Those of any big name would sound sweeter

[Paul Barasi]

While listening today to the wonderfully melodic 2nd movement of Bristow's superb Symphony on Jarvi's Chandos CD, I thought "Brahms could have written this ... and with his name on the cover it would surely have sold much better."  And how they loved it when mistaking the Tarantelle Rossini was playing on the piano for his own rather than by the then unknown Saint-Saëns. This seems to be the story of unsung composers: it's not the quality that counts but the brand name.

[Leea25]

Interesting that you should mention that Paul. I have quite a few friends who, with the greatest respect to them, suffer from a sort of musical snobbery, where by if a piece isn't by one of the 'greats', it can't be any good. They are often pleasantly surprised when I sit them down and make them listen to something a bit different. I think it is ignorance in the geniune meaning of the word - most people like what they know. Say something is by Tchaikovsky and people are immediately more receptive - the barriers come down rather than staying up and perhaps being reinforced.

Equally, I also think the 'great' composers also suffer from the assumption that every single piece they wrote is a work of genius. Mozart's early symphonies might be of great historical/biographical interest, and extraordinary for someone so young, but they aren't very interesting pieces of music for me (he says making a sweeping generalisation on the strength of the few he has heard!). The best pieces of 'second-rank' composers are far, far better (in my opinion) than the lesser works of the 'greats'.

[JimL]

If I could make just these two posts alone a FB status I would.  You've just encapsulated the biggest problem in serious music in a nutshell.

[Alan Howe]

Actually, it's even worse. Some unsung works are actually as good as some (very) sung ones. In other words, among the ranks of unsung composers are some true greats. Discuss further, please!

[kolaboy]

I know some may not agree, but I would hold up Gade's 6th to any of Mendelssohn's, or Schumann's symphonies - and I love Mendelssohn and Schumann. The very imaginative percussion writing in the final movement alone places it among the greats. And anyway, the entire work is just a thoroughly beautiful (and mournful) piece. In my humble opinion.

[Paul Barasi]

Being constrained by our own assumptions or misled by those of others runs throughout the whole human experience. From music: "Those of any big name would sound sweeter," to literature: "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet"; from the Biblical: "Nazareth? Can anything good come from there?" to the stylistic: the hypermodern chessmaster hardy able to express admiration to another he'd written off as a traditionalist; and right through to our food choices: initially snubbing a great beetroot yogurt & mint dip simply because I hate beetroot. So, why do we have lots of CDs we don't much like or play, if not because we bought them under the influence of their composer's name?

The downside with unsung composers for me is the huge number of them, many with vast output, and all too often undifferentiated in quality when listed or cited, with the consequent inevitability of running into much I don't like while missing much that I would. So a key thing for me is the discovery of rare but outstanding music. Indeed, the Unsung Composers' collection is so much bigger than that of the big names that quite possibly it contains rather more stars which – if only we looked at the less familiar parts of the sky or waited for the clouds to unfold – would make us appreciate that they shine forever.

Take a beautifully crafted third symphony that comes complete with a hit parade of tunes and is so inventively scene-shifting it's engaging from start to finish. 'It's a symphony, Jim, but not as we'd know it" – actually by Fibich, and so just can't be a masterpiece. Or Chant de triomphale deliverance not by Bruckner but Lekeu (whose delightfully pretty Ophelia movement from his Study Symphony is another star covered by clouds), or Chausson's hauntingly majestic Poeme, or Diepenbrock's lovely Hymne for Violin and orchestra, or Wallace's superb symphonic poems http://www.unsungcomposers.com/forum/index.php/topic,1343.msg16159.html#msg16159, or Bax's magical box of small orchestral works ... and all these multiplied by who knows how many?

But to find more stars discovered by others and to know why these shine so brightly is my hope whenever visiting this site.

[mbhaub]

The problem always comes back to this: what makes music "great". How can this be quantified? I dunno. I've always looked at music for its entertainment value. For me, a Kalinnikov symphony is a supremely entertaining thing to listen to. I get far more pleasure out of the Raff 3rd or 5th than I get from any symphony of Brahms, Mendelssohn, Schumann. I can listen to Elgar's 2nd any time and never be bored. But I realize that there are others to whom Raff's music is uninspired, repetitive, and dull. Even his daughter, in her excellent biography of Raff, addresses the question of quality: did the Germans "manufacture" music rather than creating something really inspired?
I know some musically informed people who do get it: the best music of many 2nd rate composers is at least as good as the lesser music of 1st rate composers. But it's a tough sell to audiences. A local conductor wants to program the Schmidt 4th, but he can't figure out how to market it. Selling audiences on Brahms 4, Tchaikovsky 4, Mahler 4 is easy. Dvorak 4, Beethoven 4 a bit more difficult. But Schmidt? Who's that?  And so it goes.
And I'm just as bad as anyone. I can't tell you how many times as a kid I would ignore music because the composer was unknown or had a "stupid" name, or worse, the record (LP) jacket had a dumb picture. I eventually learned not to prejudge. There's still so much great music to listen to...and so little time and money!

[TerraEpon]

Of course, they knew this even back in the late 1700s. There's tons of works that were published under Haydn's name that actually weren't by him, for instance.

[Leea25]

Can I put in a word for Lekeu here! if anyone doesn't know his piano sonata (there is a recording on youtube), it is, in my opinion, incredibly beautiful and an excellent piece of music to boot.

It is a big problem with audiences, I agree. I suspect that if someone were so suddenly discover a youthful (but rather dull and derivative) orchestral piece by Mahler, audiences would flock to it. However, when I recently programmed Kalinnikov 1 (better know in American I believe, than here in the UK), the immediate response was, "err... who?" I spent a lot of time saying, "But, it's REALLY good, honest!" The audience for the concert was ok, but I know it would have been far more had we done Sibelius 1, or Brahms 1! That's not a problem for me personally - I'm glad those people who were there got the chance to play or hear Kalinnikov 1, but it's a problem for the orchestra, because, being an amateur affair, it runs on a shoe string and small audiences means less money. I should imagine the same applies to professional set-ups.

