| Rank | Artist |
| 1=. |
Leonardo
Da Vinci was an artist whose studies of natural philosophy
anticipated modern science. His paintings include such features
as classically beautiful model subjects beautified still further
by exquisitely soft shadows and river-like flowing hair. The
landscapes in the background of his paintings also feature a
dreamy quality. Here are some of his definitive work (in order of
decreasing merit):
- The Mona
Lisa (1503 - 1507) is probably the most famous
painting/artwork of all time.
- The
Last Supper (1495-1498) is a famous painting of Christ's
last meal.
- The
Virgin and Child with St Anne and St John the Baptist
(ca. 1499-1500) is a full-size cartoon drawing.
- The Vitruvian
Man is a famous drawing of the proportions of an ideal
man.
In terms of the realistic depiction of classically beautiful human
forms Da Vinci is rivalled by his contemporary Michelangelo
Buonarroti or Michelangelo for short whose definitive works
include (in order of decreasing merit):
-
David (1501-1504), is probably the most famous
sculpture of all time.
-
The Sistine Chapel (1508-1512) is an astonishing
collection of paintings depicting scenes from The Bible located
on the ceiling and rear wall of the Sistine Chapel.
- Pietà
(1498-1499) is the most exquisitely beautiful sculpture of
the Virgin Mary cradling the dead body of her son Jesus Christ.
- The Doni Tondo
(1503-1504) is also known as the The Holy Family.
Michelangelo was primarily a sculptor. Although he also painted,
his paintings have a sculptural quality to them, as if he had
created the sculpture in his mind and then painted that.
|
| 3. |
Ludwig Van
Beethoven for writing what is probably the greatest musical
work of all time, his epic
Symphony No. 9 in D Minor (Opus 125, 1822-1824),
written while he was deaf. This symphony consists of a
thunderstorm-like dissonant first movement, a dance-like second
movement, a lyrical meandering third movement and a fourth
movement that reprises the first three and adds singers to the
mix, which was a first for a symphony. Like Jimi Hendrix's best
work (see below) this artwork preaches the doctrine
of Universal
Emancipation. His Symphonies No.s
3
and
5
also approach Symphony No.9 in terms of greatness. Beethoven's
music expanded vastly on the classical style of the time
established by Mozart
and Haydn
et al. to create a new genre known as Romanticism, which
anticipated further developments by such visionaries as
Wagner (see later),
Tchaikovsky,
Schoenberg
and Webern.
|
| 4. |
Wolfgang
Amadeus Mozart for his late symphonies and other works, listed
below roughly in order of decreasing merit:
- Symphony No. 41 (K551, Jupiter)
- Symphony No. 40 (K550)
- Symphony No. 39 (K543)
- The Four Horn Concertos (K386b, K495, K447 and K417).
Mozart's chief gifts were for melody and a deep appreciation and
understanding of the classical style of the time. Mozart was like
a rock star before rock stars were invented. It would be
interesting to find out if female concert-goers would throw their
panties at Mozart as he presented a concert much like the
twentieth century crooner
Tom Jones!
|
| 5=. |
Richard
Wagner for writing the four epic operas that comprise The
Ring Cycle (1848-1874). An ideal introduction to Wagner for
novices is the single opera
Tannhäuser (1845). If you liked Star Wars or
The Lord of the Rings then Wagner's Ring Cycle is like
these on steroids. Wagner's differentiation between the Gods and
the Men in his operas mirrors the differentiation of workers and
their employers in real life: The Gods all have different motives
and thoughts wereas the men always talk in unison and therefore
all have the same motives and thoughts. As a play-writer I prefer
Wagner
over William
Shakespeare because my brain prefers words and music to
merely spoken text and because the language of Shakespeare's plays
is written in a kind of old English that makes it hard for modern
ears to interpret what is being said. In the same vein Wagner's
operas benefit from translation from his native old German tongue
into modern English (although to perform them in English would
lose all the
German rhyme
and alliteration).
I have talked to a German person and apparently the same is true
for Wagner and the Germans that is true for Shakespeare and the
English. About Shakespeare, I must say that I gain some enjoyment
from the modern takes on the bard such
as Baz
Lurhmann's Romeo And Juliet (1996) Although I do not
like Shakespeare that much, I realise that to omit him from a list
of the greatest artists of all time would be something of a
travesty so I include him here as an equal to Wagner. In
particular Wagner's concept of
the Gesamtkunstwerk
(or "total artwork"), anticipated modern cinema.
|
| 7. |
Johann Sebastian
Bach for writing
The Mass in B Minor (BWV 232, 1724-1749). If this piece
can't convert you from being a rock/pop aficionado to a broader
appreciator of beautiful voices integrated with beautiful music
(such as
Bel Canto Opera and
Lieder) then nothing will! Some of the best examples of
beautiful voices that are available as recordings include
(in alphabetical order of last name):
Julie Andrews,
Agnes Baltsa,
Plácido Domingo,
Emma Kirkby,
Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and
Dawn Upshaw.
|
| 8. |
Franz
Schubert whose use of melody was a rival to Mozart and through
his Lieder he invented the concept of the Art Song.
|
| 9. |
The
Beatles whose music is like the sun: hating the Beatles is akin
to hating the sun, no person in their right mind can do this. They
sung and played like Franz Schubert (see the previous entry). They
also pioneered the use of studio trickery to create new musical
sounds that never existed before technology made them possible.
