Rather than drag a different thread off-topic, I will start a new one here.
There are a number of 20th C composers whose individual voice is so distinctive that if you heard by accident any ten seconds of music from an unfamiliar piece, you would still unfailingly identify the composer at once. Often because their way of constructing harmonies is unique.
It seems to me that it is much harder to spot 19th C romantics as quickly. So many wrote in a common idiom that is a mixture of Schumann, Mendelssohn and Brahms, and latterly Wagner and Strauss. So the subject of this thread is name the romantic composers (preferably less celebrated) whose style is so distinctive that you think they could be identified from any ten-second extract (within reason; not juvenilia, for instance).
The two that spring to my mind are Bruckner and Mahler. The difficulty with them is that they wrote so little that it might be hard to find an extract from an unfamilar piece. However, there was a time when I had not heard all the Mahler symphonies; and one day I heard a cousin of mine whistling something that I could correctly identify as Mahler, even with it being from a symphony I had not heard.
How about: Dvorak, Smetana, Verdi, Rossini, Puccini, Elgar, Schubert, Grieg, Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, Berlioz, Paganini, Sullivan, Gounod, Weber, Johann Strauss, Offenbach, Wolf, Sibelius, Nielsen, Tchaikovsky? - to name just the first ones that come to mind.
Of the unsungs: Draeseke, Raff, Rufinatscha, Stenhammar, Berwald, Alkan, Field, Bull.
In fact, I would seriously question the notion that the majority of sung composers who fall within UC's remit wrote within the stylistic categories mentioned above. The problem applies more obviously to unsung composers writing within the broad Austro-German tradition, but even here there are those whose styles are pretty distinct.
(Edit: ) To expand on Berwald, though you mentioned him already... (a fact I seem to have missed. Remedial reading comprehension, Eric. Now. Sorry...)
I've been able to recognize works by Berwald I haven't heard (that I hear on classical radio/TV, and whose title and composer I don't yet know, etc.) as being by Berwald even though his style often sounds to me like a mix of that of other composers. (A specific mix, with fingerprints. Originality-- is overrated. Originality in _everything_, moreso. (Not accusing Berwald of plagiarism anyway- some of the music his works sounds like, I gather, hadn't yet been written, others I am not sure he had encountered even during his travels. Don't know; don't care- the ingredients may be familiar, the recipe and result are- not always of course, but in much of his work- quite distinctive- to my ears!)
Spohr! ;D
David
Good choice, in my opinion. The "sound" of my favorite works by Spohr, at least (the first two string quintets are high on my list, for starters - the way the high-flying violin writing near the first movement's exposition-coda actually sounds happy, instead of merely strenuous as with some violinist-composers in similar contexts maybe..., comes to mind as somehow representative of what someone described as his basically content and humane muse, if I remember? - not meaning anything other than a pleased and complimentary description, -not- something negative...)
(As with at least a lot of what I've read about Liszt, I can't help but like a lot about what I've read about Spohr as a person... tangentially.)
This is a very subjective issue and really centres on familiarity. Because I, like many of us here, have immersed myself for many years in the music of 19th century romanticism, I often don't have much difficulty in picking up on the tell-tale fingerprints of a composer from the period whose other music I already know. Alan has already mentioned a fair selection of those whose sound worlds are quite individual, despite the fact that many are speaking dialects of a broad Austro-German lingua-franca. I'd add Rubinstein and Glazunov to his list - they have very characteristic orchestral sounds. Clearly, it's easier with "Nationalist" composers such as Glazunov, and orchestral music is easier than chamber, of course. Oddly, I find piano music quite easy too. Juvenilia is notoriously difficult to identify blind because the composer's influences are still unassimilated and some composers, like Eduard Franck or (although a much better composer) Reinecke, never seem to have developed an individual sound.
Whether the 20th century was characterised by composers with more easily differentiated sound worlds I have no idea.
Didn't see Mahler and Bruckner in the mix. After their first symphony or two, I think they're unmistakable.
As for much of mid to later 20th century composers, they all sound pretty much the same to me. Lots of strange sounds; little substance. But then, like Mark, I don't listen to most of it.
Jerry
Quote from: jerfilm on Wednesday 15 May 2013, 15:54
Didn't see Mahler and Bruckner in the mix.
They're in the initial post.
Actually, I do think that the musical scene post UC's remit exhibits a remarkable range of voices. The problem, as Jerry suggests, is that many are ones I simply don't want to listen to - in the same way as I have only theoretical interest in attempting to read James Joyce...
While Reinecke may not have a fully "individual" voice, I certainly find him uniquely gifted in terms of melody and orchestration, as well as developmental skill. He may be a Mendelssohn/Schumann epigone, but if you feel, as I do, that Mendelssohn and Schumann died too soon and didn't leave enough music behind them, Reinecke is your guy.
