Your Favourite non-masterpieces?

[Guido]

Some pieces you know are seriously flawed but you can't help but love them despite (or perhaps because of) their failings.

For me such a work is Barber's The Lovers op.43. The piece was composed in 1970 and is his last (and without question his weakest) large scale work. It was written after the catastrophic failure of his opera Antony and Cleopatra but more importantly during the dissolution of his 40 year relationship with Menotti - it was this that he never recovered from, not the Met catastrophe as is so often trotted out. In his later years he sunk into depression and alcoholism and produced very few works in deed.

It is a setting of texts by Neruda - 20 love poems and a song of despair - for baritone, chorus and orchestra. The harmony lacks the natural warmth and generosity found in his other major works and often sounds strained and tired, sometimes even slipping into cliché and the lyricism so important to his works is rarely allowed to take flight and bloom. Though there are lots of lovely little moments, overall it just doesn't flow as naturally or hang together as well as his other works.

It is redeemed by a setting of the poem "Tonight I write the saddest lines" which here becomes an unbearably poignant cry of an artist struggling against his depression, alcoholism and his own failing powers. It is clearly a love poem mourning the loss of his relationship with Menotti. Somehow it manages to be masterful, even though the inspiration is lacking, almost by sheer force of will and the pure emotion that he pours into it - rarely has his work been so Dionysian. And it's so moving despite, or perhaps because of its short comings - hes struggling so hard against everything. It's one of my favourite songs and makes the rest of the work all worth while.

What are yours?

[Luke]

I love 'flawed' music! Where the humanity of the composer leaks through..... but then, to me, sometimes the flaw is part of what makes the piece a masterpiece. There are plenty of pieces by Tippett, for instance, with structural problems, places where he seems to have had a brainwave for a bar or two....it only serves to make them more lovable, to my twisted mind, anyway. Take his Triple Concerto, for instance - it could be improved, but doing so would wreck it! And of course, Janacek, my lovely Janacek - he's full of miscalculations, impossibilities, places which need major makeovers to be functional, but I don't think it can seriously be held that even these pieces are not masterpieces.

OK, here's one - the three early songs by Satie, so little appreciated that they aren't even mentioned by some commentators, or are dismissed perfunctorily by others. Either I am missing something or everyone else is - to me these are three exquisite gems as perfect and unique and magical as the Gymnopedies or the Gnossiennes, folloing the same Satiean rule of tripartite unity (IOW, the three songs are hugely similar to each other, like the three Gymnopedies, the iIeces Froides and the Airs a fair fuir). There is absolutely no pretence at counterpoint or complexity in these songs, just perfectly voiced gem-like chords, progressing calmly and evenly and the most wonderously still melodic line floated magically above. The first time I heard them, I thought 'this is like everything that is best in the songs of Faure, Debussy, Ravel, crystalised and distilled to its essence.

[Guido]

I should note - they don't need to be seriously flawed - I also just love Sollima's Violoncelles, Vibrez! for 2 cellos and strings which to me just expresses the pure joy of the act of making sound in harmony with others. It may not be Great but it sure is great!

[Franco]

Porgy & Bess

[Guido]

Porgy & Bess

Yes this is an excellent one. I adore the piano concerto too. Actually I think that most of Gershwin's concert music fits into this category.

James - I'm not talking about the "neglected masterpieces" that we all harp on about here - I'm talking about pieces where you recognise their failings and realise that they'll probably never be popular but that you still love for whatever quixotic reason.

[Lethevich]

Medtner I feel is well-suited to this category. I love his music but it will never have popular appeal - it is slightly limited by its very style, despite this being exactly what the composer set out to do.

The Piano Quintet in particular is one of the absolute best works I have heard in this form - rich in invention and melody, with an almost orchestral sweep (there something in common with Brahms in this). This is his one real shot of a popular piece - the piano concertos are too confusing to Rachmaninoff-familiar ears. They develop in Beethovenesque ways, avoiding flowing melodies, rather strict. But there's just so much spectacular music in them!

I wish that I could advocate individual pieces as well as you and Luke do.

[Guido]

I should mention that The Lovers has another wonderful movement - In the hot depths of this summer in which he retreats completely into his rarefied french impressionistic mode and it's the absolute antithesis of Tonight I write the Saddest Lines - understated, hushed, delicate beauty with the most simple and economical of means - Sopranos and Altos with very simple closed position triads oscillating in the orchestra beneath them. It creates an atmosphere of complete calm and stillness, an impassive, silent witness watching the world go by.

