Well - that is absolutely not true - you just arent into that kind of music to see its development. there are HEAPS of well known, well payed composers out there who are known all over the world. they just arent played on MTV. the 20th century is FULL of truly amazing composers - and so will the 21st century be

Yeah I know there are many good classical composers out there, most get there jobs working in film scores and playwrights. I meant there not making an impact on the music world like the composers of that era did, and none I’ve heard can compare to the greats, like Mozart and Beethoven. To me a lot of Classical composers now are students of science rather than innovators or art. My opinion of course, however cynical it may be.

Simpler? well - hardly. what is so hard about todays life? i guess it was alot harder to get your mouth fed back in those days where you had to work REAL hard.

Of course there were hardships, in Beethoven’s Era there was Napoleon and Mozart walked a continent stricken with disease and death. What I mean by simpler is one’s everyday life is not as complex as today's. Life moved at a much slower pace and wasn‘t as stressful. Back then the only stress one would have is writing a composition. And they didn’t have TV, radio, cars that could break down, anything like that so if they had spare time they wrote. The life of a common man was definitely a lot harder but simpler.

That is true - just think of the Hexachord.

Yeah definitely. We still don’t use the seventh degree of the major scale much now either, if so it’s usually flattened. So the scale becomes Mixolydian instead, which is more popular today.

Couldn't all this stuff about Bach putting his name into music be conspiracy theory? I mean, people find hidden codes in everything. Someone even disproved "hidden code finding" by "decoding" a fisheries act and finding words about fish, the ocean, etc. "encoded" into the text.

That sounds like something I would say. HAHA. Although it is true, Bach used mathematics extensively in his compositions. Like many theorists before him did, back then the science we know as theory was still very hazy and not completely conclusive. Of course Bach changed that, and his ideas have influences music til this day. And all those ideas are backed behind mathematics, and he used them in writing to prove his point.

I can imagine the pressure put on these young prodigys by their parents to be successfull was tremendous.

Definitely Mozart, I think he had it the worst of anyone. He had a good father but he disagreed with every Mozart did outside of music, even marriage. I know his father died without resolving some of the things he put his son through.