I would nominate Richard Strauss as the greatest orchestrator of his own music in the past 150 years. (please no discussions about the merits of Strauss). Who would members suggest is the greatest of the unsungs, and I don't mean for just one piece ?
Raff is consistently fine in this regard. His ability to suggest colour is a rare gift - try the first movement of Im Walde for a wonderful sequence of mood-paintings.
Yes, inevitably Raff first came to my mind amongst unsung candidates. What about Kalinnikov? I know that he was a product of the Borodin/Rimsky tradition, but he seems to have had a particular gift for jewel-like orchestration.
Granville Bantock. No question. Quite brilliant.
Regarding orchestration Strauss absolutely had equals, and to my mind betters. Right off the bat: Respighi, Zemlinsky and Ravel (these two possibly the greatest of all), (possibly the greatest of all), Korngold, Florent Schmitt, Bax, John Alden Carpenter, Schreker, and of course Joseph Marx. orchestration is different from composition in that it can be taught and learned in a way that composition cannot. The genius lies in the way a composer finds a way to properly suit his material, and with that in mind the relatively colorless Brahms is a great orchestrator for the manner always matches his material. One day we should have a group meeting and play examples of our orchestration champ candidates. With ale of course. The persiflage around this topic will be lively.
I think Bax's instrumentation is impressive enough, though his style is a little bit monotonous.
Greatest orchestrators - Respighi and Rimsky-Korsakov; Unsung - give me another ten years or so! :)
I didn't realize you were composing, oh great new moderator......heehee.....gotcha.....
Jerry
Among American Romantics, George Whitefield Chadwick without a doubt for me. A full but _spacious_ sound, rich colour with an easily identifiable textural clarity. The first time I ever heard any William Grant Still orchestral music, many years ago, I thought "that sounds like Chadwick" before finding out Still had studied with Chadwick. Oh, and Victor Herbert, especially in HERO AND LEANDER.
I don't recall what bio I was reading a few months ago, but someone had made the comment that some composer orchestrates really well, "but who doesn't nowadays?". There were so many composers who knew how to make an orchestra sing. Of the well-known composers, the list is seemingly endless. But the unsungs sure have some fine ones: Raff, Vladigerov, Peterson-Berger, Weingartner, Karlowicz, Novak, Pfitzner, and many others. For my ear, I love the sound of Elgar, Bax, Vaughan Williams, and Holst. What is about British composers? They sure mastered the orchestra!
Orchestration can be taught, but you have to have the ear for it. Many composers could (and can)get around the orchestra adequately, but to know which instruments distinctively shade a line or a chord - and how to space registers - I think is one step beyond learning to being a gift.
And that is the genius of Ravel, Zemlinsky, Bax and the others on my list.
While he certainly not unsung Rimsky-Korsakov gets my vote. Scheherazade is in a class by itself.
Tom
I would rank Elgar at the top among English composers for matching orchestral brilliance with the emotional/dramatic substance of the music (I'm working here on the assumption that brilliance is not always called for [Vaughan Williams] and much orchestral flash and filigree hasn't much beneath it [...]).
Quote from: jerfilm on Friday 17 August 2012, 23:27
I didn't realize you were composing, oh great new moderator......heehee.....gotcha.....
Jerry
Just testing, of course, Jerry! I wondered who'd be the first to spot it! ;D
It's relatively easy to have an opinion about composers with whom one has become familiar over a lifetime, and the moment I had posted my ambiguous message, I felt I should also have named Stanford and Elgar. The Unsungs really are a different matter.
I wonder where Havergal Brian stands in the 'great orchestrator' stakes. Any views, anyone?
Scherzo of the Gothic, astonishing sounds.
The sad thing is we slide back to the sungs, there are more mentions of these than the unsungs.
OK, let's put our thinking caps on, then...
Julius Rontgen always sounds fresh and invigorating. Big bold sound when needed.
Balakirev was no slouch: Tamar and the first symphony are marvelously orchestrated.
Glazunov was brilliant - the scherzos of almost every symphony, but his orchestral wizardry is nowhere more apparent than in The Sea
Recent outings of Widor's music shows a musical mind at home as much with the orchestra as the organ.
Is Schoenberg unsung? I'm not sure, but his Pelleas und Melisande never fails to astonish me and the extraordinarily complex orchestral sound. The score is mind boggling.
