GMG Classical Music Forum

I don't know whether this topi has been discussed before.

Just a few years ago I'd have said that I vastly prefered exploring new music to sticking to, and deepening my knowledge of, familiar music and favorite composers. I have even dared to think, and publicly state, that "life is too short to spend it on masterpieces only".

But as I grow older (will turn 48 coming December) I'm becoming increasingly conservative in my taste and in the last year most explorations of new music and composers left me with a feeling of dissatisfaction and frustration, whereas when I put on the music of my favorite composers I have a strong and pleasant feeling of coming home. Most new music I have listened to during the last year seemed insipid and uninspiring and after it was over I was left with no memory of anything, whereas even the shortest and most unpretentious work of my favorite composers charms my ear and stirs my soul and haunts me for a long time after it's over.

Given that, and the fact that if were I to listen exclusively to the complete works of my top 10 composers in all the performances I own I would be busy for several years, I guess my exploration time will be drastically cut in favor of sticking to, and deepening, my knowledge and familiarity with the music I know for sure I love and will enjoy.

As Delius --- a composer I have not yet explored  :D --- put it, "Always stick to your likings - there are profound reasons for them".

What's your experience in this respect?

My experience has been that the whole "favorite composers" thing is definitely a part of my past, part of when I was first starting out in music and thus knew only a few composers. If I ever try, for the purposes of responding to a poll, say, to think of "my top ten composers," I quickly come up against the fact that I cannot limit myself to ten. And that has been true for almost sixty years, or almost only mere weeks later than that "first starting out" thing. That is, I was voracious, and while I have slowed down a bit (not too much, though, as I don't have too much time left, realistically), "a bit" is probably not all that much. I was bowled over by music from before my earliest memories. Music is in my earliest memories in any case. And for years that was only "Hollywood" music. It's all there was when I was growing up. When I first heard classical music, properly so-called (as in other than Warner Bros. cartoons), it was overwhelming.

In those six decades--what a cruelly brief amount of time that is, to be sure--I have never thought that I had to choose between exploration and spending time with old favorites. I have always done both. After all, an old favorite is just a brand new experience after a bit of time has passed, an idea I have missed seeing in many years of listening to people talk about music. For most people, the exploration seems always to belong to a dim and distant past, in "the long, long ago, the before time." There was once a time, for all of us, when we heard Beethoven for the first time, or Tchaikovsky, or Rachmaninoff. And I think all of us have at least one composer in our favorites list, however long that may be, whose music repelled us the first time we heard it. Maybe not. I have dozens like that. But having an insatiable appetite for music, I do not find instances of initial and temporary repulsion to be at all serious or important. But the sense I get, after years of listening to people talk, is that the favorites have always been favorites.

My own experience, however, has been that the older I get, as in, the more time I spend listening to music, the more I know that there's a lot of music out there, music I've never heard and perhaps never will. I don't have that much time. I will spend it exploring new things, that is, in listening to tomorrow's old favorites.

Thank you for your thoughtful reply, Michael, I sincerely appreciate it.

Quote from: Florestan on June 06, 2020, 08:08:29 AMWhat's your experience in this respect?

I listen mostly to composers I know and like, but I'm always on the lookout for new (to me) things.  Sometimes one can find a composer to rival the greats (I'm thinking Morales or de Rore when I discovered them) or lesser known music from known composers that really hits the spot (Rossini's Petite messe solennelle or, perhaps even more so, Cherubini's mind-bogglingly great masses).  With music more readily available and at a lower price than ever before, I see now as the best time ever to try to hear as much of everything as possible.

Quote from: Florestan on June 06, 2020, 10:14:46 AM
Thank you for your thoughtful reply, Michael, I sincerely appreciate it.

Thanks, Florestan.

In my personal case, discovering new music is an important part of the fuel that drives my musical experience everyday. It partly has to do with the excitement that means to find great music that wasn't written by the most played composers, or discover less-known works by the most famous ones. I've discovered MANY impressive works by composers who are rarely mentioned elsewhere. It's about giving a kind of recognition to them as well. It's already a habit on me. Granted, not always discovering works/composers is a fruitful activity. I've listened to works from unsung composers that should remain into the music obscure realm. Nevertheless, I consider that's part of the adventurer's job. You can't always pretend to win.

Lately I've intended to discover as much new music (for me) as possible, whether by popular or less-known composers. The results have been positively rewarding most of the time, and that seems becoming an addiction on me. I constantly need new music. So I hardly ever listen to, e.g. Beethoven's 5th Symphony, Brahms's Violin Concerto, Saint-Saëns's Danse Macabre, or so. Once in a while I do that. I am one of those unusual (?) listeners who can't listen to 100+ recordings of the same work. I can't get pleasure of it. I just can not.

In my own listening, I have found that, while I do enjoy exploring new composers and new music, it's not absolutely vital that I do this. In my earlier listening, I was very much a breadth type of listener where my appetite for hearing/discovering new composers was omnipresent in my general attitude, but, nowadays, I find that my attitude is more depth than breadth in that I'm not really worried about wanting to hear it all or even discover new music. I'm more interested in deepening my knowledge of the composers that I love. I personally don't think you can have both a breadth and depth attitude that occurs simultaneously, because then you really don't gain much knowledge in your listening. I have a large pool of composers to draw upon whose music I love and I find that the more I add, the more I end up drowning myself, because I know that deep down I'll never devote the kind of time that I already have put in with my more well-established favorites.

Quote from: Symphonic Addict on June 06, 2020, 11:30:01 AM
In my personal case, discovering new music is an important part of the fuel that drives my musical experience everyday. It partly has to do with the excitement that means to find great music that wasn't written by the most played composers, or discover less-known works by the most famous ones. I've discovered MANY impressive works by composers who are rarely mentioned elsewhere. It's about giving a kind of recognition to them as well. It's already a habit on me. Granted, not always discovering works/composers is a fruitful activity. I've listened to works from unsung composers that should remain into the music obscure realm. Nevertheless, I consider that's part of the adventurer's job. You can't always pretend to win.

Lately I've intended to discover as much new music (for me) as possible, whether by popular or less-known composers. The results have been positively rewarding most of the time, and that seems becoming an addiction on me. I constantly need new music. So I hardly ever listen to, e.g. Beethoven's 5th Symphony, Brahms's Violin Concerto, Saint-Saëns's Danse Macabre, or so. Once in a while I do that. I am one of those unusual (?) listeners who can't listen to 100+ recordings of the same work. I can't get pleasure of it. I just can not.

Heartily agree with all of this! Being a musician myself has, unfortunately, meant that I have become overexposed to a lot of the warhorses of the repertoire. As a result, most of my listening lies in the "unsung" realm. Call me a "shallow" listener if you will, but I could never find the appeal in comparing umpteenth different recordings of the standard repertoire. I'm always on the lookout for new music to explore (mainly within my tastes, admittedly), because more often than not it has brought me immense pleasure.

Good question. I keep Listening Logs documenting all the music I hear and have done so since January 2010. I put a star* next to things that I'd never heard before. The data shows something quite different from my perception.

In 2010, when I was 21, I explored a lot more overlooked/obscure music. Atterberg, George Lloyd, Kalomiris, Guridi, Raff, the Stamitz family... Now, while some of those more obscure composers have graduated into my personal "canon" (like Kalliwoda, Weinberg, and Roussel), most of my listening is a whole lot closer to the core repertoire. And without disparaging any specific composers (though I can if asked), many of the "overlooked" guys are deeply UNinteresting to me now. Nobody has ever challenged Beethoven as the #1 most listened to composer every year in my log.

And yet! The logs show that I actually am listening to more new works than ever (new meaning new to me personally). Something like 1000 first listens per year. Part of it is that I've plunged headlong into jazz. Part of it is that when younger I skipped huge amounts of core repertoire (I've heard 1 Bach cantata). Part is that I still explore just to see what's out there. You can't really know what you love if you haven't heard it yet.

I think of it like a diet. Each day I try to listen to something old, something new, something orchestral, something smaller, a big piece and a little piece. Just to get some balance.  :)

I feel lucky not to be a musician like Kyle or a radio listener like some, because it means that a piece like, say, The Sorcerer's Apprentice is still super fun to me rather than tired and overplayed.

Interesting post, thank you.

As for me, it's obviously also a mixture of new stuff (from all musical ages, except Gregorian), never heard recordings, and re-listening to works/recordings. Don't know the statistics, and surely they fluctuate, though I've probably tended to more re-visiting in later years, in spite of buying lots of new repertoire too. The first category usually requires more from the listener, of course, and may be dependent on how much energy one will want to invest, at a certain time.

Yes, an interesting thread and I've given this some thought. I've always enjoyed discovering lesser-known composers and that is the same now in my 60s as it was in my 20s, so in that sense there hasn't been much change. I grew up with an older brother (seven years older) who was a great Bruckner fan (and still is I'm pleased to say). So, although in my teens I listened to the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix (still love their music) and American Jazz-Rock I was always exposed to classical music (Beethoven's Violin Concerto etc). As soon as my brother stopped trying to 'convert' me to classical music I became interested on my own. Coming home from school one day I strolled into W.H.Smith newsagent in Earl's Court Road, where I later worked for my Saturday job and was browsing through the LPs when I came across Vaughan Williams's 6th Symphony (LPO/Boult). I asked my brother what he thought of VW and he described him as like 'a British Copland'. My brother had an LP of Copland's 3rd Symphony which I liked very much, so I bought the VW LP (I was curious because it featured a speech from the composer) and I never looked back. For a long time I just listened to VW, bought everything I could about him, read the biographies, wrote to his wife (got a nice reply with a book of VW's essays). So, my early musical diet was VW, Copland, Bruckner and Rimsky-Korsakov, (my mother had an LP of Scheherazade). Luckily I lived in central London and there was an excellent local record library and I got my dad (who only listened to Frank Sinatra) to join so that I could use his tickets, which meant I could take six LPs out at any one time (hence my 'list' threads on GMG Forum tend to be for six choices). This way I discovered lots of new composers at no cost, ones that spring to mind are Klauss Egge (Symphony No.1), Cyril Scott (piano concertos), Pettersson (Symphony No.7), Janis Ivanovs (Symphony 11) etcetera. Miaskovsky I discovered after hearing the Cello Concerto on radio and Martinu's 4th Symphony was another radio discovery. Now there is the internet, You Tube, GMG Forum. In that sense my collecting/listening habits haven't changed that much. I don't think I've exactly answered the question but I hope this makes some sense. I still listen to Bruckner, Vaughan Williams, Copland and Rimsky-Korsakov.

I constantly explore new music. My experience is as follows.

1. I cruise around streaming services listening in a more or less superficial way to composers I've hardly heard of, following connections, suggestions , my nose.

2. Most of it washes over me but every so often something strange happens which I call "captures my imagination"

3. When that happens I listen to that piece a lot, and follow Step 1 from there - I follow connections, suggestions and my intuitions leading from that piece.


As an example, this recently happened when I read a review of Helmut Lachenmann's Got Lost; I listened and it "captured my imagination"; from there I moved fairly randomly to another piece by the same composer called Serynade which I also liked, despite feeling recently that the piano was not for me. So I said to myself, maybe avant garde piano music is OK, so I cast around for other things and eventually found some piano sonatas by Sciarrino which "captured my imagination" . . . That led me to Sciarrino's six quartteti brevi , and then on to Donattoni's Flag . . .

I'm not sure whether I'll revisit Got Lost in the future much, I don't care either way. It was like an enjoyable sex friend - fun together for a few nights, I leaned something about the possibilities of musical experience, and then I move on with no commitment or attachment.

In addition to this there are some things which I've got a special long term relationship with, not many, Bach's WTC 2 is an example, as is Sainte Colombe's music for two viols. Here I tend to revisit this music as frequently as the appearance of new releases.

I always wondered why people listen to 20th century works so much and so little baroque, but I think I have finally understood it. It seems we have discovered so many of our favorite composers and works from radio, and it seems MY local classic radio was very baroque heavy compared to classic radios elsewhere in the world. Also, I think the classical radio I was listening to played a lot of Naxos meaning I was mostly exposed to composers recorded by Naxos while not being aware of many obscure composers from Atterberg to Weinberg (20-25 years ago Naxos didn't have Weinberg discs, now it has plenty). Also, the classical radio station I was listening to preferred short works over long ones. So, not many Symphonies (maybe that's why I am not a Symphony nut?), but shorter orchestral works. I never heard VW Symphonies on radio. I heard Greenleaves and Lark Ascending. That's it. Sometimes they did play a longer work and I heard Nielsen's 4th Symphony and Saint-Saëns' 3rd Symphony (and was blown away by both). Anyway, the programming was very baroque heavy: Corelli, Vivaldi, Telemann, Bach, Handel, etc. where played a lot. Post war stuff was almost never played and if they played something contemporary it was almost always Pärt.  ;D That's why I have been very ignorant about post war and contemporary classical music and only recently discovered the treasures it has to offer beyond Pärt and Philip Glass...

Great thread; many excellent insights and valuable perspectives

Thank you all very much for your thoughtful replies, gentlemen.

I'm not as interested as many here at exploring lesser-known composers of the common practice era, but my ears are open to a very wide range of styles and eras. I'll try anything at least once. If you gave me a choice between "broad" and "deep" listening, I would probably prefer the latter, because I find the masterpieces of any era to be nearly inexhaustible, but as a composer, I think it's valuable to maintain both an awareness of the wide range of contemporary music and the great music of the past.

If I had given up on music I didn't connect with after a single listen, I would never have come to love either Mahler, Debussy, or Schoenberg.

Still, my personal list of "great works" has never shrunk, and I hope I continue to find new things (and newly-written things) to add.

Quote from: 71 dB on June 07, 2020, 04:35:13 AM
I always wondered why people listen to 20th century works so much and so little baroque, but I think I have finally understood it. It seems we have discovered so many of our favorite composers and works from radio,

This is a very good question and a very good theory. I think there's an interesting disconnect here between casual music lovers and those who enjoy music enough to join a discussion board. Vivaldi and Water Music and so on are easy to love because they have straightforward cheery tunes, and they work well on radio - also the pieces tend to be pretty short!

But for most of us, we can relate to more recent music better, simply because it's nearer in time to us. To really dig in to baroque music deeply, you have to learn all kinds of context about their culture and musical rules, and understand why say Biber was daring. Whereas we don't have to do as much learning for really recent history.

Quote from: Brian on June 07, 2020, 07:14:54 AM
for most of us, we can relate to more recent music better, simply because it's nearer in time to us. To really dig in to baroque music deeply, you have to learn all kinds of context about their culture and musical rules, and understand why say Biber was daring. Whereas we don't have to do as much learning for really recent history.

Definitely count me out! I need no historical context whatever to greatly enjoy Vivaldi, D. Scarlatti or Telemann. And I don't care whether Biber was daring or not --- I just like and enjoy his music.  :)

I must confess that, with age, my eagerness for discoveries has waned significantly. When I was younger, I was "omnivorous", and would embark in enthusiastic explorations (on record) of composers which at the time were unfamiliar to me.

For those here on GMG, it may be hard to believe that many years ago, I went through much of the oeuvre of e.g. Shostakovich and Sibelius (and prior to that, in my teens, I even explored Tchaikovsky). Usually, these explorations came to a halt sooner or later, as I stumbled onto some piece that "diminished" the quality of this or that composer in my eyes, and often also made me see the rest of his output in a different, less positive light. As a consequence, I'd stop listening to his or her music (but keep the CDs, as I'm not one for culling my collection).

The most recent process of this nature concerned Carl Nielsen (thanks to GMG, to a great extent). I found his symphonies and the Clarinet Concerto interesting, but then listened to Springtime in Funen and the Hymnus Amoris, didn't like what I heard at all, and now only very occasionally will listen to any of the works I initially appreciated.

My listening is nowadays circumscribed to large "blocks" (for lack of a better term), styles and eras I've come to love and enjoy with the years: Viennese classicism and early romanticism  (roughly from Haydn through Schubert), Wagner, the Second Viennese School and its ramifications,  Stravinsky, French music from the first half of the 20th century, Italian Neo-Classicism, Darmstadt avant-gardism, some Spanish music, and isolated composers (Busoni, Mahler, R. Strauss, Prokofiev, Monteverdi ...) who may not fit into any of the aforementioned. My interest in exploring music outside of these "thematic" areas (e.g, Soviet stuff, the nordics, music from the British Isles) is very limited (almost nonexistent), and frankly, even within those "blocks" I've lost curiosity to search for any unknown jewels that may be there to be discovered (although this does happen every now and then, e.g. recently Hans Erich Apostel and—thanks again to GMG—names like Jongen and Vierné).

In opera—which fascinates me as a genre—I may be a more open to novelty, even if in many cases the musical quality may not be to my ears really top-notch.

But, there's so much to enjoy, revisit and rediscover in my areas of focus, that frankly I don't feel as if I'm missing out on much by my unadventurous stance.

I deeply relate to these:

Quote from: Todd on June 06, 2020, 10:44:54 AM
I listen mostly to composers I know and like

Quote from: Mirror Image on June 06, 2020, 11:45:26 AM
I have a large pool of composers to draw upon whose music I love and I find that the more I add, the more I end up drowning myself, because I know that deep down I'll never devote the kind of time that I already have put in with my more well-established favorites.

Quote from: Brian on June 06, 2020, 06:14:00 PM
without disparaging any specific composers (though I can if asked), many of the "overlooked" guys are deeply UNinteresting

Quote from: ritter on June 07, 2020, 08:01:04 AM
I must confess that, with age, my eagerness for discoveries has waned significantly.
[...]
But, there's so much to enjoy, revisit and rediscover in my areas of focus, that frankly I don't feel as if I'm missing out on much by my unadventurous stance.

