Sung composers that you just "don't get"

[semloh]

Fyrexia - yes, I agree - Tchaikovsky (PI) and Liszt - with the exception of the Hungarian Rhapsodies maybe? I've been listening to the Leslie Howard recordings, and he sym. poems and I just can't see what he's getting at...

[Ilja]

Tchaikovsky's critical fate has always been decided by his (still) immense popularity and the high-brows frowning upon it and dismissing it for that reason. Usually, I find that those that dismiss him off-hand have either heard very little of his work (and I can't really blame someone getting bored with the Nutcracker or the Pathetique after 100+ listenings) or have based their judgment on a markedly inept performance (Solti's recordings of the symphonies, for instance). Tchaikovsky is a difficult composer to 'get right', and the most important prerequisite is to shun sentimentalism: the legendary Mravinsky recordings are, to me, still the yardstick. But Tchaikovsky's music still gives me one of the widest arrays of emotional expression of any composer, sung or otherwise. The trick is to listen to everything.

To return to the thread, my point is this: the quality and quantity of the available recordings can also lead you away from 'getting' a composer. Many 'sungs' are presented as one-trick ponies, and if you only hear, for instance, the Organ Symphony you will gain little insight into the tremendous wealth of the rest of Saint-Saëns' work.

[giles.enders]

I really don't get that dreary hymn at the end of Beethoven's ninth, it is utterly banal.  Something Stalin would have approved of!

[Alan Howe]

Beethoven's 'hymn' in the finale of the 9th cast an enormous shadow over the 19th century symphony with a number of such tunes being attempted in symphonic finales. I 'get' the tune (it never fails for me) - it's the words ('alle Menschen werden Brüder', etc.) which I find so sad in the light of man's inhumanity to man in the intervening two centuries or so.

[Peter1953]

No thread has amazed me so much as this one. Many posts leave me stupéfait. One the one hand I cannot believe and understand what I read about composers such as Tchaikovsky, Liszt, Mahler, Bruckner, Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms and even Chopin, but on the other hand it is just as it is: tastes differ enormously. What I think is genial and monumental, isn't considered like that by others at all. What I consider as disgusting, sickening noise can be praised and immensely loved by others.

Just an example. I think that Mozart was the greatest genius of his time. It's very likely that he learned a lot from contemporaries, Haydn above all. However, what makes Mozart in my opinion by far the greatest classical composer are his creative skills to compose brilliant and very memorable tunes, in solo piano works, symphonies, concertos (never heard more excellent horn concerto melodies than composed by Mozart), and so on.

Rossini was right by saying that all that really matters is the melody. But that is how I see it....

[X. Trapnel]

It may be true that melody is the most important thing, but in modernist aesthetics melody is customarily denigrated ("The trouble with Rachmaninoff is you can't get the tunes out of your head"--Eduard Steuermann); indeed when we speak of a melodic "gift" it almost signifies something unearned, as though the composer made no intellectual effort to get it right.

[Ilja]

Beethoven 'hymn' in the finale of the 9th cast an enormous shadow over the 19th century symphony with a number of such tunes being attempted in symphonic finales. I 'get' the tune (it never fails for me) - it's the words ('alle Menschen werden Brüder', etc.) which I find so sad in the light of man's inhumanity to man in the intervening two centuries or so.

I find that with Beethoven, it's never so much the theme material as what he does with them.

Peter1953: I try to avoid language like 'greatest' (or even 'genius') since it suggests an objectivity in judgment that's just not there, and is unfair on a number of levels.

[semloh]

Tchaikovsky's critical fate has always been decided by his (still) immense popularity and the high-brows frowning upon it and dismissing it for that reason. Usually, I find that those that dismiss him off-hand have either heard very little of his work

Ilja I dare say that some awkward people would dismiss a composer simply because of her/his popularity (and perhaps some of them would be attracted to an "unsung composers" forum!). But, I think you would accept that not everyone is going to like a particular composer's work, no matter how familiar they are with it, or how low/high-brow they might be, or how popular or otherwise it is. In the end, as Peter1953 said - it's all a matter of taste, and the variety of taste is truly amazing. Long may it be so... a monoculture is a depressing possibility!

[mbhaub]

I'm not so sure that melody is the most important thing in "art" music. Of course in folk music, the chants of the early church, and in popular music, melody is THE thing. But in the 19th c it was harmony that became the dominant feature. Beethoven, among others, threw off the shackles of tame harmony of earlier composers and opened up whole new vistas. The 2nd movement of Beethoven's 7th doesn't have much melody: it's the harmony that makes it interesting. Then on to Wagner and so on. What makes Tchaikovsky so memorable isn't just the melody. It's also how he harmonized it. Would the 2nd theme of the Pathetique be less effective if he had harmonized it with I-IV-V chords? No way. For me, that's what makes Mozart and to a lesser degree Haydn so boring. The harmony may be "perfect", but it's also so utterly predictable. Mozart did do some amazing experimenting in the late symphonies, and that's one of the reasons they are his most popular. If you really examine many of the works of forgotten composers, oft-times it's because the music is dogged by really dull harmonization. Every loves a good tune, but I believe it's the harmony that seals the emotional deal.

[reineckeforever]

I can't forget when my old teacher of composition gave me for an exercise of harmony the melody of "Apres un reve". listening the original harmonization by Faurè after my poor attempt proved, IMHO, that melody isn't all.

[eschiss1]

sort of like asking a student to write a development section/carrying through/Durchführung for an especially imaginatively done "sonata-form" movement given only the exposition, then comparing it with what the composer actually did do, I think... some examples being much harder to predict than others, for that matter...

[bulleid_pacific]

Ancient thread.  Never mind - I've only just read it  Can anyone explain to me why I find Delius so interminably boring?  I have yet to find anything by him I like except for the trivial but charming sleigh ride.  I find his harmonic progressions particularly unfamiliar and unsettling and melodically he does nothing for me either.  Help!  Loads of eminent conductors and musicologists praise him to the rafters but I can't see why.  Am I musically defective?  BTW - nearly all the other composers mentioned in this thread I enjoy to a greater or or lesser extent - just not bloomin' Fred Delius.....

[eschiss1]

What Peter1953 writes above about Mozart reminds me somewhat of some points made in a rather - very - interesting book about him by Alfred Einstein (Mozart: His Character, His Work) which I recommend highly...

[petershott@btinternet.com]

Don't grieve over it! I share your response. Maybe the reason for it is that the music (and the orchestral music especially) just goes on and on and on....and nothing of much musical interest ever seems to happen. That's a rather crude answer, but an honest one!

I do make a slight exception in the case of 'A Mass of Life'. But then I suppose that rather rambles on and the tedium is only relieved by a few 'good' bits. Oh dear. Poor Delius.

[Christopher]

Ancient thread.  Never mind - I've only just read it  Can anyone explain to me why I find Delius so interminably boring?  I have yet to find anything by him I like except for the trivial but charming sleigh ride.  I find his harmonic progressions particularly unfamiliar and unsettling and melodically he does nothing for me either.  Help!  Loads of eminent conductors and musicologists praise him to the rafters but I can't see why.  Am I musically defective?  BTW - nearly all the other composers mentioned in this thread I enjoy to a greater or or lesser extent - just not bloomin' Fred Delius.....

Hear hear re Delius (whom I wish not to hear hear...) - I can't discern a melody, rise, fall, climax, beginning, end, it's just a kind of noise...or drone...