Heuberger Symphony?

[FBerwald]

For the Musical-Archeologists here. I came upon this interesting reference to a Symphony in F by Heuberger [I imagine Richard Heuberger of the splendid Der Opernball]. Did he masquerade as a serious composer ?



Any thoughts?

[minacciosa]

It was no masquerade; examine the list of his teachers and you'll see he was trained t be a "serious" composer (whatever that means). He chose a direction as all composers do, but I would never characterize what he and others did so exceedingly well as less than "serious" (whatever that means). Ever try to write an operetta, or anything for that matter? It's all a serious application of hard-won skills and the lightning strike of inspiration. No pejoratives are necessary in characterizing Hueberger's accomplishments.

[Mark Thomas]

My initial thought is outrage at seeing Raff's Im Walde Symphony descried as a mundanity! Cooling down, though, I see that this page (in German) also refers to a Brahmsian F major Symphony be Heuberger

[FBerwald]

"Serious" or "Light" is not something I invented @minacciosa rather a title given based to the types of compositions produced. I'm sure that writing an operetta requires a lot of skills, Lehar is one of my favorite composers and anyone who has heard his music is impressed upon by the lush and skilled orchestration. Even Oscar Straus wrote "serious" (I'm pretty sure most of us know what it means!) music before his operetta and Light music phase. I also did mention "... the splendid Der Opernball" - I have liked what I have heard of Heuberger's music and didn't intent any disrespect. 

[mjkFendrich]

I also did mention "... the splendid Der Opernball"

However it seems to be clear by now that substantial parts of the orchestration (and the complete overture?) for Heuberger's "Opernball"
had been done by Zemlinsky.

[Gareth Vaughan]

I wonder if this symphony has survived.

[Mark Thomas]

It doesn't seem to have been published. The ONB has quite a few Heuberger manuscripts, but a symphony isn't amongst them.

[Wheesht]

Nor can the symphony be found in the Wienbibliothek, where they have a lot of Heuberger manuscripts, including a letter by Heuberger to Kienzl about the impending performance in Vienna. That performance received a very positive review in the Wiener Zeitung on 29 December 1886.

[Gareth Vaughan]

Then it is unlikely we shall ever discover the extent of its mundanity. One wonders how the author of the book from which the extract is taken arrived at his Olympian opinion. I see it was published in the USA by the University of Indiana in 2003. I doubt very much that its author was familiar with any of the symphonies he so airily dismisses as "mundanities". This is the sort of third rate musicology we can do without.

[Mark Thomas]

Well said, that man!

[eschiss1]

Well, we can't ask him (whether and what he knew of those works) as he (the author of that paragraph above, A. Peter Brown) died in 2003 too.

(This suggests he was indeed very interested in unsung and underheard music, but of the _Classical_ era (e.g. d'Ordoñez)).)

[pcc]

I studied with Brown at IU and he was a cultured, interesting, and provocative teacher, a Classical specialist (though I took a really fascinating Schumann seminar with him) but he was personally persnickety and in his writing sometimes threw things in to jolt people. (He sometimes did that in classes too; at the end of one, he dismissed us once with "Next time, we will look at some aspects of Berlioz, the greatest composer of the nineteenth century.")

[Alan Howe]

Berlioz, the greatest composer of the nineteenth century

Actually, I wouldn't necessarily disagree...

[pcc]

Neither would I.