I've given this some more thought. It is unusual (possibly unprecedented) for me to go to bed at night thinking about a GMG Forum thread, but it was true in this case (your fault Andrei 😀).
As I mentioned in my earlier thread I have an older brother, who was seven when I was born. We were, and are, very close. He was, unlike his younger brother (me), a child prodigy - a genius. He could, and I'm sure this is true, draw a map of the world when he was tiny, maybe 2 and play chess, certainly he featured in national newspapers. He even had to have a special child psychiatrist to look after him - Dr Emmanuel Miller, father of the late playwright, director, comedian etc Johnathan Miller.  All this was before I was born. Much as I loved my dad, he never took anything very seriously, so I tended to gravitate to my brother with any worries, problems etc. My brother was/is the great Bruckner fan, so I grew up in the shadow of my brother and Bruckner. Luckily for me I saw my brother more as a father figure and (honestly) never recall being jealous of him and was, along with my parents, very proud of his achievements (First class degree from Cambridge etc). I do, however, recall him being envious of me when, as a 15 year old, when my brother was abroad, I attended, with a friend, what turned out to be a legendary performance of Jascha Horenstein conducting Bruckner's 8th Symphony at the Proms (subsequently released on a BBC CD). All I remember of the concert (which was in 1970) was a member of the audience asking my friend to stop sniffing. So, what's this got to do with anything here? Well, I think that it was important for me to find my own 'special composer' who wasn't Bruckner, to establish some kind of separate musical identity from my far cleverer older brother - which was, I think, where Vaughan Williams came to my rescue. I was quite obsessed with Vaughan Williams in those days and maybe the above, to some extent, explains why. He remains a very special composer to me but I think that, in my case, the reason why goes beyond the purely musical to some kind of existential consideration. Hope this makes some sense! Maybe it also, to some, extent explains why I felt, and still do feel, the need to discover 'neglected composers'. This thread has made me consider the psychological motivation behind my musical choices.  :)

Quote from: vandermolen on June 07, 2020, 08:43:02 AM
I've given this some more thought. It is unusual (possibly unprecedented) for me to go to bed at night thinking about a GMG Forum thread, but it was true in this case (your fault Andrei 😀).

Well, I'm glad I piqued your interest twice in a month (first with the porn ladies and now with this).  ;)

QuoteAs I mentioned in my earlier thread I have an older brother, who was seven when I was born. We were, and are ,very close. He was, unlike his younger brother (me), a child prodigy - a genius. He could, and I'm sure this is true, draw a map of the world when he was tiny, maybe 2 and play chess, certainly he featured in national newspapers. He even had to have a special child psychiatrist to look after him - Dr Emmanuel Miller, father of the late playwright, director, comedian etc Johnathan Miller.  All this was before I was born. Much as I loved my dad, he never took anything very seriously, so I tended to gravitate to my brother with any worries, problems etc. My brother was/is the great Bruckner fan, so I grew up in the shadow of my brother and Bruckner. Luckily for me I saw my brother more as a father figure and (honestly) never recall being jealous of him and was, along with my parents, very proud of his achievements (First class degree from Cambridge etc). I do, however, recall him being envious of me when, as a 15 year old, when my brother was abroad, I attended, with a friend, what turned out to be a legendary performance of Jascha Horenstein conducting Bruckner's 8th Symphony at the Proms (subsequently released on a BBC CD). All I remember of the concert (which was in 1970) was a member of the audience asking my friend to stop sniffing. So, what's this got to do with anything here? Well, I think that it was important for me to find my own 'special composer' who wasn't Bruckner, to establish some kind of separate musical identity from my far cleverer older brother - which was, I think, where Vaughan Williams came to my rescue. I was quite obsessed with Vaughan Williams in those days and maybe the above, to some extent, explains why. He remains a very special composer to me but I think that, in my case, the reason why goes beyond the purely musical to some kind of existential consideration. Hope this makes some sense! Maybe it also, to some, extent explains why I felt and still do feel the need to discover 'neglected composers'. This thread has made me consider the psychological motivation behind my musical choices.  :)

Most interesting, thanks for sharing.

Now I have to add RVW to Miaskovsky on my "to explore" list of composers.  :D

I like to hear pieces I don't know, but I love to hear things I don't know in pieces I think I do know, so a combination of "new" things and deeper listening to "old" things is ideal. I use the scare quotes because I started my journey in the pre-war 20th century, largely thanks to the man shown in my avatar, whose influence underlies the stylistic breadth of music I've sought out over the past third-and-a-bit of my life (I am 30, and began listening to classical music seriously around the age of 18), and while I have certainly listened to many more recent works, a lot of my "new" pieces these days are hundreds of years old.

I bought too many CDs, including too much new music to digest in time for more than 10 years (ca. 2003-13). Before that (1987-early 2000s) I could somewhat keep up but even then there were pieces I had on disk, listened to a few times but never realls spent enough time with to digest them. In the last few years I cut back somewhat but usually in favor of music I had not known before and while I usually listened to most of what I bought, the point with digesting is still true. So I am pretty much saturated now and have in 2020 bought fewer CDs than in any other year since 30 years or so.
I also admit that I have been through some phases where I was very quick to buy music (often beyond the mainstream) "hyped up" on some internet forum. A lot of this was worthwhile listening to but not all had staying power. Overall, I think that the standard repertoire/mainstream is quite well founded and with what I have already I see usually marginal returns in getting more semi-obscure 18th-early 20th century music. I also acquired enough "early" and "modern" music that I am still not very familiar with that I have lots to digest before getting more.
And on top of this, there will usually be favorites (not a sharp top ten or so) that I listen to most anyway.

Personally, I don't think anyone can 'keep up' when there are thousands of composers to listen to. It'll take 20 lifetimes to actually keep with everything that has been released. Thankfully, my interest in classical music only spans the 20th Century and even then, I still feel I don't have the full measure of the myriad of styles, movements, etc. that occurred within this century.

Quote from: Brian on June 07, 2020, 07:14:54 AM
This is a very good question and a very good theory. I think there's an interesting disconnect here between casual music lovers and those who enjoy music enough to join a discussion board. Vivaldi and Water Music and so on are easy to love because they have straightforward cheery tunes, and they work well on radio - also the pieces tend to be pretty short!

Nothing wrong with music like that. It's music from some of the most talented composers in music history and it has survived the test of time.

Quote from: Brian on June 07, 2020, 07:14:54 AMBut for most of us, we can relate to more recent music better, simply because it's nearer in time to us. To really dig in to baroque music deeply, you have to learn all kinds of context about their culture and musical rules, and understand why say Biber was daring. Whereas we don't have to do as much learning for really recent history.

To me it was actually the other way around. Before getting into classical music I assumed my "modern" ears are incompatible with music hundreds of years old, but I was proven completely wrong. I am an atheist, but I enjoy baroque church music tremendously. Mankind has not "evolved" in art, only explored previously unknown ground. Sometimes we can have even more context for "old" things than what's happening right now if we don't yet fully understand new things.

Also, "recent" music is so much more than just classical music. If I want something "recent", maybe I play Autechre or Katy Perry's new pop song whereas everything old is classified as classical music. Having "discovered" and explored contemporary classical music to some extent the last decade or so I do find it "fresh sounding" compared to older classical music but not particularly easier to get compared to say Biber. Do you understand what goes on inside the head of people on the street? I don't. So, why would I know what goes on inside the head of living composers? They are lucky if they know themselves in these confusing times! Modern times makes as dizzy! I'm quite sure baroque composers had much clearer head. No distractions like Netlix, Twitter and Facebook. Life was simple. Hard, but simple.

Quote from: ritter on June 07, 2020, 08:01:04 AM
The most recent process of this nature concerned Carl Nielsen (thanks to GMG, to a great extent). I found his symphonies and the Clarinet Concerto interesting, but then listened to Springtime in Funen and the Hymnus Amoris, didn't like what I heard at all, and now only very occasionally will listen to any of the works I initially appreciated.

I think Carl Nielsen is a very uneven composer and I accept that. I concentrate on his good stuff and almost ignore the rest. I think it would be silly to not listen to his Symphonies just because his String Quartets are weak.  :P It's like ignoring a great movie by a director who made some bad movies too.

Quote from: 71 dB on June 07, 2020, 12:11:53 PM
I think Carl Nielsen is a very uneven composer and I accept that. I concentrate on his good stuff and almost ignore the rest. I think it would be silly to not listen to his Symphonies just because his String Quartets are weak.  :P It's like ignoring a great movie by a director who made some bad movies too.

You are absolutely right...But, strangely, after encountering the pieces I disliked, I also lost interest in the pieces I initially did enjoy (as I realised I didn't really admire them that much). It's as if I was expecting greater (for me) things from the composer after the promising start and, when these things did not materialise, he completely receded from my radar. Irrational, maybe, but I hardly think any of us is rational in his or her tastes and approach to music...

The Nielsen quartets are actually pretty good, I'd say (although not as important as the symphonies admittedly). But with the commendable (near) completism of some labels, virtually everything by uneven composers is dug out and recorded.

Quote from: Jo498 on June 07, 2020, 12:26:32 PM
The Nielsen quartets are actually pretty good, I'd say (although not as important as the symphonies admittedly).

Will have to check those SQs out (somehow, the SQ medium tends to bring out the best in many composers).

QuoteBut with the commendable (near) completism of some labels, virtually everything by uneven composers is dug out and recorded.

Of course, and there's plenty of second- or third-tier stuff by the composers I focus on. But I've reached a point in which my tastes are relatively well established, and I don't really expect that, let's say for the sake of argument, Miaskovsky's 25th Symphony—which I don't know at all— is going to be a revelation to me, and change my lack of affinity for his idiom and the general cultural milieu he comes from. OTOH, I will be the first to recognise that, e.g., Wagner's piano music is not exactly a treasure trove of masterpieces, but I feel closer to it.

Quote from: Jo498 on June 07, 2020, 12:26:32 PM
The Nielsen quartets are actually pretty good, I'd say (although not as important as the symphonies admittedly). But with the commendable (near) completism of some labels, virtually everything by uneven composers is dug out and recorded.

Yes, Nielsen's chamber music is very good.  And although I rather like the Hymnus amoris, I don't fault anyone for considering it beneath the symphonies.  Sad to think of itg as a catalyst for overall neglect of (distaste for) the composer.

Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on June 07, 2020, 12:40:08 PM
Yes, Nielsen's chamber music is very good.  And although I rather like the Hymnus amoris, I don't fault anyone for considering it beneath the symphonies.  Sad to think of itg as a catalyst for overall neglect of (distaste for) the composer.

Sad indeed  ;). But please let's not derail this thread because of my stance vis-à-vis good old Carl's music. I only used him as an example of what happens to me when exposed to "new" music as I grow older.

And good day to you, Karl!  :)

Cheers, Rafael! Then let's bring it back on topic:  I'll suggest that both in the literature overall, and in the work of composers I already know and admire, I like to balance refining my knowledge of what I already know with the joy of new discoveries, which indeed is how I veered toward the  Hymnus amoris at first. :)

Quote from: ritter on June 07, 2020, 12:23:35 PM
You are absolutely right...But, strangely, after encountering the pieces I disliked, I also lost interest in the pieces I initially did enjoy (as I realised I didn't really admire them that much). It's as if I was expecting greater (for me) things from the composer after the promising start and, when these things did not materialise, he completely receded from my radar. Irrational, maybe, but I hardly think any of us is rational in his or her tastes and approach to music...

Well, encountering weak works of a composer can stop me exploring said composer further, but not stop appreciating works I appreciated previously. What can stop my appreciation is things such are changing/developping taste and discovery of "better" composers and works.

Quote from: Dowder on June 07, 2020, 01:28:57 PM
That said, I'm up for any era or style. Sticking to one epoch is kind of weird to me.

I like and recognize that!
But it is difficult to transcend ones dislikes....

Quote from: pjme on June 07, 2020, 02:27:17 PM
...it is difficult to transcend ones dislikes....

This is just generally true, for all people, whatever the topic.

It's a good thing to push back against, I think.

Two good things will come of it, I think. One, if one can overcome one's initial repulsion, one gains more music to like. Two, one can be more charitable towards things one still dislikes, and towards the people, what's more, who so wrong-headedly persist in liking that so obviously awful dreck. My favorite example of this in my own life is Howard Hanson. When I was first bowled over by the manifold delights of "modern" music, revelling in the glories of Bartók and Varèse and Cage, I also came up against people like Howard Hanson, who seemed to me to be the archetypal regressor. Some twenty or thirty years after first puking my guts out over the saccharine grossness of his second symphony, I was innocently driving around L.A. I was bored (freeways are boring) so I turned the radio on and was immediately attracted by what was playing. Nothing like the first time I heard Keith Rowe's Dial: Log-Rhythm,* also on the radio, but still, pleasant enough. Pleasant enough to pay close attention to listen for the announcer so that I could buy a copy of it for myself.

It was the symphony number six... of Howard Hanson.

Embarrassing. Doubly so. Embarrassing first for liking something by my first musical anti-christ. But then embarrassed even more that I had demonized Hanson. The second embarrassment was by far the more useful of the two. And I currently own more albums by Hanson than just the sixth symphony. (Plus I even found an added bonus by discovering music by Sten Hanson** as well, ha ha.)

*https://www.allmusic.com/album/dial-log-rhythm-mw0000330378 

The clips here are stupidly short, but this is the best I could find that offers samples of the whole album.

**https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ms3B37H_J7A

Quote from: some guy on June 08, 2020, 11:11:58 AM
This is just generally true, for all people, whatever the topic.

It's a good thing to push back against, I think.

Two good things will come of it, I think. One, if one can overcome one's initial repulsion, one gains more music to like. Two, one can be more charitable towards things one still dislikes, and towards the people, what's more, who so wrong-headedly persist in liking that so obviously awful dreck. My favorite example of this in my own life is Howard Hanson. When I was first bowled over by the manifold delights of "modern" music, revelling in the glories of Bartók and Varèse and Cage, I also came up against people like Howard Hanson, who seemed to me to be the archetypal regressor. Some twenty or thirty years after first puking my guts out over the saccharine grossness of his second symphony, I was innocently driving around L.A. I was bored (freeways are boring) so I turned the radio on and was immediately attracted by what was playing. Nothing like the first time I heard Keith Rowe's Dial: Log-Rhythm,* also on the radio, but still, pleasant enough. Pleasant enough to pay close attention to listen for the announcer so that I could buy a copy of it for myself.

It was the symphony number six... of Howard Hanson.

Embarrassing. Doubly so. Embarrassing first for liking something by my first musical anti-christ. But then embarrassed even more that I had demonized Hanson. The second embarrassment was by far the more useful of the two. And I currently own more albums by Hanson than just the sixth symphony. (Plus I even found an added bonus by discovering music by Sten Hanson** as well, ha ha.)

*https://www.allmusic.com/album/dial-log-rhythm-mw0000330378 

The clips here are stupidly short, but this is the best I could find that offers samples of the whole album.

**https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ms3B37H_J7A

Good on ya, mate!

Quote from: some guy on June 08, 2020, 11:11:58 AM
This is just generally true, for all people, whatever the topic.

It's a good thing to push back against, I think.

Two good things will come of it, I think. One, if one can overcome one's initial repulsion, one gains more music to like. Two, one can be more charitable towards things one still dislikes, and towards the people, what's more, who so wrong-headedly persist in liking that so obviously awful dreck. My favorite example of this in my own life is Howard Hanson. When I was first bowled over by the manifold delights of "modern" music, revelling in the glories of Bartók and Varèse and Cage, I also came up against people like Howard Hanson, who seemed to me to be the archetypal regressor. Some twenty or thirty years after first puking my guts out over the saccharine grossness of his second symphony, I was innocently driving around L.A. I was bored (freeways are boring) so I turned the radio on and was immediately attracted by what was playing. Nothing like the first time I heard Keith Rowe's Dial: Log-Rhythm,* also on the radio, but still, pleasant enough. Pleasant enough to pay close attention to listen for the announcer so that I could buy a copy of it for myself.

It was the symphony number six... of Howard Hanson.

Embarrassing. Doubly so. Embarrassing first for liking something by my first musical anti-christ. But then embarrassed even more that I had demonized Hanson. The second embarrassment was by far the more useful of the two. And I currently own more albums by Hanson than just the sixth symphony. (Plus I even found an added bonus by discovering music by Sten Hanson** as well, ha ha.)

*https://www.allmusic.com/album/dial-log-rhythm-mw0000330378 

The clips here are stupidly short, but this is the best I could find that offers samples of the whole album.

**https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ms3B37H_J7A

That's a very interesting story I've always been a fan of Howard Hanson, although the 'Romantic Symphony' is not my favourite and I can understand why people reject his music as that of a kind of arch-conservative. Many times in my life I've made an initial negative assessment of someone on first meeting and later found out that I was completely wrong. I agree that such occasions can increase one's tolerance and understanding of other people.

When I had only 10 records I knew every piece by heart. Eventually the collection has grown the the point where, by the time I have time to revisit something, I have forgotten it and it seems new again. Except for core Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms and some favorite pieces by Haydn, Mahler, Stravinsky, etc, everything is a new discovery, especially if it is a recording I have not heard before. :)

Probably current listening, sparse as it is now, is "familiar", "seems new" and "is new" to me, in equal proportion.

Quote from: Baron Scarpia on June 08, 2020, 12:05:39 PM
When I had only 10 records I knew every piece by heart. Eventually the collection has grown the the point where, by the time I have time to revisit something, I have forgotten it and it seems new again. Except for core Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms and some favorite pieces by Mahler, Stravinsky, etc, everything is a new discovery, especially if it is a recording I have not heard before. :)

Probably current listening, sparse as it is now, is familiar, seems new and is new, in equal proportion.

