Messages

I should have mentioned that we have already two threads on Mayer's string quintets:

On the D-Major: https://www.unsungcomposers.com/forum/index.php/topic,8500.msg88384.html#msg88384
On the d-minor: https://www.unsungcomposers.com/forum/index.php/topic,8610.msg89252.html#msg89252

I have meanwhile transcribed quite a set of Mayer's chamber pieces for IMSLP though I did not announce them here.  I didn't feel like acting like a hen that celebrates every egg she produces with noise.  I am thinking about a more general post about her "style" and about "Mayerisms" but I am not there yet.

BTW it is possible, I think even likely, that the two quintets were planned as a pair.  Quintetto 2 could also be the one that was to be played second.  Almost every composer would play the minor piece first wouldn't they?  Even more so a composer who admires Beethoven.

I understand the point you're making, but the reality is that, in respect of the composers we cover here at UC, the music composed by women must amount to a very small percentage of the total.

Isn't this a reason to pay special attention to it?  I'd say that the gender balance among members of this forum is just about as lopsided as the gender balance among the composers we are dealing with.  Which makes it easy to believe that there may very well be some subconscious old fashioned prejudice in play.

As to the specific case of Luise Le Beau:  I agree with the judgement here, based not on the symphony but on several other pieces I have listened to.

I have heard music that got big praise on this forum that turned out just as dull as this symphony when I checked it out (Moszkowski for example).  Yes, we should not promote someone's music because of a composers gender or background.  But we should also be cautious about not doing the opposite.

I just found a live recording of a performance of this work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hD08k3lpYg

It's an amateur performance (at least I hope so!) but quite good as such. The tempo of the scherzo is too slow and of the trio even more too slow.  The finale could also have a bit more drive.  But it can give an impression of the piece for those who are interested. It's still better than an electronic imitation. 

Here is a sentence from the listening guide: "And again and again the violins seem to lose themselves in gimmicks of all kinds and high trills."
First of all:  I would avoid the word "gimmick" at all cost in a paragraph designed to entice people to listen to a piece of music.
But on the other hand: This sentence describes Spohr's violin concertos rather better than the author probably intended.  For the most part they begin with an impressive orchestral tutti only to become one dull once the soloist joins in.  The virtuosic passages are too loosely connected to the musical material and resemble each other too much across Spohr's output to be very interesting.  (I will admit here that I am not a fan of violin concertos in general as I hear these same weaknesses in all but the top half dozen VCs--in spite of playing the instrument myself.)
Spohr was a fast working composer who seems to have never gone back and worked over an existing composition (if I remember correctly he admits this himself somewhere in his autobiography).  The result is a fairly high number of uninteresting works, including violin concertos.  If he had been able to muster just a small dose of Brahmsian self-critique he would get more respect than he does. 
To me Spohr is at his best in (some of) his chamber music such as his double quartets, some of the string quartets, violin duos, the violin/harp sonatas and most of his larger mixed ensemble pieces.

Unfortunately that sort of objective criteria has been abandoned generally, not just in music, in the modern liberal societies in which most of us live, so that's a total non-starter.

I don't think that's fair, in fact it seems to me to insult this very forum.

Though I would say I have noticed a greater insistence on standards for "DEI" composers than for our "standard" persons of interest.  A few posts above I find praise of a Loewe symphony.  Is it any more attractive than those of Emilie Mayer?  Not in my ears, maybe rather the opposite.

Anyway, if the price for living in a liberal society is some artists being overvalued I'd say it's well worth it.

I found Hurwitz's video refreshing.  The idea of a composer imagining his work performed in a way that was not possible in his days had not occurred to me.  And I'd say we don't even have to stipulate novel instruments.  I'd bet that decent amateur orchestras of nowadays make fewer errors than any orchestra available to Beethoven and I can't imagine any composer hearing his work in his mind with execution errors included.

On the other hand, while Hurwitz names a few composers with imagination of that kind there were probably others.  Chopin (by no means a conservative) for example was a master at playing the piano he had at his disposal.  I would expect him to have written for exactly this instrument that he knew intimately.  And so it may make sense to play his music on an instrument from his time.  I also think Mozart is a different case:  In his operas he wrote for exactly the singers he had which is the opposite of imagining the impossible though in its own way just as imaginative.  He wrote his clarinet concerto and chamber music for not just the clarinet but for Anton Stadler, very much for the instrument that Stadler happened to be playing.

