After the end of patronage, many well-known composers penned works that have either been labeled 'tragic' (rightly or wrongly) or that may fairly be described as tragic, even if, as in the case of Tchaikovsky 6, they've been labeled a bit differently.
Among my own questions is whether a work need END tragically to be considered tragic so long as sufficient catharsis has been exacted along the way.
My main question, however, is: What unsung composers have contributed significantly to the subset of symphonies that are tragic? A sub-questions might be: Does writing a tragic symphony tend to make a composer less unsung?
I'd love to read thoughts and opinions from other forum members. Hopefully without us dwelling too much on the minutae of labels per se,
Well, Draeseke's 3rd Symphony is labelled 'Tragic', even though the only thing really tragic about it is the funeral march slow movement.
The remarkable 5th symphony by Valentin Silvestrov has always had an aura of tragedy to me. I suppose the Gorecki 3rd does too, but I find the work so dull that I may be a bad judge.
Relatively unsung compared to some of his other works is Shostakovich's Eighth Symphony, written during WWII in 1943. A more tragic piece it would be hard to imagine.
Quote from: Delicious Manager on Monday 11 October 2010, 16:58
Relatively unsung compared to some of his other works is Shostakovich's Eighth Symphony, written during WWII in 1943. A more tragic piece it would be hard to imagine.
The symphony was a "sequel" of sorts to the 7th,
Leningrad Symphony. It is a much superior work to that piece of patriotic puffery.
Quote from: JimL on Monday 11 October 2010, 18:46
The symphony was a "sequel" of sorts to the 7th, Leningrad Symphony. It is a much superior work to that piece of patriotic puffery.
Well, even though I don't agree with the opinion of the Seventh, I cannot help but admire the nice bit of alliteration used to debunk its value. :P
Quote from: Delicious Manager on Monday 11 October 2010, 16:58
Relatively unsung compared to some of his other works is Shostakovich's Eighth Symphony, written during WWII in 1943. A more tragic piece it would be hard to imagine.
Well, the Thirteenth, for starters...
I find it ironic that so many 'tragic' symphonies don't sound that tragic at all: take Mahler's Sixth, Reznicek's First, Hamerik's Second. And to be honest, Draeseke's Third seems even less overtly tragic to me than his Fourth is 'comic'.
Well, for a sung example, Schubert's 4th isn't particularly "tragic" even though it was called so by its composer. I suppose it sounded better than the Nervous or Anxious Symphony. :P
you're right, the nickname Tragic for Schubert 4 apparently does go back to the composer. (Not so with Mahler 6, or at least not with any firm evidence- apparently it depends on how far one trusts Walter??)
But to go back to an earlier post- the question wasn't about symphonies that are labeled tragic, but symphonies that are felt to be tragic, another affair entirely- whether the consensus can describe a symphony as tragic without the work ending tragically. If I understand the question and its terms- and again I'm not sure I do (I'm still not sure what 'tragic' means- a certain kind of minor-mode ending? Distant, observational, 'hieratic' - as I've heard said to be preferred of the 'tragedy' in its old form - or passionate and involved? Or barking up another tree entirely?)
Eric
Quote from: JimL on Sunday 10 October 2010, 23:37
Well, Draeseke's 3rd Symphony is labelled 'Tragic', even though the only thing really tragic about it is the funeral march slow movement.
K A Hartmann wrote a Sinfonia tragica, and the 6th symphonies of both Brian and Weingartner are labelled Tragic.
Quote from: eschiss1 on Tuesday 12 October 2010, 00:04the question wasn't about symphonies that are labeled tragic, but symphonies that are felt to be tragic
The 17 symphonies (two incomplete) of Allan Pettersson are decidedly grim.
http://www.classical.net/music/comp.lst/acc/pettersson.php (http://www.classical.net/music/comp.lst/acc/pettersson.php)
http://homepages.uc.edu/~cauthep/allan.html (http://homepages.uc.edu/~cauthep/allan.html)
http://www.classical.net/music/recs/reviews/c/cpo77247a.php
I would have to add Myaskovsky's 6th to this list. (Kondrashin 1959 or Liss for better audio) Vacillating from thrilling to gloomy, to its serene conclusion.
Although Sibelius is definitely not an unsung, his 'Kullervo' symphony is rarely performed and unfamiliar to most people. It's a tragic story and although it is a youthful work, the music is among his best romantic compositions. This can also be said of Rachmaninoff's 'The Bells' symphony -- not a youthful work, but one that is too rarely heard and among his most beautiful works.
I have not yet figured out why Reznicek titled his 1st symphony "Tragic". I just don't hear anything tragic there.
I suppose Gorecki's 3rd symphony, the 'Symphony of Sorrowful Songs', would fall into this category as well. I'm not sure that it is cathartic, but it is surely one of the most deeply sad compositions I've heard.
it may not quite fit entirely into the category "unsung", but given the topic i would like to point out the 'asrael' symphony by joseph suk which he composed after the death of his wife and his father-in-law, dvorak. it is a wonderful dark, deep and rich work which will require several listenings, but to me at least it is very rewarding and became one of my all-time favs.
Quote from: Crescendo on Wednesday 13 October 2010, 23:02
it may not quite fit entirely into the category "unsung", but given the topic i would like to point out the 'asrael' symphony by joseph suk which he composed after the death of his wife and his father-in-law, dvorak. it is a wonderful dark, deep and rich work which will require several listenings, but to me at least it is very rewarding and became one of my all-time favs.
I think it counts as unsung or undersung, in my opinion. While it had some circulation in the earlier parts of the 20th century (to the extent that Viktor Ullmann could quote it in his last opera, written in Nazi detention in Terezin, and expect some of his audience to know what he was quoting!), I think it had no commercial recordings outside of Czechoslovakia until recently (I don't think Kubelik's was commercial? Not sure...? Hrm. There's also Svetlanov's though- ok, not sure at all here) - anyhow, its
relative(ly increasing) wider popularity is a recent thing, and a very, very
relative thing. (And in my opinion deserved- but very recent, and relative- that is, most classical fans, aside from fanatics, have never heard of it, or even of Suk, I suspect. Well, maybe the Serenade.)
Eric
I must gently disagree with you, Eric, over 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. There have also been new recordings recently by Ashkenazy, Weller, Flor and Kirill Petrenko. This is an enormous improvement on the situation when I was a student at Cambridge in the 1970s: in those days the only recording available was the historic one by Talich and it took the CUMS (Cambridge University Musical Society) Orchestra to give it a public performance - one of the great musical experiences of my life. So: unsung? No. Undersung? Maybe...
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.
Quote from: Delicious Manager on Thursday 14 October 2010, 10:20
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
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.
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?
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.
Quote from: JimL on Thursday 21 October 2010, 05:30
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.
Quotethe 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.
Welcome, hasleraj!
Yes, 'undersung' these days rather than unsung is about right, I think.
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.