I noticed yesterday I have a Naxos disc of Yevhen Stankovych's Symphonies 1, 2 & 4 in my collection. I can barely remember buying it, but I don't have a clue why I have bought it and I have zero recollection of the music.

;D  :-X  ???

Quote from: 71 dB on June 08, 2020, 12:48:59 PM
I noticed yesterday I have a Naxos disc of Yevhen Stankovych's Symphonies 1, 2 & 4 in my collection. I can barely remember buying it, but I don't have a clue why I have bought it and I have zero recollection of the music.

;D  :-X  ???

Well, listen to it, and you'll find out.

This is why I keep a journal of listening. Just recently I was thinking, "which Respighi piece did I like?" I looked it up and now I know.

There are some CDs I cull, then I think, "why did I get rid of that, it was so good," then I buy it again and discover, "oh, that's why I got rid of it." A journal can help with that too. :)

Quote from: Baron Scarpia on June 08, 2020, 01:18:25 PM
Well, listen to it, and you'll find out.

My problem is I have dozens of CDs I'd want to revisit and I can't decide which one of them is next so I sit in the silence.  ::)

Quote from: vandermolen on June 07, 2020, 08:43:02 AM
I've given this some more thought. It is unusual (possibly unprecedented) for me to go to bed at night thinking about a GMG Forum thread, but it was true in this case (your fault Andrei 😀).
As I mentioned in my earlier thread I have an older brother, who was seven when I was born. We were, and are, very close. He was, unlike his younger brother (me), a child prodigy - a genius. He could, and I'm sure this is true, draw a map of the world when he was tiny, maybe 2 and play chess, certainly he featured in national newspapers. He even had to have a special child psychiatrist to look after him - Dr Emmanuel Miller, father of the late playwright, director, comedian etc Johnathan Miller.  All this was before I was born. Much as I loved my dad, he never took anything very seriously, so I tended to gravitate to my brother with any worries, problems etc. My brother was/is the great Bruckner fan, so I grew up in the shadow of my brother and Bruckner. Luckily for me I saw my brother more as a father figure and (honestly) never recall being jealous of him and was, along with my parents, very proud of his achievements (First class degree from Cambridge etc). I do, however, recall him being envious of me when, as a 15 year old, when my brother was abroad, I attended, with a friend, what turned out to be a legendary performance of Jascha Horenstein conducting Bruckner's 8th Symphony at the Proms (subsequently released on a BBC CD). All I remember of the concert (which was in 1970) was a member of the audience asking my friend to stop sniffing. So, what's this got to do with anything here? Well, I think that it was important for me to find my own 'special composer' who wasn't Bruckner, to establish some kind of separate musical identity from my far cleverer older brother - which was, I think, where Vaughan Williams came to my rescue. I was quite obsessed with Vaughan Williams in those days and maybe the above, to some extent, explains why. He remains a very special composer to me but I think that, in my case, the reason why goes beyond the purely musical to some kind of existential consideration. Hope this makes some sense! Maybe it also, to some, extent explains why I felt, and still do feel, the need to discover 'neglected composers'. This thread has made me consider the psychological motivation behind my musical choices.  :)

Can I ask - I hope its okay to ask - how did your brother's early genius affect his later life?

I like to discover new composers and works, and I like to discover new things about familiar composers and works.

Quote from: Daverz on June 08, 2020, 06:20:19 PM
I like to discover new composers and works, and I like to discover new things about familiar composers and works.

+1

My interest in discovering new composers is proportional to their proximity in time.
I have almost no interest in listening to lesser known composer from the Middle Ages, whereas I am totally open to new contemporary artists/niches (both in the classical and in the rock/electronica/etc domain).

I guess this has to do with the "Lindy effect"* or the equivalent simple thought that the passage of time is the most effective filter, so that if generations of scholars/historians/enthusiasts have defined a certain set of worthy artists and works, then the expected return of the time invested in discovering further ones is low. On the contrary, for periods closer to ours, such filter hasn't had enough time to operate, so it is less unlikely to find something valuable even off the beaten path.



* per Wiki: a theory that the future life expectancy of some non-perishable things like a technology or an idea is proportional to their current age, so that every additional period of survival implies a longer remaining life expectancy

Quote from: Overtones on June 09, 2020, 02:02:02 AM
the passage of time is the most effective filter, so that if generations of scholars/historians/enthusiasts have defined a certain set of worthy artists and works, then the expected return of the time invested in discovering further ones is low. On the contrary, for periods closer to ours, such filter hasn't had enough time to operate, so it is less unlikely to find something valuable even off the beaten path.

This theory makes a lot of sense but unfortunately my personal experience is that the closer a work is to our time, the higher the probability is that I don't like it. There are exceptions, of course, (one of them is our good GMG neighbour Karl Henning) but as a general rule of thumb it's valid. This is of course no value judgment of the music, only a reflection of my own taste.

It's not that I gave up exploration altogether, but I decided to limit myself to genres and eras that I've tried beforehand and loved. Thus, my main interest lies with Baroque, Classical and Romantic composers and genres: anything written between 1600 and 1900 might in principle be right up my alley, or at least won't bore the hell out of me or grate on my ears to the point of needing to turn it off rather quickly. Also, within Romanticism, chamber music, solo piano, Lieder and concertos are more likely to pique my interest than symphonies; an dthe much despised "drawing room music", especially solo piano or violin and piano, gives me much pleasure and enjoyment. Every now and then I try to like Medieval and Renaissance music but with few exceptions my enthusiasm fades rather quickly. As for post-1900 music, pretty much all my favorite composers or the ones new to me but whose music I like upon the first hearing were described, and are still regarded by some, as reactionaries or conservatives or populists. I have no use whatever for the 2nd Viennese School, the Darmstadt avant-garde and anything similar.

There was a time, not so long ago, when I condemned the musical canon as being too heavily Austro-German oriented and influenced. Now, while I still think it to be partially true, I can think of no un-canonical composer I've ever listened to whom I can hand-on-heart say deserves to be placed alongside the canonical ones, let alone supplant one of them. Most obscure composers are obscure for a reason and while I can, and do, derive much momentarily pleasure from listening to their music, half an hour after their music is over I have no memory whatsoever of it. In stark contradistinction, the music of canonical composers haunts me for days and weeks and even months. Not to mention that the latter stimulates my imagination and draws extra-musical associations (from literature, visual arts, or simply my personal experience of nature, love, or life) far more than the former. So bottom line, and to give concrete examples: Onslow's or Raff's or Spohr's piano trios are pleasant enough while they sound but no match for Mozart's or Beethoven's or Schubert's; Chaminade's and Moszkowski's piano music is charming and exquisite while it sounds, but can't compare to the long-lasting effect Chopin's have on me; and Herz's or Moscheles' or Field's piano concertos, which I like very much while they sound, can't, at the end of the day, hold a candle to Schumann's, Tchaikovsky's or Rachmaninoff's.

A thought about persevering in listening to music one didn't like on first hearing: my personal experience --- which I mention FWIW only, not because it is, or should be, commendable --- is that there is not a single work I like, or merely tolerate, now that I didn't even slightly like or merely tolerate back then when I first heard it. All my favorite composers and all other composers besides them whose music I like were love at first sight. It happened that a composer I dearly loved in the past fell out of my favor (Beethoven is the most illustrious instance: as a teenager he was my favorite, nowadays I rarely listen to his music, except some chamber and solo piano) --- but it never happened that a composer whose music bored me to death on first hearing ever made it to my list of favorites (eg, Bruckner's symphonies bore me to death today just as they did 30 years ago, except S1 and S4).

Plus, I'm currently living through the most difficult, stressful and nerve-racking phase of my life ever. I have enough grave problems of my own, the last thing I need or want is unfamiliar, difficult, grim, uncompromising music expressing the personal problems of the composers. I have always fully subscribed, but today more than ever, to Mozart's dictum that "Music, even in situations of the greatest horror, should never be painful to the ear but should flatter and charm it, and thereby always remain music." This has become my litmus test, actually: if I can hum it long after it's over, I love it; if not, I might like it but never love it; I surely dislike what I can't hum along. (The music in my heart I bore,/Long after it was heard no more.) All composers whose music qualifies are my favorites in different degrees: top 3 I love everything; top 10 I love almost everything; all the rest I love at least one work. So I think there at least 50 composers on whose music only I could spend my whole remaining lifetime without any fear of ever getting bored.

Oh, and a word about listening to the same work in different recordings: I do that sometimes but I never do any A/B/C/D etc comparisons. Whatever performance I'm currently listening to, it's my current favorite.

There is also a historical reason why there were so many composers from the Austro-German-Hungaro-Bohemian region in the 18th and 19th century. There are also more forgotten, non-canonical ones of them, so one could expect a few great ones simply from overall numbers...
It was because of the extraordinary large number of smallish states with many extravagant counts/dukes/princes... who spent their largesse (or sold some of their peasant boys to fight in America) on music. (Haydn lost his first position with Count Morzin because the latter was simply too broke to keep him!) So everybody needed a Kapellmeister and while they had first imported them from Italy (that's why up to the mid 18th century or so, there are also many semi-obscure Italian composers), homegrown was cheaper. Additionally, there is the importance of church music in catholic and lutheran (but much less in reformed/calvinist regions like Netherlands and parts of Scandinavia and Scotland) and a comparably decent level of education (again driven partly by reformation and counter-reformation). Because of the devastating 30 years war this whole development was somewhat later in German/Central European states than in France and Italy.
This does of course not explain everything. I don't really know why Spain has so few (great) composers after the early Baroque.

Quote from: Jo498 on June 09, 2020, 06:32:48 AM
There is also a historical reason why there were so many composers from the Austro-German-Hungaro-Bohemian region in the 18th and 19th century. There are also more forgotten, non-canonical ones of them, so one could expect a few great ones simply from overall numbers...
It was because of the extraordinary large number of smallish states with many extravagant counts/dukes/princes... who spent their largesse (or sold some of their peasant boys to fight in America) on music. (Haydn lost his first position with Count Morzin because the latter was simply too broke to keep him!) So everybody needed a Kapellmeister and while they had first imported them from Italy (that's why up to the mid 18th century or so, there are also many semi-obscure Italian composers), homegrown was cheaper. Additionally, there is the importance of church music in catholic and lutheran (but much less in reformed/calvinist regions like Netherlands and parts of Scandinavia and Scotland) and a comparably decent level of education (again driven partly by reformation and counter-reformation). Because of the devastating 30 years war this whole development was somewhat later in German/Central European states than in France and Italy.
This does of course not explain everything. I don't really know why Spain has so few (great) composers after the early Baroque.

Some very good points here, to which I subscribe  --- and I think Leibniz was one of the first to make them; I've very recently read a quote of him (can't remember where) making this very point, that the myriads German states and statelets were a blessing for artists, especially musicians.

I think Spain had three great composers during Late Baroque (D. Scarlatti, Soler, the lesser known Blasco de Nebra) and a great Classical composer (Boccherini) --- admittedly, two of them were imported. Fernando Sor can count as a great Late Classical/Early Romantic composer within his niche (guitar music). Then the (apparently) spontaneous generation of Romantics like Albeniz and Granados. Then the modernism of de Falla. But yes, and with all due respect to our good friend ritter (Rafael), das land ohne Musik can apply much better to 19-th century Spain than to 19-th century England.

I'd like to stop spending money on new music and stick to what I already have, but am struggling to manage it :-[.

Quote from: Florestan on June 09, 2020, 06:03:27 AM
There was a time, not so long ago, when I condemned the musical canon as being too heavily Austro-German oriented and influenced. Now, while I still think it to be partially true, I can think of no un-canonical composer I've ever listened to whom I can hand-on-heart say deserves to be placed alongside the canonical ones, let alone supplant one of them. Most obscure composers are obscure for a reason and while I can, and do, derive much momentarily pleasure from listening to their music, half an hour after their music is over I have no memory whatsoever of it. In stark contradistinction, the music of canonical composers haunts me for days and weeks and even months. Not to mention that the latter stimulates my imagination and draws extra-musical associations (from literature, visual arts, or simply my personal experience of nature, love, or life) far more than the former. So bottom line, and to give concrete examples: Onslow's or Raff's or Spohr's piano trios are pleasant enough while they sound but no match for Mozart's or Beethoven's or Schubert's; Chaminade's and Moszkowski's piano music is charming and exquisite while it sounds, but can't compare to the long-lasting effect Chopin's have on me; and Herz's or Moscheles' or Field's piano concertos, which I like very much while they sound, can't, at the end of the day, hold a candle to Schumann's, Tchaikovsky's or Rachmaninoff's.

For the most part, I agree with what you say regarding lesser-known composers of the early-mid 19th century vs. the acclaimed "masters" of the era. Because, IMO, most of the "undeservedly neglected" composers (in my view, anyway) come from the late-19th and 20th centuries. Before the late-19th century, there were many lesser-known figures who composed pleasant enough music, but it often lacks originality and memorability because it sometimes seems like they were trying too hard to emulate the "big names" of the era. But, beginning in the late-19th century and continuing well into the 20th, an extraordinary diversity of musical thought opened up, and composers both well-known and obscure today developed highly individual musical languages. Many of my favorite "unsung" composers, even if they wrote in a relatively "conservative" style for their day, forged idioms that are almost instantly recognizable (e.g. Arnold, Atterberg, Braga Santos, Casella, Lloyd). And, more importantly, many of them wrote music of staying emotional power and memorability (to me, anyway), that draws me back to their music time and again. :)

I'd like to point out - if it weren't clear - that what I wrote about the Lindy effect in music has nothing to do with personal taste.
It's not that I am more open to new composers from recent times because I like contemporary music more than older music (in fact, my favourite music is from '800 - early '900); it is just that my degree of acceptance of the "canon" is higher if said canon has been settling for 4 centuries; it is lower if the canon has been settling for a couple of centuries; it is null if the canon is not even there yet...

Quote from: Overtones on June 09, 2020, 10:04:23 AM
I'd like to point out - if it weren't clear - that what I wrote about the Lindy effect in music has nothing to do with personal taste.
It's not that I am more open to new composers from recent times because I like contemporary music more than older music (in fact, my favourite music is from '800 - early '900); it is just that my degree of acceptance of the "canon" is higher if said canon has been settling for 4 centuries; it is lower if the canon has been settling for a couple of centuries; it is null if the canon is not even there yet...

With all due respect --- all of the above is exclusively about your personal taste. Or do you imply that there is an objective measure in the way you are assessing music of different eras?

Quote from: Florestan on June 09, 2020, 10:19:26 AM
With all due respect --- all of the above is exclusively about your personal taste. Or do you imply that there is an objective measure in the way you are assessing music of different eras?

I never said anything about my assessment of the music, I only mentioned the overall assessment of historians and scholars, that which has established in 200 years that Franz Schubert is a cornerstone of music history and that Dieter Unknownitz from the same period is not, and which has not had enough time yet to establish with a similar certainty whether some Georgian composer of the late XX century is a cornerstone or not.

Quote from: Overtones on June 09, 2020, 10:04:23 AM
I'd like to point out - if it weren't clear - that what I wrote about the Lindy effect in music has nothing to do with personal taste.
It's not that I am more open to new composers from recent times because I like contemporary music more than older music (in fact, my favourite music is from '800 - early '900); it is just that my degree of acceptance of the "canon" is higher if said canon has been settling for 4 centuries; it is lower if the canon has been settling for a couple of centuries; it is null if the canon is not even there yet...

Who's in the "canon" from c9? And how did s/he get there?

Quote from: Overtones on June 09, 2020, 11:11:04 AM
I never said anything about my assessment of the music, I only mentioned the overall assessment of historians and scholars, that which has established that Franz Schubert is a cornerstone of music history and that Dieter Unknownitz from the same period is not, and which has not had enough time yet to establish with a similar certainty whether some Georgian composer of the late XX century is a cornerstone or not.

Yes, indeed, you're right. Please excuse me if I came across like an annoying bastard --- it sometimes happens to me, but I am not one such, and I always regret coming across like one.  :-*

Quote from: Florestan on June 09, 2020, 11:18:17 AM
Yes, indeed, you're right. Please excuse me if I came across like an annoying bastard --- it sometimes happens to me, but I am not one such, and I always regret coming across like one.  :-*

I'm sorry but being annoying IS (=) coming across as annoying. Bastardness is another matter.

Quote from: Florestan on June 09, 2020, 11:18:17 AM
Yes, indeed, you're right. Please excuse me if I came across like an annoying bastard --- it sometimes happens to me, but I am not one such, and I always regret coming across like one.  :-*

You didn't at all  :)

Quote from: Mandryka on June 09, 2020, 11:16:45 AM
Who's in the "canon" from c9? And how did s/he get there?

C9?
I am not sure I get what you mean.

Quote from: Mandryka on June 09, 2020, 11:21:19 AM
I'm sorry but being annoying IS (=) coming across as annoying. Bastardness is another matter.

I am not sure I get what you mean.  :)

Quote from: Overtones on June 09, 2020, 11:23:06 AM
C9?
I am not sure I get what you mean.

800 - early 900. The 9th century.

Quote from: Mandryka on June 09, 2020, 11:25:13 AM
800 - early 900. The 9th century.

Oh, he surely meant 1800s-1900s.  :D

Quote from: Florestan on June 09, 2020, 11:26:33 AM
Oh, he surely meant 1800s-1900s.  :D

Oh, that's annoying! I thought I'd finally met someone who's interested in Notker Balbulus. Instead he's interested in fucking Beethoven or something.