Their best three works are all from the same time period (the mid
sixties) and were released in succession to one another. Here they
are (in order of decreasing merit):
-
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967). Very
clever use of melody and pushing the boundaries of what is
technically possible in a studio, even with the measly four tracks
that were available to them. Albums from other artists that take
the studio trickery of Sgt. Pepper to its logical conclusion
include Pink
Floyd's stoner album
The Dark Side of the Moon (1972-1973), and The Orb's ambient
house music album U.F.Orb
(1992).
- Revolver
(1966) anticipated the sophistication of Sgt. Pepper.
Although Sgt. Pepper is a greater work, most us have fonder
memories of Revolver as it does not tend to annoy us as much as
Sgt. Pepper can.
- Rubber
Soul (1965) set the scene for lyrics influenced by Bob
Dylan (see the next entry).
The output of the group exceeded the sum of its parts, the truth of
which can be seen by the comparing the high standard of recordings
they made as a group with the lower standard of recordings they
made as solo artists. The legacy of the Beatles stretches long (in
time) and wide (in influence) including such bands as
New Zealand's own
Split Enz and
Crowded House.
|
| 10. |
Bob Dylan who
brought intelligent lyrics into popular music and although nobody
would say he had a beautiful voice his genius like Billie Holiday
(see later) lay in the many different artful ways that he deployed
it.
The reason he gets such a high ranking in this list (apart for his
ground breaking lyrics) is because his albums have showed us that
he has a deep understanding of many different musical styles,
including folk, blues, rock and country.
At his best his style could be characterised as stream of
consciousness language plus absurdist humour. Whatever the musical
style, he promises to never let you fall asleep while listening to
him. The following Dylan lyric is relevant:
"The country music station plays soft but
there's nothing really nothing to turn off."
Like The Beatles, his best three works are all from the mid sixties
and were released in succession to one another. For this reason
the canon of The Beatles and Bob Dylan in the mid sixties is
considered by many of us to be the pinnacle of all art in the
twentieth century. Here they are (in order of decreasing merit):
- Highway
61 Revisited (1965). This album, like some of Wagner's
operas sounds too harsh for novices, but after repeated
listening the listener is rewarded by the opening up of a whole
new sound world, a sound world populated by those of us with a
bad case of (teenage) angst. Every song on this album is a
classic and the harsh angry young man language and the dissonant
music feed off of each other to create a synthesis not seen
since trumpeter Louis Armstrong played against singer Bessie
Smith on the track: "The St. Louis Blues" (see later).
- Blonde
on Blonde (1966). Although containing some weaker
material (e.g. "Rainy Day Women . . .") it is sung with such
subtle and ingenious phrasing reminiscent of Billie Holiday that
it is something of a rarity in music. The variety of singing
employed on the album coupled with psychedelic language and
flowery ornamental music create a beautiful and memorable
package.
-
Bringing It All Back Home also known as Subterranean
Homesick Blues (1965), which spends half of the album
saying goodbye to folk music, half saying hello to a new kind of
Beatles-inspired rock music.
Like Shakespeare versus Wagner, I prefer Dylan's work to
Shakespeare because my brain prefers music and voice to mere text
alone and because Dylan's language is closer to the language of
today, making it more relevant. Bob Dylan's voice harks back to a
earlier singers (in order of decreasing year of birth):
Elvis Presley (see later),
Chuck Berry (see later),
Frank Sinatra (see later),
Muddy Waters (blues),
Woody Guthrie (folk)
and Robert Johnson (see later).
