Six undeservedly neglected composers.

[Mirror Image]

Are there any composers that anyone responding on this thread would consider deservedly neglected, or do the adverb and adjective in the subject line always form an inseparable pair?

Does wishing a composer was deservingly neglected count?

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Are there any composers that anyone responding on this thread would consider deservedly neglected, or do the adverb and adjective in the subject line always form an inseparable pair?

I saw that question coming and it's a good one.

If you look at all the composers mentioned, you can see that their nationalities are varied and most of them live(d) between ca. 1850 and the present. Before that time, the three main musical countries were Italy, France and Germany/Austria. With the rise of nationalism, every country got its own national school, some composers of which went on to 'compete' internationally. The backbone of the canon was still formed by the three nations mentioned, with the prestige of symphonic music being highest, making the German/Austrian tradition dominant. And here the problem of neglected composers start. Not only was there an international music market in which you had to compete, that market was driven too by innovation (and the underlying idea of Progress). The undisputed giants have become those composers who are either the musical 'kings' of their respective nations, or have been the most fascinatingly 'new' to international acclaim. Composers who weren't or haven't been either have thus been 'neglected', though the recording industry, for its own commercial reasons, have dug many of them up again. That the majority of them aren't world-shattering geniuses is obvious. That many of them still wrote good music, is obvious, too (to me). Canons  are handy and they aren't there for nothing. But a canon isn't static, either. Nor should it be. Sometimes a new entrant can renew it.

[Brian]

Are there any composers that anyone responding on this thread would consider deservedly neglected, or do the adverb and adjective in the subject line always form an inseparable pair?

I could have sworn there was a mocking "deservedly neglected" composers thread at some point, but it appears that is not the case. Still, might I nominate Albert Dietrich or Julius Otto Grimm?

[mszczuj]

How about setting the Dementors on the critics?

Useless. The critics are the Dementors themselves.

[cilgwyn]

Composers aren't always undeservedly neglected,anyway. Listening to Cpo's cd's of Ernst Boehe and Richard Wetz have to be some of the most dreary,turgid,wastefully uninspiring minutes I've ever spent. Maybe it's a good idea to take some of those over enthusiastic reviews of obscure composers on sites like Musicweb with the occasional pinch of salt.
Less please!

[(poco) Sforzando]

I could have sworn there was a mocking "deservedly neglected" composers thread at some point, but it appears that is not the case. Still, might I nominate Albert Dietrich or Julius Otto Grimm?

There was a "great composers who aren't you cup of tea" thread, on which virtually every famous name in musical history made it. (My own least favorite great composer, Richard Strauss, did not, so here I'll redress the balance.)

[Brian]

There was a "great composers who aren't you cup of tea" thread, on which virtually every famous name in musical history made it. (My own least favorite great composer, Richard Strauss, did not, so here I'll redress the balance.)

I just found the Worst Composers Ever!! thread.

[cilgwyn]

Now that's a fun thread!

[(poco) Sforzando]

I saw that question coming and it's a good one.

If you look at all the composers mentioned, you can see that their nationalities are varied and most of them live(d) between ca. 1850 and the present. Before that time, the three main musical countries were Italy, France and Germany/Austria. With the rise of nationalism, every country got its own national school, some composers of which went on to 'compete' internationally. The backbone of the canon was still formed by the three nations mentioned, with the prestige of symphonic music being highest, making the German/Austrian tradition dominant. And here the problem of neglected composers start. Not only was there an international music market in which you had to compete, that market was driven too by innovation (and the underlying idea of Progress). The undisputed giants have become those composers who are either the musical 'kings' of their respective nations, or have been the most fascinatingly 'new' to international acclaim. Composers who weren't or haven't been either have thus been 'neglected', though the recording industry, for its own commercial reasons, have dug many of them up again. That the majority of them aren't world-shattering geniuses is obvious. That many of them still wrote good music, is obvious, too (to me). Canons  are handy and they aren't there for nothing. But a canon isn't static, either. Nor should it be. Sometimes a new entrant can renew it.

Agreed that canons should not be static, but in practice they tend to be, and it's difficult to say what makes a composer canonical if he (much more rarely she) hasn't been signed up. (In an interesting article on the history of the musical canon, Joseph Kerman cops out by writing: "There has been more about the history and ontology of the canon in these remarks than about the philosophy and politics of canon formation. They are coming to an end where many readers, I rather think, would have liked to see them begin: How are canons determined, why, and on what authority?" Which, of course, is the crux of the problem.)

