Most fatalistic, pessimistic, or despairing composers?

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

I was wondering when someone else would mention Mozart. There's a lot of angst and anguish in Mozart. Not the obvious breast-beating kind, woe is me.

Yes indeed. There's a lot of anguish but it's usually subtle.

What Mozart does extremely well - I think of it as one of his signature traits - is create an underlying atmosphere of unease that isn't quite resolved but just sort of lifts, like waking up from a disturbing but not quite nightmarish dream. I hear this in such pieces as the andante from the 40th Sym., large sections of the K. 421 quartet, and basically all of the Adagio K. 540, among other pieces.

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

I was wondering when someone else would mention Mozart. There's a lot of angst and anguish in Mozart. Not the obvious breast-beating kind, woe is me. The irredeemable kind sometimes though. He was my first thought actually.

Wagner should be mentioned. Gotterdamerung and all.

I have another not so obvious nominee. Weill. More particularly, the shows done with Brecht. Happy End.

Yes actually i find a lot of Mozart's music does tend to evoke sadness, even when looking at his music through topic theory his music tends to show aspects of the pianto topics quite a bit, even allowing them to creep in at more conclusive points in his music. One recurring idea in much of his later works is a chromatically descending melodic line. Il Commendatore's death is a very obvious example but you hear allusions to it again and again in the final two symphonies as well.

[Florestan]

Re: Mozart, I think you confuse the music with the man. Fatalistic, pessimistic, despairing? He was nothing of the sort, not even in his final days. Read his letters if in doubt.

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

Re: Mozart, I think you confuse the music with the man. Fatalistic, pessimistic, despairing? He was nothing of the sort, not even in his final days. Read his letters if in doubt.

I'm not talking about the man, I'm talking about topic theory.

[ritter]

Well, yes, there's all those composers you guys have mentioned....and then, of course,  there's Bernd Alois Zimmermann...

[vandermolen]

Pettersson
Weinberg?
Miaskovsky: Symphony 3 and 6.
Malcolm Arnold, Symphony 6,7 and 9 perhaps.

[Florestan]

I'm not talking about the man, I'm talking about topic theory.

By "you" I meant not you Jessop, but you gentlemen in general who bring up Mozart in a thread dedicated to "most fatalistic, pessimistic, or despairing composers". Neither the man nor the music fit the description. 

[Rinaldo]

Schnittke´s music has a solid dose of those characteristics, of course.

That's the first name that came to my mind when I saw the thread title.

Also, Petr Eben:

https://www.youtube.com/v/f5SRjw15kLA

(and not just this particular movement from Job – his organ music reeks of dread)

[Ken B]

Sadness, darkness, despair etc. are about as far as you can get from what I associate Mozart with...... 

(Though I would agree on the Requiem to some extent)

And as the  indicates, that's your lack of attention and exposure talking.

[Mister Sharpe]

And as the  indicates, that's your lack of attention and exposure talking.

Fabulous, try his 40th symphony, one of only two in a minor key he wrote. Charles Rosen heard in it "passion, violence and grief." There is much in it of intense dispair, sometimes obvious, sometimes lurking beneath the surface.

[carlos]

Last of Liszt piano works are extremely dark, obscure and sad. It's just incredible that the guy who wrote those is the same of the Raphsodies or the Gallop Chromatic. Already on his huge sonata it can be note a dark tone.

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

By "you" I meant not you Jessop, but you gentlemen in general who bring up Mozart in a thread dedicated to "most fatalistic, pessimistic, or despairing composers". Neither the man nor the music fit the description. 

I think Mozart was better at evoking those emotions in his music than any other classical era composer.....

[Ken B]

By "you" I meant not you Jessop, but you gentlemen in general who bring up Mozart in a thread dedicated to "most fatalistic, pessimistic, or despairing composers". Neither the man nor the music fit the description. 

Some of us Andrei think Mozart capable of more than one mood. I know, I know, Pettersson wails and wails in his histrionic look-at-me-see-how-I-suffer mode, pretty much non-stop, so if we were talking about composers who ONLY despair the you'd have a point. But there's lots of grief in Mozart and it's not just shallow bombastic grief like some composers I could mention. Talking about the Jupiter doesn't mean the G minor doesn't exist!

[Turner]

Pettersson wails and wails in his histrionic look-at-me-see-how-I-suffer mode, pretty much non-stop, so if we were talking about composers who ONLY despair the you'd have a point.

This perception of Pettersson is partly the result of Leif Aare´s biography. Pettersson himself would protest very loudly against seeing his music as merely a portrait of his own suffering; checking the choice of texts in the works, they are politically inspired and contain a lot of comments on society (Vox Humana cantata, 12th Symphony, etc.). Andreas K. Meyer writes more about this in the CPO CD liner notes to the 8th Symphony, for example.

[PerfectWagnerite]

Fabulous, try his 40th symphony, one of only two in a minor key he wrote. Charles Rosen heard in it "passion, violence and grief." There is much in it of intense dispair, sometimes obvious, sometimes lurking beneath the surface.

Yes the other one is Gminor also. #40 is a rather "serious" work - 3 of 4 movts are in sonata form, rather usual at the time.

[ahinton]

This perception of Pettersson is partly the result of Leif Aare´s biography. Pettersson himself would protest very loudly against seeing his music as merely a portrait of his own suffering; checking the choice of texts in the works, they are politically inspired and contain a lot of comments on society (Vox Humana cantata, 12th Symphony, etc.). Andreas K. Meyer writes more about this in the CPO CD liner notes to the 8th Symphony, for example.

The fact - and indeed it is a fact, as you rightly point out - that Pettersson's major works are not "a portrait of his own suffering" is not quite the point in that, in reality, that music, demonstrates, among other things, a sensitivity on his part as to what that kind of suffering is and can be; his music is not self-indulgent or self-pitying but some of it is nonetheless tragically potent because of that very understanding.

[Parsifal]

Yes the other one is Gminor also. #40 is a rather "serious" work - 3 of 4 movts are in sonata form, rather usual at the time.

The g-minor symphony is an intense work, but it strikes me as presenting a rather theatrical sort of grief. For expressions of serious angst in Mozart I tend to look to his more intimate works, such as the Adagio in b-minor for piano.

[relm1]

This perception of Pettersson is partly the result of Leif Aare´s biography. Pettersson himself would protest very loudly against seeing his music as merely a portrait of his own suffering; checking the choice of texts in the works, they are politically inspired and contain a lot of comments on society (Vox Humana cantata, 12th Symphony, etc.). Andreas K. Meyer writes more about this in the CPO CD liner notes to the 8th Symphony, for example.

But don't you think regardless if he is referencing his personal suffering or that of his people, that is still a very dark mind space that he consistently inhabits? 

[relm1]

I am increasingly becoming a fan of Malcolm Arnold's symphonies.  I used to hear them as slight semi popular but now really hear a personal darkness born out in these works.  I think like Mahler, he mixed popular idioms such as songs and dances within these titanic frameworks of great depth.  In Mahler's case sometimes very redemptive but with Arnold and Sibelius, usually tumultuous.  Arnold consistently rises in my mind as a great and unique symphonist.

[relm1]

I am noticing a dearth of American composers mentioned here.  I have mentioned a bias that Scandinavian composers seem to be over represented in this dark compositional mindset.  What do you all think about composers like Peter Mennin, George Crumb, George Rochberg, maybe even Samuel Barber?