Unsung versus Mainstream

[albion]

There is perhaps more obscure repertoire being explored and recorded today than at any other time. In my CD collection I try to balance mainstream works and obscurities. Concentrating on orchestral music I now have a pretty comprehensive showing of repertoire from about 1800-1950 with all the acknowledged 'masters', late Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Dvorak, Tchaikovsky, Bruckner, Strauss, Mahler, Sibelius, Nielsen, Elgar, Vaughan Williams, etc. etc. To have these is important to me and I wouldn't be without them, but if I had to make a sudden decision to save only some of my collection, what would I choose? Most likely a whole host of "lesser" composers including Alfven, Gade, Raff, Bantock, Stanford, Cyril Scott, Rubbra and Magnard.

I can understand that anybody without the passion that 'unsung' music generates amongst its followers would regard such a selection over the established canon as ridiculous and perhaps slightly deranged, but I would probably get more long-term listening pleasure from a smaller library entirely given over to music from the fringes of the repertoire. I think part of the attraction in such music is a revelling in the actual obscurity of it - knowing that it is under-appreciated and that by listening to it I am making some amends to the composer who toiled over the supremely laborious and unrewarding task of writing his ideas out in full orchestral score.

I tried to calculate the ratio of unsung to mainstream listening that I do at home and its probably something like 10:1. As I scan the shelves for something to put on the CD player I glance appreciatively towards the Mackerras Mozart, the Kempe Strauss and the Barenboim Bruckner, but I find myself drawn to Jarvi's George Chadwick, Lloyd-Jones recording of Sullivan's 'Ivanhoe', Howard Griffiths' Holbrooke and Thierry Fischer's Florent Schmitt. Sometimes I do feel slightly guilty in neglecting my mainstream discs, but then I reason that if I want a pleasurable rather than a dutiful listening experience I need something slightly (or totally) unknown to the world at large. Brahms can wait - now which York Bowen piano concerto to put in the machine?

[thalbergmad]

I spent 25 years playing and listening to mainstream and now intend to spend the next 25 years on the unsungs.

As a 3rd rate hack pianist, I love to play something that possibly has not been played for a hundred years and is unrecorded, as it gives me a kind of "explorer" feeling of treading where others are not. The only problem with the unsungs, is that one sometimes has to search through a pile of rubbish to find a pearl, but when one does, it is worth the effort. I guess with mainstream composers, the percentage rate of masterpieces is a lot higher, but this is subjective and not always the case.

Coming here has helped me a lot in discovering new pieces ( notably Healy Willan Concerto) and has cost me a fortune in recordings and scores, but this is a price worth paying.


Thal

[petershott@btinternet.com]

I do like the idea of 'making amends' to unsung composers. After all, I guess if us lot didn't lap up the CDs of this music then such composers would disappear for ever. And we'd then be left with nothing but an endless diet of Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert.....

But there's a far more concrete reason for treasuring the recorded music of unsungs (or for rushing in to save just some of your collection if perchance the house went up in flames): this music is otherwise completely unavailable. I live a short distance from Aldeburgh and the Maltings at Snape - and that gives me music all through the year, and even more concentrated in the summer months. London, with its concert halls and opera houses, is an easy journey away. Cambridge is a short drive away. Yet there's a greater probability in a camel passing through the eye of a needle than hearing Alfven, Gade, Raff, Bantock, Stanford, Scott, Rubbra and Magnard in these venues. No problem in getting to concerts of works of Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert et al. So that is the reason why the shelves at home get full of the former - were it not for those recordings I'd simply never be able to hear this music.

And to stick the neck out I see little point in accumulating records of 'the masters' given that this music is (fortunately) widely available, and where one's money can be better spent on recordings of more obscure stuff. No point at all in collecting some of the celebrated glories of the gramophone: for any day I'd far prefer to sit in a hall listening to a 'competent' or even struggling performance of, e.g. Strauss, rather than in my armchair listening to a sublime and ravishing recording by Kempe. CDs, even when playing on a stupendous kit of hi-fi gear and the neighbours away on holiday, are surely a very much second-best thing? Rather like washing your feet with your socks left on?

