How good is unsung music--and how would we know?

[matesic]

Zdenek Kosler with the Slovak PO. I expect Ancerl and Kertesz are better. Trying to get my tongue round these names I'm reminded of a T-shirt that said "Only a composer called Dvorak would write an opera called Dmitrij". Incidentally, I see the Requiem was given its Proms première as recently as 1994!

[Alan Howe]

Probably, but not significantly so. Maybe this spectacular performance conducted by Jansons on YouTube might persuade you...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPxHEN9lXCU

[sdtom]

I've been listening to another Dvorak work his 8th symphony. I assume that this is a sung work. I've heard the Minnesota Orchestra perform this as well as the San Diego Symphony. I find it in some ways superior to his 9th.
Tom

[chill319]

Yes, it's a requiem, but does it have to be so serious?

In nineteenth-century German-speaking lands, there was a tendency to take Requiems seriously. Already in the early decades a composer/critic like E.T.A. Hoffmann (and one could as easily mention Rochlitz or Gottfried Weber) could write that church music had reached its zenith under Palestrina and maintained that standard until the last part of the 18th century, when it went astray. The rest of the century worked those sentiments out in various ways.

For what it's worth, there's a rave review [10/10] of a performance of the Dvorak Requiem by the Warsaw PO and Chorus under Wit at http://www.classicstoday.com/review/marvelous-new-dvorak-requiem-wit/.

[matesic]

Jansons's live performance of Dvorak's Requiem on youtube certainly evinces more drama than Kosler's in the earlier movements but I found my interest waning later on in the piece. Much of the choral writing is rather slow-moving, even in the Dies Irae, which could be one reason why it hasn't become popular amongst choral societies.On an earlier visit to England Dvorak was asked to conduct a choir of 500, which could have persuaded him that English choral societies couldn't cope with music that was light and athletic. The Mass in D Op.86, on the other hand, has a much more vigorous, lusty feel to it; I'm not sure I'd have been able to identify the composer in a blind audition, but it seems much more characteristic of the man who wrote the symphonies.

[Double-A]

I too was a little taken aback by the idea that a requiem is too serious.  I'd add that the text is not just about death; it is about the whole complicated and frightening (for believers) sin and forgiveness theology of the catholic church.  The idea that your loved one in the coffin may now undergo serious time in purgatory (or worse) is more than serious, it creates fear.  Dvorak was catholic himself, if he was religious in a serious way at the time he wrote the requiem I don't know, but he grew up with this stuff.  BTW Brahms was protestant (and not truly religious) and made up the text for his requiem himself.  Yet it is plenty serious (though more dramatic and / or energetic than Dvorak's I suppose).

[matesic]

Sorry, I confess I couldn't resist the irony there, although with a core of sincerity too. Is Chill319 implying that German-speaking composers of the (late?) 19th century took the Requiem Mass especially seriously? Draeseke might make an appropriate comparison, but I can't immediately think of another example. What I miss from Dvorak is both the excitement (perhaps not fear - you need to go to Italy for that!) and consolation that are present in abundance in Brahms's humanist piece. Although English choral societies must have sung a lot of boringly portentous works, these usually took the form of dramatic oratorios or secular cantatas. Newly composed requiems weren't their standard fare at all, so I think Dvorak rather mistook his aim as regards both the performers and the audience.

[chill319]

Is Chill319 implying that German-speaking composers of the (late?) 19th century took the Requiem Mass especially seriously?

I was thinking more of how during the 19th-century a number of easily identifiable composers (Schumann, for instance) abjured some or most of their characteristic style and intentionally modified their expressive range to write religious music (not just Requiems) that was less about, say,  personhood than their other music. (Schumann is even said to have written his late liturgical music in accordance with a system of mathematical proportions, not unlike Bartok 80 or 90 years later.) The observation about Dvorak's experience with a British chorus of 500 is quite interesting. Without denying its relevance it's possible that Dvorak was also intentionally moving a bit into the expressive sphere characterized by the neo-Palestrina movement.

[matesic]

I suspect every composer modifies his or her style to some degree when setting a sacred text. Most predecessors of Dvorak who set the Requiem or "Solemn Mass" managed to do so while maintaining their individuality (think Mozart, Beethoven, Berlioz, Verdi, Rossini!), although Schumann's late setting seems to be generally regarded as a failure. I read that Dvorak's commission from the Birmingham Musical Festival was for either a sacred or a secular piece but he was encouraged "in any case to write only Dvorak". Also, according to John Clapham, "The composer was much keener on writing chamber music and a symphony at that time". There then followed an unseemly wrangle over the fee, Dvorak finally settling for £650 which probably converts to at least $50,000 in today's money! It all suggests to me that his heart wasn't really in it.

[chill319]

Since this thread is not about liturgical music, let me respond, matesic, by asking you and everyone:

In judging how good a piece of unsung (or new-to-us) music is, do we err when we bring into consideration circumstances outside the score? There's the Dvorak story just told. There's also the familiar 19th-century trope of a composer's last piece, which attracts special attention for being claimed as such. Or even such circumstances as whether, in Paris, the ballet is properly located in an opera's second act.

I don't mean to suggest that there's a one-size-fits-all answer! Composers like Stravinsky and Rachmaninov had underlying programs behind such big pieces as the "Faust" sonata and the Symphony in Three Movements. Neither composer wanted to share their personal programs, in part, I would guess, because they didn't want their scenario to become baggage that listeners had to contend with, beyond the notes. Nevertheless the scenario was part of their creative process.

