...Mozart, by name. Do we actually have an unsung piece by Amadeus?
A piano work from circa 1780 has been found in the Tirol.
See: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/320587 (http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/320587)
Not the most odd thing in the world. Things are always being found now and again.
As for 'unsung' pieces by Mozart? There's a LOT of them.
Thank you for enlightening me. Now my life is complete.
Quote from: febnyc on Monday 05 March 2012, 22:11
...Mozart, by name. Do we actually have an unsung piece by Amadeus?
A piano work from circa 1780 has been found in the Tirol.
See: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/320587 (http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/320587)
Heard of a Tchaikovsky 7th, but have not heard it. Obviously finshed by someone else.
Tchaikovsky was working on a symphony 7 - or 5 and a 1/2? (I forget if it's no.7 or before no.6 actually ) - but decided, if I recall, that the first movement might do better as a single-movement piano concerto; and we have the piano concerto no.3 in E-flat. The other two movements he almost finished were edited by Sergei Taneyev into an Andante and Finale for piano and orchestra. All three movements, and a piano piece from the opus 72 set to serve as scherzo, were converted into a four-movement symphony by Semyon Bogatyrev. And so, Tchaikovsky symphony in E-flat, ed. Bogatyrev :) (that should probably be "no.8"- let's not forget Manfred.)
And yes, as to unsung works by Mozart... depends on your threshold. I consider the string trio preludes (to precede arrangements of fugues by members of the Bach family) unsung- if Mozart wrote them, which is not as certain as could be. But they're better-known than some other works of his... (and in proportion to quality - the divertimento for string trio Kv563, well! :) Sung, but not nearly enough for justice. But that's not what you asked. :D )
Yes, the Tchaikovsky Symphony in Eb is from before the Pathetique, so the "No. 7" nomenclature is wrong.
Dunno what it has to do with this topic as Tchaikovsky has a lot of unsung music, as does pretty much every major composer.
The "Symphony No. 7" by Tchaikovsky is actually in E Major. Those sketches were in E. When he decided to use the music in a piano concerto instead, he decided that E Major wasn't as "pianistic" a key as E-flat, so he transposed the music a half-step down. The 3rd PC never spent a minute of its existence in E Major, but the symphony completed by Bogatyrev is in that key.
Quote from: TerraEpon on Friday 09 March 2012, 06:48
Yes, the Tchaikovsky Symphony in Eb is from before the Pathetique, so the "No. 7" nomenclature is wrong.
Dunno what it has to do with this topic as Tchaikovsky has a lot of unsung music, as does pretty much every major composer.
Thanks for the update.. the topic is "Discovery of previously unknown work by the most "sung" composers" Tchaikovsky is "sung" and the 7th is newly "discovered". Where's the rub? Do you sort your M&M's by color before eating them?..
Ok, what I';m getting as is a couple of posts seem to be implying that everything by Mozart/Tchaikovsky is 'sung' except for what's being brought up, which is kinda silly.
Quote from: JollyRoger on Saturday 10 March 2012, 17:50
Quote from: TerraEpon on Friday 09 March 2012, 06:48
Yes, the Tchaikovsky Symphony in Eb is from before the Pathetique, so the "No. 7" nomenclature is wrong.
Dunno what it has to do with this topic as Tchaikovsky has a lot of unsung music, as does pretty much every major composer.
Thanks for the update.. the topic is "Discovery of previously unknown work by the most "sung" composers" Tchaikovsky is "sung" and the 7th is newly "discovered". Where's the rub? Do you sort your M&M's by color before eating them?..
The Tchaikovsky 7th isn't "discovered", it's "reconstructed", like Mahler's 10th or Elgar's 3rd. The only difference is that the music from the Tchaikovsky was recycled in another work.
Let's return to the subject of the thread, please...
One of my favorite past-times - discovering little-known works by sung composers.