But then again, I don't know if there is a necessarily sharp distinction between canonical composers on the one side and undeservedly neglected ones on the other. JZ brings up the point about nationalities beyond the Big Three and dates past 1850, but that may be just a reflection of the tastes of posters on this thread: for example, someone could just have well mentioned Mozart's contemporary JM Kraus, who worked in Sweden; or closer to Beethoven's time, JV Vorisek from Bohemia. And since JZ rightly says of these neglected composers that "the recording industry have dug many of them up again," the question is my mind is whether they are truly neglected at all - unless by neglect one means a paucity of live performances. But after all, live performances of lesser-known figures can be arduous for the performers, risky for the producers, expensive for the audience, and in any case at best a few thousand people in geographic proximity may be able to attend. But since a large percentage of listeners approach music primarily through recordings, which are generally easy to obtain and inexpensive, the availability of a recording may well mean that the composer reaches far more people than might be the case otherwise, and so a single CD can offset all kinds of "neglect."

[mc ukrneal]

Composers aren't always undeservedly neglected,anyway. Listening to Cpo's cd's of Ernst Boehe and Richard Wetz have to be some of the most dreary,turgid,wastefully uninspiring minutes I've ever spent. Maybe it's a good idea to take some of those over enthusiastic reviews of obscure composers on sites like Musicweb with the occasional pinch of salt.
Less please!

Non! Non! And again, Non! 

Turgid, dreary and wasteful do not describe Wetz in the slightest. Wetz has beautiful melodies, and certainly this is not depressing music. This is not to say that these are absolutely the best symphonies ever, but I have gotten much enjoyment out of those discs. I've enjoyed the Eduard and Richard Franck on Sterling and Audite respectively as another example, and more examples could be Ziehrer on Naxos/Marco Polo, Contemporaries of Mozart series on Chandos, and Romantic concerti series on Hyperion. And the amount of music that is still unrecorded is actually quite staggering. A well known example - Offenbach. Only about 20-30% of his operetta have ever been recorded. EVER! Franz Xaver Richeter wrote something like 80 symphonies, of which only a small portion have been recorded (and those I have heard are absolutely excellent). The list goes on.

I for one appreciate all the efforts from labels like Opera Rara, CPO, Hyperion, Chandos, Naxos, etc. to bring us unknown and/or unrecorded music, giving us a chance to hear music we cannot hear anywhere else. More please!!!!!!!!!

[Brian]

Ziehrer on Naxos/Marco Polo

Oh man... I bought the Ziehrer opera overtures disc and would have gladly put it in the Deservedly Neglected pile.

[(poco) Sforzando]

Now that's a fun thread!

Consider it your introduction to the dearly departed Teresa.

[mc ukrneal]

Oh man... I bought the Ziehrer opera overtures disc and would have gladly put it in the Deservedly Neglected pile.

The Dances and Marches disc are pretty good (series of four discs). But then again, I love this stuff - Strausses, Lehar, Lumbye, etc. I can listen to that music anytime.

[Brian]

The Dances and Marches disc are pretty good (series of four discs). But then again, I love this stuff - Strausses, Lehar, Lumbye, etc. I can listen to that music anytime.

I love JStraussJr (have an embarrassing number of the Marco Polo discs), Lehar, and some Komzak, and you ought to check out the Strauss Society's Ivanovici discs - turns out that "Danube Waves" was about the least cool thing he wrote.

[mc ukrneal]

I love JStraussJr (have an embarrassing number of the Marco Polo discs), Lehar, and some Komzak, and you ought to check out the Strauss Society's Ivanovici discs - turns out that "Danube Waves" was about the least cool thing he wrote.

Komzak - got him too. Ivanovici - a new name! Thanks!

[North Star]

I suppose toucan meant to write Gabriel Fauré, and I can agree wholly with him being neglected. Saint-Saens is neglected pretty much because he lived long enough to become old-fashioned, while he was one of the most progressive composers of his generation.
Alkan was forgotten because he was a recluse and his works were always unknown to the public - even though Debussy and Ravel both studied his works under one of Alkan's students.
Of Finnish composers from late 19th or early 20th century, Sibelius is pretty much the only one whose works are played in concerts.
Liszt's music is also underrated by the general public because they only know the showpieces.
Mendelssohn's piano & chamber music aren't performed too much either.
Of the classical era, Boccherini isn't known at all compared to FJ Haydn.
But perhaps the most obviously neglected composer has been Antonio Vivaldi - of whom Stravinsky for example didn't have a very high opinion, even though he was crucial to the development of the concerto form, and he also composed huge amounts of operas and cantatas, among other things.