Right up there with the Schoenberg is Franz Schmidt's 2nd symphony. Over the top orchestration that goes beyond Mahler and Bruckner.
Depends upon what one means by "flash". Though Elgar is excellent, I don't consider him among the true virtuosos of instrumentation. His is largely traditional in its use of sections, as opposed to the kind of fragmentation of those sections evidenced by the composers I put forth.
I think that The Pleasure Dome of Kubla Khan reveals Charles Tomlinson Griffes as an Unsung with credentials to be considered a great orchestrator -- an impressionist, to be sure but to my ear, more Debussy than Ravel. Such a pity that he didn't live to fulfill his potential.
I should ad Frank Bridge. His Enter Spring could be a textbook on how to orchestrate.
I may be wrong here but didn't someone famous suggested Moszkowski was the best orchestrator of his time?
Quote from: Jonathan on Saturday 18 August 2012, 18:40
I may be wrong here but didn't someone famous suggested Moszkowski was the best orchestrator of his time?
André Messager is supposed to have said something of the sort to Thomas Beecham when recommending that he study with Moszkowski and I'm sure I've read somewhere that Jules Massenet held a similar opinion.
I certainly agree about Frank Bridge and often wonder what Vaughan Williams meant when he referred to Bridge's music as "the abyss of 'writing effectively.'" A name that has rarely come up here (unless I've missed something) is Joseph Jongen, my favorite unsung along with Marx. The Symphonie Concertante is a spectacular (and musically substantive) amalgam of impressionist color and robust romanticism, not far in spirit from the Schmitt of Psalm 47 and La Tragodie de Salome.
Taken in the context of Vaughan Williams' letter to Gustav Holst (whence came the quote), he seems to be chiding Bridge as being a bit too precise, too proficient, too perfect ( ???)... IMHO, however, I generally find the orchestral works of Bridge to be perfectly sublime... Ah, The Sea! :)
Bridge went where Vaughan Williams could not, as FB's later works attest. He died prematurely, and I believe had he lived longer he would today be held in equal or greater esteem than RVW.
Minaccosia, I don't think it was a question with Vaughan Williams of "couldn't go" (the same argument used to denigrate post-Elektra Strauss) but rather, as with all great composers, of going where he had to go, regardless of fashion or "historical imperatives." Personally, I think RVW a greater figure than his present reputation would have it. I do agree, though, that Bridge's premature death was a terrible loss, but what we have is flat out, unequivocally, sung or unsung great: Phantasm, Oration, Enter Spring, and, oh yes, The Sea, The Sea.
Absolutely.
Agreed. Very perceptive - thanks.
Yes, totally agree with this - but then, it is to be expected - Bridge was a pupil of Stanford!! :)
And, on the basis of his completed works, you're surely right about Griffes, Lionel.
Griffes belonged to a lost generation of American composers that was largely buried by the ascendancy of Copland and other Boulanger students. On the basis of his piano sonata I speculate that he might have embraced modernism to the extent of burning off the impressionist mist toward a kind of hard, urban, art deco aestheticism (I can hardly imagine him following Copland and Harris into the wide open prairie) that would nevertheless romantic rather than neo-classical. Paul Creston's first two symphonies might be close to what I mean. His orchestration owes much to Debussy and extends an essentially romantic style into the modern world.
Thanks, X. Trapnel -- a very thought-provoking observation. I must mull that over...
Many fine orchestrators were made better orchestrators by their exposure to RS, whose immense aural imagination could spin actual orchestral thoughts.
Schoenberg's Gurrelieder, Pelleas, and subsequent works as late, I would argue, as Erwartung owe a clear debt to Strauss.
Alfven's Symphony 4 owes a debt to Strauss IMO.
Carpenter was a wonderful orchestrator, but Converse was perhaps an even better one, and another player whose game was improved by exposure to Strauss.
I wish there were enough recorded material to have a Carpenter/Converse orchestration face-off. I'd bet on Carpenter.
On the Dutton disk I was very impressed by Converse's orchestration but a little disappointed with the musical substance (I hope this will change with subsequent hearings). I think Loeffler was the best of the American impressionist/romantics with a very distinctive orchestral pallette.
These are thought-provoking exchanges. Thanks, to everyone concerned.