Beethoven sketches are full of powerful music: in recent years we have seen recordings of these (commercial and otherwise):
-Piano Trio in f minor, Biamonti 637 (1815) (the sketches, not the 'completion')
-Oboe Concerto in F, Hess 12 (2. Largo) (1791)
-Piano Concerto in D, Hess 15 (1815) - hardly unknown
-Andante for piano and orchestra in D, intended for a Pf Concerto in A, Biamonte 55 (1788) (heard on NPR)
-Song 'Erlkönig', WoO 131 (1795)
Tchaikovsky, Mendelssohn, Dvorak, and Schubert - I have recordings of just about everything they wrote that's extant - great finds hidden in their oeuvre.
Geirr Tveitt, born Nils Tveit (October 19, 1908 – February 1, 1981, lost much of his music in a 1970 fire at his Norway home...according to wikipedia, "300 opuses (including six piano concertos and two concertos for Hardanger fiddle and orchestra) were reduced to singed bricks of paper - deformed and inseparable. The Norwegian Music Information Centre agreed to archive the remains, but the reality was that 4/5 of Tveitt's production was gone - seemingly forever.."
While some of it is showing up from other sources, I find it hard to believe there is so little.
..to find more of it would be a real find.
I apologize if this is a bit off topic,but I am wondering if anyone has knowledge of newly discovered music from this composer. Tveitt may be unsung but is becoming more reknowned in recent years, thanks largely to Naxos. I have eagerly sought every orchestral piece available and I was very pleased to hear his fine unheralded first symphony here at unsung.
In terms of Mozart, there's an enormous amount of "unsung" material, obviously - given that there are many, many "sung" works in Mozart's oeuvre, of course, the "unsung" probably run into the hundreds. Inevitably, a lot of it is pleasant enough, but perhaps rather workaday compared to his best work... That said, even amongst the juvenalia, it's fascinating how early the "early" stuff starts to sound like bona fide Wolfgang.
Anyway, as for an actual unsung work, the one I'd nominate is, I suspect, "undersung" rather than genuinely "unsung", but if you look through all the various collections of Mozart's "greatest hits", you'll never see anyone mention a recording of the organ fantasia K608, but for my money it's Mozart's greatest work by a country mile. I wonder if the fact that it's for (mechanical) organ is why it falls off the radar somewhat, but it's a staggering piece of music. My theory as to why is that if you look at Mozart's letters around the time, it's a work he loathed composing to commission, so it was something he worked through at speed, and during some of his darker days, so there's no sense of politeness or of Mozart censoring himself in the music. It remains, for me, one of the very few glimpses of the real Mozart not hiding behind a facade. It's a dark, disturbing journey, as epic in its 12 short minutes as anything in (e.g.) Mahler, and it deserves to be more widely sung.
Busoni's piano arrangement for four-hand is pretty special too!
Maybe mentioned, but does a recent discovery of a strophic early song by JS Bach qualify?
Thomas Arne's song Sweetest Bard That Ever Sung. I heard it in a broadcast featuring little known songs on the subject of Shakespeare some years ago, and it has remained with me ever since.
Going back to unsung works by Mozart, one I always cite is the wonderful incidental music Thamos of Egypt. It dates from around the same time as his opera Idomeneo and represents about 40 minutes of orchestral movements vocal solo numbers and choruses which are all top-notch Mozart, but which never see the light of day. I would also make a strong case for some of the under-performed symphonies, especially No 21 (K 134) and No 33 (K 319), the latter of which includes in its first movement, the first subject of what would later become the magnificent last movement of the Jupiter Symphony.
Handel wrote three Concerti a due cori, which were composed as interval pieces to be performed between the acts of his operas. They comprise suites of 'recycled' Handel material and were probably written as much as publicity tools for Handel as anything else. They make great, entertaining listening, however, and I'm amazed they have never been taken up as regular concert items (many people would know most of the tunes, after all).
