Which unsungs are on their way to becoming 'sung' - and vice versa?

[musiclover]

I suppose, thanks to Dutton, Richard Arnell is less un-sung (can one say that?) anyway, he is certainly more sung than he was. All on recording of course, still hardly any performances. Why don't the Proms schedule the amazing third symphony or even the potentially very poplular Piano Concerto?

[Alan Howe]

You may have a point about Arnell; however, please do read our revised remit...
http://www.unsungcomposers.com/forum/index.php/topic,3681.0.html

[ronanm]

I have noticed two opposing trends: in the concert hall, the audience for classical music has aged and become more and more middlebrow. Looking back recently over the concertos that Helene Grimaud has performed, you realise that concert promoters have to fill halls with middlebrow listeners who are not prepared to listen to anything they haven't heard before. So there is a shrinking repertoire in public performance.
But there is a great expansion of recordings of repertoire that you are remotely unlikely to hear in concert ever. The only performance of a Stanford symphony I can recall in the last decade in Dublin - his birthplace, for goodness' sake! - was by a good amateur orchestra. But we now have two excellent recordings of the complete symphonies. And although beyond the horizon of this group, the same can be said for renaissance music: concert performances are rarer, but the standard and coverage in recordings is remarkable.
So possibly the question needs to be modified. In the concert hall, more and more composers and repertoire are being relegated to the sidelines as the relentless pressure to sell tickets pushes promoters towards the classical 'pops'. However, the independent recording industry has realised that an audience of a thousand people need not be in one place at one time. They just need to be found – and that's where the internet comes in.

[semloh]

Yes, I think you are right, except that perhaps the concert hall remains the forum for premieres -  especially of new works - sandwiched between the 'pops' to help audiences digest them!

That said, I don't believe that concerts play much of a role in shaping musical tastes, though I have no clear idea as to what does - and even less of an idea as to how composers become sung/unsung! 

[chill319]

... I believe we have to look longer term say over a period of ten years

I quite agree, Giles. However, I hope we can consider unsung composers on more than one temporal scale of fame and influence. One wonderful thing about modern media is the way it encourages people like ourselves to connect, transcending distance, and to share our enthusiams, which are no less universal in spirit for being ineluctably personal. I also quite agree, Giles, that Rattle, say, is unlikely to take up Bax the way Haitink took up VW.  On the other hand, the pianist Michael Endres and the cellist Johannes Moser have advanced Bax's cause in the years since Handley's spirited cycle. So perhaps a more rounded version of the composer will prevail, thanks in part to the Continent. And meanwhile, after several decades I myself have not tired of Bax -- or Nielsen -- and am content to see a remarkable number of his works (not to mention Cyril Scott's) available for enthusiasts like myself.

In the world of literature, the Canon seems more elastic, more accommodating of strata, of writers with specialized audiences. Wilkie Collins, for example. Or Philip Larkin. Or my father's favorite, George Meredith. I hope this is the direction in which art music reception is going, too.

[giles.enders]

A prime example of a relatively unsung  composer getting enormous amounts of publicity which other composers can only dream of and his work played over and over again is Gorecki with his  Symphony of Sorrowful Songs.  Now one never hears it.  Could he be described as a 'one work wonder'?  He is almost forgotten except among the cognoscenti

[Alan Howe]

Actually, a number of his other pieces (e.g. Totus Tuus) get airtime on ClassicFM, so he's not totally forgotten.

[semloh]

He's certainly a one-hit-wonder here in Aus. - and decidedly not a romantic! 

[Maury]

I am uncertain whether to have started a new thread as opposed to commenting on a decade old thread of unsungs moving to sungs. However I haven't seen any follow-up thread on this specifically. Looking at this thread though I don't see any movement in the last decade - the only 2 composers I see having moved out of Unsung to fringe mainstream are Samuel Barber and Erich Korngold, although their operas are seldom performed other than Die Tote Stadt.