Now, I must find time to re-visit the music. :)
It was wrong-headed of me (and pointless) to compare Converse to Carpenter in this particular thread, X. Trapnel. I think we all agree that virtuosic orchestration reached a new plateau in the two decades preceding the Great War. The global influence of Wagner's orchestrations notwithstanding, I hear a distinctive French thread in the sophisticated orchestrations of, say, Lalo, d'Indy, Magnard, and a distinctive Eastern European thread in the complex orchestrations of Dvorak's late tone poems, Novak, Suk, and Mahler. Which is to say that many contributed to the rapid evolution of the orchestral vocabulary. Nevertheless, I agree with Giles that Strauss is unmatched. It's not merely the effectiveness of Strauss's "busy" textures, the rightness of his writing for many instrumental families, but the way the tunes themselves, as in the magnificent opening of Ein Heldenleben, are robustly imagined within a matrix of orchestral sound, not simply as musical lines to be colored by instruments. The orchestrations of Korngold and Bloch (3 Poemes Juifs) among many many others are unthinkable without the example of Strauss.
Across the Atlantic, Loeffler participated (brilliantly, in my opinion) in the development of the French branch. As for the modern German branch of orchestration, between 1897 and 1915 its most innovative and effective American exponent was Converse. (Chadwick was no wallflower either, with Straussian influences especially evident in Tam O'Shanter. But Chadwick, I think, wanted to find a way to graft modern German virtuosity onto Brahmsian nobility, which requires a different handling of overtones. Nielsen found greatness by treating the same intractable issue as a Gordian knot.) Converse's orchestration masterwork is Flivver 10 million, which contains some remarkable sounds I am not aware of in any previous orchestral piece. As for the works on the Dutton CD, American Sketches is the big one. I would listen to it after hearing Chadwick's Symphonic Sketches. Both are ambitious and intensely American. They straddle a period in which war and social revolution brought into question the aesthetic implicit in Strauss's musical cadences and expensive (to play) orchestrations -- an aesthetic that both Chadwick and Converse believed in.
Strauss and Mahler are certainly the obvious influences on (?sources of) Korngold's sensuous romanticism, and were among his greatest champions in the pre-Hollywood days. But, don't forget that the other great Strauss - Johann - was also an influence on Korngold. His last published piece - Straussiana - is a tribute to Johann, and ends, I think, with a waltz. He seems to have harboured a lifelong nostalgia for the lost golden age of the Austro-Hungarian Empire! I am sure he would have wallowed in that nostalgia as it is resuscitated each New Year's Day in Vienna, no less than the glitterati who attend today. :)
Going back a bit, to the very early Romantic (or perhaps slightly before), has anyone heard the orchestration of Clementi's symphonies? I think some of the "thick" sounds that he used - like in the ending of the first movement of his so-called "Great National" Symphony - might have been completely original at that time. Whether original or not, Clementi is one of my all-time favourite orchestrators, perhaps just behind Raff even. Elaborate, complex, and expert, able to get a rich, often heavy sound without getting harsh.
Grab the Chandos 'Contemporaries of Mozart' disc with Clementi's earliest known surviving "big" symphony, go to the end of the slow introduction, and listen to 40 seconds or so. If you're looking for intricate orchestral soundscapes to explore, Clementi is well worth checking out! I'd rate him as an all-time great orchestrator.
It is interesting to compare Strauss' orchestrations with Korngold's, because beyond the obvious early influence the former had upon the latter, it is very easy to tell the two apart. Key (to my ear) is the matter of sonority. Throughout his life Strauss maintained a harder coloristic manner that I describe as distinctly German. Korngold's has something more urbane to it, a greater elision between instruments that yields entirely new colors. (Think of the difference between Debussy and Ravel.) Korngold softens the contours within these shifts in a way much more akin to Zemlinksy, who I submit was the greatest orchestrator of all. Das Wunder der Heliane, Die Tote Stadt (which has an amazing air of decay about it) and the Symphony are great examples of this, as well as examples of how different was Korngold's scoring from Friedhofer's and the few others that scored Korngold's film scores.
While Strauss was a giant, he is not alone on that exalted plane, and I believe he is surpassed by some of his company there.
Like Josh, I'm quite fond of Clementi the orchestrator -- in my case known only from the old D'Avalos/Philharmonia recordings on ASV. My understanding is that Pietro Spada had a stronger presence in the edition being performed there than can be rightly considered Urtext. Not being a Clementi scholar, I wonder if other members have information about the reliability of Spada's edition.