Back to Tchaikovsky. His incidental music to The Snow Maiden (the same story that inspired Rimsky-Korsakov's opera) is well worth a listen, as is that he wrote for a production of Hamlet (the fantasy overture we now know is an extended version of the original overture to the incidental music). I would say that, compared to its greatness as a piece of music, Manfred is dreadfully unsung.
Some of Shostakovich's best works are all but ignored, including his Fifth String Quartet (written at the same time as the mighty Tenth Symphony), the second concertos for cello and violin and his cantata The Execution of Stepan Razin, one of the most powerful choral/orchestral works of the 20th century. And what about Vaughan Williams' Job? Arguably his finest piece, it never gets heard in the concert hall, which is both a crime and a tragedy.
I couldn't finish without putting in a bid for Holst's Egdon Heath. Holst himself considered it his best work and I would have to agree; it has a stark and menacing beauty unequalled anywhere else in his output.
Quote from: Delicious Manager on Tuesday 17 April 2012, 13:35
Going back to unsung works by Mozart, one I always cite is the wonderful incidental music Thamos of Egypt. It dates from around the same time as his opera Idomeneo and represents about 40 minutes of orchestral movements vocal solo numbers and choruses which are all top-notch Mozart, but which never see the light of day. I would also make a strong case for some of the under-performed symphonies, especially No 21 (K 134) and No 33 (K 319), the latter of which includes in its first movement, the first subject of what would later become the magnificent last movement of the Jupiter Symphony.
Handel wrote three Concerti a due cori, which were composed as interval pieces to be performed between the acts of his operas. They comprise suites of 'recycled' Handel material and were probably written as much as publicity tools for Handel as anything else. They make great, entertaining listening, however, and I'm amazed they have never been taken up as regular concert items (many people would know most of the tunes, after all).
Back to Tchaikovsky. His incidental music to The Snow Maiden (the same story that inspired Rimsky-Korsakov's opera) is well worth a listen, as is that he wrote for a production of Hamlet (the fantasy overture we now know is an extended version of the original overture to the incidental music). I would say that, compared to its greatness as a piece of music, Manfred is dreadfully unsung.
Some of Shostakovich's best works are all but ignored, including his Fifth String Quartet (written at the same time as the mighty Tenth Symphony), the second concertos for cello and violin and his cantata The Execution of Stepan Razin, one of the most powerful choral/orchestral works of the 20th century. And what about Vaughan Williams' Job? Arguably his finest piece, it never gets heard in the concert hall, which is both a crime and a tragedy.
I couldn't finish without putting in a bid for Holst's Egdon Heath. Holst himself considered it his best work and I would have to agree; it has a stark and menacing beauty unequalled anywhere else in his output.
Beg to differ with you about K 319. Here in the States, at least, the B-flat Symphony is a repertory piece.
Quote from: JimL on Tuesday 17 April 2012, 15:16Beg to differ with you about K 319. Here in the States, at least, the B-flat Symphony is a repertory piece.
Interesting how traditions in different countries vary. You'd be hard pushed to find K319 programmed here in the UK. Conversely, some of my American friends bemoan what they see as the under-representation of Sibelius in American concert programmes, whereas he does quite well here.
Quote from: Delicious Manager on Tuesday 17 April 2012, 15:33
Quote from: JimL on Tuesday 17 April 2012, 15:16Beg to differ with you about K 319. Here in the States, at least, the B-flat Symphony is a repertory piece.
Interesting how traditions in different countries vary. You'd be hard pushed to find K319 programmed here in the UK. Conversely, some of my American friends bemoan what they see as the under-representation of Sibelius in American concert programmes, whereas he does quite well here.
Two Mozart symphonies that are sadly underrepresented on programs are Nos 28 in C, K 200 and 30 in D, K 202. Instead we get overloaded with K 201 in A, which is a nice enough symphony but overperformed or K 318 in G which is essentially an old-fashioned opera overture without an opera (although it does have some rather ingenious elements in its construction).
Gentlemen, we're way off topic here...