I don't think, sadly, there will ever be an answer to it. Classic FM in this country has done a great deal to popularise classical music, but alas, over a very limited repertoire. Radio 3 on the other hand, has such an eclectic mix from Renaissance to Romantic and for Jazz to Avant-garde, I should imagine it is rather difficult for a non enthusiast to pick out what they might want to hear - I certainly dip in and out, and would never listen to it for an extended period.

[Steve B]

I know this, to a degree, is ultimately subjective, and we have done it before, in the "old days", but we could all list 5 (relative) unknown pieces that we, personally, think are great, or just good fun; (please explain which category!); paul Barasi has already given a good list! here is mine; and u can take it with a pinch of salt as MY personal choice; i am not interested into getting into "reverse " hierarchies of the "great" unknowns by some "rationalist" "objective" standards!
1. Great: Paderewski Symphony "Polonia"
Moszkowski Violin Concerto
Medtner; Piano concerto 2
2. Fun(primarily):Coates "Rhodesia" march( but ineffably moving long trio melody so that is actually very good by my subjective criteria, ie I like to be MOVED)
Sgambati PC, esp first zany movement

Steve

[John H White]

One of my favourite Haydn pieces was the string quartet Op 3 No 5, whose lovely slow movement used to be played to introduce the BBC programme "Music in Miniature". Of course, I now know it's by Roman Hoffstetter (1742-1815), but its still amongst my favourites. I used to be puzzled by the fact that 8 year old Mozart's Sympony No 1 in E flat sounded so much better than those that followed it until I read somewhere that the young composer had merely copied out the score of a symphony by Carl Friedrich Abel as an exercise before trying his hand at writing his own symphonies.

[eschiss1]

Re Mozart's symphony no.1 in E-flat: haven't heard about that one. That's his symphony "no.2 in D" that was found to be identical to a symphony composed by Abel (and not because Abel copied the Mozart, either), not Mozart's symphony no.1... if I remember, anyway. ... I should check...

[Latvian]

I have quite a few friends who, with the greatest respect to them, suffer from a sort of musical snobbery, where by if a piece isn't by one of the 'greats', it can't be any good. They are often pleasantly surprised when I sit them down and make them listen to something a bit different. I think it is ignorance in the geniune meaning of the word - most people like what they know. Say something is by Tchaikovsky and people are immediately more receptive - the barriers come down rather than staying up and perhaps being reinforced.

Equally, I also think the 'great' composers also suffer from the assumption that every single piece they wrote is a work of genius. Mozart's early symphonies might be of great historical/biographical interest, and extraordinary for someone so young, but they aren't very interesting pieces of music for me (he says making a sweeping generalisation on the strength of the few he has heard!). The best pieces of 'second-rank' composers are far, far better (in my opinion) than the lesser works of the 'greats'.

Well said! I know many excellent musicians who have the same attitude as your friends in the first paragraph. And, unfortunately, there are many major musicians who refuse to venture outside the realm of the generally accepted masterworks unless compelled to for some reason. In common with many other members of this forum, I'm sure, I would much rather hear even a lesser conductor and and orchestra perform a lesser-known work by a lesser-known composer than yet another Beethoven 5th.

Back to the first paragraph, though. Sadly, I find many public radio stations (of the relatively few that still broadcast classical music to any meaningful extent) perpetuate this attitude. Apart from sloppy, inconsistent, incomplete, and often outright inaccurate information about the composer, music, and performers, they also frequently treat anything off the beaten track with mild condescension and an air of "here's a composer I've never heard of who actually wrote something listenable!"

I'm sure some of us have decent public radio, but sadly, I don't. I'll stop now before launching into a rant on the subject!

[Leea25]

"here's a composer I've never heard of who actually wrote something listenable!"

- Sadly, this does rather seem to be the attitude, with the exception of the proms, who always seem to have well-researched and balanced discussions about the music being performed.

I'm glad you agree! I would also rather hear 'lesser' orchestras play lesser-known works. As for Beethoven 5.... I'm a member of emusic.com and spent hours trawling through innumerable versions of Beethoven 5, Tchaik 5, Sibelius 2 etc (all pieces I love by the way), trying to find the increasingly infrequent gems. Can there really be a market for 1000s of recordings of Beethoven 5?

Apologies - this is probably territory this forum has covered several times before, but it is a pet peeve of mine!

[chill319]

During the past week, Draeseke's Symphony 1 has been in my ears a lot. With every listening, it grows on me as a masterpiece of German music, pure and simple.

In the cunning of its construction it surpasses many another 19th-century symphony (including first symphonies by Franck, Berlioz, Schumann, and Mendelssohn). If its style is less viscerally exciting than firsts by Berlioz and Mahler, its affect less soul searching than the first of Franck, nevertheless its mature balance of sobriety and good humor, without the slightest hint of jiggy pandering, together with its keen and attractive musical arguments, represent a high point of the symphony after Beethoven.

Both current recordings work well where dance or march rhythms propel the music -- that is, in the outer movements and the balletic scherzo. In the slow movement what is needed -- and what neither recording manifests -- is an understanding of the parlando line, of music as utterance, such as was pioneered by Hans Richter and later championed by Furtwaengler. It's not simply a matter of proper tempo; movements like this suffer as much as poetry from metronomic rendition at any speed.

Should a performance with such understanding be forthcoming, I predict Draeseke 1 will find a considerably wider audience than it has today.