The slow movement of the D-Major sonata is now on youtube.  Very well played (pretty much as I imagined it).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWsls6RvxGU

It turns out that a recording of the D-Major sonata exists:  It is part of a series called "Trouvez les femmes" (two disks so far apparently).  Available on Amazon and posted on youtube by Terragne (a year ago).

Actually it is an arrangement for flute and piano, played by Miriam Terragne (flute) and Catherine Sarrasin.  I listened to it on youtube and I think it could have been better, they use much too much rubato.  Example:  A nice detail of the composition is the piano repeating the end of a phrase (played by the violin/flute) in minor, pianissimo and at half tempo.  They slow this already slow measure down even more.  There are places where almost standstill occurs.  It almost looks as if they didn't trust the composition very much (in which case they shouldn't record it).

There are also the octets by father and son Carl and Hermann Grädener in this thread (on the third page of the thread):  https://www.unsungcomposers.com/forum/index.php/topic,4446.0.html

As I remember the father's work did not rank very highly but Hermann's octet was thought to pass muster.

IMSLP does not include a date on the work page (where dates are included they seem to be from Runge's biography).  For her early works the handwriting helps with dating but by somewhere in the 1850 it stabilized; at least I can not see any differences.  I'd say the sonata was composed after the one in d-minor (published 1869).  It takes some liberties beyond that sonata, e.g. it begins with a highly chromatic introduction of 10 measures cadencing in D-Major, followed by a quite diatonic first theme. One may further guess that it was written before Mayer embarked on a whole series of cello sonatas. Three of them, op. 38, 40 & 47 were published in 1873, 1874 and 1883 (year of Mayer's death).  Six more (plus the first version of one of them) were never published.  The information about the cello sonatas comes from a thesis by Marie-Aline Cadieux (apparently an American in spite of the name) from 1999.

So my guess would be the early 1870s for the D-Major (as well as the c-minor) violin sonata.

The sonata in E flat is an early work and not all that memorable though certainly pleasant, especially the andante.  The one in F (op. 17) was published in 1863 ("middle period") and is a thoroughly reworked version of the earlier "Duet" for Violoncello and piano.  The one in D exists in manuscript (fair copy) and I'd guess was composed quite some time later.  I think it is really interesting and attractive.  There is also a presumably late one in c-minor I like (in a heavily corrected working copy).

I have been transcribing some sonatas by Mayer, so I allow myself to utter a judgement.

The E-flat sonata BTW has been recorded before, by Alexandra Masloravich and someone whose name does not appear in the Amazon listing.  The piano playing by this nameless person is fine but the violin is awfully badly played, too choppy and aggressive and the intonation is not always spot on.

Isn't the innovation of public symphony concerts (and the establishment of suitable orchestras) an important factor in driving the process?  At any rate the traditional repertoire (i.e. pre-HIP) used to begin with Mozart and Haydn (with the exceptions of Bach and Handel), coinciding with the beginning of the tradition of public concerts and the establishment of orchestras.

About Schoenberg:  His analysis is very plausible but maybe his solution less so.  He seems to have overlooked (or not cared about) the crucial role tonal harmony plays in the construction of large forms.

There is also the incipit which looks nothing like middle of 19th century, more like early Haydn or even Vivaldi:  Three chords I-V-I, followed by a climb up the C-Major triad with trills thrown in, followed by a simple cadence.  Plus there are three movements in C-Major, G-Major and C-Major rather than 4 as usual. 

I almost think that, if it weren't for the violin sonata, Franck could count as unsung.  Hardly any of his other works seem to get much attention (or indeed any at all).

The popularity of the "organ symphony" is easy to explain:  It has firstly a name ("symphony in d-minor" is not a name) and secondly an organ which makes it unique.

Now that you mention it:  I hear the Franck too.  I wonder if they play the trio somewhat slower than usual, thereby making the similarity more obvious.  The similarity seems mostly in the construction: units of 2 measures following each other with the music "taking a breath" in between them every time.  Emotionally the two themes are quite different, the Franck joyful and confident, even more so because of the canon, the Schumann wistful or resigned.

I would guess that  Franck did not work "under Clara's influence" and that the similarity is a coincidence.