Most obscure work by a major composer?

Started by Brian, February 21, 2013, 05:02:14 AM

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ibanezmonster

How about Prokofiev's op.88 Symphonic March? If I'm the only who has ever fully orchestrated it, that's pretty obscure.


If I remember right, I actually enjoyed Beethoven's Mass in C quite a bit more than something like Missa Solemnis. But then again, I tend to prefer his less popular stuff, with a few key exceptions (mainly certain piano sonatas).

kishnevi

Beethoven: the incidental music to a play by F. Dunker, Leonore Prohaska.

The only reason I know about it is because one of the four pieces is scored for glass armonica and speaking voice, and included under the title Melodram in a CD devoted to the glass armonica I found in the used CD store a few days ago.  It's supposedly the only music Beethoven wrote for glass armonica

If you want more information about the music,  don't ask me: everything I know is from the liner notes and substantially reproduced in the above paragraph.
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kishnevi

Quote from: Cato on February 21, 2013, 01:44:27 PM
First thing I thought of:

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His symphonies for some reason have occasionally invaded my brain in the past days! It must be time to revisit Robert Schumann!

That's not really obscure.  It's simply hardly ever been performed.  But bits and pieces of the music do show up in Schumann CDs with a bit of regularity.

But sticking to Schumann,  perhaps we could nominate some of his choral works or the studies for pedal organ?

springrite

Quote from: Opus106 on February 21, 2013, 07:45:49 AM
Nothing's really obscure in GMG. Thread closed.

True enough. There is nothing too obscure to deserve its own thread and hailed as a neglected masterpiece.
Do what I must do, and let what must happen happen.

Florestan



Der Rose Pilgerfahrt (The Pilgrimage of a Rose) is a hybrid work, combining aspects of the choral ballade, oratorio, song cycle, and even opera. Schumann made this combination very deliberately; he believed that a new format was needed to combine the best aspects of all of these genres and meld lyricism and drama in a new way. Throughout his life he experimented with these concepts, producing, as well as this work, the better-known "Paradise and the Peri," (most of which was written during 1841) "Scenes from Goethe's Faust," (written between 1844 and 1853) "Manfred," (written in 1848 and 1849, premiered in 1852) and "Der Konigssohn" (also written in 1851.) However, those works are larger in dramatic scope and far from the intimacy of this work, which was premiered in the music salon at the Schumann's Dusseldorf home, a venue which could hold an audience of only about 60.

The structure is most like an oratorio, divided into sections for solo voice, solo voices and chorus, and for just the chorus, which itself is sometimes divided into different sections, as in the beginning and ending pieces, which are sung just by the women's voices. However, unlike the standard oratorio format, the solo music is not divided into recitatives and arias, but instead written more like individual lieder, an impression which the relative intimacy of the music and the piano accompaniment (in that version) enhance. Also unusually, the role of the narrator is taken by different soloists during different moments.

Though it is infrequently performed, it is overflowing with lyric melody with a charm that is naive but not cloyingly so, and is appealing in its own right as well as for the insight it provides into Schumann as a musical innovator. ~ Anne Feeney, Rovi


Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind. — Rossini

some guy

Given that the terms obscure and major are highly debatable, here's my take on this topic:

Barney Childs, all
Pauline Oliveros, all
Eliane Radigue, all
Helmut Lachenmann, all
Luc Ferrari, all
Bernard Parmegiani, all
David Tudor, all
Beatriz Ferreyra, all
Phill Niblock, all
Maryanne Amacher, all
Günther Becker, all

And so forth....

The Six

Debussy - Le martyre de Saint Sébastien

TheGSMoeller


ibanezmonster

Quote from: some guy on February 22, 2013, 10:48:30 AM
Helmut Lachenmann, all
I don't get the impression that this is completely true, especially if compared to the other ones in the list. Which is alright- Lachenmann rocks.  ;)

Opus106

Quote from: some guy on February 22, 2013, 10:48:30 AM
Given that the terms obscure and major are highly debatable, here's my take on this topic:

Barney Childs, all
Pauline Oliveros, all
Eliane Radigue, all
Helmut Lachenmann, all
Luc Ferrari, all
Bernard Parmegiani, all
David Tudor, all
Beatriz Ferreyra, all
Phill Niblock, all
Maryanne Amacher, all
Günther Becker, all

And so forth....

Hey, I've actually come across two of those names before!


:D
Regards,
Navneeth

The new erato

Quote from: Opus106 on February 22, 2013, 10:32:41 PM
Hey, I've actually come across two of those names before!


:D
Tudor and Lachenmann probably. But I thought Ferrari made cars and Becker played tennis.

AdamFromWashington

Bartok's 44 Duos for Two Violins might count. His early Scherzo for Piano and Orchestra definitely would. Shostakovich's Viola Sonata, might. I love it, but I can hear why it might not be very popular. All of Sibelius's piano music would fall under this category.