I think of Strauss's orchestral colors for all their richness as clear and bold, rather than shadowy, elusive, irridescent, but then his world view is classical/realistic, materialist in a positive sense and sociable. His spiritual home was the eighteenth century in so many ways, much closer top the spirit of Mozart than Stravinsky's arty neo-classicism could ever get.
Very perceptive comment.
OK - but where does Johann Strauss fit into these observations about Korngold's orchestration? ???
When I started this thread, I was hoping for an 'all rounder', someone who could orchestrate symphonies, songs, cantatas or what ever. Someone who one would immediatly recognise. It seems that there is no one. I like Kallinikov but he didn't compose much, Boito, the prelude from Mefistofele and indeed the opera itself are very well orchestrated. I think Marx comes to the nearest of my expectations.
Well, Giles, I immediately recognize Holbrooke's style of orchestration. To me, it's unmistakeable, and has principally to do with his use of the winds.
I can name an unsung composer who is instantly recognizable from his scoring style: Franz Schmidt. Everything he wrote (well, almost) has a certain sound quality that he once said was influenced by a parish organ he used to hear. And whether it's any of the symphonies, concertos, chamber music, oratorio, opera...it all sounds like Schmidt, and no one else. Maybe I'm just biased since Schmidt is easily one of my favorite composers, but years ago when I didn't know that much of it (who did?) and I would hear something on the radio that sounded like Schmidt, I was never surprised when that was the case. And his scoring is magnificent, imaginative, tasteful, and idiomatic; he was a master of the orchestra.
Read Harold Truscott; he explains very well why Schmidt sounds like Schmidt and like no one else.
For chill319 about the transatlantic branch - one of the reasons I admire Chadwick's orchestration is that it's _un_-Brahmsian; nowhere near as dense or soberly-coloured. The Germanic influences and approaches he takes are brighter and more spaciously-registered. If you put the first movement of Chadwick's Third Symphony against the first movement of Brahms' Third (which is in the same key and metre) the differences are much more striking than the similarities, and Chadwick's sonic distinctiveness becomes readily apparent. I think the Symphonic Sketches are an outgrowth of Chadwick's natural colouristic tendencies; American, yes, but so are his symphonies in terms of their lyricism and exuberance rather than instrumental effects. (I find the "American" label tricky in orchestral definition; I grew up, literally, reading Gilbert Chase, and I now think his book and its positions quite narrow and ultimately destructive.)
PCC, I quite agree with you about the dissimilarity of orchestration in Brahms and Chadwick. (The Brahms of the first Serenade is a somewhat different orchestrator, of course.) So who do you think Chadwick was listening to? (I don't say 'reading' because, Berlioz aside, you can forget the textbooks -- Jadassohn's 1899 opus, for example, essentially stops at winds in pairs.) Take the xylophone in the last movement of the Symphonic Sketches. Saint-Saens? Or American vaudeville, where xylophones were heard more often than in Symphony Hall?
Oh, it's definitely vaudeville! Chadwick, from what I know, was an avid theatre-goer with a strong sense of humour. The very last bars of "A Vagrom Ballad" could be exit music for an act at the Orpheum! It's the various definitions of "Americanism" in concert music that get me, and Chadwick (who is a top composer of any nationality for me) often gets pushed under a heap for his European elements, including his orchestration. But where else would an American composer in the 1880s and 90s turn for orchestral models? Orchestration didn't spontaneously generate over here in an "American" form - heavens, before 1900 there were fewer than ten professional symphony orchestras in the entire country. (As to who else Chadwick might have had in his ear, it's hard to say, but I'd go with Raff or the Czechs rather than Brahms - but again, with a distinctively open-sounding texture. More than one writer has pointed out the similarities between the slow mvts of the Chadwick Second and Dvorak "New World" symphonies - and Chadwick's was the earlier of the two.) You want a _badly_ orchestrated 19th century American symphony? The Ives First, which many Ives defenders say is really easy to take compared to his later work, is one of the clunkiest orchestral pieces ever written, even as a graduation exercise (which it was), and putting anything by Chadwick (or even the Paine Second) against the Ives shows how amateurish the Ives is - and he only went downhill from there. (A very biased personal opinion, I admit, but the dislike I have for Ives' music is compounded by Ives' verbal boorishness, which hampered properly assessing composers of the Second New England School for decades and helped promulgate an idea of "American music" that simply doesn't speak to or for me. Harumph!)