Dylan's legacy extended to practically all singers that followed him
including (in order of increasing year of birth):
Lou Reed (The Velvet Underground),
Neil Young,
Bruce Springsteen,
Mark Knopfler (Dire Straits),
Suzanne Vega,
Michael Stipe (R.E.M.),
Tracy Chapman,
Kurt Cobain (Nirvana),
P.J. Harvey
and New Zealand's own Bic Runga and Emma Paki and others.
|
| 11. | Charles
Dickens for writing A
Christmas Carol (1843) which tells a tale of a person who
learns that a life devoted to selfishness is ultimately
unfulfilling. Luckily this person changes their ways before the
end of the story so that they are able to enjoy the rewards of
loving thy neighbour. This is the only entry in this list
featuring an author of fiction books. Why? Because A Christmas
Carol is short in length and I prefer to blast myself with my
stereo than reading long fiction books!
|
| 12. |
Louis
Armstrong as part of the
Hot Fives (1925-1927,1928) and
Hot Sevens (1927) transformed jazz into a modern art
form from something much less than that. Like Bessie Smith (see
later) and Robert Johnson (see later), a student of Armstrong needs
to have a strong constitution to listen to his music because of the
antique studio technology (that predates microphones) used to
produce it. Listen my child and you will be rewarded!
|
| 13=. |
The following jazz artists are all roughly equal to each other
(in order of increasing year of birth):
Louis Armstrong and the above three artists anticipated today's
multi-talented rock musician Prince
who sings and plays all his instruments himself including guitar,
keyboards, and saxophone.
|
| 16. |
Jimi
Hendrix whose album
Axis: Bold as Love (1967)
laid the foundations for all Rock/Punk/Metal/Grunge bands that
followed him such as
Def Leppard,
Led
Zeppelin,
The Sex
Pistols, Guns N' Roses,
Metallica, Nirvana
and New Zealand's own Shihad. Here is
what the magazine
The Wire had to say about Axis:
. . . it has the most focused and compositionally mature material
. . . It's rock's most complete statement - it has tenderness,
aggression, beauty and dirt. No-one before or since has touched
that plane.
|
| 17. |
John
Coltrane who did some exquisite work with Miles Davis in
Kind of Blue (see earlier) and spent the rest of his
career elaborating on this style.
|
| 18. |
Bessie
Smith is also known as The Empress of the Blues.
Preserved for posterity in 160 scratchy 3-minute recordings
(1923-1933), her voice was a force of nature: strong, draggy
and rough and even the antique studio technology of her time cannot
hide her raw talent. Some of her singing (the songs marked *
below) grabs you by the private parts until it hurts which takes
some getting used to, but when you do it is like Bob Dylan's
Highway 61 Revisited (see earlier) in how it opens up a
whole new sound world, and you wonder why it wasn't invented
sooner. Bessie also possessed other talents such as a jazz singer's
ability reshape notes and lyrics to stamp her own interpretations
on the songs she sung. Here are her ten best works (in order of
decreasing merit):
- "The St. Louis Blues*" (1925) with Louis Armstrong (see
earlier) shows two stars at the peak of their powers, playing
note for note against each other and challenging each other like
geniuses need to be challenged to reach henceforth unattained
heights of musical genius.
- "You've Been A Good Ole Wagon*" (1925)
- "Work House Blues*" (1924)
- "House Rent Blues*" (1924)
- "Down Hearted Blues" (1923)
- "Frankie Blues*" (1924)
- "Moonshine Blues*" (1924)
- "Aggravatin' Papa" (1923)
- "Beale Street Mama" (1923)
- "Weeping Willow Blues" (1924)
Because of her talents, she was hugely influential on later women
singers such as Billie Holiday (see the next entry),
Janis Joplin and Aretha Franklin (see later). Read this story
about Bessie's antics:
". . . we were in the kitchen in this house and she beat up this
man who was trying to get fresh with us. Well, he waited for us
outside, and suddenly jumped out of the dark and stabbed Bessie
with a great big knife right in her side. Bessie just groaned a
little bit, then she chased that man for about three blocks,
holding her side to keep the blood in --- and that knife was
still in her when she finally collapsed on the ground."
Bessie survived this attack but died later in a car accident.
|
| 19. |
Billie
Holiday whose achievement as a jazz singer in its way rivals
that of Bessie Smith. Her greatest period was the 1930's,
repackaged as the Quintessential Billie Holiday series on
Columbia Records. As microphones had only been invented recently
after Bessie stopped recording and recently before Bille started
recording, the quality of sound is one notch higher than what was
available during Bessie's era, accommodating a wider range of
musical frequencies and making a band of players for the first
time in a recording sound somewhat realistic. While Bessie
anticipated jazz singers in her sometimes jazz-like style of
singing, it was Billie who first took these ideas minus the Force
of Nature voice of Bessie and plus more jazz idioms to define jazz
singing for all artists who would follow in the genre including Ella
Fitzgerald and others.
|
| 20. |
Robert
Johnson is a famous Delta
blues singer whose 41 scratchy 3-minute recordings
(1935-1936) all sound as faint as the traces of steam on a window.
