Mozart

Better than either Strausses. Who were both better than Wagner.

Beethoven was the best of the lot.

I prefer Handel.

Mozart was certainly better than both Strausses, but I'd prefer Wagner over all three and Beethoven over most, even if Bach would be my overall favourite classical composer. Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata though for the overall win in terms of being the best classical piece.

Johann Strauss came up with some decent stuff though, The Blue Danube has the aura about it.

Bach was Baroque, not Classical. And Beethoven ending up being the first of the Romantics - of whom I prefer Tchaikovski.

Old Pyotr Ilyich is my favourite composer.

Of that period, sure. I do generally prefer the Slavic composers to the Teutonic, oddly enough. Must be the Pole in me . . .

Amadeus, one of my favourite films.

Schubert had a lot to recommend him.

Mozart wasn't classical, he was Rococo.

Rock Me Amadeus. One of the worst songs ever.

Winkle Spinner wrote:Mozart wasn't classical, he was Rococo.

I love this sort of nit-picking.

Isn't the Classical period supposed to have started with late Mozart?

Well, it's all very arbitrary if you ask me, but I would say Mozart was predominantly Rococo, and Beethoven was predominantly classical. In fact, i would say his early and middle periods were practically the definition of classical, it was only the late period where he began to move into romanticism (I wouldn't really classify a lot of his later works as romantic exactly, but they certainly paved the way to romanticism by breaking the accepted rules of composition).

On second thought, naming eras of music after the style of architecture favoured at the time is cheaping music.

It's not just architecture, it's literature too. The era's overlap as well and the names aren't always the same. Romantic isn't a style of architecture, romantic music and literature spans neo-classical and and victorian gothic architecture. Isn't Rococo Baroque musically?

I'm tired and a bit muddled headed so I might just have posted a load of balls.

Rococo isn't baroque. You're probably right about the architecture, though, it's not really my area of expertise.

What's era's Baroque then? Is it later than Rococo? I thought both were 18th century.