Tragic symphonies by unsung composers

[Delicious Manager]

I agree with Alan re: the Arael Symphony (what a great piece!), but would say that, given the consistently high quality of his music, Suk is VERY unsung generally - as his contemporaneous compatriot Vítězslav Novák.

[eschiss1]

I agree with Alan re: the Arael Symphony (ehat a great piece!), but would say that, given the consistently high quality of his music, Suk is VERY unsung generally - as his contemporaneous compatriot Vítězslav Novák.

I don't know who (probably several people) introduced me to the music of these composers, yes, but I owe them quite a lot. (Well, I remember who some of the people are )

Other works I could recommend *g* - Novak's late chamber music- the cello sonata and 3rd string quartet - are still almost completely unsung (the cello sonata's received a modern recording, the 3rd quartet was coupled with it on LP and hasn't been seen since I think?) but deserve much better, Suk's mid-period 2nd string quartet (the one-movement opus 31, begins in G minor and ends in Dflat) and late Epilog (the last work in the series that contains Asrael - Zrani (Ripening) isn't half-bad either !) are pretty fantastic and maybe fantastical too, ... - to select a few works; there are many more. It may be that these used to be known as some of Dvorak's pupils (and Suk as his son in law, and the grandfather of the violinist of the same name, all of which is true); one is fortunate, in my honest opinion to have more access, in live concert and on recording and in broadcast, to their music. 

(A whole lot of information on Novak's music, including a good worklist, is on a site about Kapralova's music, and there's a story there, I suspect )

Apologies for all the BIXies. Early yet in my day.
Eric

[Hovite]

I think that it is also worth mentioning the extraordinary Symphonie funèbre of J M Kraus, written for the funeral of the assassinated Gustav III.

[chill319]

Thanks, all, for your excellent comments. A few random thoughts for any who care to share...

Since Aristotle, tragedy has been associated with catharsis. Tragedy is something shared through empathy -- otherwise catharsis couldn't occur.  Everybody dies. But some die young, which ups the ante, and some of the young who die are givers, not takers, which ups the ante further. And a few of these are bold. I think this is what Draeseke is aiming for in the first movement of his symphony 3 -- healthy, heroic music (after the somber foreshadowing of the opening). His subsequent funeral march will not be for a marionette. The olympian prototype of this strategy is found, of course, in Beethoven 3.

Tchaikovsky 6 uses the same kind of idea, light moving to darkness,  except here the contrast between brilliance and pathos (for some, bathos) happens especially in the final two movements. This gets Bonus Tragic Points for conforming to classic and Shakespearean tragic architecture. I would award even more Bonus Points to the tragic closing Chaconne in Brahms 4 -- a subjective response to be sure.

Did Beethoven ever write a tragic instrumental work in the Brahms/Tchaikovsky mold, one where the ending is pessimistic? He certainly wrote lots of cathartic music that ends in a blaze of optimism or glory. Anybody feel that some of this works as tragedy?

My feeling is that before Tristan and The Ring, few 19th-century instrumental works were tragic in the Brahms/Tchaikovsky manner, where bad things happen to good people. (Chopin's Ballades are an exception.)  Strauss's instrumental works end in various ways, including ironically and ambiguously,  but to my recollection never tragically or pessimistically. I wonder if there was a window between the impact of mature Wagner (the mid 1860s) and the impact of mature Strauss (the 1890s) where we might find more unsung composers writing tragic instrumental works?

[JimL]

Strauss' Don Juan starts heroically and ends tragically, or at least pessimistically (he dies disillusioned).  As for Beethoven, I'd say the Coriolan Overture qualifies as tragic, but then again so is the play whence it derives.

[eschiss1]

Strauss' Don Juan starts heroically and ends tragically, or at least pessimistically (he dies disillusioned).  As for Beethoven, I'd say the Coriolan Overture qualifies as tragic, but then again so is the play whence it derives.

Oddly, the only other really pessimistic ending of a piece (as against a movement- Alfred Einstein, I think, rightly described Beethoven as an optimist when it came to this ... comparing him to Mozart who sometimes did end in some very ambivalent ways- Kv464/iv was the finale Einstein had in mind; not tragic but -not- happy!) in Beethoven I can think of- there are minor-mode endings in works like the 8th quartet and the Pathétique and Appasionata sonatas, and the C minor violin sonata, but they are generally active and very allegro, not like the ending of the Coriolan ov. much less some other examples one could think of (Tchaik 6 besides!!...) (... then again this is true of the "Tragic" Brahms' 4th symphony as well, of course. But whose title is that?) - is that of the unpublished, somewhat-passacaglia-ish 32 variations in C minor (WoO 80) written - maybe? - around 1806.
Eric
(further edit: not because it's passacaglia-ish - like the Brahms - but because of the nature of the insistent ending, the last bars, the way the C minor variations come to a close.  Another work that comes to a close in a different-also-similar-way actually - Atterberg sym. 5 "Funebre"... with its indecision at the end between two different keys and sudden PLUNKing on one of them that's oddly affecting.  And that makes me think of, of all things, the ending of Allan Pettersson's symphony 4- and 15 - both of which convince you they're about to end in one key only to end in another very suddenly, though in two different ways. Odd but effective effect. Anyway. Sorry.)

Belated belated decade-belated edit: actually, WoO 80 was published - the next year (1807), in Vienna, not "unpublished" at all... I don't know what I was thinking.

[hasleraj]

the Asrael Symphony's status ... It has had two public performances in London in 2010 - one with the LPO under Vladimir Jurowski in February and one with the LSO under Daniel Harding in May ... So: unsung? No. Undersung? Maybe...   

Posting for the first time, and late in the day for this thread, but it called up a memory.

I think a crucial time for the Asrael Symphony's UK reception was Libor Pešek's tenure in Liverpool. He recorded the piece with the RLPO in 1990, and their magnificent Proms performance (13 August 1991), which I was lucky enough to attend, was an experience I can't imagine forgetting. I got to know the piece in the 80s through Neumann's recording, which I picked up after hearing the last 10 minutes of the piece on Radio 3 and responding to that extraordinary radiance. Only on a full hearing, of course, did I realise the truth of Suk's "You have no idea what that final C major chord cost me." Recordings may have multiplied, but if anything, I think the piece is still undersung.

[Mark Thomas]

Welcome, hasleraj!

[Alan Howe]

Yes, 'undersung' these days rather than unsung is about right, I think.

[eschiss1]

I'd still nominate Hermann's 2nd symphony, for a certain feeling of inevitability of its pacing and progressions, doom-laden feeling even in moderate and fast tempi, the particular use he makes of chorales - not unique qualities at the time, and the word tragic can't be applied here in a Greek fashion but at least in Fifield's performance on Sterling, and as I hear it, it can have some of the associated affect.