WHO is that composer?

[chill319]

Late last night while driving home from work, a local FM station broadcast music that intrigued more and more as it unfolded (at length). Rather than listening single-mindedly, I found myself trying to guess who could have written such a piece with this, that, and the other thing in it. More importantly, many of the thises, thats, and the others were pretty darned impressive, if not quite goosebumpworthy, music.

It turned out to be a late ballet by Villa Lobos based on Eugene O'Neill's one-acter "The Emperor Jones."

I'm sure we've all had similar experiences. So my question is:

What would be a memorable unsung piece that you encountered in some such way?

[edurban]

Like many of us, I have many, many cds, and many go unlistened to year after year.  My wife's solution to this 'rut' is to pick something at random and put it on without telling me what it is.  In this way I discovered that Sir Donald Francis Tovey's piano concerto is a much more compelling piece than I remembered...also that I couldn't name the composer if the Inquisition were asking me the question...

David

[John H White]

Back in the '50s I was very pleased with myself at being able to guess correctly that the music I had tuned into on the "wireless" as we used to call it was Vaughan Williams's 5th symphony, not having heard it before.

[petershott@btinternet.com]

I remember rather stunning myself in the mid-1970s when I attended a Welsh National Opera workshop on Die Walkure given by Anthony Negus and in which Jeffrey Lawton and Kathyn Harries gave up their Sunday afternoons in order to participate. At one point in a discussion of Act 1 Negus played a phrase and then mischievously turned to the audience and asked of what it reminded them. The expression on his face registered that he held some kind of trump card, that he expected no-one could possibly answer, and then he would astound them all by revealing it.

Being an impetuous youth at the time I suddenly blurted out and without thinking of it an aria of a Bach cantata, complete with its title and BWV number. I immediately regretted it, probably blushed, and felt very foolish wondering whether folk might scoff at such an outrageous suggestion.

Negus gulped - and then declared I was spot on right. For once impetuosity was rewarded.

I have listened again to Bach just prior to scribbling this (it is, after all, Saturday morning, and the serious stuff has not yet commenced). I'm pretty sure it was BWV104. And I can't spot any connection whatsoever between that cantata and Act 1 of Walkure!! Now there's an implicit challenge to others: is there any resemblance of musical phraseology at all? Probably not. In which case either I've got the wrong cantata, or else (and most probably) I've reached the stage of going gaga.

Peter

[Amphissa]

 
Well, I've been less lucky. I've heard some things that I liked on the radio and never did figure out what they were.

But one that I did track down turned out to be by Stenhammar. I had never heard Stenhammar before, and had just assumed (I don't know why) that his music was of the modern, spiky abrasive style. How wrong I was. It was Stenhammar's Serenade, op. 31.

Another experience like that, and another composer that I had just made assumptions about, was Roussel. When I discovered that the symphony I had been listening to was Roussel's 1st symphony, I was really taken by surprise.

I've since enjoyed quite a lot of the music of both of these composers.

[Alan Howe]

Blind listening can be very useful in breaking down one's prejudices. I speak from experienece...

[mbhaub]

I have clear recollection of this even 40+ from the incident. Back in the late 60's I was very much an avid radio enthusiast, rebuilding old tube (valve) radios to get them working. After one successful evening getting an old Atwater Kent up and running, I tuned in the classical station just wanting to test the thing out. But soon I became entranced by the music I was hearing. And then the finale! You talk about goosebumps! This was the most magical thing I'd ever heard. I couldn't wait to hear the announcer tell me what it was so I could go get it. Today it isn't unsung at all -- oversung is more like it. But hearing the Mahler 2nd back in '68 at 2:00 with vacuum tubes aglow was a turning point that had me soon becoming a Mahlerite.

Not many years later, it was a similar experience how I came to discover Raff. In that case, it was the Herrmann recording of Lenore. I tuned in not far from the beginning, and listened to the end eager to hear who composed that great symphony. Oh, the memories that the mp3, iPod generation will never experience. I still miss my old radios.

[eschiss1]

Well, I've been less lucky. I've heard some things that I liked on the radio and never did figure out what they were.

It took me about a year to find out what one piece that was broadcast on a local station was. I tuned in a bit into the first movement, and the name of the work was not announced at the end.  Fortunately I have or had a good musical memory, and the next time I heard it broadcast, recognized a few details in that first movement (it turned out to have been Lars-Erik Larsson's 2nd symphony.)
Eric

[JimL]

I think my first experience with this was listening to a totally unfamiliar PC from about the middle of the first movement all the way to the end while sitting in my car at night.  I totally forget the circumstances, but I remember that I guessed who the composer was and what the work had to have been, and when the announcer came on at the end I realized that I was pretty good at recognizing the style of a composer from one work and identifying one I had never heard before.  The piece?  Anton Rubinstein's PC 5, played by Adrian Ruiz on Genesis.

[giwro]

I'd say my most memorable was my first hearing of Saint-Saen's 3rd Symphonie... I was glued to the radio (and had providentially just pressed record on the tape deck....

After that, I simply could not hear the piece too many times, and it has become one of my all-time favorite orchestral works.

- G