Good night. I've had enough of trolling.

Quote from: Mandryka on June 09, 2020, 11:28:26 AM
Oh, that's annoying! I thought I'd finally met someone who's interested in Notker Balbulus. Instead he's interested in fucking Beethoven or something.

;D

I did put the appropriate glyphs in there to clarify how banal my preference is.

Quote from: Mandryka on June 09, 2020, 11:28:26 AM
Oh, that's annoying! I thought I'd finally met someone who's interested in Notker Balbulus. Instead he's interested in fucking Beethoven or something.

;D ;D ;D

Is that NB a real composer? If yes, would you be so kind as to let me have some of his music?  ;)

Quote from: Overtones on June 09, 2020, 02:02:02 AM
My interest in discovering new composers is proportional to their proximity in time.
I have almost no interest in listening to lesser known composer from the Middle Ages, whereas I am totally open to new contemporary artists/niches (both in the classical and in the rock/electronica/etc domain).

I guess this has to do with the "Lindy effect"* or the equivalent simple thought that the passage of time is the most effective filter, so that if generations of scholars/historians/enthusiasts have defined a certain set of worthy artists and works, then the expected return of the time invested in discovering further ones is low. On the contrary, for periods closer to ours, such filter hasn't had enough time to operate, so it is less unlikely to find something valuable even off the beaten path.

In my opinion time is a weird filter. Sometimes it makes mistakes. Sometimes it corrects itself retrospectively. After J. S. Bach's death he was "filtered" by time, but then came Mendelssohn and "unfiltered" him. Taneyev, Weinberg etc. where filtered and then unfiltered. Passage of time is a filter I don't fully trust. Part of my exploration is to find out what went wrong with the filtering. Why isn't Johann Adolf Hasse considered a great composer? He certainly was one of the greatest of the 18th century.

Quote from: 71 dB on June 09, 2020, 11:45:35 AM
In my opinion time is a weird filter. Sometimes it makes mistakes. Sometimes it corrects itself retrospectively. After J. S. Bach's death he was "filtered" by time, but then came Mendelssohn and "unfiltered" him. Taneyev, Weinberg etc. where filtered and then unfiltered. Passage of time is a filter I don't fully trust. Part of my exploration is to find out what went wrong with the filtering. Why isn't Johann Adolf Hasse considered a great composer? He certainly was one of the greatest of the 18th century.

Some interesting points here.

My answer to your question: Johann Adolf Hasse might have been one of the greatest of the 18th century in his own time. He isn't considered a great composer today because the time filtered him out.

And if we consider this:

Quote from: WikipediaIn 1771, when hearing 15-year-old Mozart's opera Ascanio in Alba, Hasse is reported to have made the prophetic remark: "This boy will cause us all to be forgotten."

I'd say he was one of the most sincerest and perceptive critics in the whole history of music.  :D

Quote from: SimonNZ on June 08, 2020, 05:06:39 PM
Can I ask - I hope its okay to ask - how did your brother's early genius affect his later life?

Yes, of course. He was a very unusual small boy. He went, for example, through a period of refusing to answer to his name but instead insisting that he was an American cat called 'Houghan' (pronounced 'Hoon'). Should you ever meet my brother please don't mention this! Anyway, although unusually gifted, as he got older things evened out and after Cambridge he eventually worked as a lawyer for parliament (drafting EU laws and more recently un-drafting them). He was called out of retirement to help with the Brexit fiasco. He was very happily married (sadly his wife died in 2013) and, like the rest of us is a a fanatical Chelsea FC fan. He has four children and four grandchildren. He is a talented composer having composed eight piano sonatas but does nothing with them. He plays the organ for a local church and has a wide circle of friends. It's only because of him that I got the chance to go to university as none of my wider family did and my parents wanted me, despite my very undistinguished school record, to have the same opportunities. We have always been close. When his wife died I took him to Finland to visit my lovely Finnish friends and went to see the home of Sibelius. His children tell him that he is autistic, which he may well be, but he has had a largely happy and fulfilled life. Hope this helps.

Quote from: Florestan on June 09, 2020, 11:52:54 AM
Some interesting points here.

My answer to your question: Johann Adolf Hasse might have been one of the greatest of the 18th century in his own time. He isn't considered a great composer today because the time filtered him out.

The question is: How right was time in filtering him? I enjoy Hasse a lot. What if Mendelssohn had died in his childhood? Would J. S. Bach be considered as "obscure" as Hasse? Maybe the person who would have unfiltered Hasse DID die in childhood in 1840? The fact is how composers are considered today is based a lot on a few individuals and that makes the prosess a bit random. That's why composers come and go when it comes to how high esteem they are kept.

Quote from: 71 dB on June 09, 2020, 12:11:25 PM
The question is: How right was time in filtering him?

Quite right, I'd say --- and Hasse himself would have been the first to agree.

Quote
I enjoy Hasse a lot.

We all enjoy what we enjoy, surely. I greatly enjoy Cecile Chaminade but it would never cross my mind that she's greater than, or even on a par with, Chopin.

QuoteWhat if Mendelssohn had died in his childhood? Would J. S. Bach be considered as "obscure" as Hasse?

Counterfactual history is not very interesting, but for the sake of it I'd say that, had Mendelssohn died in his childhood, anyone else would have revived Bach nevertheless. No chance for any Hasse revival, though.

QuoteMaybe the person who would have unfiltered Hasse DID die in childhood in 1840?

Hasse is obscure for a reason, Poju, and you know it only too well.

QuoteThe fact is how composers are considered today is based a lot on a few individuals and that makes the prosess a bit random. That's why composers come and go when it comes to how high esteem they are kept.

I dare you to make any A/B comparison of Hasse and Mozart you like and come tell us that time has been unfair to Johann Adolf.

Quote from: Florestan on June 09, 2020, 12:25:10 PM
Quite right, I'd say --- and Hasse himself would have been the first to agree.

We all enjoy what we enjoy, surely. I greatly enjoy Cecile Chaminade but it would never cross my mind that she's greater than, or even on a par with, Chopin.

Counterfactual history is not very interesting, but for the sake of it I'd say that, had Mendelssohn died in his childhood, anyone else would have revived Bach nevertheless. No chance for any Hasse revival, though.

Hasse is obscure for a reason, Poju, and you know it only too well.

I dare you to make any A/B comparison of Hasse and Mozart you like and come tell us that time has been unfair to Johann Adolf.

Mozart > Hasse, but that doesn't mean everything except Mozart should be filtered. Is Hasse worse than ALL those composers who where not filtered? Often filtering happened, because a style went out of fashion. Bach went out of fashion during the classicism, but Bach became back in "fashion." Not saying Hasse = Mozart. I say Hasse is almost Mozart. Now the difference is ridiculous, as if Hasse was nothing. That's not true. Time was unfair to Hasse and maybe too fair to Mozart's whose early dramatic death made him a cult of personality.

Quote from: 71 dB on June 09, 2020, 12:37:43 PM
and maybe too fair to Mozart's whose early dramatic death made him a cult of personality.

That is foolish. The perception of Mozart as a musical genius comes entirely from dozens of great compositions, and not at all from his untimely death.

Quote from: 71 dB on June 09, 2020, 12:37:43 PM
Is Hasse worse than ALL those composers who where not filtered?

What do you mean by "ALL those composers who where not filtered?"

QuoteI say Hasse is almost Mozart.

Fine. Show me those Hasse's piano concertos, violin concertos, violin sonatas, string quartets, piano sonatas, string quintets, symphonies, piano trios and operas that are almost as good as Mozart.

Quote
Now the difference is ridiculous, as if Hasse was nothing. That's not true. Time was unfair to Hasse and maybe too fair to Mozart's whose early dramatic death made him a cult of personality.

Nobody ever said Hasse was nothing. Time was not unfair to Hasse. Mozart's claim to fame does not rest on his early death. You are deluded.

Hasse was mainly an opera composer (and married to a star primadonna). Opera tends to be the most celebrated part of music while it lasts but it is often even more prone to sudden changes in fashion that other music and because of its high cost in production it would be quickly forgotten in an age before recordings.
While connoisseurs kept playing Corelli sonatas in the late 18th century, 100 years after they had been written, even Handel's Italian operas were quickly forgotten. I think Handel and Gluck were the first composers that stayed in the repertoire with a few choice pieces despite writing large scale music for the current fashion.

Quote from: Florestan on June 09, 2020, 11:32:33 AM
;D ;D ;D

Is that NB a real composer? If yes, would you be so kind as to let me have some of his music?  ;)

Here you are

(https://ilab.org/sites/default/files/news/images/1226_image_st._20gallen_20music.jpg)

Quote from: Mandryka on June 09, 2020, 01:19:07 PM
Here you are

(https://ilab.org/sites/default/files/news/images/1226_image_st._20gallen_20music.jpg)

Why, thank you, good sir! You have my deepest and everlasting gratitude.

There were larger cultural factors at work in the fall in popularity of the old opera seria tradition. Taste played a role, as well as the rise of the upper-middle class that attended concerts in the 19th century, but most obviously, there was the centrality of castrati to that repertoire, which practice finally died a deserved if belated death.

Quote from: kyjo on June 08, 2020, 07:20:19 PM
+1

+2

Quote from: Jo498 on June 09, 2020, 01:03:56 PM
Hasse was mainly an opera composer (and married to a star primadonna). Opera tends to be the most celebrated part of music while it lasts but it is often even more prone to sudden changes in fashion that other music and because of its high cost in production it would be quickly forgotten in an age before recordings.

This, too is a genre in which Mozart will suffer no rivalry from Hasse, pace Poju, Mozart's operas have never dropped from the repertory, and the reasons are musical

Quote from: Mandryka on June 09, 2020, 11:16:45 AM
Who's in the "canon" from c9?

What about Kassia and Etienne de Liége?

Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on June 09, 2020, 01:49:15 PM
This, too is a genre in which Mozart will suffer no rivalry from Hasse, pace Poju, Mozart's operas have never dropped from the repertory, and the reasons are musical

Popularity is not the same thing as quality. My point was not understood. My point is the appreciation of composers are not 100 % correct*. The appreciation is a combination of several aspects. It is messy and prone to mistakes. That's what I think. Hasse was not Mozart, but he was closer to Mozart than music history lets us believe. I think Hasse deserves to be a little bit more appreciated.

Appreciation means more performances and recordings/releases. Do you want only the 20 greatest composers or do you want also obscure composers? If you say yes then appreciate more! That's how you get those releases.

*J.S.Bach's appreciation was very different in 1800 it was in 1900. Which one is correct?

As said above, there was a dramatic change in opera taste that began right after Hasse's zenith. While Mozart and even Rossini still wrote Opere serie for castrati, the pieces that "survived" into the early/mid 19th century were Gluck's "reform operas" (both Iphigenies and Orphée) and Mozart's (and maybe a few other's) "comical" operas. And Mozart had the additional benefit of having lifted the "buffa" onto a more serious level, especially with Don Giovanni, and had done the same with the budding German language opera. (Also note that Cosi fan tutte despite being a supreme Mozart piece got "lost" for about a century because it's sujet was too lascivious for more puritan postrevolutionary bourgeois tastes.) Similarly, Handel's italian operas were gone whereas an English pastoral like Acis & Galatea or a "pagan oratorio" like Alexander's Feast did "survive".

Quote from: 71 dB on June 09, 2020, 11:45:35 AM
In my opinion time is a weird filter. Sometimes it makes mistakes. Sometimes it corrects itself retrospectively. After J. S. Bach's death he was "filtered" by time, but then came Mendelssohn and "unfiltered" him. Taneyev, Weinberg etc. where filtered and then unfiltered. Passage of time is a filter I don't fully trust. Part of my exploration is to find out what went wrong with the filtering. Why isn't Johann Adolf Hasse considered a great composer? He certainly was one of the greatest of the 18th century.

Well, your Bach mention exemplifies my point. He was "filtered out" in the short run (just 50-60 years after his death), but then things changed, and, in time, he was given a more appropriate position in the history of music.

Hasse, on the other hand, has been evaluated for almost 3 centuries now and chances are that the current judgement is spot on. Maybe in the future it will change, who knows. But I surely trust a 3-century old judgement to last longer than a 50 years one.

This said, there surely can be exceptions to the "Lindy effect" guideline and it is right to "not fully trust" the passage of time, but I find it mostly effective.

Quote from: Overtones on June 10, 2020, 01:56:57 AM
Well, your Bach mention exemplifies my point. He was "filtered out" in the short run (just 50-60 years after his death), but then things changed, and, in time, he was given a more appropriate position in the history of music.

Hasse, on the other hand, has been evaluated for almost 3 centuries now and chances are that the current judgement is spot on. Maybe in the future it will change, who knows. But I surely trust a 3-century old judgement to last longer than a 50 years one.

This said, there surely can be exceptions to the "Lindy effect" guideline and it is right to "not fully trust" the passage of time, but I find it mostly effective.

I don't think forgotten composers are "constantly evaluated." It takes a special mind to discover and see the need for re-evaluation.



I don't trust others. I trust myself. You are not paying attention. History can be very wrong. Those who write are not all-knowing Gods. People write history and people make mistakes. Those who evaluate have taste. Whose taste matters? My taste matters to me. I believe those study music I believe think Hasse was brilliant. It's the masses who do not know him, because he was never marketed the way Mozart is. I am not saying he should be celebrated as Mozart, but how about as much as Boccherini?

"Few artists enjoyed such success and acquired such a remarkable reputation as Hasse; Few have been forgotten more completely than he is now"

- Francois Joseph Fétis, Biographie universelle des musiciens, 1844


Sorry, I WON'T listen to Mozart only. People here listen to a lot of obscure composers so people should be ON MY SIDE!!!
I want to be nice but it's difficult when people OPPOSE every fucking thing I SAY!

OK.OK. take it easy.
Indeed, many people here listen to less well known composers and enjoy their discoveries. Some are hooked on Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, Josquin, Bruckner, Mahler, Wagner, Schubert, Sibelius and other Verdis,Dvoraks, Monteverdis and Stockhausens. Some like jazz and rock& roll (I don't) or (as I am) are fed up with a lot of (iron) repertoire that gets repeated ad nauseam (Sibelius violin concerto, Dvorak's symph. nr 9 and the cello concerto, Spiegel im spiegel, Spem in alium...)
But, as I see it,  GMG is "only" a classical music forum . And I'm sure most of us could live without it. Before the internet I was perfectly happy with The Gramophone, Fanfare, Le monde de la musique, radio broadcasts (BBC 3, France Musique, Dutch radio 4, BRTN Radio 3/KLARA etc. Ah, listening is great!
And I continue to read.
GMG is not a school nor a guide of life. There will always be differences (to love or hate).
It is good though to vent once in a while ones frustrations (I dislike Wagner, especially the Liebestod and Siegfried Idyll, Chopin's Etude revolutionaire, Barber's adagio, Minimal & repetitive...). Feel free to let us know....
But, I (we...) don't OPPOSE every fucking thing you SAY! it's more the way you say it.

I may listen to Englund's first pianoconcerto now. And then switch to a choral work by Brahms or a harp sonata by Hindemith. Or something by Mozart. Varèse!

Quote from: pjme on June 10, 2020, 04:59:33 AM
....I dislike Wagner, especially the Liebestod and Siegfried Idyll...

We can still be friends... ;)

Of course.  ;D

Believe me: a couple of (corona)weeks ago I watched Parsifal on TV - every note of it - in the  Nikolaus Lehnhoff production Baden Baden (2005). Great singers (Ventris, Salminen, Meier, Fox, Hampson), excellent orchestra and conductor (Kent Nagano).
After a few minutes I couldn't help seeing Parsifal as Victor Mature in Samson and Delila, Waltraud Meier as Joan Crawford, Titurel as The creature from the black lagoon and Klingsor as Gary Oldman/Dracula....

Quote from: Jo498 on June 10, 2020, 12:14:25 AM
[snip] And Mozart had the additional benefit of having lifted the "buffa" onto a more serious level, especially with Don Giovanni, and had done the same with the budding German language opera. [snip]

That does sound like a "benefit" which his genius earned; so, it is true that Hasse would be as great as Mozart if he (Hasse) had had the benefit of Mozart's genius. Your opere serie remarks well taken.  If, like Handel, Hasse's subsequent reputation had not depended upon a dying genre, things might have been different, of course.

Quote from: 71 dB on June 10, 2020, 02:31:50 AM
Sorry, I WON'T listen to Mozart only.

Hope you enjoyed that canard, but no one has said any such thing.

Quote from: pjme on June 10, 2020, 05:24:49 AM
Of course.  ;D

Believe me: a couple of (corona)weeks ago I watched Parsifal on TV - every note of it - in the  Nikolaus Lehnhoff production Baden Baden (2005). Great singers (Ventris, Salminen, Meier, Fox, Hampson), excellent orchestra and conductor (Kent Nagano).
After a few minutes I couldn't help seeing Parsifal as Victor Mature in Samson and Delila, Waltraud Meier as Joan Crawford, Titurel as The creature from the black lagoon and Klingsor as Gary Oldman/Dracula....

(* chortle *)

Quote from: 71 dB on June 10, 2020, 02:31:50 AM
I want to be nice but it's difficult when people OPPOSE every fucking thing I SAY!

You didn't really expect anybody to agree that Hasse is almost as good as Mozart, did you?

But fine, go on and make this case. Recommend us three Hasse recordings that can make us change our mind.

Just a heads up guys in case you missed it, but 71 dB is no longer responding to posts that aren't friendly (aka ones that actually challenge his opinion or what he just said). So let's keep this in mind when we respond to him as this is what he said:

Quote from: 71 dB on June 09, 2020, 11:52:24 AMI try to do my part in making this forum a more friendly place so from now on I avoid responding posts I feel aren't friendly in nature and can lead to toxic responses.

