Quiz: Mystery scores

[Sean]

[(poco) Sforzando]

Good thing for you both I was out of the house these past six hours . . . .   

(Sean usually gives very easy ones, while Luke gives very hard ones.)

[Luke]

Do you know the Faure piece I set, Sfz? It's fun!

Here with score

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2cdus04GoU

[Sean]

I guess I do see much more fear than fun in this kind of thing. Wagner shows confidence but not overconfidence to be debunked; it would be far easier to send up French sensitivity or Italian verismo. Wagner's enormous structures were far beyond any French mind and most of them bar Faure were under his influence for good reasons.

[(poco) Sforzando]

Do you know the Faure piece I set, Sfz? It's fun!

Here with score

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2cdus04GoU

I do now.

[Luke]

I guess I do see much more fear than fun in this kind of thing. Wagner shows confidence but not overconfidence to be debunked; it would be far easier to send up French sensitivity or Italian verismo. Wagner's enormous structures were far beyond any French mind and most of them bar Faure were under his influence for good reasons.

I'm not sure about easier - it's not exactly difficult to send up Wagnerian pomposity. Faure knew his Wagner very, very, well indeed, but he was too much his own man to be too susceptible to influence. Therefore he was in the perfect position to admire and understand Wagner without being swamped by him, at the same time as - as you say - many other French composers couldn't stay out of the thrall of the Beast of Bayreuth. (Of course later on Satie and then Debussy and so on found their way out of the Teutonic forests....).

But you're right, I think, to diagnose a kind of fear in this. A fear of what Wagner represents, musically - the hugeness, the overwhelming power, the mists and shadows and subjective magics... The way to counteract that is by puncturing it with the sort of cosmopolitan, quotidian humour and fleet-footed thought that the French can do so well, as here. It does remind me a bit of e.g. Chaplin's puncturing of Hitler by sending up his own tropes and motifs...

[Sean]

I wouldn't say that Wagner is pompous, though indeed there's a rather declamatory and naturalistic tradition of production that doesn't work well and panders to particular audiences. A little abstraction changes everything and focuses the attention on librettos' sophistication instead; I went to a Haitink Meistersinger once that was so foolishly wrongheaded for the Covent Garden lot that I had to walk out, whereas I've seen a profound Tristan and Parsifal where much more was gained through less.

I do get fed up with this notion of the cute French reaction to Wagner, as though their whimsy is suddenly justified; I remember a Poulenc seminar once where this was done, and a Wagner concert that was contrasted with some Ravel. I basically disagree that there's any significant insincerity in Wagner, this also being to take a stand against the prevailing academic view.

[Karl Henning]

I wouldn't say that Wagner is pompous [....]

That alone is telling 

[Sean]

[Karl Henning]

I basically disagree that there's any significant insincerity in Wagner, this also being to take a stand against the prevailing academic view.

He is entirely sincere in his pomposity, no argument there.

[Sean]

 

[Karl Henning]

Thread Duty:

[Karl Henning]

.

[Cato]

The Firebird by Stravinsky for the big orchestral score.

[Karl Henning]

The Firebird by Stravinsky for the big orchestral score.

Aye.

[(poco) Sforzando]

Aye.

#4 in vocal score is from the first act prelude to Wagner's Die Walkuere.

[Karl Henning]

#4 in vocal score is from the first act prelude to Wagner's Die Walkuere.

Jawohl.

[(poco) Sforzando]

Jawohl.

By the font, I'd say the violin concerto is by a Russian; however, since it's not Prokofiev or Shosty, I'll make a wild guess (since I don't know the piece) and say it could be the Khatchaturian.

[Cato]

I do not recall ever hearing the work, but is the two-piano work the Sonata by Stravinsky?

[(poco) Sforzando]

I do not recall ever hearing the work, but is the two-piano work the Sonata by Stravinsky?

I doubt it. I may have a score, but I'm too lazy to go to the other room and check. But doesn't look his style at all. My first guess would be Richard Strauss, perhaps a 2-piano reduction from an opera.