No, Ives did just go downhill. Again, a very personal opinion! I'll take Chadwick as a professional orchestrator every time.
Quote from: Alan Howe on Thursday 30 August 2012, 09:22
No, Ives did just go downhill. Again, a very personal opinion! I'll take Chadwick as a professional orchestrator every time.
Agreed!
Quote from: pcc on Thursday 30 August 2012, 07:42
.......The Ives First, which many Ives defenders say is really easy to take compared to his later work, is one of the clunkiest orchestral pieces ever written, even as a graduation exercise (which it was), and putting anything by Chadwick (or even the Paine Second) against the Ives shows how amateurish the Ives is - and he only went downhill from there. ........
But, speaking as a simple listener who knows nothing of the technicalities of orchestration, I find Ives'
First Symphony a work of beauty (and within the romantic style). Am I alone in finding the 2nd movement utterly seductive. Naive? Maybe. But clunky? ???
Analyses I've heard or read of Ives' later work persuade me that (although they are mostly not to my taste, and fall way outside the scope of UC) they are both daring and carefully constructed, and that Ives knew very well how to orchestrate, if that means using the orchestra to best express one's intentions. The 4th Symphony is a remarkable example, and is one of the few dissonant works that I can really enjoy time and time again.
Obviously, the issue here is not Ives, because he almost entirely lies outside the scope of UC, but rather
orchestration, and I am at a loss to know exactly why Chadwick can be considered so highly by comparison. I am happy to be enlightened! ;D
I suppose it's Ives' later deliberate, chaotic naïvety in all its aspects that I just don't get. I agree about both comments made about the 1st Symphony, though - it does seem clunky, but it's also fascinating to hear the developing iconoclast attempting to write such an academic piece. It's kind of a contradiction in terms...
QuoteI agree about both comments made about the 1st Symphony, though - it does seem clunky, but it's also fascinating to hear the developing iconoclast attempting to write such an academic piece. It's kind of a contradiction in terms...
Orchestration, to me, also means equally understanding how to build and refine instrumental combinations in ways that allow for harmonic and colouristic flexibility for maximum personal expressivity, and how to utilize each instrument's character and idiosyncracies in ways that are gratifyingly practicable for players and auditors alike. _That's_ what really great orchestrators can do, in my opinion - that's the "ear" I mentioned earlier. Chadwick had it, and Ives didn't (again, my opinion). One of my favourite passages written about orchestration is in Gervase Hughes' study of Arthur Sullivan (who is not "unsung" in some ways but is becoming more widely "understood" in others), who said that no matter what you might think of Sullivan's music, instrumentalists almost always enjoy playing it, and Hughes shows an apparently fearsome bass trombone passage from THE GOLDEN LEGEND that lies magically perfectly for the English G bass trombone. I don't think anyone questions Sullivan's orchestral mastery or distinctive orchestral idiom. Chadwick's SYMPHONIC SKETCHES was the first full score I ever purchased to always have by me, when I was an undergrad, because I wanted to really learn how he "made his colours". Each movement of that work has a different orchestral sound, but the work overall is still distinctively and identifiably the tonal work of one person. The brass writing is impeccable but varied, the woodwind all over the place registrally for colour purposes, and the percussion work imaginative, all playing off a string basis which is equally colouristically divided and combined according to purpose. I've always said the easiest thing in the world is to write a
tutti, but on reflection, I'd add that the
hardest thing to write is a
tutti that is uniquely yours. I hear that in Chadwick.
As to the interest of Ives conventionality in his First Symphony against his later work, I think it shows how little he mastered what he came to reject and deride, and I have a hard time respecting those who mock what they apparently can't do. (I always think that Horatio Parker passed Ives with a sigh, maybe advising him as he left Yale "you know, Charles, have you ever considered going into something else besides music - insurance, perhaps?...") On the other hand, I think Stravinsky and Schoenberg's earliest works shows how well they
could write conventionally.
Quote from: pcc on Thursday 30 August 2012, 17:45
I don't think anyone questions Sullivan's orchestral mastery or distinctive orchestral idiom.
How true. Sullivan's orchestration is masterly: he manages to make a theatre orchestra sound full and rich but not thick, and his tuttis are not all of a piece but are enormously varied.
Quote from: pcc on Thursday 30 August 2012, 17:45
I always think that Horatio Parker passed Ives with a sigh, maybe advising him as he left Yale "you know, Charles, have you ever considered going into something else besides music - insurance, perhaps?..."