This goes for Karl, Andrei, myself or anyone else who questioned him in a 'negative' tone.

Quote from: 71 dB on June 10, 2020, 02:31:50 AM
I don't think forgotten composers are "constantly evaluated." It takes a special mind to discover and see the need for re-evaluation.



I don't trust others. I trust myself. You are not paying attention. History can be very wrong. Those who write are not all-knowing Gods. People write history and people make mistakes. Those who evaluate have taste. Whose taste matters? My taste matters to me. I believe those study music I believe think Hasse was brilliant. It's the masses who do not know him, because he was never marketed the way Mozart is. I am not saying he should be celebrated as Mozart, but how about as much as Boccherini?

"Few artists enjoyed such success and acquired such a remarkable reputation as Hasse; Few have been forgotten more completely than he is now"

- Francois Joseph Fétis, Biographie universelle des musiciens, 1844


Sorry, I WON'T listen to Mozart only. People here listen to a lot of obscure composers so people should be ON MY SIDE!!!
I want to be nice but it's difficult when people OPPOSE every fucking thing I SAY!

You are perfectly right in not wanting to listen to Mozart only :) no one thinks you should.

We are only talking probabilities, so to say.
It is less likely that an unsung composer from the XVI century is actually as good as the sung ones.
It is more likely that an unsung composer of the late XX century is.

HOWEVER, after having noted such probabilities, every one is free to roam and explore whatever he feels like and it is perfectly legit to love unsung composers even more than established cornerstones.

Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on June 10, 2020, 05:30:30 AM
That does sound like a "benefit" which his genius earned; so, it is true that Hasse would be as great as Mozart if he (Hasse) had had the benefit of Mozart's genius. Your opere serie remarks well taken.  If, like Handel, Hasse's subsequent reputation had not depended upon a dying genre, things might have been different, of course.

Sure, but Mozart would also have prevailed with only Figaro and Magic Flute, I believe, although "Don Juan" was particularly highly regarded shortly after his death and in the early 19th century, I think. And Handel despite 14 years older than Hasse realized already in the late 1730s that his brand of opera had peaked and basically invented the choir-heavy oratorio, so it was also "earned" that his music survived better than Bononcini's or Hasse's.

The revival of baroque opera in the last ~30 years is quite remarkable. I remember that when I read popular books on music history and opera guides in the 1980s (often based on older 1950s-60s material) it was a cliché that high/late baroque opera was almost beyond redemption because it was a boring sequence of standardized dacapo arias. I don't know how many Hasse operas were rediscovered and staged within this revival (it seems mostly focussed on Handel and Rameau), but his chance now is probably better than at any other time since his death.

Quote from: Jo498 on June 10, 2020, 07:31:38 AM
Sure, but Mozart would also have prevailed with only Figaro and Magic Flute, I believe, although "Don Juan" was particularly highly regarded shortly after his death and in the early 19th century, I think. And Handel despite 14 years older than Hasse realized already in the late 1730s that his brand of opera had peaked and basically invented the choir-heavy oratorio, so it was also "earned" that his music survived better than Bononcini's or Hasse's.

The revival of baroque opera in the last ~30 years is quite remarkable. I remember that when I read popular books on music history and opera guides in the 1980s (often based on older 1950s-60s material) it was a cliché that high/late baroque opera was almost beyond redemption because it was a boring sequence of standardized dacapo arias. I don't know how many Hasse operas were rediscovered and staged within this revival (it seems mostly focussed on Handel and Rameau), but his chance now is probably better than at any other time since his death.

Good points. And actually of Hasse, a Late Baroque composer of mainly operas, can be more rightly said he was as good as Handel or Rameau, who were in the same business; it's they who eclipsed him as time went by.  Mozart, 57 years his junior and much more versatile, has got nothing to do with his posthumous fate. Neither has Boccherini, also much younger than Hasse and who didn't wrote a single opera (Clementina is a zarzuela).

Quote from: 71 dB on June 10, 2020, 02:31:50 AMIt's the masses who do not know him, because he was never marketed the way Mozart is.

It's insulting to conflate artistic reception and performance with marketing. Someone promoting Mozart's works through performance, through analysis, or through appreciation is not paid on behalf of a company to sell a product. It is these things, not the work of record companies to sell their recordings or sheet music publishers to sell scores (both of which are marketing), that established Mozart's reputation.

And, I would argue, one of the virtues of the argument by sustained reputation over time that has been advanced here is that it tends to remove the effects of "marketing" from the equation. It no longer matters how Beethoven, Bach, or others were promoted in their own times, and the musical works survive regardless.

Quote from: Overtones on June 10, 2020, 06:59:27 AM
it is perfectly legit to love unsung composers even more than established cornerstones.

Absolutely.

Then again, I perceive there's a tendency to glorify unsung composers just because of their obscurity. I find it slightly amusing when we post that the symphony of some forgotten early 20th century Moldovan composer we've just discovered in a recording by the Orquesta Sinfónica Municipal de Almendralejo on some obscure Taiwanese label has shot up to be among our 10 favourite symphonies ever.  Usually, just a couple of days later, we'll say that a cantata by a 17th century Hondurean maestro de capilla, written for the 1638 Easter celebrations at the cathedral of Catacamas is fantaaaastic, and rivals anything written by Monteverdi, and the following week the comic opera by a Latvian wunderkind, only performed once in Liepaja in 1887 and just now rediscovered, is an absolute masterpiece and makes Verdi's Falstaff look like an amateur effort in comparison....

Quote from: ritter on June 10, 2020, 09:45:30 AM
Then again, I perceive there's a tendency to glorify unsung composers just because of their obscurity. I find it slightly amusing when we post that the symphony of some forgotten early 20th century Moldovan composer we've just discovered in a recording by the Orquesta Sinfónica Municipal de Almendralejo on some obscure Taiwanese label has shot up to be among our 10 favourite symphonies ever.  Usually, just a couple of days later, we'll say that a cantata by a 17th century Hondurean maestro de capilla, written for the 1638 Easter celebrations at the cathedral of Catacamas is fantaaaastic, and rivals anything written by Monteverdi, and the following week the comic opera by a Latvian wunderkind, only performed once in Liepaja in 1887 and just now rediscovered, is an absolute masterpiece and makes Verdi's Falstaff look like an amateur effort in comparison....

It's a topic that seems to rile people up sometimes. I find that some people react as you suggest. Others react in a 'prove he/she's any good' sort of way. Personally, it's the journey that I enjoy. Sometimes I find some unheralded masterpieces. And sometimes I find dreck. But as long as the process is enjoyable and I am learning something, I'll hope it never ends. Interestingly, I almost always find that whatever my opinion of the music, it almost inevitably helps me appreciate some other aspect of music/composers more.

I do not object at all to enjoying unsung composers. I do it myself frequently. What's annoying is presenting them as being victims of unfairness from the part of critics, historians and the audiences, or claiming that the famous composers are famous solely because they were better marketed. Both ideas are complete nonsense.

I wouldn't say that I don't continue to explore new music (music new to me, that is), only that I no longer seem to find anything that I can imagine becoming a "preference" in the way that things I discovered 30, 40 or (heaven help us) 50 years ago have become.  Recently, for example, I've made a determined attempt to get to know better the works of several key composers - Boulez, Ligeti, Lutosławski - have expanded my knowledge of jazz, have revisited the prog rock of my teenage years - and yet the pieces that would go with me to that desert island (I'm sure the list is here in a thread somewhere) remain those from my ancient past.  I can no longer even imagine discovering something new that would affect me in the way that the best of Byrd, Bach, Haydn, Mahler, Stravinsky etc. do.  Perhaps I've just been around too long, and been listening too long, but it does seem sometimes as though there's nothing new under the sun.  Those of you who are more dedicated in following contemporary music will tell me that's nonsense, and that new masterpieces are appearing all the time.  So I remain keen to keep expanding my knowledge of music, but sometimes if I need a reliable stimulant only the Nielsen clarinet concerto, the Debussy violin sonata, the Byrd Great Service or Birtwistle's Earth Dances will do.

Quote from: Florestan on June 10, 2020, 06:04:11 AM
You didn't really expect anybody to agree that Hasse is almost as good as Mozart, did you?

But fine, go on and make this case. Recommend us three Hasse recordings that can make us change our mind.

[asin]B0000241TX[/asin]
[asin]B00004S3CQ[/asin]
[asin]B00000IAEE[/asin]
[asin]B0000260SY[/asin]

Requiem/Miserere Opus 111
Mottetti Virtuosi Opus 111
Cantatas and Chamber Music MDG

Quote from: Florestan on June 10, 2020, 10:30:31 AM
I do not object at all to enjoying unsung composers. I do it myself frequently. What's annoying is presenting them as being victims of unfairness from the part of critics, historians and the audiences, or claiming that the famous composers are famous solely because they were better marketed. Both ideas are complete nonsense.

Indeed. I personally don't a flip about marketing. If someone is marketed as the 'next Beethoven' I usually lose interest immediately after reading something like this and will never have any desire to hear the music for the sheer fact that what they're doing is absurd, baseless and 'all about the money' to begin with. If you do give into their claim and listen to the composer and come away disappointed, then that's a lot of egg on your face.

Quote from: 71 dB on June 10, 2020, 11:07:05 AM
[asin]B0000241TX[/asin]
[asin]B00004S3CQ[/asin]
[asin]B00000IAEE[/asin]
[asin]B0000260SY[/asin]

Requiem/Miserere Opus 111
Mottetti Virtuosi Opus 111
Cantatas and Chamber Music MDG

Thank you. Will investigate.

Quote from: Florestan on June 10, 2020, 11:13:40 AM
Thank you. Will investigate.

You are welcome! I encourage people to actually listen to some Hasse before "declaring" him a nobody compared to the well-known great composers of the 18th century.  ;)

Quote from: kyjo on June 09, 2020, 09:05:26 AM
For the most part, I agree with what you say regarding lesser-known composers of the early-mid 19th century vs. the acclaimed "masters" of the era. Because, IMO, most of the "undeservedly neglected" composers (in my view, anyway) come from the late-19th and 20th centuries. Before the late-19th century, there were many lesser-known figures who composed pleasant enough music, but it often lacks originality and memorability because it sometimes seems like they were trying too hard to emulate the "big names" of the era. But, beginning in the late-19th century and continuing well into the 20th, an extraordinary diversity of musical thought opened up, and composers both well-known and obscure today developed highly individual musical languages. Many of my favorite "unsung" composers, even if they wrote in a relatively "conservative" style for their day, forged idioms that are almost instantly recognizable (e.g. Arnold, Atterberg, Braga Santos, Casella, Lloyd). And, more importantly, many of them wrote music of staying emotional power and memorability (to me, anyway), that draws me back to their music time and again. :)

Andrei, I'd be interested to hear what you think about the point I raised here.

And there is this :

https://hasseproject.com/

Quote from: DaveF on June 10, 2020, 11:05:48 AM
Those of you who are more dedicated in following contemporary music will tell me that's nonsense, and that new masterpieces are appearing all the time.

While I would not use the word "dedicated," I am someone who does listen to a lot of music written by people who are either still alive or only recently deceased. And what I would tell you is something different. I might say that the whole concept of "masterpiece" has become rather threadbare, and that it always, even when it was a popular notion, missed the point, rather. That is, I would say that if I felt like enjoying an extreme weather event involving excrement. Sometimes I do; sometimes I don't.

I would more likely say that there are some important differences between new music and old. Old music is familiar. That is, a piece by Händel that you've never heard before is still familiar to you. It's still Baroque, for one, which is familiar to you. And it's familiar to you even if you never listen to "Baroque" as such. Even if you can't identify it as by Händel, you know without a doubt, unless you are the veriest tyro, that it's Baroque. And the old music that you're likely to hear has been thoroughly vetted; it is not just that you are only likely to hear the masterpieces that have survived, but the shapes and sounds of that older music have been thoroughly assimilated into the larger musical culture. That is, the very first time ever that you hear a piece by Bach, you are very unlikely to hear it as unfamiliar.

Aside from pastiche, music that is recent is not as familiar as older music. This is much more important now than it was in Haydn's time, when people went to concerts in order to hear new music, when the whole idea of "a canon" was only just starting to become a thing. And even then only in isolated instances. And its current importance means that listening to new music nowadays takes a bit more effort. Music that's recent has not been vetted, as well, so you are much more likely to hear a wider range of things, though to divide those things into masterpieces and dreck is to apply principles that, well, don't apply.

Even if you would argue that "masterpiece" is a useful concept generally, and I for one would not, it is certainly not useful for enjoying new music or even for talking about it. And I would argue that the things that are useful for encountering new music--attending to each piece on its own terms, allowing each piece to express its own terms, listening in the moment, accepting whatever you're hearing without judging it (at least not right away), of just generally listening to things rather than for the things you already know and like--are equally useful for listening to any music, however old or familiar. I think, in short, that talking about Hasse and Mozart in terms of ranking is to miss the point that it is not only possible but possibly desirable to listen to and enjoy Hasse and Mozart both.

Quote from: some guy on June 10, 2020, 12:18:01 PM
an extreme weather event involving excrement

I don't have anything to contribute to this discussion, but I wanted to voice my appreciation for this turn of phrase.

Quote from: Florestan on June 10, 2020, 08:32:29 AM
Absolutely.

+1

Quote from: Florestan on June 09, 2020, 11:32:33 AM
;D ;D ;D

Is that NB a real composer? If yes, would you be so kind as to let me have some of his music?  ;)

https://www.youtube.com/v/vYrIwn1vxvI&ebc=ANyPxKoObrG3em-htxTdS2CBDiw9-HzCJ3taR0NUavXaCgZjVP7hfrmHV7kcshqOP5p4dbKZLZC2Mhaay8Acz8dD9tBq8a1Lwg

Quote from: ritter on June 10, 2020, 09:45:30 AM
Then again, I perceive there's a tendency to glorify unsung composers just because of their obscurity. I find it slightly amusing when we post that the symphony of some forgotten early 20th century Moldovan composer we've just discovered in a recording by the Orquesta Sinfónica Municipal de Almendralejo on some obscure Taiwanese label has shot up to be among our 10 favourite symphonies ever.  Usually, just a couple of days later, we'll say that a cantata by a 17th century Hondurean maestro de capilla, written for the 1638 Easter celebrations at the cathedral of Catacamas is fantaaaastic, and rivals anything written by Monteverdi, and the following week the comic opera by a Latvian wunderkind, only performed once in Liepaja in 1887 and just now rediscovered, is an absolute masterpiece and makes Verdi's Falstaff look like an amateur effort in comparison....

Haha!

Let's not forget when someone says that they found the Moldovan symphony to be boring, and then a newfound Moldovan music fanatic angrily replies that they have no right to criticize!

Quote from: kyjo on June 10, 2020, 11:51:53 AM
Andrei, I'd be interested to hear what you think about the point I raised here.

Ah, sorry, Kyle, I wanted to reply but with all that Hasse thing it slipped out of my mind.

QuoteFor the most part, I agree with what you say regarding lesser-known composers of the early-mid 19th century vs. the acclaimed "masters" of the era. Because, IMO, most of the "undeservedly neglected" composers (in my view, anyway) come from the late-19th and 20th centuries. Before the late-19th century, there were many lesser-known figures who composed pleasant enough music, but it often lacks originality and memorability because it sometimes seems like they were trying too hard to emulate the "big names" of the era. But, beginning in the late-19th century and continuing well into the 20th, an extraordinary diversity of musical thought opened up, and composers both well-known and obscure today developed highly individual musical languages. Many of my favorite "unsung" composers, even if they wrote in a relatively "conservative" style for their day, forged idioms that are almost instantly recognizable (e.g. Arnold, Atterberg, Braga Santos, Casella, Lloyd). And, more importantly, many of them wrote music of staying emotional power and memorability (to me, anyway), that draws me back to their music time and again.

You made some (partially) good points. Now, take the big names who were contemporary with Arnold, Atterberg, Braga Santos, Casella, Lloyd* : do you find the emotional power and memorability of the former to be on the same level with the latter's?

*Btw, I think only Lloyd can qualify as unsung or neglected; the others are pretty well-known, I'd say.

Quote from: 71 dB on June 10, 2020, 11:43:15 AM
You are welcome! I encourage people to actually listen to some Hasse before "declaring" him a nobody compared to the well-known great composers of the 18th century.  ;)

None of us declared Hasse a nobody. What we took issues with were your extravagant claims that (1|) Hasse is almost as good as Mozart* and (2) Mozart's fame and popularity rest on his untimely death and having been better marketed.

*which actually begs the question: almost as good at what?

Quote from: Florestan on June 11, 2020, 12:49:05 AM
None of us declared Hasse a nobody. What we took issues with were your extravagant claims that (1|) Hasse is almost as good as Mozart* and (2) Mozart's fame and popularity rest on his untimely death and having been better marketed.

*which actually begs the question: almost as good at what?

As if Mozart (one of the most loved and best known composers in the history) needs this  ::)

No, Hasse is the one needing some promotion, because he is the "forgotten one" despite of being one of the greatest composers of his time.

Yeah, I think Hasse was almost as good composer as Mozart. If not then who was? If all other composers were significantly worse than Mozart why would we listen to anyone else then Mozart? But that's not the case.
Mozart had fame and popularity, but his death certainly helped making him even more "mystical" figure and I am sure to some (casual) consumers of classical music that matters.