Modern composers are a different thing entirely - the recent musical idioms are so different that it takes time until people accustom to the new sounds - Mahler wasn't appreciated before Bernstein's first cycle, and J.S. Bach was forgotten completely (well students have played his works pretty much always) after his death until Felix Mendelssohn resuscitated the B minor mass and later Casals recorded the cello suites and Gould the keyboard works. And the solo violin works were used as wrapping paper.

[North Star]

Alessandro Scarlatti's Motets seem as good as the choral music of Vivaldi's - heavenly, literally - see the recording by Michel Corboz on Erato

Vivaldi was forgotten for several centuries and there are still those who believe he is third fiddle to Bach - but let's be fair, the Vivaldi revival is one of the significant musical event of the XXth century - with unacknowledged importance of Ezra Pound and Olga Rudge at its inception.

The Neo-Classical movement of the interwar period - the good efforts of people like Nadia Boulanger (who also shares responsibility in the Monteverdi revival) and Wanda Landowska, explains the re-discovery of so many pre-romantic composers.

The Middle Ages are still a turn off to most of us. Perhaps a look into the recordings of Hugues Cuenod might make a difference - Cuenod sings Guillaume de Machaut as one would sing Schubert and Brahms therefore making him sound as good as Brahms and Schubert - while the scholars who customarily specialize in ancient music try and reconstruct how it may have sounded to contempories, thereby making it seem pedantic and dull.

Yes, Vivaldi has been revived in the last 30 years especially, along with the rise of the HIP movement.  There's also the naïve project of recording those works (over 450) whose manuscripts are at Turin. Of Pound's efforts I didn't know previously, although I knew he was a fascist. It reminds me of the one good thing the Nazis did - they digged up Schumann's violin concerto, because Mendelssohn's couldn't obviously have been played in the Third Reich.

Regarding the performance practice of old music, I don't think Machaut or Perotin or Monteverdi should be performed like Richard Strauss - at least most performances shouldn't be like that. If people can appreciate older music only if it sounds like the 19th century romantics, it could be better that they listen to the 19th century romantics instead.
But, we of course can't really know how the music was performed originally, and this isn't to me as important as performing the music so that the unique aspects of the style or piece of music are best realized.


Niccolo Paganini is also very much neglected - other than the caprices and violin concertos, that is.

[Brian]

Niccolo Paganini is also very much neglected - other than the caprices and violin concertos, that is.

The current complete edition on Naxos is revealing that Zigeunerweisen just barely scratches the surface of what Pablo de Sarasate could do.

[North Star]

The current complete edition on Naxos is revealing that Zigeunerweisen just barely scratches the surface of what Pablo de Sarasate could do.

Yes, he, too is one of the 19th/early 20th century virtuosos who are very much neglected. Ysaÿe isn't too well known, either.

[mszczuj]

Six?

Well, the No.1 is Johannes Ockeghem. He was a real giant. His music make me unstopped pleasure while listening. I never can predict what next sound will be and never lose interest what it will be. Of course he is appreciated between old music lovers but it is not enough. He should be ranked among the greatest like Bach and Beethoven.

Then the No.2 must be Josquin des Prez. Not so intense as Ockeghem but omnipotent master who could do with sound everything. Like only Haydn and Mozart did.

But if I recognize their greatness I probably ought to think Jacob Obrecht should be the No.3. But I don't know his music enough. On the other hand what I listened was fabulous, May be most ecstatic thing I ever heard.

Well, I'm afraid all it goes in wrong direction. This is completely diffrent musical language and that difference was recognized immediately when our language was born. Prima Pratica had its pinnacle then as our - still our I suppose - Seconda Pratica has its pinnacle in Vienna of late 18th end beginning of 19th century. But there is no reason to expect that masters of that musical language will be performed and recorded and appreciated like masters of our.

So I must begin everythingonce again thinking only about masters of our musical language.

In new post.



Oh! Spell Check suggested me to change Ockeghem to Orgasm!