Quote from: Delicious Manager link=topic=2545.msg32438#msg32438 date=1334666123
I couldn't finish without putting in a bid for Holst'si]Egdon Heath[/i]. Holst himself considered it his best work and I would have to agree; it has a stark and menacing beauty unequalled anywhere else in his output.
[/quote]
We are certainly in agreement as far as Egdon Heath is concerned. I have the Naxos recording which also has another favorite Beni Mora on it. If it were possible to wear out a CD this would be one!
Ahem! Back to the topic, please!
Was listening to a realization of sketches to a Beethoven unfinished late string quintet over at IMSLP- is that near enough to topic? (I was a bit befuddled by it for reasons I could go into some other time. Four words: Schubert symphony(?) on Centaur.)
http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/Drilldown?name_id1=10889&name_role1=1&genre=66&bcorder=19&comp_id=261951 obviously.
I keep seeing that and wondering what the hell it actually is.
Oh. I can answer that question, sort of. I meant that as my answer... It presents itself as a reconstruction of an unfinished symphony of Schubert, I think.
A review in Fanfare (one of several, but the others were more positive) when that CD came out suggested, though, that it had a whole great feeling of "doesn't feel right" about it. (And for at least one of the same reasons, at that, that came to mind when I listened to the Beethoven quintet reconstruction.) But that belongs probably to a separate thread about judging, or at least guessing in a good informed (though of course never perfect) way, whether a work is genuine or spurious...
Quote from: TerraEpon on Friday 09 March 2012, 06:48
Yes, the Tchaikovsky Symphony in Eb is from before the Pathetique, so the "No. 7" nomenclature is wrong.
Reading this thread about the 7th Symphony got me to pull out the Chandos recording that I had of this one and it made me realize why I had not re-visited it for a long time. To further muddy the waters the mix Chandos chose was trebly to say the least.
Tom
Probably the most interesting discovery of a sung composer is to be found in the reconstruction of the finale of Bruckner's symphony #9. I was frankly astonished at how much of the supposedly fragmentary finale actually existed! The introduction to the "final revised edition" of the finale makes fascinating reading! It is available in full at
http://www.abruckner.com/Data/articles/articlesEnglish/cohrsB9finale/BG_Cohrs_Introduction_SPCM2012.pdf (http://www.abruckner.com/Data/articles/articlesEnglish/cohrsB9finale/BG_Cohrs_Introduction_SPCM2012.pdf)
I notice from a listing in BBC's "In Tune" this week a performance of a "recently recovered" album leaf by Brahms. Previously unknown to me, anyway. What's this about, might I ask?
(In somewhat less recent news there was a well-received - as I recall - motet by Vivaldi that turned up among manuscripts by a less sung contemporary of his... I found that interesting.)
Reading the original article, there is simply no way to know whether the discovered composition is by W. A. Mozart. (This may be patently obvious to members, and I may be missing a joke. If so, please ignore what follows.)
For starters, Mozart was certainly not 13 in 1780, so exactly how is that connection being made?
Second, the experts trotted out in support of this attribution sound less than expert (or less than certain). One is an anonymous "professional music copyist" (in this day and age does that refer to a user of Sibelius or Finale?); the other is a foundation, and despite the sincere wishes of the U.S. Supreme Court, it takes one or more actual well-informed individuals willing to go on record to establish the veracity of an attribution.
Third, we're assured that the piece is not in Mozart's hand. That simplifies things.
Fourth, when Mozart _was_ 13, he and his father sometimes used monasteries as we use Holiday Inns, and, ever the obliging guests, "sang for their suppers" by leaving behind music, even new symphonies, written for their hosts to play. More than once a piece now known to be by Leopold, signed "Mozart," has been attributed to Wolfgang on stylistic grounds for one specious reason or another.
Fifth, recall the music and arrangements by other composers published as Mozart's own during the 18th century.
In sum, while the discovered piece may indeed be by W.A. Mozart, the (digital!) article raises more questions than it answers.
In 1780, Mozart would have been 23-24. Not a promising sign of authenticity if the article claims he was 13.