Sorry, but you still do not consider sufficiently the actual historical conditions that determined the reputations (and their fading and growing) of Hasse and Mozart. Casual consumers of the late 20th and early 21st century are mostly irrelevant here because they are 200 years too late ;) And so are legends surrounding Mozart's early death. Relevant are factors like the fading of the opera seria (on which Hasse's fame rested, it seems interesting that the discs you recommend and also my only Hasse disc (Salve Regina) are mostly sacred music, so even this is a distortion) and also the innovative genius of Mozart who transformed the opera of his time into something sufficiently timeless to be appreciated troughout the almost 250 years since then. And not only opera but almost everythin he touched.
Do you think that a headstrong youngster like the young Beethoven cared a fig about Mozart being a mystical figure when he modelled lots of his early pieces on Mozartian paradigms? This is far more about technical quality and innovation than about biographical details.

Quote from: Jo498 on June 11, 2020, 03:11:50 AM
Sorry, but you still do not consider sufficiently the actual historical conditions that determined the reputations (and their fading and growing) of Hasse and Mozart. Casual consumers of the late 20th and early 21st century are mostly irrelevant here because they are 200 years too late ;) And so are legends surrounding Mozart's early death. Relevant are factors like the fading of the opera seria (on which Hasse's fame rested, it seems interesting that the discs you recommend and also my only Hasse disc (Salve Regina) are mostly sacred music, so even this is a distortion) and also the innovative genius of Mozart who transformed the opera of his time into something sufficiently timeless to be appreciated troughout the almost 250 years since then. And not only opera but almost everythin he touched.
Do you think that a headstrong youngster like the young Beethoven cared a fig about Mozart being a mystical figure when he modelled lots of his early pieces on Mozartian paradigms? This is far more about technical quality and innovation than about biographical details.

Not sure what I am supposed to get out of this...  :P

Operas were popular, because it was "popular music" of the time. Popularity doesn't tell much about quality or are you telling me the best selling pop music of today is all of high quality? I never listen to Mozart's operas and frankly I don't understand why they are kept in so high esteem and I have never heard a Hasse opera, but I suppose I'd enjoy a Hasse opera more than Mozart operas. These composers composed so much other music, more serious music not to appeal the simpleminded audience. So, if I listen to Mozart it's Piano Concertos, chamber music, Piano Sonatas, works of that nature and if I listen to Hasse it's mostly church music.

I don't have a clue what you mean by being 200 years too late. Of course we are "late" because we live now and not in the 18th century. What does it matter? We have it better now. My access to music is insane compared to people 200 years ago. Yes, Hasse's fame faded because of the fading of the opera seria, but that doesn't concern us, because this is the 21st century where all kind of opera music has been long death and  most people listen to Taylor Swift or Eminem and only some "nutcases" like us explore music composed long ago. We are not living in the middle of opera seria fading so we can re-evaluate these composers more objectively having the benefit of historical perspective.

Quote from: Florestan on June 06, 2020, 08:08:29 AM
"Always stick to your likings - there are profound reasons for them".

That is an intriguing quote from M. Delius. I think I appreciated music more in the days when I had less of it so listened to each album more regularly and came to know it very well. I might try doing something like that again, concentrating much more on the real treasures I've discovered over the years.

Quote from: 71 dB on June 11, 2020, 03:50:25 AM
I never listen to Mozart's operas and frankly I don't understand why they are kept in so high esteem and I have never heard a Hasse opera

Oh, dear! Oh, dear! You openly confess ignorance of the one single genre where Hasse and Mozart could be compared. Then on what ground do you claim that Hasse is almost as good on Mozart?

Plus, if you never listen to Mozart's operas it's no wonder you don't understand why they are kept in so high esteem.

Quote from: 71 dB on June 11, 2020, 03:50:25 AM
if I listen to Mozart it's Piano Concertos, chamber music, Piano Sonatas, works of that nature and if I listen to Hasse it's mostly church music.

Ah, now I get it: Hasse's church music is almost as good as Mozart's chamber music. That makes sense, makes a lot of sense indeed. Very intelligent. Brilliant even.

QuoteMy access to music is insane compared to people 200 years ago.

That's true but I doubt you have a more profound relationship with, or a better knowledge of, music than people really interested in it 200 years ago. For a starter, you can't even read a score or play an instrument (nor do I) while most if not all of them could --- so you are in absolutely no position whatever to judge the purely musical merits of a work, or lack thereof, other than by stating your subjective preferences and claiming they are enlightened and nonprejudiced when they are in fact anything but.

QuoteHasse's fame faded because of the fading of the opera seria, but that doesn't concern us, because this is the 21st century where all kind of opera music has been long death and  most people listen to Taylor Swift or Eminem and only some "nutcases" like us explore music composed long ago. We are not living in the middle of opera seria fading so we can re-evaluate these composers more objectively having the benefit of historical perspective.

While this is true in principle, who are those "we" who can re-evaluate? Surely not you, because as I said when it comes to the technicalities of music you are an illiterate (just like me). Now, if you mean professionals (performers, conductors, critics, historians) who know their trade inside out, then I must point you to the fact that Handel 's opera seria, and to a lesser degree Vivaldi's, are the only ones of their genre that have been extensively recorded and performed, so for the time being the historical perspective is well established and the historical record is set: only the works of those composers who excelled at more than one single genre which has been long since dead and burried stand any chance of having their operas rescued and revived. You may call it unjust till you're blue in the face, it doesn't change the fact that standing the test of time means first and foremost expressing in one's music timeless values in a style accessible to, and pleasant for, both contemporaries and the long-run posterity --- and I'm sorry to tell you that within these parameters Hasse failed miserably and Mozart succeeded brilliantly (not because they consciously strived for any kind of immortality and one failed and the other succeeded, but because the latter was a versatile genius while the former was not.)

Look, I don't understand why you cannot limit yourself to stating your personal preferences (at which level it's perfectly okay and unobjectionable to prefer Hasse to Mozart) and why you think that belittling established masters will help in any way the cause of your unsung heros. It won't; on the contrary, it will make you appear in the eyes of knowledgeable, reasonable and dedicated listeners (the only kind worth considering; casual listeners who watched Amadeus and subsequently have in their home a recording of Eine kleine Nachtmusik, that immortal masterpiece of a genius who died much too young don't qualify and I'm greatly puzzled you can seriously bring them in) as someone who cannot be taken seriously.

By all means, go ahead and listen to Hasse with much more pleasure than to Mozart, none of us object to that --- just don't pretend that your subjective preference translate into any kind of enlighened judgment value, becuse it emphatically does not.

Quote from: 71 dB on June 11, 2020, 03:50:25 AMOperas were popular, because it was "popular music" of the time. Popularity doesn't tell much about quality or are you telling me the best selling pop music of today is all of high quality?

Untrue.  Popular music of that time was...popular music. It wasn't generally written down or published, and survived primarily as an oral tradition. Opera, especially opera seria, was primarily written for the nobility, not for the mass market as with popular music. The modern "pop music" genre didn't exist in its current form until the advent of sound recording.

Also, nobody here has argued that popularity in itself equals quality.

Quote from: 71 dB on June 11, 2020, 03:50:25 AMI never listen to Mozart's operas and frankly I don't understand why they are kept in so high esteem and I have never heard a Hasse opera, but I suppose I'd enjoy a Hasse opera more than Mozart operas.

Because Mozart's mature operas are dramatically and musically masterful works. He wrote two mature opera seria which are often performed and recorded: Idomeneo and La Clemenza di Tito.

Quote from: 71 dB on June 11, 2020, 03:50:25 AMThese composers composed so much other music, more serious music not to appeal the simpleminded audience. So, if I listen to Mozart it's Piano Concertos, chamber music, Piano Sonatas, works of that nature and if I listen to Hasse it's mostly church music.

Mozart's operas are not simpleminded. They are every bit as sophisticated as the chamber music and the piano concertos and form the bedrock of the modern operatic repertory.

Quote from: 71 dB on June 11, 2020, 03:50:25 AM
I never listen to Mozart's operas and frankly I don't understand why they are kept in so high esteem

Well, nobody understands what he doesn't listen to,

my 2 cents on the original question: Re: Exploring New Music vs. Sticking to Preferences

Quote from: Florestan on June 06, 2020, 08:08:29 AM
What's your experience in this respect?

I have given some thought to your question over the last few days Andrei and I looked at my purchasing log to find my pattern and behaviour: this has basically been subject to phases, circumstances and own frame of mind.

When I joined the old forum in 2005 (I think), not knowing anything about classical music, the initial build up of my collection and tastes was a slow exploratory process, with carefully selected and steady purchases in many genres all the way from 2006 to 2011. By that time, I had found my main preferences in genres and periods and there was a sudden ramp up in purchases all the way to 2015, with multiples purchases of the same works and composers.

The bulk of my go-to listening preferences would by then consist of : Mahler (lots of version accumulated), Beethoven ( several piano sonatas sets, SQ's, symphonies), Haydn (SQ, symphonies), Chopin, Bruckner, Vivaldi (Hogwood), Rameau (Ross, Meyer), Scarlatti (Ross), some specific boxsets (Celibidache, Bernstein Sony boxes, Wand Edition, Beaux Arts Trio) and a choral music section from Perotin to Poulenc.

Any other composers explored beyond this list and purchased during that time, for breadth intent, would be mostly limited to 1 or 2 CD's each. Circa 2015, I also created an Excel file with a substantial list of "maiden composers" I had yet to explore.

From 2016 to 2018 however, purchases tanked and my classical listening substantially reduced overall.

Several causes:
- A burn-out from an over-exposure to my go-to bulk list
- a mental pressure on new music that can eat at you with too many composers, so little time (71dB hinted to that for him in the past, I could sympathise with some of that feeling to a degree).
- Add to that a sometime self-defeating approach to composers I would not "get" – what do other people get that I don't e.g. with RVW, Sibelius, Shostakovich. I would end up listening to some of those composers more "out of duty" without the necessary openness or enjoyment.

Several consequences:

- Being "Mahlered" out is the most heart-breaking for me (even to this day). His music means so much to me but I struggle to still get a full buzz out of listening to it. I look sadly at the De La Grange's 4 massive books on my shelf...untouched... I don't know for how long still. With hindsight, I regret to have bought that many cycles or versions over the years, that killed some of the pleasure for sure (I even sold some last year – Abbado and Rattle were the first to go !  ;D )
- For the majority of my collection beyond the listening bulk, there was no real recollection or mental registration of the works, melodies, only a thought of "oh I think I did like that before, let's listen to that again.
- A serious need to reset my approach to classical music was needed.

From late 2018, I decided to purposely broaden my classical listening to avoid falling into those pitfalls again, from my shelves to start with. For any one CD of Haydn or Beethoven I might listen to again, I'd pick up a handful of neglected CD's e.g. Suk, Piazzolla, Janacek, Biber, Nielsen and other to ensure the variety in play.

Like Scarpia alluded to a few posts before, for those, the lack of repeated listening or registering served as an advantage in that you re-discover some works anew each time. With one change: If it sticks, all the better, if it does not, so be it, don't force it, press stop, shelve it for another time, move on.

That approach worked a treat in 2019 when I started to dabble into the British composers, which were one of those categories that eluded me completely in previous years. I sampled various works on youtube and eventually found a couple of  entry points that clicked (George Lloyd, Alwyn) and the rest followed one by one afterwards (Arnold, Bax, Rubbra, Bantock, Moeran). The big personal turning point after those years was to finally get to RVW and finding myself enjoying most of his symphonies. It was liberating in exploratory terms for me. Even Sibelius got a full cycle hearing after that, and with some hints of enjoyment !

This year, being now content with my British explorations and purchases and with lock down suddenly happening, I halted physical purchases and decided to have a first look at streaming to expand to more new music. I dug up that old "maiden composers" list again from 2015/2016, updated it by reviewing the latest composer index and then "favourited" various CD's for each in Qobuz for my main listening, plus any other CD's that have been in my buying consideration list in the past.

I have now about 750+ CD to explore  with a view to pinpoint some definite and thought-through purchases of my liking, or what seems ok but I might need to re-asses in the future,or what I rule out for now (all logged in a file as well). If ruled out, it gets deleted in Qobuz. It can wait for another time when I re-assess the file again...or when the mood takes me to try again.

That has served me well so far in this last quarter : Amongst others, I have come to discover and like some of Spohr, Czerny, Holmboe, Tubin, Weiss, Parry, Braga Santos, Hummel, Hurlstone, Casella, Reinecke, more Bliss, Arnold, Bax, etc...

I still have some major blind spots: Operas and Modern (atonal) music to name just two...maybe one day I'll get to those as well.

For modern music, the post #108 in this thread from Some Guy has given me food for thought for sure. I must remember that particular frame of mind when I get to Boulez, Ligeti and onwards in this genre in my exploration list.

Short answer  0:) :

Before > Preferences
Now > New Music
Tomorrow > who knows as long as I enjoy the music and the process.

Quote from: Papy Oli on June 11, 2020, 09:49:18 AM

Most interesting, Oliver! Thanks for taking the time to answer my question.

Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on June 11, 2020, 07:36:33 AM
Well, nobody understands what he doesn't listen to,

;)

Quote from: Florestan on June 11, 2020, 06:56:42 AM
Oh, dear! Oh, dear! You openly confess ignorance of the one single genre where Hasse and Mozart could be compared. Then on what ground do you claim that Hasse is almost as good on Mozart? Plus, if you never listen to Mozart's operas it's no wonder you don't understand why they are kept in so high esteem.

Maybe I expressed myself badly: I have ALL of his operas (in the Brilliant Classics Boxset and I have heard them all, but it's not an area I go back to when listening to Mozart.

Quote from: Florestan on June 11, 2020, 06:56:42 AMAh, now I get it: Hasse's church music is almost as good as Mozart's chamber music. That makes sense, makes a lot of sense indeed. Very intelligent. Brilliant even.

If you want to put it into that form.

Quote from: Florestan on June 11, 2020, 06:56:42 AMThat's true but I doubt you have a more profound relationship with, or a better knowledge of, music than people really interested in it 200 years ago. For a starter, you can't even read a score or play an instrument (nor do I) while most if not all of them could --- so you are in absolutely no position whatever to judge the purely musical merits of a work, or lack thereof, other than by stating your subjective preferences and claiming they are enlightened and nonprejudiced when they are in fact anything but.

I think I can read a score. I just don't have them. To me score is not everything. Sound is important. If score is everything why bother play and record music when you can read the score? You can't live in the blueprints of your house. You live in your house. Blueprints where just needed so your house could have been build. Also, just as I am "blinded" by the current fashion of popular music for example, they where blinded by the reality where Mozart's sound was the thing of the day. That's what I mean by perspective. I know what happened 100 years after Mozart. They didn't. They never heard Wagner. We know Wagner. They propably never heard Monterverdi either. It was an are without recordings. What you heard was the music of the day.

If I am just an idiot then why do I even bother to explore classical music and form my own opinions about it? Why are forgotten composers discovered if the history is always right? Weinberg was forgotten!! Why do record companies keep releasing his music? Sure, I love Weinberg, but I can barely read scores so why do they believe me? Why don't they release just Shostakovich who was not forgotten?

Quote from: Florestan on June 11, 2020, 06:56:42 AMWhile this is true in principle, who are those "we" who can re-evaluate? Surely not you, because as I said when it comes to the technicalities of music you are an illiterate (just like me). Now, if you mean professionals (performers, conductors, critics, historians) who know their trade inside out, then I must point you to the fact that Handel 's opera seria, and to a lesser degree Vivaldi's, are the only ones of their genre that have been extensively recorded and performed, so for the time being the historical perspective is well established and the historical record is set: only the works of those composers who excelled at more than one single genre which has been long since dead and burried stand any chance of having their operas rescued and revived. You may call it unjust till you're blue in the face, it doesn't change the fact that standing the test of time means first and foremost expressing in one's music timeless values in a style accessible to, and pleasant for, both contemporaries and the long-run posterity --- and I'm sorry to tell you that within these parameters Hasse failed miserably and Mozart succeeded brilliantly (not because they consciously strived for any kind of immortality and one failed and the other succeeded, but because the latter was a versatile genius while the former was not.)

Music consumers, because what connsumers want gets performed recorded. I have been pretty illiterate musically, but I have learned stuff. Vivaldi failed miserably. His music was forgotten for a long time only to be discovered some 100 years ago. If Vivaldi can do that, why can't Hasse? In fact, Naxos has released Hasse's Didone abbandonata Doesn't Naxos know Hasse is not a genius? Actually Hasse might have been a genius, just not as big as Mozart.

Quote from: Florestan on June 11, 2020, 06:56:42 AMLook, I don't understand why you cannot limit yourself to stating your personal preferences (at which level it's perfectly okay and unobjectionable to prefer Hasse to Mozart) and why you think that belittling established masters will help in any way the cause of your unsung heros. It won't; on the contrary, it will make you appear in the eyes of knowledgeable, reasonable and dedicated listeners (the only kind worth considering; casual listeners who watched Amadeus and subsequently have in their home a recording of Eine kleine Nachtmusik, that immortal masterpiece of a genius who died much too young don't qualify and I'm greatly puzzled you can seriously bring them in) as someone who cannot be taken seriously.

Mozart > Hasse. Never said otherwise. However, of all 18th century composers, Hasse is among the greatest and Hasse's fame today doesn't reflect his greatness. Mozart is a million time better known, but even the GREATEST GENIUS EVER can't be a milllion times better than someone who was one of the greatest of his time!!!! 10 times better? 13 times betters? 3 times better? We can debate, but Hasse would be happy to be 1/100 as celebrated. That is the craziness of music history.

Quote from: Florestan on June 11, 2020, 06:56:42 AMBy all means, go ahead and listen to Hasse with much more pleasure than to Mozart, none of us object to that --- just don't pretend that your subjective preference translate into any kind of enlighened judgment value, becuse it emphatically does not.

