Unmistakable voices

[Gauk]

Rather than drag a different thread off-topic, I will start a new one here.

There are a number of 20th C composers whose individual voice is so distinctive that if you heard by accident any ten seconds of music from an unfamiliar piece, you would still unfailingly identify the composer at once. Often because their way of constructing harmonies is unique.

It seems to me that it is much harder to spot 19th C romantics as quickly. So many wrote in a common idiom that is a mixture of Schumann, Mendelssohn and Brahms, and latterly Wagner and Strauss. So the subject of this thread is name the romantic composers (preferably less celebrated) whose style is so distinctive that you think they could be identified from any ten-second extract (within reason; not juvenilia, for instance).

The two that spring to my mind are Bruckner and Mahler. The difficulty with them is that they wrote so little that it might be hard to find an extract from an unfamilar piece. However, there was a time when I had not heard all the Mahler symphonies; and one day I heard a cousin of mine whistling something that I could correctly identify as Mahler, even with it being from a symphony I had not heard.

[Alan Howe]

How about: Dvorak, Smetana, Verdi, Rossini, Puccini, Elgar, Schubert, Grieg, Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, Berlioz, Paganini, Sullivan, Gounod, Weber, Johann Strauss, Offenbach, Wolf, Sibelius, Nielsen, Tchaikovsky? - to name just the first ones that come to mind.

Of the unsungs: Draeseke, Raff, Rufinatscha, Stenhammar, Berwald, Alkan, Field, Bull.

In fact, I would seriously question the notion that the majority of sung composers who fall within UC's remit wrote within the stylistic categories mentioned above. The problem applies more obviously to unsung composers writing within the broad Austro-German tradition, but even here there are those whose styles are pretty distinct.

[eschiss1]

(Edit: ) To expand on Berwald, though you mentioned him already... (a fact I seem to have missed. Remedial reading comprehension, Eric. Now. Sorry...)

I've been able to recognize works by Berwald I haven't heard (that I hear on classical radio/TV, and whose title and composer I don't yet know, etc.) as being by Berwald even though his style often sounds to me like a mix of that of other composers. (A specific mix, with fingerprints.  Originality-- is overrated. Originality in _everything_, moreso. (Not accusing Berwald of plagiarism anyway- some of the music his works sounds like, I gather, hadn't yet been written, others I am not sure he had encountered even during his travels. Don't know; don't care- the ingredients may be familiar, the recipe and result are- not always of course, but in much of his work- quite distinctive- to my ears!)

[edurban]

Spohr!

David

[eschiss1]

Good choice, in my opinion. The "sound" of my favorite works by Spohr, at least (the first two string quintets are high on my list, for starters - the way the high-flying violin writing near the first movement's exposition-coda actually sounds happy, instead of merely strenuous as with some violinist-composers in similar contexts maybe..., comes to mind as somehow representative of what someone described as his basically content and humane muse, if I remember? - not meaning anything other than a pleased and complimentary description, -not- something negative...)

(As with at least a lot of what I've read about Liszt, I can't help but like a lot about what I've read about Spohr as a person... tangentially.)

[Mark Thomas]

This is a very subjective issue and really centres on familiarity. Because I, like many of us here, have immersed myself for many years in the music of 19th century romanticism, I often don't have much difficulty in picking up on the tell-tale fingerprints of a composer from the period whose other music I already know. Alan has already mentioned a fair selection of those whose sound worlds are quite individual, despite the fact that many are speaking dialects of a broad Austro-German lingua-franca. I'd add Rubinstein and Glazunov to his list - they have very characteristic orchestral sounds. Clearly, it's easier with "Nationalist" composers such as Glazunov, and orchestral music is easier than chamber, of course. Oddly, I find piano music quite easy too. Juvenilia is notoriously difficult to identify blind because the composer's influences are still unassimilated and some composers, like Eduard Franck or (although a much better composer) Reinecke, never seem to have developed an individual sound.

Whether the 20th century was characterised by composers with more easily differentiated sound worlds I have no idea.

[jerfilm]

Didn't see Mahler and Bruckner in the mix.  After their first symphony or two, I think they're unmistakable.

As for much of mid to later 20th century composers, they all sound pretty much the same to me.   Lots of strange sounds; little substance.  But then, like Mark, I don't listen to most of it.

Jerry

[Alan Howe]

Didn't see Mahler and Bruckner in the mix.

They're in the initial post.

[Alan Howe]

Actually, I do think that the musical scene post UC's remit exhibits a remarkable range of voices. The problem, as Jerry suggests, is that many are ones I simply don't want to listen to - in the same way as I have only theoretical interest in attempting to read James Joyce...

[JimL]

While Reinecke may not have a fully "individual" voice, I certainly find him uniquely gifted in terms of melody and orchestration, as well as developmental skill.  He may be a Mendelssohn/Schumann epigone, but if you feel, as I do, that Mendelssohn and Schumann died too soon and didn't leave enough music behind them, Reinecke is your guy.

[Alan Howe]

That's an interesting view of Reinecke - and one with which I agree. Thanks, Jim.

[Mark Thomas]

No quibbles with that here, either, as it does support my view that one can't hear an unknown piece and "Ahh, that can only be by Reinecke".

[JimL]

However, if one knows Mendelssohn and Schumann well enough, one can infer it's Reinecke.  "Ahh, that isn't anything I know of by Mendelssohn or Schumann, and since I know everything by them, it must be Reinecke!" 

[Alan Howe]

That's a non-sequitur. There's also Jadassohn, for example. And a whole host of other composers basically in the conservative/Leipzig tradition...

[eschiss1]

Hrm. Not at all sure I agree that Reinecke, Jadassohn, Bruch, Rosenhain, Goetz etc. etc. et al. are indistinguishable - but... hrm.