Have You Ever Experienced Radical Changes in Your Musical Taste?

[vers la flamme]

Are there any composers whose stature increased immediately after their deaths? This kind of thing is common in popular music, so I wonder if anything similar ever happened with a classical composer.

[Lisztianwagner]

Are there any composers whose stature increased immediately after their deaths? This kind of thing is common in popular music, so I wonder if anything similar ever happened with a classical composer.

Georges Bizet comes immediately to my mind; when he was alive, his music wasn't very successful and even his most famous opera, Carmen, received a lot of criticism at the premiere. Six months after his death, Carmen started to be considered a masterpiece and Bizet began to be kept in very high esteem.

[ritter]

And OTOH, I'd say Wagner's reputation never fell into decline either after his death, just like Beethoven.

Or more recently, Stravinsky? Debussy?

... In just this way it's something funny-pathetic-iconic that the trustees of Boston's Symphony Hall could not agree on any other composers whose names "deserved" to join Beethoven's above the stage.

That's because our dear @Florestan  wasn't among the trustees. If he had been, we'd see the names of Offenbach and Waldteufel next to Beethoven's. 

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

And OTOH, I'd say Wagner's reputation never fell into decline either after his death, just like Beethoven.

I suspect you're right about that. Maybe Brahms, too.

Or more recently, Stravinsky? Debussy?

"More recently" is the key phrase. I was thinking of composers active before about 1900 or so.

[Karl Henning]

And OTOH, I'd say Wagner's reputation never fell into decline either after his death, just like Beethoven.

Or more recently, Stravinsky? Debussy?
That's because our dear @Florestan  wasn't among the trustees. If he had been, we'd see the names of Offenbach and Waldteufel next to Beethoven's. 

You forgot Rossini! 😇

[Jo498]

Are there any composers whose stature increased immediately after their deaths? This kind of thing is common in popular music, so I wonder if anything similar ever happened with a classical composer.

Not immediately, but Schubert was mostly locally known at the time of his death and got more famous afterwards, especially after the C major symphony was premiered 10 years after his death.
Bach, Handel, Gluck, Mozart and Haydn remained known after their deaths but their status was not stable. But they didn't have to be re-discovered like e.g. Monteverdi was in the 1920s, or Vivaldi even a bit later.

[Florestan]

If we take as measure of a posthumous reputation of a composer the percentage of his works that are still regularly performed and recorded all year long all around the world then Chopin is far ahead any other 19th century composer, Beethoven and Wagner included.

[Florestan]

In just this way it's something funny-pathetic-iconic that the trustees of Boston's Symphony Hall could not agree on any other composers whose names "deserved" to join Beethoven's above the stage.

That's because our dear @Florestan  wasn't among the trustees. If he had been, we'd see the names of Offenbach and Waldteufel next to Beethoven's. 

You forgot Rossini! 😇

Actually, no. I am firmly opposed to mentioning the name of any composer above the stage or around the hall. A concert hall is not, or should not be, a pagan temple where gods are put on display for veneration and prayer, and much less a church where only the one true God is venerated and prayed to. It should be what the name implies: a public building where music is performed and listened to.

[Florestan]

And OTOH, I'd say Wagner's reputation never fell into decline either after his death, just like Beethoven.

Actually, the reputation of them both was rather split during their lifetime, some considered them as the ne plus ultra of music whereas some others were more reserved towards, or downright hostile to, their music. The difference is that Beethoven's reputation today is far more uniformly positive than Wagner's. 

[Opus131]

Yeah but classical music IS a kind of religion. It even made an attempt to turn into a kind of mysticism around the turn of the 20th century.

[Florestan]

Yeah but classical music IS a kind of religion. It even made an attempt to turn into a kind of mysticism around the turn of the 20th century.

Depends on what you mean by classical music. Music written in the Classical Era proper was most emphatically not a kind of religion. Gluck, Haydn, Mozart, Boccherini, Cimarosa or Paisiello or indeed any of their contemporaries can hardly if at all be mentioned on the same page with mysticism.

Actually, the turning of music from an entertaining and edifying art into a religion of art was initiated and propagated not as much by musicians as by literati, especially the German ones. The pseudo-mystical, pseudo-religious twaddle that such overexcited people as Tieck and Wackenroder wrote about the music of their time is incredible. They had mystical raptures and spiritual revelations while listening to Johann Friedrich Reichardt's Macbeth overture (this being the only composer and work mentioned nominally by Wackenroder). Please read the description of the way the fictional musician Joseph Berglinger listened to music and then tell me which secular music from around 1797, when the book was published, could have really warranted this kind of religious ecstasy. Their work was continued and expanded by another feverish writer, E.T.A. Hoffmann, with whom the deification of Beethoven was set in motion full speed (together with the devaluation of Haydn).