Where did you get that? I enjoy Mozart more than Hasse in general, but not 10000 times more. Just a little more so why don't we admit after the greatest Mozart Hasse was one of the best of his time?

Quote from: 71 dB on June 11, 2020, 10:01:32 AM
If I am just an idiot

Nobody called you an idiot. You just love to play melodramas and fight strawmen.

Quote from: Florestan on June 11, 2020, 10:29:21 AM
Nobody called you an idiot. You just love to play melodramas and fight strawmen.

+1 Indeed, he does.

Quote from: Mahlerian on June 11, 2020, 07:20:09 AM
Because Mozart's mature operas are dramatically and musically masterful works. He wrote two mature opera seria which are often performed and recorded: Idomeneo and La Clemenza di Tito.

Maybe I revisit these.

Quote from: 71 dB on June 11, 2020, 03:50:25 AM
Not sure what I am supposed to get out of this...  :P

Hopefully a little more understanding of the history of music.

Quote
Operas were popular, because it was "popular music" of the time. Popularity doesn't tell much about quality or are you telling me the best selling pop music of today is all of high quality?

I am trying to tell you that the establishment of Mozart as a great composer and the fading of Hasse did not work like late 20th century popularity of pop (or classical) music may work. Mahlerian already explained that Opera was not simply the popular music of the mid/late 18th century.

Quote
I don't have a clue what you mean by being 200 years too late. Of course we are "late" because we live now and not in the 18th century. What does it matter?

It matters because the status of Mozart and Hasse in musical history was established more than 200 years ago and by mechanisms that were different from the way music today gets popular (or fades away). Casual listeners are rather important today but they were not very important 200 years ago, especially not for the establishment of music beyond the fashion of a few seasons. Mozart was (often too) hard for casual listeners or even for the amateur players among his contemporaries. He could establish himself because other composers and the best of the amateurs admired his music and his music remained in the repertoire because it had interest for a younger composer like Beethoven and also the listeners of a new century whereas Hasse was working in the twilight of a genre and an epoch and held no interest for the next generations. This was very different from marketing for modern mass music with teenagers and other casual listeners.

Quote
We are not living in the middle of opera seria fading so we can re-evaluate these composers more objectively having the benefit of historical perspective.

You only have the benefit of a historical perspective if you do not ignore actual history. Nobody wants to spoil Hasse for you. But the reasons for Hasse's fading and Mozart's thriving after their deaths have nothing to do with casual listeners or with today's listeners. Even today Hasse has first to convince musicians and producers to make a recording or stage an opera in the first place before any listener gets to "vote". We are living in the middle of a revival of Opera Seria and unlike Handel and Rameau Hasse is not really benefitting from this revival although this could have been expected.

Far as I can see (vide that #108 post that Papy Oil has mentioned), 71db's position is only flawed insofar as he argues from the same premise as Florestan et al., namely that comparisons are useful.

Comparisons are invidious.

I just listened to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8Ue_7Tg08c  (It's a short extract. Only a coupla minutes.)

My overriding impression was this: this is eminently listenable. Do you need to compare it to anyone else in order to enjoy it?

No.

And that is partly, I realize, because the comparisons are already there. I have heard other baroque music, including operas. Given that implicit comparison, however, do I really need to make explicit comparisons in order to enjoy this? No, I don't.

I'm more interested in contemporary music than in anything else, so am generally more inclined to explore within that area. But now, having heard this very brief excerpt, I have to say that I very much want to listen to some more music by Hasse.

Quote from: Jo498 on June 11, 2020, 11:28:02 AM
Hopefully a little more understanding of the history of music.
I am trying to tell you that the establishment of Mozart as a great composer and the fading of Hasse did not work like late 20th century popularity of pop (or classical) music may work. Mahlerian already explained that Opera was not simply the popular music of the mid/late 18th century.
It matters because the status of Mozart and Hasse in musical history was established more than 200 years ago and by mechanisms that were different from the way music today gets popular (or fades away). Casual listeners are rather important today but they were not very important 200 years ago, especially not for the establishment of music beyond the fashion of a few seasons. Mozart was (often too) hard for casual listeners or even for the amateur players among his contemporaries. He could establish himself because other composers and the best of the amateurs admired his music and his music remained in the repertoire because it had interest for a younger composer like Beethoven and also the listeners of a new century whereas Hasse was working in the twilight of a genre and an epoch and held no interest for the next generations. This was very different from marketing for modern mass music with teenagers and other casual listeners.
You only have the benefit of a historical perspective if you do not ignore actual history. Nobody wants to spoil Hasse for you. But the reasons for Hasse's fading and Mozart's thriving after their deaths have nothing to do with casual listeners or with today's listeners. Even today Hasse has first to convince musicians and producers to make a recording or stage an opera in the first place before any listener gets to "vote". We are living in the middle of a revival of Opera Seria and unlike Handel and Rameau Hasse is not really benefitting from this revival although this could have been expected.

Excellent points, all of them.

Quote from: some guy on June 11, 2020, 11:36:29 AM
71db's position is only flawed insofar as he argues from the same premise as Florestan et al., namely that comparisons are useful.

You're wrong. That is not my premise at all. It's not me who started comparing Hasse with Mozart and said that Hasse's church music is almost as good as Mozart's chamber music, which is exactly like comparing beers and oranges.

Quote

I just listened to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8Ue_7Tg08c  (It's a short extract. Only a coupla minutes.)

My overriding impression was this: this is eminently listenable. Do you need to compare it to anyone else in order to enjoy it?

No.

I never contested that. In fact, I emphatically agreed.

I believe scholars think Hasse was great. I enjoy Hasse. Makes sense, if he was great. I believe the scholars. Greatness just doesn't correlate with popularity 100 %. Weinberg is MUCH better known than just 20 years ago. Weinberg is just as great as ever, but his popularity has risen dramatically because more recordings available. Hasse's popularity today could be anything between zero and that of Mozart.

Quote from: Jo498 on June 11, 2020, 11:28:02 AM
...the status of Mozart and Hasse in musical history was established more than 200 years ago and by mechanisms that were different from the way music today gets popular (or fades away).

And what, exactly, were those mechanisms? Both Hasse and Mozart were writing and performing at a time before a canon was established. We respond to them from a time after canonical thinking has become so established as to be practically invisible. It determines how we think, that is, without us being at all aware of its influence.

More than 200 years ago (with a certain amount of precision, more than 210 years ago), nothing much was established. For a piece to continue to be played years after its premiere, any piece by anybody, was unusual. There was no establishing or fading either one, not as we experience those things, anyway. Everyone wrote for the moment, without any thought of posterity. Beethoven was one of the earliest people to have any sense of posterity as a thing, much less as a thing to be reckoned with. Saying that Hasse "faded" only makes sense if you recognize that everyone at the time "faded." Up to the 19th century, fading was just something that happened, regardless of any putative quality of any particular piece, regardless of any putative quality of any particular composer. That is, in reality, fading really didn't happen at all. Or, to put it another way, "fading" points to a reality (the canon) that didn't even exist when Hasse was writing. Nor when Mozart was writing.

Quote from: Jo498 on June 11, 2020, 11:28:02 AM
Hopefully a little more understanding of the history of music.

How much do I have to understand the history of music? I understand something and my knowledge is superior to a teenager listening to Eminem, but of course I don't know/understand everything. Nobody does. What I do know/understand is Hasse was one of the greats of his time even if Mozart was even a bigger genius. Now do we accept only composers of Mozart caliber, or do we also aknowledge the greatness of composers like Hasse? Do we see how Hasse might deserve better? He is no Mozart, but how about 1-10 % of Mozart's fame? Would that be fair?

Quote from: some guy on June 11, 2020, 11:57:02 AM
And what, exactly, were those mechanisms? Both Hasse and Mozart were writing and performing at a time before a canon was established. We respond to them from a time after canonical thinking has become so established as to be practically invisible. It determines how we think, that is, without us being at all aware of its influence.

Thank you, this helps me expressing myself. I am trying to make canonical thinking visible. Is canonical thinking even needed? Can't we enjoy Mozart's genius without canonical thinking telling us he was a genius??

Not that there is anything wrong with that, but "listenable" is a low threshold.  Mozart is a great deal more than "listenable"

Quote from: some guy on June 11, 2020, 11:57:02 AM
And what, exactly, were those mechanisms? Both Hasse and Mozart were writing and performing at a time before a canon was established. We respond to them from a time after canonical thinking has become so established as to be practically invisible. It determines how we think, that is, without us being at all aware of its influence.

More than 200 years ago (with a certain amount of precision, more than 210 years ago), nothing much was established. For a piece to continue to be played years after its premiere, any piece by anybody, was unusual. There was no establishing or fading either one, not as we experience those things, anyway. Everyone wrote for the moment, without any thought of posterity. Beethoven was one of the earliest people to have any sense of posterity as a thing, much less as a thing to be reckoned with. Saying that Hasse "faded" only makes sense if you recognize that everyone at the time "faded." Up to the 19th century, fading was just something that happened, regardless of any putative quality of any particular piece, regardless of any putative quality of any particular composer. That is, in reality, fading really didn't happen at all. Or, to put it another way, "fading" points to a reality (the canon) that didn't even exist when Hasse was writing. Nor when Mozart was writing.

Indeed, Mozart faded right into a limepit.

Quote from: 71 dB on June 11, 2020, 11:52:11 AM
I believe scholars think Hasse was great. I enjoy Hasse. Makes sense, if he was great. I believe the scholars.

You believe the scholars only when you agree with them. If the selfsame scholars would tell you that, for all Hasse's greatness, Mozart is superior to him in every respect --- which most of them probably would --- you'd cease believing them.

Quote from: Jo498 on June 11, 2020, 11:28:02 AM
I am trying to tell you that the establishment of Mozart as a great composer and the fading of Hasse did not work like late 20th century popularity of pop (or classical) music may work. Mahlerian already explained that Opera was not simply the popular music of the mid/late 18th century.

Popular music didn't exist the way it exists today, but people went to opera to be entertained. I would even go so far to say opera was movies before movies existed and served similar function of escapism and entertainment.

Quote from: Florestan on June 11, 2020, 12:16:51 PM
You believe the scholars only when you agree with them. If the selfsame scholars would tell you that, for all Hasse's greatness, Mozart is superior to him in every respect --- which most of them probably would --- you'd cease believing them.

I have agreed all the time about Mozarts superiority. I'm just saying Hasse deserves better. While inferior to Mozart he wasnt' bad or even mediocre. He was great, but he has the popularity of a bad or mediocre composer.

In the early 18th century Telemann and Graupner were considered superior to J. S. Bach. Personally I'm glad that assesment has been re-evaluated, althou Graupner faded too much into the obscurity, but that has been somewhat rectified. All I say is history doesn't seem to get it right always, at least on first try and it takes time before mistakes are being corrected.

Quote from: 71 dB on June 11, 2020, 12:22:47 PM
I have agreed all the time about Mozarts superiority. I'm just saying Hasse deserves better. While inferior to Mozart he wasnt' bad or even mediocre.

Strawmne, time and again. Show me one single poster in this thread who claimed Hasse was bad or mediocre.

Quote
He was great, but he has the popularity of a bad or mediocre composer.

If you refer to the present time, he has no popularity at all, for multiple reasons which have been explained to you in detail and more than once but which you stubbornly refuse to consider. He was great in a genre which was approaching its natural demise while he was still alive. Handel, another great in the same genre, was perceptive enough to realize that and consequently reinvented himself (and anyway his fame did not rest exclusively on operas); for whatever reason Hasse did not. His posthumous fate is inextricably linked with the postumous fate of the genre he excelled in. If you can understand that, fine; if you can't, or won't, fine again. I'm done with the topic.

[I is possibly time to repeat that, even for scholars [I enjoy this music] ≠[this music is great]

Quote from: Florestan on June 11, 2020, 12:37:07 PM
If you refer to the present time, he has no popularity at all, for multiple reasons which have been explained to you in detail and more than once but which you stubbornly refuse to consider. He was great in a genre which was approaching its natural demise while he was still alive. Handel, another great in the same genre, was perceptive enough to realize that and consequently reinvented himself (and anyway his fame did not rest exclusively on operas); for whatever reason Hasse did not. His posthumous fate is inextricably linked with the postumous fate of the genre he excelled in. If you can understand that, fine; if you can't, or won't, fine again. I'm done with the topic.

To teenagers of today pop music of the 80's sound extremely old, but if popular music of our time is played 200 years from now it all sound the "same" In other words styles getting out of fashion is not a deal for us: They all got out of fashion 200 years ago and to us other things matter such as the quality of the music. J. S. Bach got totally out of fashion, but he had Mendelssohn. Hasse didn't. This is not 1820. This is 2020.

Quote from: 71 dB on June 11, 2020, 12:47:33 PM
J. S. Bach got totally out of fashion, but he had Mendelssohn. Hasse didn't.

Maybe Mendelssohn found some Hasse, too, but left it at the fishmonger's 8)

Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on June 11, 2020, 02:19:57 PM
Maybe Mendelssohn found some Hasse, too, but left it at the fishmonger's 8)

:laugh:

Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on June 11, 2020, 12:10:57 PM
Not that there is anything wrong with that, but "listenable" is a low threshold.  Mozart is a great deal more than "listenable"

Hey Karl. As someone who is arguing for dispensing with ranking as a useful concept in music appreciation, I am not terribly impressed by the threshold remark here. I'm much more receptive to the "I like ≠ It's great" notion, but even there, I have to note that "great" still refers to ranking.

My point is that my ability (and perhaps your ability as well--and yours and yours and yours) to enjoy Hasse, to hear Hasse for the first time and be impressed with his music, is in no way affected by how he ranks against Mozart. Indeed, if one is really enamoured of the whole ranking business, one will probably acknowledge that most composers of any era (I kept typing that as "are," so stubborn are my fingers) do not stack up well against Mozart. 71db's point, far as I can tell, was simply to remark that despite Hasse not stacking up to Mozart, his music is still unmistakably rewarding.

My initial experience bears that out. Hasse's music is unmistakably rewarding.

Otherwise, I see that there is only one thing I have left to say in this post, and that is that a low threshold is certainly less likely to trip anyone up than a high one. Be fair!

Quote from: some guy on June 11, 2020, 02:56:42 PM
Hey Karl. As someone who is arguing for dispensing with ranking as a useful concept in music appreciation, I am not terribly impressed by the threshold remark here. I'm much more receptive to the "I like ≠ It's great" notion, but even there, I have to note that "great" still refers to ranking.

My point is that my ability (and perhaps your ability as well--and yours and yours and yours) to enjoy Hasse, to hear Hasse for the first time and be impressed with his music, is in no way affected by how he ranks against Mozart. Indeed, if one is really enamoured of the whole ranking business, one will probably acknowledge that most composers of any era (I kept typing that as "are," so stubborn are my fingers) do not stack up well against Mozart. 71db's point, far as I can tell, was simply to remark that despite Hasse not stacking up to Mozart, his music is still unmistakably rewarding.

My initial experience bears that out. Hasse's music is unmistakably rewarding.

Otherwise, I see that there is only one thing I have left to say in this post, and that is that a low threshold is certainly less likely to trip anyone up than a high one. Be fair!

Hah!
Well, I thank you for (among other things) putting what was probably 71dB's point much more sensibly. Probably because you harbor no peevish resentment of Mozart.

Quote from: Old San Antone on June 11, 2020, 03:27:51 PM
I feel much like you describe, I don't have the urge to rank composers.  But it is unavoidable that we as listeners will gravitate to some composers more than others; while I love Brahms I can't tolerate Wagner - and feel absolutely no obligation to give Wagner yet another chance.

I don't believe it when someone claims to like everything the same. 

True, too.

Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on June 11, 2020, 02:19:57 PM
Maybe Mendelssohn found some Hasse, too, but left it at the fishmonger's 8)

Remarks like this really make me feel my exploration into the world of classical music is paying off in the form of acceptance among the online classical music community.  :P Whatever I say, I can count on it Karl Henning the wise finds a clever way to make me a laughing stock. Do you really need to be this way Karl? If you feel my knowledge of Hasse and Mozart is lacking how about educating me in a friendly manner instead of Mendelssohn jokes? Maybe this is just how things are and we classical music fans are mean besserwissers attacking each other?

Btw, you forgot to mention maybe Mendelssohn found some Dittersdorf too... ...you are getting sloppy.  ;)

Quote from: 71 dB on June 11, 2020, 03:45:26 PM
Remarks like this really make me feel my exploration into the world of classical music is paying off in the form of acceptance among the online classical music community.  :P Whatever I say, I can count on it Karl Henning the wise finds a clever way to make me a laughing stock. Do you really need to be this way Karl? If you feel my knowledge of Hasse and Mozart is lacking how about educating me in a friendly manner instead of Mendelssohn jokes?

You are absolutely right, I've used you poorly. Sorry!

The subject of this post is something I ponder often. How to strike a balance between things that I could return to hundreds of times, and new things frantically waving their hands for attention. "Hey, if you would just listen to me once, I might become your favorite piece."

And not just contemporary music, either (since I do consume a lot of it). My favorite example is Janáček, whom I discovered after perhaps three decades of classical listening. His operas were a revelation: "How have I not heard these pieces?" But there are only so many hours in a day, and given the avalanche of available music, you could go a long time without hearing many people. So time allocation becomes important.

Others have chimed in here similarly: "Everything was 'new' once."

--Bruce

I could not find the original of this quote, so I couldn't present it to y'all in the nice little blue box. But y'all remember quote marks, right?

Old San Antone: "I don't believe it when someone claims to like everything the same."