I'd also like to challenge, Albion, this familar distinction between 'the masters' and the 'unsung'. That simply reflects received opinion, the critics, the academies, and tradition. We ought not approach, e.g. Rubbra, thinking 'this is a minor and thus inevitably an inferior composer'. To my mind he wrote many things that justify him a seat in heaven along with Beethoven or Brahms. We ought to explore all music, and not put on a pedestal only the 'great masters'. And being able to hear works by Alfven, Gade et al is the only justification for CDs. I often think it isn't as if Beethoven or Brahms wrote music in a different category from the unsungs; it is rather that they wrote fewer less significant or worthwhile works that haven't quite stood the test of time or even bad works.

Apologies: i've gone off onto a ramble. And I'm now asking myself: in fact, did Beethoven ever write any bad works? Probably not, in which case my ramble ends up in a splutter. Moral: think out a posting before you write it!

Peter

[Hovite]

And I'm now asking myself: in fact, did Beethoven ever write any bad works?

What about "Wellington's Victory, or, the Battle of Vitoria" and "Fantasy in C minor for Piano, Chorus, and Orchestra"?

[Hovite]

As I scan the shelves for something to put on the CD player I glance appreciatively towards the Mackerras Mozart, the Kempe Strauss and the Barenboim Bruckner, but I find myself drawn to Jarvi's George Chadwick, Lloyd-Jones recording of Sullivan's 'Ivanhoe', Howard Griffiths' Holbrooke and Thierry Fischer's Florent Schmitt.

I'm currently playing Balakirev's Symphony No. 1, but I'm not sure whether that is currently ranked as mainstream or unsung.

[albion]

Hi Peter, I quite agree with you on the point that there should ideally be no distinction between 'unsung' (or 'lesser') composers and 'masters', hence the inverted commas in my original post. They are entirely artificial distinctions created by fashion, publishers, the twentieth-century recording industry and blinkered critics. Quite often, neglected composers have simply been defeated by the sheer volume of music clamouring to be heard during their lifetime: I could weep at the labour of Parry, Stanford, Cowen and Mackenzie endlessly producing large-scale and often highly accomplished and attractive works for soloists, chorus and orchestra for the Provincial Festivals between 1880 and 1910 only to have them performed (usually badly) once or at most twice including a London performance. They lived during a period of prodigious production when novelty was the cult and, without the benefits of recording, a work performed once or twice in its existence surely has not had anything like a fair hearing. However, the 'unsung' label is quite a useful one when pushing for greater exposure by recording companies.

Balakirev is probably not 'unsung' in Russia!

[Alan Howe]

Perhaps it's best to think of sung/unsung as a single continuum rather than as separate categories...

[albion]

Quite. Some areas of the output of Brahms (songs), Schumann (choral music) and Saint-Saens (operas other than 'Samson and Delilah') are still overlooked and there are plenty of other 'unsung' works within a 'sung' composer's output: until Marco Polo's complete editions of Johann Strauss II and Josef Strauss, few would have guessed that so many compositions of such high quality lurked behind the  obscure titles, and, until they were committed to disc, who thought that Elgar's 'Crown of India' and Vaughan Williams' 'Willow Wood' could be so enjoyable. Of course (spontaneous) live performances would be preferable to (repetitious) recordings in an ideal world, but an unrecorded work heard once or twice in concert is not going to be easily remembered even by the most attentive listener and (even with the aid of a score) cannot be properly absorbed. Furthermore, a reliance upon concert performances for our musical nourishment would probably limit our listening to the hours of 7.30-10 pm! Recordings (with all their faults) at least allow us to hear a piece again and again until we 'know' it as well as we are able.

[TerraEpon]

What about "Wellington's Victory, or, the Battle of Vitoria" and "Fantasy in C minor for Piano, Chorus, and Orchestra"?

I love both those pieces, especially the Fantasy.

(But then again, I don't like the Eroica Symphony, Hammenklavier Sonata, or the Grosse Fugue, so what do I know, right?)

[Kriton]

What about "Wellington's Victory, or, the Battle of Vitoria" and "Fantasy in C minor for Piano, Chorus, and Orchestra"?

I love both those pieces, especially the Fantasy.

(But then again, I don't like the Eroica Symphony, Hammenklavier Sonata, or the Grosse Fugue, so what do I know, right?)