O, how I want that to be true! ;D
Erm - as to Clementi's symphonies- neither edition (Casella's (1938, 1950?) or Spada's (1977)) that I know of?... I gather... (from what I've read in reviews of the Spada edition, anyway...) - is a particularly good representation of the (hard to read) manuscripts. So modern recordings - e.g. d'Avalos - of the four big symphonies he wrote (op.18 are in better shape, having been published during his lifetime, though I may be making a logical leap there) are more judgments of "Clementi/Spada" than of Clementi, and maybe with emphasis on the latter. (Hrm. I see Bamert uses Casella's edition of the first symphony, actually. Not sure whether Scimone's 1979 recordings use Spada or Casella, and how many of the symphonies Casella edited- possibly just the C major. May have been another edition I've forgotten of the other three between 1938 and 1977...
Whether a better edition closer to the "real" orchestration would show more lightness of touch (whether the major mistakes even concern orchestration) I don't know one way or the other and don't want to guess - I'm not assuming it would.
Yes, that's a very pertinent observation with regard to Clementi, Eric.
Thanks for the information and insight, Eric. As one who once worked his way through much of Gradus ad Parnassum, I was taken aback when I first heard Clementi's late symphonies by how orchestrally secure they are. Much as I love Schubert, I wouldn't say his earlier symphonies, 6 for example, surpass these.
Oh, I quite like some (not a few!) of his piano works and trios, I wasn't trying to tear him down, at that. :)
Stokowski!
Ravel!
Henry Wood!
Gordon Jacob!
Charles Koechlin?
Quote from: M. Yaskovsky on Thursday 06 September 2012, 20:27
Stokowski!
Ravel!
Henry Wood!
Gordon Jacob!
Charles Koechlin?
Czemu? Pourquoi? Why?
Quote from: mbhaub on Saturday 18 August 2012, 15:40
Julius Rontgen always sounds fresh and invigorating. Big bold sound when needed.
Balakirev was no slouch: Tamar and the first symphony are marvelously orchestrated.
Glazunov was brilliant - the scherzos of almost every symphony, but his orchestral wizardry is nowhere more apparent than in The Sea
Recent outings of Widor's music shows a musical mind at home as much with the orchestra as the organ.
Is Schoenberg unsung? I'm not sure, but his Pelleas und Melisande never fails to astonish me and the extraordinarily complex orchestral sound. The score is mind boggling.
Right up there with the Schoenberg is Franz Schmidt's 2nd symphony. Over the top orchestration that goes beyond Mahler and Bruckner.
I agree re. Glazunov and Balakirev. I would add Atterberg and Alfven in the mix. And Wagner reigns supreme also.
Any reasons, please?
John Alden Carpenter rates as a great orchestrator. Listen to Skyscrapers, or the Symphony No.2. The latter is especially resourceful. There are many other examples of his greatness in this area, but unfortunately there are no commercial recordings of some works as yet. What I know f these is gleaned from scores in my collection.
I would add Atterberg-try his magnificent Symphony no. 3 and you'll see what I mean. Very imaginative and colorful use of woodwinds in particular. Also, Schreker (whom I largely prefer to R. Strauss) had a knack for lushly decadent orchestration.
Quote from: LateRomantic75 on Friday 18 October 2013, 13:20
I would add Atterberg-try his magnificent Symphony no. 3 and you'll see what I mean. Very imaginative and colorful use of woodwinds in particular. Also, Schreker (whom I largely prefer to R. Strauss) had a knack for lushly decadent orchestration.
It's difficult and completely subjective to say who is the greatest among the great in this regard, but I would say that Schreker along with Zemlinsky, Ravel, Respighi, Strauss and Korngold are in a class by themselves.
By no means completely subjective. Berlioz and Strauss, who were pretty good at orchestration, had some things to write on the subject (as did others) by way of practical advice - which one cannot do, take my word for it (and I mean cannot) if a subject has absolutely nothing objective about it at all (even though much, even very, very much, about it may be subjective.)
(Ah, I see I misread and mistook your statement a bit, but "who is the greatest of them all" isn't subjective, just unanswerable. Always conceivably someone you haven't even heard yet... also, one risks trying to edge out someone else who's looking in that Magic Mirror... er... sorry, wrong Grimm Legend...)