Composers famous for one work only.

[Alan Howe]

Franck: most listeners would know the Violin Sonata ahead of the Symphony these days.
Elgar: Nimrod from the Enigma Variations is just as well known.
Handel (outside our remit): Water Music - just as well known as The Messiah

Now, let's return to unsung music from the romantic era in this thread, please...

[kolaboy]

Jaromír Weinberger - Švanda Dudák  (Polka & Fugue).

[Ilja]

Dukas symphony familiar? Where? Not in my part of the world. I hang out with a lot of musicians and none of them know it. That's the problem: we on this site are so familiar with the forgotten corners of the musical realm that we forget what it was like to be a novice or an "average" music listener. To those people, Sorcerer's Apprentice is the only thing Dukas wrote.

Maybe it's utterly unknown in the English-speaking world, but in the last fifteen years I've heard it in concert twice in France and once in Holland and Germany. That  counts for something. Also, Amazon lists 15 recordings: not very many, but far from non-existent.

[Alan Howe]

I'd say Dukas' Symphony was only known from recordings really. Classic FM's a good guide - and there you'll only hear The Sorcerer's Apprentice.

[eschiss1]

Re Dukas: putting the symphony aside, his Villanelle for horn and piano (or orchestra) and Fanfare from La Péri have been heard in concert, on recording and on radio stations (ok, better radio stations, and depending on country) - he's not quite a one-work composer. (Concerts this year including works by Dukas include La Péri (in full), La Péri (fanfare), variations for piano on a theme of Rameau, Sorcerer's Apprentice (most of them), Villanelle for horn and piano.)

And in all due fairness to Classic FM, radio station playlists are not polls, etc. ... (and probably most to the point, to the extent that they are, they're polls only of their audience, not of a larger group- their listeners, not similar people in other countries, perhaps.)

[sdtom]

I think that Hollywood chooses many of our most popular themes for their films. Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky, Chopin, and Lizst lead the way.
Tom

[Alan Howe]

And in all due fairness to Classic FM, radio station playlists are not polls

Actually, they are. Classic FM is not only listener-driven in its choice of music played - it also has a top 300 (I think) voted by those listeners.

[eschiss1]

I stand corrected.

[Amphissa]

Carl Orff's claim to fame as a composer seems limited to Carmina Burana here in the U.S.

Jean-Joseph Mouret's Fanfare-Rondeau from his first Suite de Symphonies ranks right up there with Pachebel's Canon. Immediately recognizable, but but most people have no clue who wrote it.

[TerraEpon]

There's a name that I doubt anyone would even think about, but I think it fits, very well.

Vladimir Vavilov. You won't even find his name as the composer of anything popular, but he did, in fact, write a piece that IS: The Ave Maria "by Guilio Caccini"
That piece is a musical hoax, but even more odd is that Vavilov just said that 'Anonymous' wrote it, and it was his student that gave the Caccini attribution.

[eschiss1]

Erm, semi-infamous-sort-of (and non-existent- well, ok, according to Wikipedia, the person existed, but is not known to have composed) for one work only? Mykola Ovsianiko-Kulikovsky, non-existent composer to whom was attributed... (well, see Wikipedia.
... never mind )

[Mark Thomas]

How interesting (and appalling in places), Eric.

[alberto]

The Dukas Symphony shall be performed in the current season in Lyon (I must admit it is very, very seldom performed even in France, while several recordings exist).
I attended a performance of La Peri and one of the Piano sonata.

[Alan Howe]

The odd performance here and there doesn't make a work famous, though...

[eschiss1]

No argument there, Mark, no argument at all. (I am just glad my Russian great-(great-?)grand-parents had already emigrated (to NYC, I think) (I don't actually know where in Russia they lived or whether they ever personally ran into a pogrom, but...), likewise the rest of my family from other countries, late the 19th century. So very much more than glad, I cannot say, but only because I cannot find the words.)
I was interested to see Gleb Taranov show up in that article, I think I shall create a Wiki-article for him now I know he did more than just write a couple of interesting pieces (like that 6th symphony, some other things too that I haven't heard).
Erm. Sorry.
zzzoooooh. Grofé's been mentioned- on some radio stations one occasionally hears other works of his, but yes, his face to almost anyone who's heard anything at all by him would be the Grand Canyon Suite.
Re Glazunov: are excerpts from his Seasons ballet (admittedly, one of the few ballet works I personally find to be "not too long for its content" even at full-length rather than suite and even without the dance visuals, just sound...)  the one and only work that a casual, non-fan is likely to have heard? Interesting. (Not doubting, I didn't know this one way or the other. I see that portions of Les ruses d'amour get regular airplay, but on classical radio stations that of course mostly classical fans are likely to tune into- intentionally, anyway. Of course, so do his symphonies also etc., his saxophone quartet, his concertos for violin and saxophone (especially), etc., but on a Glazunov google  search through radiowavetuner.com (fwiw- just a radio schedule "crawl" site I like and recommend, at least when it's up!...) one does see ruses d'amour a certain amount (and "The Ruses of Love", too. Especially in July 2013 and somewhat in September, for some reason- maybe an artifact of the search... )