How good is unsung music--and how would we know?

[Double-A]

In the recent thread on Gerald Walter Crawford a few of us got sidetracked into a discussion of the issue of quality.  Alan Howe quite rightly reminded us to stay on topic.

Since I believe we might have been onto something on that sidetrack I am trying to continue the "debate" in a new thread.  As a reminder and starting point here is the last post on this sidetrack by Matesic:

Unfortunately not many of us are qualified to judge whether a piece of music is "well written" or not. Reading a string quartet score there are certain criteria which prompt me to make such a judgment with a reasonable chance of not perpetrating a gross injustice, but when confronted with a piano piece I wouldn't have a clue. And in the context of this forum, with certain exceptions that can be argued over another day, there frankly aren't many pieces that would qualify as "truly great". The best we can hope to do is try to separate the good (stimulating, pleasurable, memorable etc) from the mediocre.  All subjective, of course, but very necessary when so many competent, well-trained, even professional composers of all ages have turned out so much music that wouldn't be missed.

(Sorry, I can't figure out how to format as a quote if it comes from another thread.)

Read the rest in the thread on Crawford if you are interested, starting with post 4 or 5 where things started to get away from Crawford. 

I am interested to hear what people think about questions like the following:
What constitutes "good" music (restricting ourselves to the period we are always talking about here)?
Do we always want to listen to "good" music?  Do we always want to listen to great music?  And how does the passion for unsung music come into this?  In other words:  Given a good sized sung repertoire which is generally good, much of it great (or do you disagree with this premise?) why hunt for unsung stuff?  Matesich has a point when he says that much of it "wouldn't be missed", doesn't he?  (Though Mozart wouldn't be missed if he had never lived or the Parthenon wouldn't be missed if the Greeks had never built it...) 

The floor is open...

[sdtom]

The purpose of this forum for me is the introduction of new pieces that I might never have heard before. I base this knowledge on forum members who are far more knowledgeable than I. We still of course have our own opinion and it isn't right or wrong. Ex. One of my favorite works is the 4th symphony of Glazunov which some people have not heard of while others finding it dull and uninspiring. Some on this forum consider him a sung composer others unsung. I find much of his work to be exciting and pretty much have most of his work in the 19 volume Naxos set released years ago.
Tom

[chill319]

A lot of it is good enough for me. So many wonderful B+ and A- composers!

How would I "know"? Do you mean verbally "justify" affection for the music? That _is_ a crucial question for this forum, and it deserves periodic discussion. That said, I might similarly try to justify my affection for my wife, who is neither famous nor on the covers of fashion magazines (though, of course, she should be).

Many unsung composers communicate with me at depths it's hard to find in our tattooed pop culture.

[Alan Howe]

We've tried this before and disagreed about whether there can be objective criteria by which one can judge the quality of a piece of music, or not. I think there are such criteria, but so many other factors come into play, notably whether one has listened to something sufficiently well/over a sufficient length of time/sufficiently often, that we have never really got anywhere. Unless we can get beyond the knee-jerk 'well, I just like it' response to the 'well, I like it because...' reasoned argument, I don't think it's a subject worth pursuing again.

[mbhaub]

"Well written" and "Good" are mutually exclusive. There are a lot of things that technically are well-written, but not so good: there are hundreds of cds in my library attesting to that. The Schnabel 2nd symphony is technically well-written and horrible to listen to. Then there are things that may not be technically well written, but are not just good, but great: Musorgsky's Boris Godinov or original Night on Bald Mountain for example. Rimsky-Korsakov took them and made then well written, but was something lost in the process? Probably.

Then there are things that only a serious devotee or musician can appreciate. And the Glazunov 4th is as good as example as any. I, too, think it's a thrilling, beautiful work. But I'm in a minority. The compositional skill is astonishing. The way the themes cross-fertilize the whole work is amazing. But most people don't  hear it, or care. Brilliantly scored, you'd think it would be as popular as Tchaikovsky - but it's not.

