Major works absent from your collection?

[JBS]

I mentioned Beethoven, Mozart, and Haydn because I have some (in Beethoven's case, all) of their lieder. I suppose Beethoven should get points for the first song cycle.

[Florestan]

I suppose Beethoven should get points for the first song cycle.

I'm not even sure about this. The first song cycle from a major composer, certainly. The first song cycle ever, I would not be surprised to learn it's not really the case.

[vers la flamme]

Count me as a fan of Beethoven's and Mozart's Lieder (not as familiar with Haydn's), though I'm not altogether a huge fan of the genre. I've heard Winterreise and Schöne Müllerin, but only 2 or 3 times each. That being said, I LOVE Schumann's lieder, especially Dichterliebe.

[Florestan]

Count me as a fan of Beethoven's and Mozart's Lieder (not as familiar with Haydn's), though I'm not altogether a huge fan of the genre. I've heard Winterreise and Schöne Müllerin, but only 2 or 3 times each. That being said, I LOVE Schumann's lieder, especially Dichterliebe.

I'm a Mozart fanatic but it would never cross my mind to claim him as a great Lieder composer, for he was not. Lieder is a tipically Romantic genre.

[vers la flamme]

I'm a Mozart fanatic but it would never cross my mind to claim him as a great Lieder composer, for he was not. Lieder is a tipically Romantic genre.

Don't knock it til you try it. Have you heard his Lieder? It's sooo good. I would certainly call Mozart a great Lieder composer.

[Florestan]

Don't knock it til you try it. Have you heard his Lieder? It's sooo good. I would certainly call Mozart a great Lieder composer.

I have heard them all, multiple times. Enjoyable as they certainly are, they can't hold a candle to Schubert or Schumann. Heck , even Loewe is better.

[vers la flamme]

I have heard them all, multiple times. Enjoyable as they certainly are, they can't hold a candle to Schubert or Schumann. Heck , even Loewe is better.

Fine, you don't have to like them. We can still be friends 

[Florestan]

Fine, you don't have to like them. We can still be friends 

Of course. I wouldn't have it any other way. 😎

[JBS]

I'm not even sure about this. The first song cycle from a major composer, certainly. The first song cycle ever, I would not be surprised to learn it's not really the case.

Checking Wikipedia's article on Lieder cycles

The term "song cycle" did not enter lexicography until 1865, in Arrey von Dommer's edition of Koch's Musikalisches Lexikon, but works definable in retrospect as song cycles existed long before then.[1] One of the earliest examples may be the set of seven Cantigas de amigo by the 13th-century Galician jongleur Martin Codax.[4] Jeffrey Mark identified the group of dialect songs 'Hodge und Malkyn' from Thomas Ravenscroft's The Briefe Discourse (1614) as the first of a number of early 17th-century examples in England.[5]

And further on

Two of the earliest examples of the German song cycle were composed in 1816: Beethoven's An die ferne Geliebte (Op. 98), and Die Temperamente beim Verluste der Geliebten (J. 200-3, \Op. 46) by Carl Maria von Weber.

So Weber might be due the credit. (I've never even heard of, much less heard, the Weber cycle before this.)

Interestingly, German Wikipedia's page on Ferne Geliebte says it was the first song cycle, but the equivalent page on Anglophone Wikipedia doesn't make that claim.

[Jo498]

I have also never heard of the Weber song cycle. But the innovation of Beethoven is not just collecting them in a cycle but musically unifying them. In that respect, his op.98 is closer to Schumann than to Schubert. I would not claim that his lieder are as important as Schubert's or Schumann's but they are no negligible, I think, and many people might be surprised at their range and quality.
Loewe has as specialty the ballad, a narrative song, and he is very good at this but they seem even more a niche, closely tied to a (now mostly bygone) section of German culture. Some of Loewe's used to be quite popular (as were the poems he set) in Germany but that was half a century ago or more.

[Florestan]

Loewe has as specialty the ballad, a narrative song, and he is very good at this but they seem even more a niche, closely tied to a (now mostly bygone) section of German culture. Some of Loewe's used to be quite popular (as were the poems he set) in Germany but that was half a century ago or more.

Exactly. I love German ballads, I really do.

[JBS]

Naturally the Weber is on Youtube.
https://youtu.be/CwvlW5ZSBrs

Hermann Prey is the singer.

