I usually see this idea of a heroic great artist (compared to artists who presumably don’t have what it takes to merit being mentioned) in discussions around classical music. When people talk about visual art, there is more focus on the quality of the work, and the artist’s distinct voice. Consider an example: a work by Picasso looks like Picasso made it, and that’s what gives it its value. By contrast, derivative works that merely copy another artist’s style are usually not held in high esteem. Chopin’s work scores very well according to quality, and his distinct voice usually makes it obvious that the piece you’re hearing is a Chopin. The visual arts are a lot better at allowing more artists to become established than the classical music world is for composers.
This may be a consequence of the properties of the creations. People who want to listen to a concerto will share the experience with many others, and typically won’t be able to buy it all just for themselves. People who want to be involved in the contemporary art world can and often do buy physical works of art for themselves, and it doesn’t matter whether or not the artist could convince a theater of people to pay to sit down together and appreciate it for 30 minutes. If art patrons want to buy physical pieces for themselves, you need a bigger pool of artists to serve them; but if you want to fill opera houses, it’s better to have a few artists that everybody has agreed to like.
I don't think your thesis is accurate. When it comes to classical composers, its rather easy to tell them apart once you've studied classical music long enough. The issue is the painters are limited to certain materials, and their paintings are originals that decay and age even as new better materials for painting come out. Contrast that with composers, whose originals were not recorded and whose works are generally performed on vastly superior instruments, in far more formal and much larger venues than the composers would ever have used. Chopin for instance very rarely performed in venues larger than a rich person's salon and his instrument was much less powerful, had less sustain, and even more notes are added to the keyboard over time. So, for me, your thesis is not true when these technological and temporal variations are considered
> whose works are generally performed on vastly superior instruments, in far more formal and much larger venues than the composers would ever have used. Chopin for instance very rarely performed in venues larger than a rich person's salon and his instrument was much less powerful, had less sustain, and even more notes are added to the keyboard over time.
Chamber music actually sounds a lot better with historically accurate venues and instruments, albeit the latter is not generally possible. In fact there's a bit of a refocusing on chamber music lately in the "classical" world, now that the quality of recorded media is better and big concert halls have become less important. Performing Chopin's music in a huge, modern-day concert hall means trying to turn it into something quite different than what it actually was when Chopin wrote it.
Venues are fluid for pianists. It's extremely difficult to move a piano vs another instrument, obviously.
I highly doubt Chopin only intended his music for a specific space. Chopin's music translates to large concert halls (with proper concert grands, of course) quite well. Every great pianist will adjust for the room.
Of course this will always be a debate. Some believe Bach's WTC should only be played on keyboards from Bach's era (ignoring the piano.) What a shame that would be to us all.
> I usually see this idea of a heroic great artist (compared to artists who presumably don’t have what it takes to merit being mentioned) in discussions around classical music.
Well, it depends - the idea you talk about is certainly out there, but I think most commenters don't really take it all that seriously. There's a lot of great stuff in classical music that's by unheard-of, "minor" composers, and even some pieces the composer of which is entirely unknown, and we can only make guesses as to their rightful "attribution". As to the focus on the "quality of the work", there is a bit of a hierarchy in classical music where some genres (i.e. "formats" of music) are considered to be inherently more worthwhile than others. In instrumental music, for example, a "concerto" or an "overture" would be a chance for the composer to show off their best work, while a "symphony" would be slightly lower in ambition, and maybe a "suite" would be slightly lower again. So if you're familiar with these designations, you can kinda sorta predict what the composer will be going for, and whether it will be derivative "filler" or not.
> There's a lot of great stuff in classical music that's by unheard-of, "minor" composers, and even some pieces the composer of which is entirely unknown, and we can only make guesses as to their rightful "attribution".
It was careless of me to say that works by Chopin sound like they are obviously by him. Recently, a friend played a piece by him that I was unfamiliar with, without saying who wrote it, and I told him it sounded like an unusual imitation of Chopin. I'd still say that his distinct voice was present in that piece, and that it's there in just about everything he published.
On a slightly related note, Chopin was also a highly technically proficient pianist, much like Paganini on the violin. There were great many amazing composers back then, but technicians of the instrument were perhaps rarer?
In any case, I imagine that the last century has perhaps produced the most technically proficient musicians on possibly every instrument, across all genres. Sometimes I'm blown away by some of the younger players and their flawless technique.
Not true, most of the composers were brilliant performers as well. Writing and more importantly publishing their compositions gave them extra income on top of lessons and performances. So often Beethoven Mozart or Chopin needed or wanted money, promised compositions to publishers to get it, then were late due to overpromising. Sounds familiar to my overpromising on data analysis then running into snags and getting highly delayed.
Anyway, paganini was a virtuoso first and foremost, the closest analogy would be a modern player like Horowitz or argerich, although liszt was similar but composed way more than paganini
This may be a consequence of the properties of the creations. People who want to listen to a concerto will share the experience with many others, and typically won’t be able to buy it all just for themselves. People who want to be involved in the contemporary art world can and often do buy physical works of art for themselves, and it doesn’t matter whether or not the artist could convince a theater of people to pay to sit down together and appreciate it for 30 minutes. If art patrons want to buy physical pieces for themselves, you need a bigger pool of artists to serve them; but if you want to fill opera houses, it’s better to have a few artists that everybody has agreed to like.