Internet stalkers without out lives?

[Jo498]

The closest Bach got to opera were probably not the passions but the two comical secular cantatas: Peasant cantata and Coffee cantata

[ahinton]

It's good to read all the thoughful, insightful and pertinent comments about Schönberg to which, for the sake of further proportionality, I would add that his copntradictory retort to someone who described him as an auto-didact was that he was "a pupil of Mozart" and that the largest chapter in his book Style and Idea is entitled Brahms the Progressive; I would also note that a/tonality is in the ears of the beholder...

[KevinP]

if I could go back in time and commission one composer to write one piece, there's no doubt who and what I'd pick: Mahler's Requiem.

The only question is which phase of his life I'd choose. That's an interesting one.

If I had money left, I'd get one from Bach too.

[Jo498]

There is the funeral music "Lass, Fürstin, lass noch einen Strahl" and some of the motets supposedly also were for funerals. Bach would not have written a catholic Requiem but there could have been more explicit funeral music, maybe some pieces got lost or he would have repurposed (parts of) cantatas.

Beethoven could have written a requiem; I think he was better at choral music than he is often given credit for and another late-ish large scale choral works, somewhat similar to the missa solemnis would have been amazing.

[KevinP]

There's also Bach's Actus Tragicus, but that's what makes me want a Bach requiem.

[Androcles]

How about some multi-part choral polyphony (a capella) from Berg? I think it would have been more interesting than Krenek's 'Lamentations of Jeremiah'.

[Dedalus]

If Mahler wrote an opera, what would it be about?

Considering the themes that seem to take up all his work, would it be an opera on existence or coming to terms with death? just a thought

I have no answer to your question but just the thought of a Mahler opera touching on those themes gives me a strong wistful feeling.

[ahinton]

How about some multi-part choral polyphony (a capella) from Berg? I think it would have been more interesting than Krenek's 'Lamentations of Jeremiah'.

It might have sounded rather more akin to Strauss's An den Baum Daphne or Deutsche Motette...