There's at least one other (Martyn Hill) but it's in the form of 4 unlinked videos.

[vers la flamme]

I've got this lying around and have yet to listen to it:



Anyone heard it, worth a listen tonight?

[DavidW]

The great Schubert and Schumann cycles are miles ahead.

That is like saying Chekhov is a mediocre playwright because he isn't Shakespeare!

[DavidW]

So Weber might be due the credit. (I've never even heard of, much less heard, the Weber cycle before this.)

Using Cambridge instead it is Beethoven due to harmonic unity and ending on the same key: http://assets.cambridge.org/97805218/96443/excerpt/9780521896443_excerpt.htm

But I agree with Florestan in spirit.  Beethoven might have technically wrote the first, but he didn't dominate the genre as Schubert and Schumann did.  The lieder is as Romantic era as you can possibly be. 

[Jo498]

I've got this lying around and have yet to listen to it:



Anyone heard it, worth a listen tonight?

I don't know that one, but I have two or three others from the series with male singers.
The more famous Loewe ballads are usually associated with the low male voice (baritone or even bass).

There are 1950s/60s recordings with Greindl on DG, and they and more might be findable on youtube.

There is an "Erlkönig" that is interesting to compare with Schubert's, there is the "Sorcerer's Apprentice", Odin having his flying steed shoed on Helgoland, another nice one is a poem about the writing of a popular song "Prinz Eugen" (of Savoy, a brilliant general, who finally stopped the Ottoman threat 300 years ago), they range from legendary, fairy tale, historic, martial or patriotic episodes etc. It's not hard to see why they were so popular.
As I said, many of these ballads used to be quite popular, partly because the source material was so popular. Even I had to learn some parts of them by heart in school in the 1980s and in my parents' generation many people knew several of these (sometimes very long) poems by heart.

[prémont]

Is this "Unpopular Opinions"? 

Yes, "unpopular opinions" is becoming more popular. 

[Jo498]

Due to streaming, I think I'll pivot away from talking about my collection to talking about my listening habits.  What are the holes in my listening?  I would say early music and early baroque.  Also opera.  The latter is due to wanting to watch it while I listen.  I'm slowly starting to move away from that since it is so limiting.

The bulk of my collection was acquired before 2010. There was no streaming; if one didn't have access to a very good library or wanted to rely on radio the only way to seriously get to know a piece was to get a recording. So, since I could afford to get not only what I was immediately interested in, I embraced the "building your own library" aspect, at least to a certain extent. That's why I have quite a bit of stuff I rarely listen to, and some I never really listened to because I got it as it was cheap.

Regarding opera I also came to the stance that I prefer this on stage, I don't even like watching videos of it on my own. But I can rarely bothered to actually go to live opera. So although I don't dislike opera at all, it has come to take a back seat in my listening. I don't know but this might change again in the future. In any case, I am not throwing out all these operas from my shelves.

[71 dB]

Compared to most enthusiasts I don't have a huge interest in symphonies by many composers. For example of all symphonies by Shostakovich I only have a Naxos disc of symphonies 5 & 9. I just have zero interest in exploring further. I have almost nothing by Vaughan-Williams and very little Sibelius and Dvorák. I have only four symphonies by Mahler and Bruckner. I don't like a lot of operas (Verdi, Rossini etc.) so I have none of those (but I dig Puccini!) I have very little lieds. I like Vivaldi, but I don't have any recording of the Four Seasons (what's the point? I rather listen to something by Vivaldi I haven't heard a million times).

So, a lot is absent from my collection. I seem to prefer baroque and smaller scale (chamber) works to massive large scale works (except if the large scale works are by extraordinary composers like J.S.Bach or Elgar in which case they are epic and stunning!). Baroque cantata is one genre I absolutely love. I often have more music by less known "obscure" composers than well-known ones (e.g more Rosenmüller than Sibelius, more Schieferdecker than Vaughan-Williams, more Hasse than Bartók, more Fasch than Shostakovich etc.)

I don't collect classical music based on what is considered important, but what I find interesting myself. Sometimes I get interested of universally praised music, but it can take time, years. 

[vandermolen]

I have no Verdi and no Puccini in my collection (other than the string quartets) and that isn't likely to change.

Nor me - nothing at all.