In fact in looking at bachtrack just now I see a concerning stagnation or even backsliding for composers I thought were moving in the same direction as with Zemlinsky. He seems to be regressing rather than building momentum from his return that was fairly active in the 80s and 90s. The same seems to be the case for Szymanovsky. Even Scriabin has surprisingly few listed performances of any note. Schoeck is entirely invisible with only one bachtrack performance as is Raff with 3. The recent emphasis on women composers doesn't seem to have helped much with Louise Farrenc, who has 25 performances but the vast majority are just a couple of overtures as filler. I am not including Glazunov since there was no prior momentum of concert performance to mislead.

Am I missing something or are the Unsungs usually mentioned with Korngold and Barber actually losing ground? Since I am in the US I don't have the best feel for what is going on in Europe. Sorry to revive such an old thread but didn't see a more recent similar dedicated thread.

[Alan Howe]

It depends on what context we're talking about. The concert repertoire only gives occasional evidence of expansion, but the recorded repertoire continues to be extended and shows no sign of slowing down - as this website demonstrates.

[Maury]

Thanks for your reply. Yes I was careful to specify concert performances as I have no serious concerns regarding recordings, all things considered, particularly of chamber and orchestral. The quality of the recordings is variable but that is always true. The principal recordings concern I have is with the singing of the Romantic repertoire as that style is not in vogue with current vocal instruction as far as I can tell. It seems tilted to bel canto and Baroque. However your careful wording does seem to indicate that I am not wildly misreading what is happening regarding these apparent also rans to Barber and Korngold. 

The performance situation with Scriabin I find particularly perplexing as he had a distinctive personal style and made what I consider the last major original addition to the piano repertoire on top of his orchestral works.

[Alan Howe]

I can't easily get to concerts these days, so my focus is recordings and the hope that they might lead to concert performances. Perhaps the imminent end of the Bruckner bi-centenary will release conductors from the need to record and re-record his symphonies.

For myself, what I'd like to see is the expansion of the 19th/early 20th century symphonic repertoire - along the lines of Hyperion's RPC series, perhaps.

[Mark Thomas]

Alan, that's an excellent idea and, with no soloist to pay for, would also be a cheaper proposition for Hyperion to record! Perhaps concertos sell better than symphonies, though.

Moving to the question in the thread, I agree that Korngold has moved into the mainstream and I suspect that Florence Price has done so, at least temporarily, but I can't think of anyone else. Rather, the trend is the other way in concert halls at least. With fewer concerts programming an overture, Glinka and Weber have all but disappeared for example. Is much Mendelssohn programmed any more? Certainly the concertos or anything other than the Italian Symphony are rarities.The number of concert repertoire staples is shrinking, not growing.

Luckily the recorded repertoire has exploded in recent years and, like Alan, that's my focus.

[Alan Howe]

Re. Korngold: the former 'sniffy' attitude on the part of certain critics towards the Violin Concerto has definitely disappeared - and quite right too.

[Maury]

Thank you both for your replies. i was a bit disconcerted and saddened by my sojourn through bachtrack which I had not done as extensively for a year. We are well past the pandemic effects so this seems the current reality, like it or not.  And the sniffy attitude to Korngold extended far past the Violin Concerto. Even the usually reliable Opera Magazine UK barfed over Korngold's Die Tote Stadt all through the 80s and 90s.

I agree with Mr Thomas that if such a series modeled on Hyperion included the Concerto repertoire it could be successful. Not sure of the current audience fervor for symphonies they haven't heard 100 times.

As for Samuel Barber, I am just basing my comment that he has moved to the fringe mainstream on the bachtrack results just now which surprised me a bit. The listings show both geographical distribution as well as varied selection of compositions. There were a fair number of performances in central Europe. I am frustrated by the absence of his fine opera IMO, the revised Antony and Cleopatra  but at least a concert performance of Vanessa is being performed next year in the US.

Florence Price was on a par with Louise Farrenc in the bachtrack results. less than half of Barber and Korngold. I do think these two women have a chance to survive at some low rate of performance around Szymanovky's level..

Just so we are all well advised as to what will seize the classical recording biz in the near future:

1827 Death Ludwig van Beethoven !!!!!
1828 Death of Franz Schubert !!!!!
1829 -
1830 -
1831 -
1832 -
1833 Birth Johannes Brahms !!!!!

So a brief window of opportunity for Unsungs from 2029 -2032.