Well, I wouldn't call them unsung... More "oversung", especially if you don't like those pieces!

Seriously, I would go out on a limb and say Beethoven wrote a lot crappy works, but I would probably nominate those uninteresting youth works like his compositions for wind band or mandolin. I must have a recording of that stuff somewhere - I'm as sure of that as I am of the fact that I'll never listen to it again...

[Amphissa]

 
The "unsung" tag, for me, applies more to works than to composers. Sure, there are many composers who are largely neglected. Virtually ALL of their works are "unsung." But there are other composers who are well known for one or two compositions, but the rest of their compositions are neglected. They are famous, and yet most of their music remains unsung. And then there are the composers who have almost universal name recognition, who are famous for many compositions, and yet some of their music remains unsung, neglected, even though it is quite good.

We tend to discuss most often the composers who have been almost entirely neglected. Most people have never heard of York Bowen, Arthur Foote, Schmidt-Kowalski, Martucci, Cliffe. All of their music is unsung. And Taneyev -- I am left speechless by his neglect.

But most people have heard of Saint-Saens. His 3rd Symphony is quite famous and some of his orchestral pieces like Havanaise are familiar to a lot of people. Dukas is famous for his Sorcerer's Apprentice and Rimsky-Korsakov is famous for Scheherazade and Flight of the Bumblebee. But most people have never heard anything else by these composers -- certainly not much.

But even a truly famous composer like Rachmaninoff -- how many people, even on this board, have ever heard his first piano sonata, a work so challenging that few attempt it and only two recordings are even decent, and yet, played well, is amazingly good? And most people have never heard his choral symphony "The Bells" which was his favorite of his compositions.

So, I still listen to the "sungs". But often it is the neglected works by these composers that attract me most often these days.

[chill319]

Peterschott's thoughtful post brought to mind this from Kant (1783): "Enlightenment is humanity's departure from its self-imposed immaturity. This immaturity is self-imposed when its cause is not lack of intelligence but failure of courage to think without someone else's guidance. Dare to know! That is the slogan of Enlightenment." In this forum we dare to listen, and it comes to much the same thing.

I have a weakness for late Schumann, particularly the violin pieces -- the concerto with its sublime slow movement, the violin fantasie op 131, and the third violin sonata. Less unsung than they were a few years ago, these works still, I think, illustrate Amphissa's point regarding unsung pieces and probably will in my lifetime always fall somewhere towards the unsung terminus of Alan's spectrum.

[TerraEpon]

And most people have never heard his choral symphony "The Bells" which was his favorite of his compositions.

Eh, that pieces is plenty recorded, I'd hardly call it unsung, and it's usually cited as one of Rachmaninov's finest pieces.

That said, there's plenty of unsung Rachmaninov, such as the incomplete string quartets (not even on the 'complete' Brilliant Classics set) and the recently discovered suite (originally for orchestra but only existing as a piano piece).

[Amphissa]

 
Just because it has been recorded does not mean people have heard it.  There are some good recordings of Taneyev's "John of Damascus", but most people have never heard it. Also Martinu's symphonies. If music does not get played in concert and does not get played on the radio, people do not hear it.

I think Rachmaninoff's "The Bells" has been played at The Proms two times in history. ?? Is that right? And two times is probably more than it has ever been played by any orchestra in the U.S. And I think Taneyev's "John of Damascus" is played even less. Has it ever been played at The Proms? I have never seen it on a program in the U.S. in 30 years! Yet both of these compositions rank among my favorite music for voice with orchestra.

[eschiss1]

And I'm now asking myself: in fact, did Beethoven ever write any bad works?

What about "Wellington's Victory, or, the Battle of Vitoria" and "Fantasy in C minor for Piano, Chorus, and Orchestra"?

I'm told his two mandolin sonatas are nothing to phone home about. That said, I haven't heard them yet, for one; and nothing to phone home about is not "bad".  Will try to get a listen to them.
I have heard his op. 136(?) cantata (contemporary with the 7th symphony) "Der glorreiche Augenblick", which also wasn't bad but was more - average? ... enjoyable, though, still. Hrm!
Sigh. Another "get back to you on that one"
Eric