How Classical Music History is viewed in Today's World

[Justin]

Found a fascinating interview with David Hurwitz, and in one particular segment (1:04:00), he talks about "music history." What he discusses reminds me of what we take part in here at UC, and the purpose of sharing unsung works.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGwYe9a8wj0

He says that music history is based on what was being composed, performed and perceived at that point in time, not what we conceive as strictly the influencers and influenced (Wagner/ Brahms to Schoenberg, etc). There is a brief mention where he states that in the 1870s and 1880s, one would have been just as likely to hear Joachim Raff as Brahms.

As Mark has written about extensively, Raff was enormously popular in his day, and yet, in my opinion, his descent into the abyss was pushed by what the public saw as the true figures of Romanticism. In my view, only then with a re-evaluation on the "history" of Romantic music, did Bernard Herrmann and now the wealth of recordings in the past 30 years provide us with this hidden repertoire. It is not only gorgeous music, but the key to giving us a better idea of how Romantic music had a part in the 19th/20th century classical music culture.

[terry martyn]

Raff, Brull, and Lachner would be on my shortlist of  masters whose work should be heard in concert-halls. Only Raff out of these is decently served by the music labels and I would rank him alongside Brahms in terms of stature.  Didn´t I once read somewhere that there is a Victorian novel out there where his famous March gets central casting?  That would be a book to savour.

[Mark Thomas]

It's not I'm afraid. I read the novel years ago but unfortunately can't now remember title or author. The Lenore march is constantly being whistled and hummed by the hero as a popular tune, a sort of leitmotif, but that's it's only role.

[Alan Howe]

I think that one of the functions of recorded music, especially the current flowering of recordings of unsung repertoire, has been to broaden our and deepen our understanding of musical history. Of course, there is some music (probably a lot of music) that isn't very good; then there's a huge mountain of material that is well worth rescuing, if only to stave off the boredom of hearing the same standard repertoire time after time; and then, just occasionally, genuine masterpieces emerge from the mists of time and we ask ourselves: where has that been all my life?

We live in a very exciting era, for which we should be extremely grateful.

[Ilja]

There is still this idea that some sort of transcendent "judgment from history" is what determines artistic repertory, be it in music or any other art form. That is of course nonsense. Whether an artist is adept at we would now call marketing, whether he/she dies early or lives to an old age, where he or she works and performs, are things that have nothing to do with the quality of his work but are crucial in determining its fate.

And I'm not even talking about things like Zeitgeist, which favors artists whose work happens to coincide with the collective tastes of a certain time or group. A good example is Rembrandt, certainly not considered the greatest master of Dutch painting for a long time, whose use of contrasting light just happened to fit in with bourgeois tastes in the same time that large art museums constructed a canon of "great art". That, and so much of art appreciation, is down to largely external factors.

[CelesteCadenza]

I read the novel years ago but unfortunately can't now remember title or author. The Lenore march is constantly being whistled and hummed by the hero as a popular tune, a sort of leitmotif, but that's it's only role.

More unfortunately, I can recall both the author (Jessie Fothergill) and the title "The First Violin: A Novel" 1896

Available from Project Gutenberg http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/29219 among other online sources - consult at your own risk.

[Mark Thomas]

Well done, CC! Yes, that's it. Thanks for the Project Gutenberg link too.

[Justin]

More unfortunately, I can recall both the author (Jessie Fothergill) and the title "The First Violin: A Novel" 1896

Small correction. It was published in 1877, which would make a bit more sense given that Lenore was composed in the early 1870s.