There is a lot of good music, and followers of this site are well aware hundreds of them that never appear on concerts these days. Orchestras are generally stuck playing a few hundred sanctified standard repertoire pieces over and over. There's little room for contemporary music or forgotten works. The music they play isn't just good, it's GREAT!

Which brings me to this: as a performer (bassoon) there are some works you play that you just know are GREAT. There's no logic, no way to quantify it. Every fiber in your being says "this is great stuff". In the past four weeks I've played three concerts. On one of them I played Tchaikovsky 5th. The next week Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique. I don't care how many times I play those works, I never tire of them - they are just as exciting and thrilling to play as they are to listen to. Every minute you spend polishing your part is worth it. Another concert we played Symphony No. 3 by a living composer I won't name for fear of lawsuits or defriending on Facebook. It was dull, uninspired. Went through all the motions: four movements in the right order. It was easy to play. But it was not a joyful, exciting thing to play. When the masters wrote, there's something in their writing that speaks to you and invites you to play your heart out.

As a listener at home, I spend most of my time on lesser-known music. Maybe it's not Great, but it is certainly well-written and entertaining. I get more enjoyment out of a symphony by Kalinninov, Glazunov, Schmidt, Stanford, or Bax than I do out of Brahms, Mozart, Haydn, and many other "great composers".

Finally, why hunt for the Unsung? Because every now and then you find a real gem. something worth knowing and listening to repeatedly - and something to tell others about. There's a long list of works in this category. Just a few: Raff 3 & 5, Bloch C# minor, Atterberg 6, Schmidt 4, Bakakirev 1st, and on and on.

[Alan Howe]

Which brings me to this: as a performer (bassoon) there are some works you play that you just know are GREAT. There's no logic, no way to quantify it.

I don't believe that for a moment. Of course, there's the gut-level response; but there also has to be something objective about the music, something quantifiable, otherwise one wouldn't even be able to talk about it, e.g. melody, individuality, memorability, orchestration, harmony, rhythm, originality, novelty, etc., etc. Of course, that's hard for amateurs like me to articulate, but surely that's why experts write books/commentaries/articles, etc...

[Paul Barasi]

Three obstructions to the quality of unsungs are: brand name recognition, marketability, and the immense total number of compositions. Most of the big names produced a large output: enough to stuff concert halls & recordings. Just the number of unsung symphonies is remarkable. The total amount when all unsung music is added in is incredible (and there's even more than showing when works that were never published or disappeared/destroyed are included). Has anyone tried to quantify this by number of works, or duration, or how long it might take to listen to it all - even restricting this to our site's cut-off dates? Or your own collection: CDs that you haven't ever played or not heard for years, or thought you didn't rate but now could do. What gems may there be waiting to be unearthed? Then there is our own cheating with unsungs: yes, unsung composers and works to the world but not with ourselves. For us, unsung is what we don't play.

Now, I must confess that a great deal of my CD buying has been risky, prompted by the composer/work being treated as unsung and the thrill of discovering something really good. Inevitably, there is a fair bit I consider to be duds but I would guess a good majority is to me of reasonable to high quality and interest.

[rosflute]

I spend my time researching and then publishing forgotten works, and I can assure you that it is possible to assess whether a work is good or not. You see touches of genius that are missing from other works. Songs are an extremely good way to illustrate the point and Schubert's 'Gretchen am Spinnrade' is an excellent example of a composer using the simplest ingredients in a highly skilled an inventive manner throughout. Compare Schubert's work with that of Johanna Kinkel, who wrote some very good songs, and you will observe the difference. Kinkel's songs are enjoyable with good ideas but they lack any real signs of genius and every stanza is set to the same notes. Schubert makes small changes to illustrate particular words or feelings, Kinkel does not.
At the end of the day what matters is whether any individual enjoys some music and it should not matter what someone else says about it. However, yes, it is possible to see why some pieces are more successful than others.