Clearly, I am wedded to this man's music!

[cosmicj]

Great thread idea.  Here's mine: Chopin Second Piano Concerto.  A structural mess, confused organization, perfunctory use of the orchestra's sound capabilities, immature.  It's also blindingly beautiful, with constant stretches of absolute loveliness and brilliant melodic writing.  For me, it's the definition of a great non-masterpiece.

[False_Dmitry]

I have a couple of flawed diamonds

Janacek's opera OSUD (FATE).  The libretto is so implausibly unlikely (a mother who drags her own daughter off an upper-storey balcony to their death, rather than see her married to a composer...   and then, err, the composer gets struck by lightning).   Janacek must have realised he was sailing close to the wind with this story - and produces a score which comes very near to making the story credible.  The scene in which the music-academy students rehearse  - to an on-stage piano, played by a veritable dragon of a chorus-mistress who has to both play & sing - the composer's opera (in which he tries to reconcile himself to his wife's death) is one of Janacek's happiest concoctions

Handel's RICHARD THE FIRST (RICCARDO PRIMO) - magnificent music composed for one of the most absurd opera librettos in the history of staged music.  But you can't be too harsh on an a Handel opera that includes chalumeaux in the score

Robert Ward's THE CRUCIBLE.  I know it's deeply unfashionable to like this kind of music - but in fact it's an outstanding piece of music-theatre.  I've seen serious, cynical audiences in tears as John Proctor goes to his execution at the end.  For anyone so inclined, there is a good performance of the complete work on YouTube - broken-up, inevitably into YouTube's 10-min-maximum-length chunks.

Tchaikovsky's THE OPRICHNIK.  I've mentioned this before, so only a brief write-up for the extraordinary Grand-Opera grand-guignol work that he was persuaded to disown in later life.  Stupendous stuff.  Mostly.

and at the risk of angering our resident contingent of Wagnerians, TANNHAUSER.  A really quite decent opera.  Except for Act One, which is utter pants.

[kishnevi]

I have a couple of flawed diamonds

Robert Ward's THE CRUCIBLE.  I know it's deeply unfashionable to like this kind of music - but in fact it's an outstanding piece of music-theatre.  I've seen serious, cynical audiences in tears as John Proctor goes to his execution at the end.  For anyone so inclined, there is a good performance of the complete work on YouTube - broken-up, inevitably into YouTube's 10-min-maximum-length chunks.

Some thirty years ago, while a college student, I saw a production of The Crucible in Atlanta.  My chief memory of it is that the brass seemed to double most of the vocal lines.
Whether this was due to a quirk in the theatre acoustics, to bad placement of the musicians, to  Ward's score, or something else, I couldn't tell--but it made it almost impossible to hear the singers.  I couldn't follow the action, so in the end I went into the school library the next day and read through Miller's play (which I had never seen or read before).  It was only then that  I could figure out the events onstage.

[not edward]

Luke beat me to mentioning Tippett: in so many of his pieces the greatness and the flaws are inextricable. The same would go for some of my other favourite less canonical composers--Berwald, Alkan, Ives and Schnittke being particular examples.

[DavidW]

Neruda's Trumpet Concerto.

[vandermolen]

Dyson's 'Quo Vadis' goes on much too long but has wonderful ending.

[Renfield]

Dyson's 'Quo Vadis' goes on much too long but has wonderful ending.

I read that as 'wonderful editing' - which may be what it needs?

[vandermolen]

I read that as 'wonderful editing' - which may be what it needs?

Good point!

[david johnson]

Neruda's Trumpet Concerto.

wasn't it originally composed for horn? i think i recall hearing that.

[DavidW]

Oh I didn't know that Dave, maybe I'll have to find a recording for horn as well then.

[not edward]

Busoni's Berceuse Elegiaque

Not a masterpiece? Them's fighting words!

[k-k-k-kenny]

Most of Liszt's piano works.
Here was somebody with an extraordinary gift for harmonic progression and an ear for melody that, while not in the Schubert/Tchaikovsky/Grieg class, was pretty darned good. And yet ...
Amongst these favourites of mine, just one (or two): the Grosses Konzertsolo/Concerto Pathétique - love them both.

[mikkeljs]

My own childhood works age 7-10 are pure trash, but I love those from age 10-15, since I know them quite well and am kind of into the material, but they are just extremely bad written and orchestrated.