Sung composers that you just "don't get"

[TerraEpon]

Consider also the issue of genre. Some composers may be inspired to write program music(for example), but are less inspired when it comes to non-program music.

Like Bax.

*hides*

[Alan Howe]

You're right.

*flinches*

[JollyRoger]

Bax wrote sucessfully in all genres..
"scratches his head"

[kolaboy]

I think Bax 1 - 6 - 7 (symphonies) are fantastic "absolute" works. I lean more towards his less descriptive pieces. Spring fire, on the other hand,  is an almost a too perfect conjuring of extra-musical imagery. I prefer storytelling to be a bit more mysterious. Tapiola over Pohjola's Daughter, in other words.

[Alan Howe]

On the other hand, did he ever equal Tintagel?

[kolaboy]

Probably not.
It was to be Arnold's golden mean 

[eschiss1]

No mention of Bax's chamber music? I think I prefer his quartets, piano quintet and first and third violin sonatas to most of those works myself...

[Delicious Manager]

On the other hand, did he ever equal Tintagel?

In my 'umble opinion, Spring Fire and the gorgeous Garden of Fand surpass Tintagel.

[Delicious Manager]

No mention of Bax's chamber music? I think I prefer his quartets, piano quintet and first and third violin sonatas to most of those works myself...

I'm glad you flagged up Bax's chamber works. My personal preference is for some of the more unusual works:
Elegiac Trio, for flute, viola and harp
Octet for horn, piano and string sextet
Nonet for flute, oboe, clarinet, harp, string quartet and double bass

[Gauk]

This is wandering off-topic, but I think the pinnacle of Bax's achievement in the 3rd symphony. As someone once wrote, the epilogue to the finale is one case where the phrase "of Heavenly length" is actually justified.

[alberto]

Sorry, a modic wandering off-topic also by me about Bax.
For me the absolute peak is Tintagel, rivalled, at distance, by The Garden of Fand and November Woods.
Among the Symphonies , best n.3 and n.1.

[JollyRoger]

Amphissa, perhaps your dislike of Mahler comes from over-exposure.   I think it's like hearing the latest popular song for the 483rd time.  You loved it when you first heard it but now you're just plain sick of hearing it.   For me, one of the things that turned me on to looking for unsung compositions was, I was tired of hearing the Beethoven Tchaikovsky, etc.   I love music; I wanted to hear something new.  Something different.  I love Mahler. He speaks to me in ways that no other composer does.  But if I got a steady diet of him,  he'd soon go the way of Beethoven 6.  Not being a concert hall musician or conductor, when I get to the point where I can hum my way through a 65 minute symphony - and I love being able to do that - I realize I am about saturated and tell myself, "Self, you'd best not be listening to this piece often, any more or you're going to be tired of hearing it...."

Except that, perhaps sadly, I have never been able to assimilate the experimental and non-tonality based compositions of the last century.  Recalling the first time I heard something along these lines, Webern I think, I remember thinking "He can't be serious...." but obviously he was.   Over the past 50 years, sitting in Orchestra Hall, I've been moved to tears probably a dozen times.  And I always end up reflecting - how can ANY human being conceive anything so beautiful; so moving??  Perhaps that would make an interesting thread - what work or works has moved you to tears.......

One of the very best things about this forum is that we don't call each other names when we disagree. 

Aw crap, I ramble.  Sorry about that.  A prerogative of old age, I hope....

Jerry

\

I dislike Webern all the more after reading the reason for your aversion to "new music".
I wonder how many people have turned away from classical music because of him and others of his ilk..
BTW: I am driven to tears by Vasks Cantabile for Strings and Lauda..a bit out of our remit no less..

[eschiss1]

One of the many problems with this, erm, theory?? is that - well, a generational and locational thing no doubt - I know I for one have almost never been able to just randomly been able to happen in on works by Webern without seeking his music out- he's in the occasional concert, an Oistrakh performance of his 4 violin pieces (and a Kremer performance of the Schoenberg violin Fantasy) (and some Lourié, and other things, but mostly standards- but also Myaskovsky, Weinberg, ...- well- never mind, one can see the set's contents listed easily enough elsewhere) can be heard in a set I've been listening to, but generally to hear his music I have to, again, look for it.

Back when I was actually getting into classical music in a big way I just didn't run into pantonal music so often that I would decide, on the basis of my then-dislike for, say, Berg's violin concerto and Schoenberg's Fantasy (1949)... the first works along that line that I ever heard, I think..., that "this stuff's not for me, and neither's the other stuff I _thought_ I liked, so back I go to Cole Porter and Sondheim - and forget about, just forget, this exploring-classical wheeze!" ... just didn't happen that way. I heard that kind of piece- and the Berg is teetering over the divide anyway, it later seemed to me... - occasionally at most on the radio. I caught some Shostakovich and Bartok in concert and on the radio then, never on the radio now (at least, not their quartets or the tougher stuff.) The chance of running into this stuff at random in the USA is ... generally, not high, I think.  Like a convinced Schumannian-Brahmsian of another era, one can generally keep away from the Liszt concerts, usually anyway, again.

(Not that I've left Cole Porter and Sondheim and other great theater anyway, but as I said ten or 100 times, I came in the door via Wright & Forrest's Kismet anyway. Right.)

[eschiss1]

"Webern and his ilk"- hadn't heard Webern described as having low moral character, by the way.  Naïve as _heck_ politically, but not that.  If one really does blame the decline in interest in classical music on "Webern and his ilk" and not on, frankly, a combination of market forces, differing effects and interactions of popular music, hearing loss, educational system changes, and a large number of things, then I suppose one has a certain reaction to the manner of his death...

[Gauk]

I hardly think that one can blame a lack of interest in "classical" music on the 2nd Viennese School. One could perhaps argue that modern concert audiences's risk-averse attitude to contemporary composers, and to unfamiliar names, originates from experiences with difficult atonal music. But that should not affect the market for Brahms.