[Ilja]

There may well be ways of objectively determining whether a work is good or not, but how relevant is it to do so? One of the biggest obstacles in getting recognition for unsung works, or for keeping the classical music scene alive at all for that matter, is the ridiculous notion that you need a degree of expertise in order to be allowed to enjoy it.


The most important thing is to make it possible for the public to hear music, and to give them the possibility to derive visceral enjoyment from it. How likely a piece may succeed in that mission isn't dependant upon its technical quality - there are other, far less predictable factors at work. A technically "bad" piece that happens to be heard in a movie, for instance, may be turned into an instant crowd-pleaser.


The only thing I feel I can do is to encourage people to listen to as much music as they can, and to have them listen to works that whose enjoyment I can transfer to them if I'm lucky.

[matesic]

By a matter of seconds Ilja has anticipated my main point, but I'll make it anyway!

How much of the obvious is worth restating here? The quality of a piece is only important in relation to the pleasure and satisfaction it gives listeners. The standard repertoire has become so because of the pleasure it has given and still gives to millions. Our pleasure isn't entirely determined by a piece's quality; also coming into play are our past experiences which may predispose us to certain periods or genres and prejudice us against others. On the other side of the coin, over-familiarity may cause a masterpiece to lose its lustre. Our response to a piece is also shaped by short-term psychological factors; I remember coming away from a concert feeling deeply underwhelmed, only to be captivated two days later by a broadcast of the same performance.

A relatively modest "unsung" piece may give disproportionate pleasure thanks to the thrill of discovery. Having reached the sad state in which I really wouldn't mind if I never heard many of the great classics again, I still get a huge buzz from hearing and playing the unfamiliar provided certain "objective" measures of quality are met. One of my past orchestras was devoted to presenting obscure operas in under-rehearsed concert performances whose greatest virtue was a high level of commitment from all concerned.  The audiences were transiently roused to massive enthusiasm but the pieces mostly sank straight back into obscurity.

Which brings me to the role of the performer. Clearly a perfect rendition of the notes is only the start – a strong performance can elevate a passably good piece to a higher plane while a bad performance can make a great piece insufferable (although not necessarily to all its hearers). I have great sympathy for professional orchestral musicians who are expected to play warhorses as if their lives depended on it; for them even to look bored spoils the experience for many.

So I think the best thing we can do is to carry on promoting the music that gives us a thrill. It doesn't really matter if most of the world doesn't agree, but it's good if even a few others get to share the experience.

[sdtom]

I for one find this discussion to be quite interesting and because of this thread another question comes to mind. I'm listening to a new recording of Dvorak's 6th Symphony with the Houston Symphony. In all my years of attending concerts I've never heard this work performed before. Dvorak is of course a sung composer but is the work itself unsung? I would tend to classify this work as one in that gray area. I'm glad to read that there is one other fan of Glazunov on the forum.
Tom

[Alan Howe]

There are, of course, many recordings of Dvorak 6, but it's not all that often performed in concert. My hunch is that it's still unfamiliar to most audiences, so it's probably accurate to put it in that 'grey' area somewhere between known and unknown - which is an absolute scandal because it's one if the great romantic-era symphonies. On any level - melody, orchestration, rhythmic ingenuity, structure, originality, it's an outstanding work.

[Alan Howe]

...of course, Tom, you've now got to explore the other Dvorak symphonies. Assuming you know Nos.7 to 9, I'd suggest you proceed as follows: start with No.5, then 3, then 4, 2 and finally 1.

[JimL]

If you're going to get a really unsung Dvorak 6th, get the one with James Gaffigan conducting.  He takes the first movement repeat (which the composer stated should NEVER be taken). 

[sdtom]

7,8, and 9 I'm familiar and I'm working on 6 but 1-5 I have little experience with. Need to explore these further.
Tom