, Hark, the lark,” one of his finest, on the back of a beer hall receipt, in one sitting. He wrote approximately 650 songs in the sixteen years of his career. His most famous work is his Piano Quintet, nicknamed the Trout, for the inclusion of one of his songs as a movement. He also wrote masses, 9 symphonies, of which the last two are universal brilliancies, sonatas, ballets, string quartets, and operas. His finest works are his 8th and 9th symphonies, his Trout Quintet, ballet music to Rosamunde, Marche Militaire, and some of his songs, Gretchen at the Spinning Wheel, The Erl-King, and Nacht und Trӓume among them.

R ichard Wagner

One of the most hateful and unpleasant people who ever walked the earth. Wagner despised Jews, and blamed all the problems of the world on them. But you can’t hold any of that against him when you hear his music. It transcends all the idiocy of the man himself. He only wrote operas, which he termed “music dramas.” But of them, his finest masterpieces are Tannhauser, Lohengrin, in which you’ll find the world famous “Here Comes the Bride” theme, Tristan und Isolde, which some consider his finest achievement, Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg, Parsifal, and his gargantuan four-opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen. These last four operas are the single most famous masterpiece in opera history. Of the top ten longest operas, 7 are by Wagner. The average opera length is 3 hours. Gotterdamerung, the last of the Ring cycle, is 6 hours long. More importantly, Wagner invented the leitmotif, a very short melody which represents a character, emotion, event, or object. He revolutionized the art of opera, and operas are not written in any other style today except his, or the Classical style which preceded him. There has been no progress beyond him in operatic art. It has also been said that the art of filmmaking would be set back 500 years, had Wagner not existed. Film soundtracks owe their ability to enhance the story to Wagner alone, who owes his ability to the next composer, and almost all film composers, including John Williams, agree that Wagner is the greatest film composer in history. Films can be set to his music.