That's an interesting view of Reinecke - and one with which I agree. Thanks, Jim.
No quibbles with that here, either, as it does support my view that one can't hear an unknown piece and "Ahh, that can only be by Reinecke".
However, if one knows Mendelssohn and Schumann well enough, one can infer it's Reinecke. "Ahh, that isn't anything I know of by Mendelssohn or Schumann, and since I know everything by them, it must be Reinecke!" ;D
That's a non-sequitur. There's also Jadassohn, for example. And a whole host of other composers basically in the conservative/Leipzig tradition...
Hrm. Not at all sure I agree that Reinecke, Jadassohn, Bruch, Rosenhain, Goetz etc. etc. et al. are indistinguishable - but... hrm.
I didn't say that either. I was merely arguing that the fact that a particular piece in the conservative tradition isn't by Mendelssohn or Schumann doesn't mean it must be by Reinecke! That's simply not an inference one can draw. In any case, I'd describe his music as a clear extension of that tradition - hardly surprising since he lived for over half a century beyond the deaths of the two earlier composers.
True, true (no argument there from me :) ), and I think that while I may have been responding to a somewhat earlier post of yours in the thread (but still overshooting in my response) I did still have to start wondering, in relation to this thread, if I could identify what it was about the best (subjectively-put...) pieces by certain composers in that tradition also that means almost by definition that something in their style must have fingerprints (... ok, a low bar to set, put that way)..., I think,
else it would be hard for them to have produced something memorable enough to float so high in a saturated memory :D (I think of some of the movements of Robert Fuchs' string quartets - the slow movements of the first and fourth - e.g.)
Agreed, Eric. Perhaps we can explore this further, composer by composer...? Maybe we could start with Bruch?
Based on what I know reasonably or even moderately well by Bruch (less than the works I've heard only a few times by him, which is less than the larger number of works I've seen in some form of score, etc.) I think with Bruch I may have to concede the point; stylistically not so distinctive, I don't know if with a work I haven't heard yet, an innocent-ear test (where's Robert WL Simpson when one needs him? - we could use an equivalent program on some station hereabouts in the States), I could say "oh, this is Bruch!..." as I did with a Berwald work as I mentioned (I get those things wrong more than not though...) - but still memorable at his best.
Bruch has some orchestrational quirks that are distinctive. Features the French horn an awful lot. On those grounds, I'd say I could pick out Bruch, but not by anything particular about his harmonies or melodies.
Well, I'm going to be contrarian here. Ten seconds is a very short snippet of music. I would posit that, if it is a piece you are well familiar with, you would know who wrote it even if you could not identify the exact piece.
However, I would suggest that, if it is not a piece you are familiar with, it would be very difficult to know who wrote it just from a ten second snippet. And if it is by a composer you are not especially familiar with, you are unlikely to think it by that composer.
Good point well made.
And this is precisely the point of the original post ...
I find if I turn the radio on and some unfamiliar piece is playing, I can often work out who the composer is (not infallibly) but it is often a slow process of elimination. Getting it at once, after only a couple of bars, means distinctiveness of a high order, which most of the composers mentioned so far do not have, I would say.
This is not to say that a high degree of distinctiveness necessarily equals high quality. I had this discussion with someone once who pointed out that one could acquire instant recognisability rather crudely if determined. To give an exaggerated example, had Rott been even madder, and decided that all his works would have the first beat in every single bar marked by the triangle, one would only have to listen for the triangle to recognise it as Rott.
I know for certain I can't recognise Verdi after ten seconds; it usually takes me a few minutes if it is something I don't know. Bruckner I think I could, if someone discovered a symphony of his I had never heard.
I recall one of my proudest feats in my early 20s was to determine, both by deduction and by familiarity with another work by the same composer, that a concerto playing on the radio, previously unheard by me, was Anton Rubinstein's 5th PC.
A friend of mine who taught a masters-level seminar on Bruckner symphonies surprised his class by unexpectedly giving a no-essay, drop-the-needle (LP days) final exam: identify the symphony and movement for each of 40 different 5-second excerpts played. Zero essay questions, but I guarantee you that any student who got 90% or more correct had some worthwhile insight to share regarding Bruckner's symphonies.
Quote from: chill319 on Friday 24 May 2013, 02:13
...but I guarantee you that any student who got 90% or more correct had some worthwhile insight to share regarding Bruckner's symphonies.
Or just knew the music very well.
Also I recall a guest on the BBC show "Face the Music" - I think it was Lorin Maazel - who was given the test of identifying three orchestral works by their first note alone. The rationale was that conductor is always listening particularly carefully to the first sound an orchestra makes. He got all three right. The last one was a single horn note - the opening of Schubert's Great C Major.
But again, this is a question of identifying known works, not recognising a composer's style from a few bars.