It's interesting to note that the musicians proper were much more sober and cool-headed than their literary counterparts and succumbed to the music-as-religion, composer-as-demigod nonsense only gradually and partially. All throughout the 19th and early 20th century, lots of composers, greater and lesser, were no mystics at all and regarded music through the balanced and businesslike lens of the previous aesthetics rather than through the mystical haze of full-fledged Romanticism.

Needless to say, only in an age when the genuine religious sentiment of the musicians and their audiences was weakened and diluted could music have been seriously regarded, proposed, promoted and accepted as a substitute.

[AnotherSpin]

If we take as measure of a posthumous reputation of a composer the percentage of his works that are still regularly performed and recorded all year long all around the world then Chopin is far ahead any other 19th century composer, Beethoven and Wagner included.

There is a difference between the effort required to record a Chopin piece and a Wagner opera. Operas are performed and recorded less frequently with every year. Who'd be surprised.

[AnotherSpin]

Actually, no. I am firmly opposed to mentioning the name of any composer above the stage or around the hall. A concert hall is not, or should not be, a pagan temple where gods are put on display for veneration and prayer, and much less a church where only the one true God is venerated and prayed to. It should be what the name implies: a public building where music is performed and listened to.

It is a pagan temple. Where else would a group of people watch and listen to other people blowing wooden or metal pipes, beating on the stretched skins of slaughtered animals or driving strings made of animal entrails on other strings, jerking their legs and arms, pretending to be princes or madmen and singing strange lyrics with their voices straining far beyond normal?

[Florestan]

There is a difference between the effort required to record a Chopin piece and a Wagner opera. Operas are performed and recorded less frequently with every year. Who'd be surprised.

Well, even within the operatic world itself there are differences. According to Operabase.com, since January 1st, 2023 until today December 5, 2023, Tristan und Isolde has been performed around the world 70+ times, The Master Singers of Nuremberg and Parsifal 40+ times, Le nozze di Figaro 200+ times, Il Barbiere di Siviglia 170+ times and Carmen 210+ times. Make of it what you will.

[Florestan]

It is a pagan temple. Where else would a group of people watch and listen to other people blowing wooden or metal pipes, beating on the stretched skins of slaughtered animals or driving strings made of animal entrails on other strings, jerking their legs and arms, pretending to be princes or madmen and singing strange lyrics with their voices straining far beyond normal?

Well, true pagans like the Greeks and the Romans did similar things not in their temples but in their theaters. 

[Jo498]

The theatre is a temple of Muses. Ancient Tragedy (and the beginning of opera was the idea of its revival) was also connected with Greek religion and probably has roots in the Dionysos cult. The Christian middle ages had mystery/morality plays, sometimes days long for religious festival and music in church.
It's not a radical change to put the music/opera itself in the center not as subservient to religion as it had happened in Greece as well.

[AnotherSpin]

Well, even within the operatic world itself there are differences. According to Operabase.com, since January 1st, 2023 until today December 5, 2023, Tristan und Isolde has been performed around the world 70+ times, The Master Singers of Nuremberg and Parsifal 40+ times, Le nozze di Figaro 200+ times, Il Barbiere di Siviglia 170+ times and Carmen 210+ times. Make of it what you will.

No surprise. Wagner's operas are exclusive, they are difficult to perform, they are not designed for mass audiences. In contrast to the popular stuff that never leaves the stage.

[Florestan]

The theatre is a temple of Muses. Ancient Tragedy (and the beginning of opera was the idea of its revival) was also connected with Greek religion and probably has roots in the Dionysos cult. The Christian middle ages had mystery/morality plays, sometimes days long for religious festival and music in church.
It's not a radical change to put the music/opera itself in the center not as subservient to religion as it had happened in Greece as well.

In other words, substituting music for religion, concert halls* for temples or churches and musical rituals for religious ones is not a step forward but a return to paganism.  (The Christian morality plays were Gebrauchmusik and cannot be compared in any meaningful way with the 19th century mysticism of absolute music in concert halls)

Agreed, actually.

*it's remarkable that, until Wagner, opera (and opera houses) were relatively free of pseudo-mystical and pseudo-religious garbs and conceits.

[Florestan]

No surprise. Wagner's operas are exclusive, they are difficult to perform, they are not designed for mass audiences. In contrast to the popular stuff that never leaves the stage.

That's true. Wagner turned opera outside down, from a democratic and popular entertainment into and esoteric and elitist religious ritual of the happy few.

   

[AnotherSpin]

That's true. Wagner turned opera outside down, from a democratic and popular entertainment into and esoteric and elitist religious ritual of the happy few.

   

Any music more complex than ringtone is esoteric and elitist these days. No problem, everyone has a phone and can enjoy democratic and popular entertainment.