He also excelled in making a single musician (himself with guitar
and vocals) sound like a whole band of players. Read this lyric
of Johnson:
"You can squeeze my lemon till the juice
runs down my leg."
|
| 21. | Philip
Glass for his works like
Music in Twelve Parts (1971-1974) which show how
repetition can be the basis for a great work of art. Most people I
know consider this repetition to be boring and even maddeningly
annoying but inside the repetition lies patterns which can be
interesting to listen to. For example of the transitions from one
track to the next, Andrew Porter wrote in 1978 for The New
Yorker:
"A new sound and a new chord suddenly break in, with
an effect as if one wall of a room has suddenly
disappeared, to reveal a completely new view."
Repetition in music is not new. Consider for example the
repetition in George
Frideric Handel's Messiah (1741).
|
| 22. | James
Brown was very innovative in creating a sound that would come
to define Pop, Soul, Rap and Hip-Hop music for succeeding
generations. Here is what the
Rolling Stone Album Guide had to say about him:
"James Brown may never have captured the zeitgeist as Elvis
Presley or the Beatles did, nor can he be said to have dominated
the charts like Stevie Wonder or the Rolling Stones, but by any
real measure of musical greatness --- endurance, originality,
versatility, breadth of influence --- he rivals or even betters
them all . . . And even though none of the 44 singles he put into
the Billboard Top 40 ever made it to #1 . . . in retrospect, that
reflects worse on the pop audience that it does on his music."
Like blues singer Bessie Smith (see above) James' singing has a
crotch grabbing property
but when you get used to it, like Bessie Smith and Bob Dylan, it
opens up a new sound world.
|
| 23. | Elvis
Presley is also known as The King of Rock 'n' Roll or
simply The King. He captured the zeitgeist for teenagers
of the 1950's just like The Beatles (see earlier) did in the 1960's
and
Nirvana
did in the 1990's. He also started a tradition of white men
singing black music that would later include such artists as
The Rolling Stones (see later) and Eminem.
He is also one of rock music's strongest, deepest sources,
influencing such luminaries as The Beatles and Bob Dylan (see
earlier).
|
| 24. | Frank
Sinatra (jazz/swing singer). His
Songs For Swingin' Lovers (1956) was the first ever
concept album.
|
| 25. | Chuck
Berry (rock singer). Elvis Presley (see above) owes a great
debt to this artist.
|
| 26. | Charles
Mingus whose work
The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady (1963) is one of the
most ambitious jazz compositions of all time and is a rival to Duke
Ellington (see earlier).
|
| 27. | Marilyn
Monroe who acted with perfection the role of the dumb blonde and
whose frank sexuality set the stage for female artists to explore
female sexuality like Madonna,
The Spice
Girls and today's
Pink.
|
| 28. | Aretha
Franklin is also known as The Queen of Soul. Her music
is like a rock and roll version (and therefore more accessible to
today's audience) of blues singer Bessie Smith (see earlier). As
well as having a voice that is less rough than Bessie's, her music
is sweetened with a chorus of smoother backing singers. The net
result of this is that it wins her additional converts for those
many people who only listen to "pleasant" music and therefore only
use music as a background to something more important, instead of
what I use music for: to soothe my (teenage) angst (which is why so
many of us like
Nirvana's
Smells Like Teen Spirit (1991)). It would be interesting to
speculate how much of an influence Bessie was to Franklin given that
their styles of singing share so much in common. The superiority
of Franklin over Otis Redding (see next entry) can be witnessed by
the song
Respect, which was first written and sung by Redding but
reshaped and taken over so completely by Franklin that most people
today identify the song with Franklin rather than Redding.
|
| 29=. |
Otis Redding,
Marvin Gaye and
Stevie Wonder.
This entry is like a battle between rival record companies
Tamla-Motown
and
Stax-Volt-Atlantic, Redding (along with Aretha Franklin, see
above) heralding from the rawer sounding Stax/Volt/Atlantic label
and the other two from the more commercial Motown label. All of
these singers anticipated black singers like Michael Jackson (see
later) and revolutionary rappers Public Enemy (see later) and
today white rappers
like Eminem.
The superiority of Redding over The Rolling Stones (see next
entry) can be witnessed by Redding's song Satisfaction
(1965-1966), which was first written and sung by The Stones under
the longer name
(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction (1965) but was renamed and so
completely reshaped by Redding that it knocks even The Stones' version
out cold.
|
| 32. | The
Rolling Stones who are probably the world's most successful
rock band due to their longevity. The stones are successful at
emulating the success of black singers such has Muddy Waters whose
song Rolling Stone forms the name of the group.
|
| 33. | Public
Enemy borrows heavily from James Brown but they are good
enough to deserve a place on this list.
|
| 34. |
Michael
Jackson is also known as The King of Pop and created
the best-selling album of all time,
Thriller.
What's more impressive is that his album is still pleasurable to
listen to, despite having been thrashed to death on popular music
radio stations.
|
