Roll over Beethoven, Bach is No. 1

Anthony Tommasini, writing today in The New York Times, listed his choices for the 10 best classical composers of all time. Classical music music, in one of the greatested understatements of all time, is not exactly my forte, so I'm going to defer to Mr. Tommasini on this one, even though I have no idea of who Mr. Tommasini is. Now, if the late, great John Ardoin, who also wrote for the Times as well as Stereo Review, The Dallas Morning News and other publications, had come up with a list like this, I would trust it implicitly and endorse it wholeheartedly.

Tommasini chose Johann Sebastian Bach (pictured) No. 1 "for his matchless ... masterly musical engineering," whatever that means. The rest of his Top 10:

2. Ludwig van Beethoven
3. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

4. Franz Peter Schubert

5. Claude Achille Debussy
6. Igor Stravinsky
7. Johannes Brahms
8. Giuseppe Verdi
9. Richard Wagner
10. Bela Bartok

Gee, and my favorite piece of classical music, 1812 Overture, was obviously written by some clown not even in the Top 10. Goes to show you what I know.