Matesic surmises, possibly correctly, that a reluctance to write liturgical choral music affected Dvorak's creative process. A reality-based scenario rather than an imaginative one, but a scenario nonetheless. Let's suppose that's fact. Is that information also baggage, also better withheld from posterity?

This point is particularly relevant to unsung composers because in the minor economy of classical music it's generally convenient for cash-strapped organizations to assume that a work is unsung because it simply didn't pass muster. The circumstances under which muster may or may not have been simply passed are no longer relevant -- too much information. I think we all know that, for recreative musicians (as opposed to listeners) it's not unusual for circumstantial information to function as the initial trigger for a musician's interest in a previously unknown composer. This might come in as simple a form as a recommendation from a respected colleague.

What happens when that musician investigates the score? Obviously that varies with the musician and the score. But the most moving performances -- for me, at least -- occur when musicians search for themselves in a score's music. It's the part of the nineteenth-century aesthetic I most cherish. When Brahms heard that Draeseke was getting married, he thought that circumstance would mean the end of Draeseke as a serious composer. He was quite wrong, of course, but it illustrates how much music could be experienced as a three- or four-dimensional world one could live in, revisit, and find aspects of oneself extended. The catch: entry to that world required a degree of focus, of dedication, of faith.

Granting that some fine music is written solely to entertain, and that a healthy life is many-sided, I would still encourage any musician who feels so drawn to seek reflections of their heart and mind in a score, even or especially if that score has not previously elicited such an interaction. It used to be said that Toscanini made second-rate music sound better than it really was. Clever, but such comments betray an ignorance of how scores actually function. Should some external circumstance spark a musician's deeper interaction with a score, more power to it. On the other hand, external factors that inhibit such personal engagement, no matter how fascinating, are to be ignored if the object is music making and not history writing.

Example: If Sokolov plays 'late' Schubert aware of the composer's fate, does he play it better? Yes, if it moves him to sympathy and a sense of the shared human condition.

Example: If violinist X plays 'late' Schumann aware of the composer's syphilitic end, does she play it better? No, if, as custom dictates, she classifies that end under "madness" and then retrofits that judgment onto some number of the composer's 'declining' years in Dusseldorf.

[Alan Howe]

It used to be said that Toscanini made second-rate music sound better than it really was.

Maybe that was because he made all the music he conducted sound fabulous. It was also said of Beecham, I think. Of course, among the problems unsung music has are (i) unfamiliarity to players and conductors, resulting perhaps in a tentative run-through rather than an inspired performance in which the music is truly 'under the fingers', and (ii) the reality that it tends to be the lesser players and conductors who perform it. Now, I realise that the acknowledged great orchestras, soloists and conductors don't always rise above the routine themselves and that the so-called lesser lights can actually play their socks off, so to speak, but I am too often left wondering how unsung symphonies would sound in the hands of the Berlin Philharmonic or how unsung operas would come across if Anja Harteros and Jonas Kaufmann were in the cast-list.

In other words, when attempting to judge how good a piece of unsung music is, how often does one hear it in a truly great performance? For example, I've heard some pretty miserable performances of Brahms 1 and found myself thoroughly bored as orchestra and conductor lumber along, sucking all the life out of it. Yet I know that the piece is better than that because I've heard umpteen recordings that get it right. So how often does one dismiss a piece because it's been merely adequately played?

[Double-A]

I think this effect is even a stronger:
Good performances are present as models not only in the minds of listeners, but also of performers.  For sung music this has the effect of 1) providing performers with examples of how the music can be well played, 2) of setting the standard and making them work to live up to it.  If a performer however decides (or is asked to) tackle an unsung piece there may be a recording around somewhere, more or less good, but chances are he never heard it performed live (to me still the gold standard) and also that there is no practical way to hear it performed before he does it himself.  He is alone with the score.  He has to invent the wheel from scratch.  It is harder than sung music and easier at the same time:  (Almost) no examples of other people's interpretation, but also no pressure from a Bruno Walter recording or a performance by a top orchestra in top form.

Unavoidably the less a piece is worked on by performers the less its qualities are likely to be fully explored and the less likely a performance is as appealing as the composition would allow.

[matesic]

Chill has given us plenty to think about, but regarding his last point I actually don't think it's ever a good idea for an interpreter to take account of the composer's contemporary circumstances or eventual fate. To stick with the example given, in my view Schubert's last piano sonata is often terribly overplayed for pathos, when the notes on the page are completely devoid of expression marks suggesting this is how he wanted it. It has been said that in his late works he strived too hard for profundity, but that I believe is the fault of his interpreters.

In our discussion of Dvorak's Requiem I didn't mean to imply that knowledge of the circumstances should influence our opinion of the piece - perhaps it's better not to know. I gather his oratorio St Ludmila is much more characteristically vigorous and dramatic, so I wonder why it's even more of a rarity with choral societies?

[sdtom]

last couple of days I've been revisiting Glazunov. Which symphony is your favorite and why?

[Alan Howe]

Or, to align Tom's question more closely with the subject of the thread: how good is the best of Glazunov's symphonies, and why? (It's relatively easy to say why one likes a piece - but much harder to say why one thinks a certain piece is good, speaking more objectively.)