Deservedly unsung............

[Latvian]

I am happy to listen to modernist and atonal music with an open mind, and I like some of it, but it is not the only way to compose. Schoenberg invented his system in order to open up new avenues, not to close down possibilities. Didn't he say 'there is still plenty of good music to be written in C major'?

Quite so!

[Dundonnell]

Oddly, Boulez has been conducting a lot of repertoire which one might not normally expect him to do - e.g. Liszt piano concertos (with Barenboim), Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique and Bruckner 8 (which ends in a blaze of C major). Wonder why?

Yes, he has indeed.....and we should give him credit for that God loves a sinner come to repentence There was a time when Boulez the polemicist did trash romantic composers but he seems to have changed his mind

I have his Bruckner 8th and I do think it is a very fine performance.

[Christopher]

I'm very amused that this has filled up to 4 pages within just over 24 hours, despite the profession of many that they don't approve of this line of discussion!

[Alan Howe]

Just shows - we're all mature adults here 

[Dundonnell]

I'm very amused that this has filled up to 4 pages within just over 24 hours, despite the profession of many that they don't approve of this line of discussion!

One keeps getting drawn back by comments made by others

[eschiss1]

(Though the tonal music Schoenberg wrote after that, memory serves, wasn't much centered in C major, but in G major (suite for strings), D minor (organ variations), E-flat minor (completion of his 2nd chamber symphony), G minor (wind band work), etc. Just saying.
Hasn't Boulez been conducting Romantic music for quite awhile? Mid or late 1990s certainly- I remember reviews in Fanfare of recordings that also mentioned broadcasts - but maybe well before that too for all I know... (of course, the works most often mentioned- Bruckner and Mahler for instance - are not only Romantic but pivotal to the history of the "Modern tradition"- and not just incidentally so but musically too, I say- and Debussy's Prelude, I agree with Austin, is modern despite being pre-20th century...)
As to deservedly unsung... for starters, the vast majority of dissertation compositions (in any style, "modernist", "eclectic", "neoRomantic" or otherwise.) It's a rare graduation-work that, like Prokofiev's 1st piano concerto (or Myaskovsky's 1st symphony, or etc. ...) deserves to be heard again much, far as I know...

[eschiss1]

Latvian: every single work by Babbitt (including e.g. his early 2 compositions for piano) or his most characteristic ones?
In any case I still find his late ones to be witty and to draw me in when I'm in the mood, but that all depends. (And when well-played- which includes Robert Taub in piano music and that recent Naxos disc but rather less so the performance of quartet 4 by the Juilliard Quartet.)

[markniew]

Discussion keeps going on whether one likes modern or some sorts of music.
and the question was: what music has been deservedly unsung.
All of us can show cases when we do not know if the stuff deserves to be unsung.
myself as a fan of pf ctos for decades cannot answer for such question.
for example, from dictionaries and books I know that many pf ctos were composed by Polish composers.
let me name only a few: Frieman (two), Wertheim, Wolf.
I never heard them and as far as I know they were never performed or registered in last 60 years (if ever).
Does it mean that they trully deserve oblivion and being simply forgotten?
Many of us wait for the recording of pf cto by Catoir.
Most probably it is going to be the first registration. Has that piece deserved being unsung till today? Why, who decided so?

[isokani]

Well, lots of other conductors conduct Boulez' music. I know several who do...
And as for "estranging art from its audiences", a rare performance of Pli selon Pli in London was, I am told, made to a full house ...

My problem is not with Boulez the composer or Boulez the  conductor, but with Boulez the ideologist - who deems any type of music other than his own as unacceptable and the target for active sabotage. To be honest (and this might be a good topic for a different discussion) I have often been amazed by the amount of intolerance exhibited by musicians towards anyone of a different opinion. Sure, there are similar cases in painting and literature (e.g.), but ideological militancy appears to be especially rife among musicians.

This is a rather strange image of Boulez. He has conducted traditional tonal music for years. He has made a career of it ... and his activities are becoming broader over years: Janacek, Mahler, Liszt, Berlioz etc etc ... He doesn't really conduct much contemporary music. I can think of Ligeti and early Stockhausen, both now dead composers and many of their pieces established classics. Their music is mostly very different from Boulez'.

What music did Boulez sabotage? I am quite intrigued ... and would like to know of some examples.

He was polemical in the 50s. That is nearly three generations ago!

[Gareth Vaughan]

Joseph Street - 2 symphonies, 2 PCs; all published; all very dull indeed! Deservedly unsung IMHO.

[Jimfin]

I'm thinking Macfarren as a symphony composer, though 'Robin Hood' has been a source of great joy, and I share Wagner's enthusiasm for 'Chevy Chace'. Of course, only one recording each of two symphonies may not be very representative, but someone else mentioned that Prout symphony, which I doubt has had many airings (actually, I quite liked that one)

[thalbergmad]

Joseph Street - 2 symphonies, 2 PCs; all published; all very dull indeed! Deservedly unsung IMHO.

A generous assessment indeed, but the composer fascinates me.

Surely there must be some skill involved in writing hours of music without the slightest hint of any melodic gift and ability to do anything other than to badly stitch together a string of unigmaginative flights of fancy. Puerile note spinning at its worst.

The 1st PC is in fact so bad that I think it should be recorded.

Thal

[eschiss1]

I've seen very little by Street- mostly a cello sonata, one or two other things.

[Ilja]

This is a rather strange image of Boulez. He has conducted traditional tonal music for years. He has made a career of it ... and his activities are becoming broader over years: Janacek, Mahler, Liszt, Berlioz etc etc ... He doesn't really conduct much contemporary music. I can think of Ligeti and early Stockhausen, both now dead composers and many of their pieces established classics. Their music is mostly very different from Boulez'.

As I said, little wrong with Boulez as an interpreter, although I find most of his interpretations disappointingly conventional (for one of his background).

What music did Boulez sabotage? I am quite intrigued ... and would like to know of some examples.
He was polemical in the 50s. That is nearly three generations ago!

That doesn't make it irrelevant, though. As for 'sabotage', I'm mainly speaking of politicizing music to a point where it would become difficult for contemporary composers to compose in any style other than the dodecaphonist/serialist vogue of the day. To be fair, Boulez wasn't the only one guilty of this, and regretfully the trend continues to this day: but he was a particularly vociferous symbol.

Allow me to point to this New Statesman article, which gives a somewhat wider overview: http://www.newstatesman.com/200003200041.

But maybe we ought to close this subject now, since we seem to be of somewhat different persuasion.

[Peter1953]

I find samples of Perosi's music much more attractive than listening to him at length! It's the way his music seems to ramble aimlessly that simply bores me beyond endurance. Apologies!

Very well said, Alan. I've bought Perosi's PC and as a result of a few listens I can only second your opinion. Why does Perosi need so much time to say what he wants? And it sounds so sluggish.