I wouldn't either, but I want to report that to the best of my recollection, I have never seen or heard anyone make this claim. (I have both seen and heard people allude to this claim, but that's a quite different matter.)

I have certainly mentioned a time or two my disenchantment with the whole ranking business. Indeed and boy howdy. But I don't like everything the same. Since I don't see my preferences as normative, however, my personal "rankings," which I rarely mention (which I never mention?), will never be able to be used by anyone, ever, for any purpose. Which is all to the good.

I do, however, think that it is a good thing to try to like everything for its own sake. That is, I do try (and frequently fail) to let each piece establish itself on its own terms. If I slip, and allow my already established preferences establish the terms of my enjoyment, I almost always end up enjoying things much less.

My dislike of things that will never be able to please me I try to keep strictly to myself. It wouldn't do anyone else the least bit of good. I don't even think it does me the least bit of good.

When I fail at that (the keeping strictly to myself thing), I only end up feeling embarrassed. The most recent time, several years ago, was at a concert that included the music of Hubert Howe. Thinking that I was in a safe place (a stupid excuse, but "oh well"), I blurted out my true feelings about Mr. Howe's music: "The question is not so much 'Howe' as why." To which feebleness, one person said "I like Howe." OK. That was it for me. It was a jerk thing to say, and I am heartly sorry for having said it.

Quote from: Florestan on June 11, 2020, 12:22:17 AM
Ah, sorry, Kyle, I wanted to reply but with all that Hasse thing it slipped out of my mind.

You made some (partially) good points. Now, take the big names who were contemporary with Arnold, Atterberg, Braga Santos, Casella, Lloyd* : do you find the emotional power and memorability of the former to be on the same level with the latter's?

*Btw, I think only Lloyd can qualify as unsung or neglected; the others are pretty well-known, I'd say.

Those five composers I mentioned may be well-known to us fanatics here at GMG, though they're hardly well-known to the general public, as their music is infrequently performed in concert, at least here in the US. Personally, I find the power and memorability of the music of these 20th century composers (and others dear to me) to be on par with many of the established "greats" of the era. Am I going to claim that any of these composers were as innovative or influential as, say, Debussy, Bartok, Schoenberg, or Stravinsky? Of course not! But if the music of a lesser-known composer resonates strongly with me - which it often does - I would be daft to deny them a high place in my personal "canon". Now, of course, I don't expect others to hold these composers in as high esteem as I do (unless their names are Christo, Mirror Image, SymphonicAddict, or vandermolen :D). It's all a matter of taste. :)

Quote from: 71 dB on June 11, 2020, 12:47:33 PM
J. S. Bach got totally out of fashion

This is a myth. He never "got totally out of fashion". On the contrary, amongst musicians and connoisseurs he was always held in high esteem. Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Schumann, Brahms studied and admired him. Mendelssohn did not discover Bach in 1829 out of a sudden, his musical education beginning at a very early age was actually centered on Bach.

Quote from: some guy on June 11, 2020, 06:42:44 PM
My dislike of things that will never be able to please me I try to keep strictly to myself. It wouldn't do anyone else the least bit of good. I don't even think it does me the least bit of good.

When I fail at that (the keeping strictly to myself thing), I only end up feeling embarrassed. The most recent time, several years ago, was at a concert that included the music of Hubert Howe. Thinking that I was in a safe place (a stupid excuse, but "oh well"), I blurted out my true feelings about Mr. Howe's music: "The question is not so much 'Howe' as why." To which feebleness, one person said "I like Howe." OK. That was it for me. It was a jerk thing to say, and I am heartly sorry for having said it.

By this token we should close GMG for good right now, because everything we say here regarding our preferences or evaluations of eras, genres, composers or performers can be potentially offensive to someone else.

And btw, the fact that pre-1800 the canon was not yet established does not mean that those people had no sense of quality or lack thereof, made no value judgments and liked everything and everyone the same. Actually, they very well had a canon (or rather, canons, because they depended on geographical areas) of their own --- it's only that they were mostly different from our canon.

Quote from: kyjo on June 11, 2020, 08:09:34 PM
Personally, I find the power and memorability of the music of these 20th century composers (and others dear to me) to be on par with many of the established "greats" of the era. Am I going to claim that any of these composers were as innovative or influential as, say, Debussy, Bartok, Schoenberg, or Stravinsky? Of course not! But if the music of a lesser-known composer resonates strongly with me - which it often does - I would be daft to deny them a high place in my personal "canon". Now, of course, I don't expect others to hold these composers in as high esteem as I do (unless their names are Christo, Mirror Image, SymphonicAddict, or vandermolen :D). It's all a matter of taste. :)

I can't disagree with anything of the above.

Quote from: some guy on June 11, 2020, 11:57:02 AM
And what, exactly, were those mechanisms? Both Hasse and Mozart were writing and performing at a time before a canon was established. We respond to them from a time after canonical thinking has become so established as to be practically invisible. It determines how we think, that is, without us being at all aware of its influence.

More than 200 years ago (with a certain amount of precision, more than 210 years ago), nothing much was established. For a piece to continue to be played years after its premiere, any piece by anybody, was unusual. There was no establishing or fading either one, not as we experience those things, anyway. Everyone wrote for the moment, without any thought of posterity. Beethoven was one of the earliest people to have any sense of posterity as a thing, much less as a thing to be reckoned with. Saying that Hasse "faded" only makes sense if you recognize that everyone at the time "faded." Up to the 19th century, fading was just something that happened, regardless of any putative quality of any particular piece, regardless of any putative quality of any particular composer. That is, in reality, fading really didn't happen at all. Or, to put it another way, "fading" points to a reality (the canon) that didn't even exist when Hasse was writing. Nor when Mozart was writing.

I am repeating myself and all this stuff is there to read up for everyone. It has almost nothing to do with canon. Hasse was in his own time the latest flowering of Opera seria. Opera seria had already shown some wear in the 1730s when Handel gradually switched to oratorios (and Gay/Pepusch wrote their parody) and the second half of the century is basically rearguard action for opera seria.
It is also secondary if Mozart intentionally wrote for later ages. Of course he did not. However, he himself arranged Handel and Bach, so he actually was aware of music composed before his birth that still did have interest in his lifetime. He was also aware and consciously involved in the establishment of German language opera which was something future-oriented to end the total domination of Italian opera. All this is not writing consciously for posterity but it is also very different (far more daring and innovative) from coasting along by making a career in a dying genre as Hasse did.

All this was established not by biassed historians of the late 19th century or record label marketing in the 20th or some other retrospective canons but at the time of Mozart's death, or at most a decade later. Hasse died only 8 years before Mozart, but by 1800 he was basically irrelevant (like almost all other traditional opera seria) whereas Handel's oratorios were the model for Haydn's, Gluck became the model for Cherubini and Mozart for Beethoven.

As for revival, it probably was an advantage for Handel that he remained known for oratorios when baroque opera returned to the stage in the late 20th century. Nevertheless, with several decades of frequent stagings of high/late Baroque opera seria we would expect some Hasse, if it there was sufficient dramatic or musical interest. Maybe there is not. I have not heard any of his operas, not even selected arias.

Quote from: 71 dB on June 11, 2020, 12:19:30 PM
Popular music didn't exist the way it exists today, but people went to opera to be entertained. I would even go so far to say opera was movies before movies existed and served similar function of escapism and entertainment.

You keep venting random ideas and projecting 20th/21st century conception back into the 18th instead of bothering to read up on history of opera etc.
Sure, you can also say of Shakespeare that this was "movies before movies existed and served similar function of escapism and entertainment". And it would not be totally wrong but it would not be very informative either.
For starters, recall that the "birth of opera" came from a conscious attempt by elite nerds in Florence to re-establish Greek tragedy from 2000 years ago, very far from popular entertainment (and of course also a "creative misunderstanding" of ancient tragedy). Then within a few decades, opera became the domain of highly virtuoso singers and of public representation (when was the last time they premiered a new Star Wars or James Bond movie to adorn a royal wedding?). For most of the 400 years of opera history we have factions debating and quarrelling over entertainment vs serious drama, the relationship between words and music, the dominance or subordinance of star singers and so on. All of this are important dimensions of opera (that are not or hardly found e.g. in movies) and therefore it does not further understanding and appreciation very much if you narrow this to the one unspecific aspect that is somewhat similar to a different art/entertainment form.

Quote from: Jo498 on June 12, 2020, 12:17:21 AM
You keep venting random ideas and projecting 20th/21st century conception back into the 18th instead of bothering to read up on history of opera etc.
Sure, you can also say of Shakespeare that this was "movies before movies existed and served similar function of escapism and entertainment". And it would not be totally wrong but it would not be very informative either.
For starters, recall that the "birth of opera" came from a conscious attempt by elite nerds in Florence to re-establish Greek tragedy from 2000 years ago, very far from popular entertainment (and of course also a "creative misunderstanding" of ancient tragedy). Then within a few decades, opera became the domain of highly virtuoso singers and of public representation (when was the last time they premiered a new Star Wars or James Bond movie to adorn a royal wedding?). For most of the 400 years of opera history we have factions debating and quarrelling over entertainment vs serious drama, the relationship between words and music, the dominance or subordinance of star singers and so on. All of this are important dimensions of opera (that are not or hardly found e.g. in movies) and therefore it does not further understanding and appreciation very much if you narrow this to the one unspecific aspect that is somewhat similar to a different art/entertainment form.

Hear, hear!

Quote from: Florestan on June 11, 2020, 11:37:58 PM
This is a myth. He never "got totally out of fashion". On the contrary, amongst musicians and connoisseurs he was always held in high esteem. Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Schumann, Brahms studied and admired him. Mendelssohn did not discover Bach in 1829 out of a sudden, his musical education beginning at a very early age was actually centered on Bach.

Well said!

Beethoven described JS Bach as 'the Father of Modern Harmony'

I know Beethoven studied Bach's music.

Quote from: Jo498 on June 12, 2020, 12:17:21 AM
You keep venting random ideas...

Yes, that's who I am. The guy who vents random ideas.

Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on June 11, 2020, 05:19:36 PM
You are absolutely right, I've used you poorly. Sorry!

Ok Karl. You don't need to agree with or respect everything I say, but please try sometimes... 0:)
When you disagree with me or anyone else you can always express it respecfully.

My musical education (concerning classical music) is not strong as you know* and I have wild ideas about Hasse's greatness and Beethoven's poor orchestration skills and what not, but I don't usually attack other people. I attack ideas, ideologies, conventions, canon, institutions and so on. I am constantly thinking "Why do we believe X and Y? Why don't we believe Z?". You have to admit my "crazy theories" have sparked discussions on this forum. Societies need different individuals and I am one of those shaking the ossified beliefs people hold. Maybe composers like Hasse and Dittersdorf aren't worth your time, but what if they are?

I registered on a headphone forum 3 years ago or so. I wrote a lot about crossfeed and I encountered VICIOUS rejection of my opinions so much so that the discussion turned fast extremely toxic (at times the forum made me so angry I had to go out to walk in order to calm down and not destroy my computer!). I fought for my beliefs for about 2 years and then almost left the forum tired and fed up after debating with people according to who I know and understand nothing. I get it a lot. People tell me I know nothing as if I was literally born yesterday. I am 49 years old and I have an university degree. Surely I must know something? Anyway, I visited that headphone forum recently after some serious absence and what do I see: A member who registered to the forum in 2009 and had not made a single post had made the first post in which I am thanked for educational posts and inspiration to start using headphone crossfeed! That really made my day! I feel so much all the struggle and fight in life is pointless and leads nowhere, but then something like this happens.

Being right is not the most important thing. Being able to SELL your ideas is what matters. Unfortunately I don't have this kind of talent. I couldn't sell ice-cream in Sahara.  ;D That's why this is endless struggle for me, but sometimes someone somewhere gets my message...

* However, my understanding of music theory has got much much better during the last 2 years. Now I know what Neopolitan 6th chords are and what negative harmony means, how inversions are used to "melt" chords together, what is Picardy third or ultralocrian scale or how to make more interesting melodies by not always making the non-harmonic notes of a melody follow harmonic gravitation etc.

Quote from: some guy on June 11, 2020, 06:42:44 PM
I do, however, think that it is a good thing to try to like everything for its own sake. That is, I do try (and frequently fail) to let each piece establish itself on its own terms. If I slip, and allow my already established preferences establish the terms of my enjoyment, I almost always end up enjoying things much less.

My dislike of things that will never be able to please me I try to keep strictly to myself. It wouldn't do anyone else the least bit of good. I don't even think it does me the least bit of good.

I like this post

Quote from: 71 dB on June 12, 2020, 04:04:21 AM
Ok Karl. You don't need to agree with or respect everything I say, but please try sometimes... 0:)
When you disagree with me or anyone else you can always express it respectfully.

Your rebuke was to the point.

Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on June 12, 2020, 04:23:52 AM
I like this post

Tangentially ... listening to the Mozart K. 201 now

Quote from: Florestan on June 11, 2020, 11:46:08 PM
...everything we say here regarding our preferences or evaluations of eras, genres, composers or performers can be potentially offensive to someone else.

Speak for yourself. ;)

Quote from: Florestan on June 11, 2020, 11:46:08 PMAnd btw, the fact that pre-1800 the canon was not yet established does not mean that those people had no sense of quality or lack thereof, made no value judgments and liked everything and everyone the same.

I am catching a strong whiff of straw here. No one has ever suggested that "those people" had no sense of quality or lack thereof. Or that they made no value judgments. OR that they liked everyone the same. (Seriously, do you think that having a canon is the only way to indicate a sense of quality?

Quote from: Florestan on June 11, 2020, 11:46:08 PMActually, they very well had a canon (or rather, canons, because they depended on geographical areas) of their own --- it's only that they were mostly different from our canon.

Oh, apparently you do!)

Anyway, no, there was no canon then. (You do know what "canon" refers too, right?) With very few exceptions, pieces were made for the moment, lived in the moment, and then were replaced (on printed programmes that you can see for yourself) by the next new piece. There's no mystery about it, though we have so thoroughly assimilated the idea of a canon that we seem, many of us, incapable of thinking about music without thinking about the canon.

Quote from: some guy on June 11, 2020, 06:42:44 PM
...
I have certainly mentioned a time or two my disenchantment with the whole ranking business. Indeed and boy howdy. But I don't like everything the same. Since I don't see my preferences as normative, however, my personal "rankings," which I rarely mention (which I never mention?), will never be able to be used by anyone, ever, for any purpose. Which is all to the good.
...

I have two questions:
1) Why do you think that mentioning your personal rankings implies other users seeing them as normative?
2) If you were sure that other users don't see them as normative, would you mention your rankings? Or would you still not do it because of sensitiveness (as the Hubert Howe example would suggest)?

Quote from: Florestan on June 11, 2020, 11:47:46 PM
I can't disagree with anything of the above.

8)

Quote from: some guy on June 12, 2020, 05:45:30 AM
Speak for yourself. ;)

Given how many of your posts have grated on my nerves, I'll keep the "we" alright.  :D

Music is a curious artform in that we're generally more willing to repeat the same listening experience than we are to watch the same film or read the same book.

I think I do a lot more exploration these days than I used to, partly because of online accessibility. The 'cost' of trying things out is considerably decreased by this.

I still do it pretty slowly. And I've really no interest in flitting about between so many composers (and pop performers) that I lose track of who they all are. My exploration strategy is almost entirely based on picking specific names and exploring a large amount of their work.  Sometimes those are names that I already know but trying to widen the field to works that I don't know. Other times it's exploring a brand new name that has caught my attention somehow (including if there's mention on GMG that gets my interest). I can develop an obsession from a chance encounter, though that's more typical of pop music (one good appearance on the Graham Norton Show turned me into a Christine and the Queens fan for example...)

There are reasonably lengthy lists of such names, probably only getting longer. I may well get to some point where I figure the library/repertoire is quite big enough to keep me entertained for the rest of my expected lifespan. But I think there are some things about the experience of listening to new music that simply can't be replicated when listening to familiar music, especially the sense of surprise when the music does something unforeseen. So I don't really see myself ever losing interest in that experience... unless my library becomes so big/my memory becomes sufficiently bad that I can listen to the same work without really remembering anything about it!  ;D

Quote from: Madiel on June 17, 2020, 03:59:27 AM
My exploration strategy is almost entirely based on picking specific names and exploring a large amount of their work.

I've been rather surprised by the large amounts of worthwhile and varied work produced by the few classical composers I've investigated, and over so much of their lifetimes. Reviewing my "rock" collection for really notable albums maintaining a high standard all the way through is generally only turning up one or two for a given artist. It's like they start with a great idea or build up to it after a couple of albums then run out of inspiration, either repeat the same things or try something different and it doesn't work. I guess the classical composers had a more solid foundation on which to develop their ideas in an ordered way, and also didn't have the same commercial pressures to satisfy the fans and record companies.

Quote from: Madiel on June 17, 2020, 03:59:27 AM
Music is a curious artform in that we're generally more willing to repeat the same listening experience than we are to watch the same film or read the same book.

I don't go back to the same music much, even less so in the same performance, but I can see that some people do treat music like that. I don't know why, it's interesting.

On Talk Classical there's a lot of discussion about Lachenmann's Gran Torso. Someone said that as a result of the discussion he's listened to it  and he seems to have got quite a lot from the experience, and then he commented that despite this, it's not a piece he would go back to often. It's as if Gran Torso is failing to give him something which he gets from those pieces (unnamed) which he does return to frequently.

Giles Deleuze talks about identity and difference a lot, some people seem to get a sort of comfort from familiar things, things they already know. Identity. I guess people like me don't look for that.

I guess also some people don't like risk, and maybe going back to music you've already heard is about risk avoidance.

Cage talked about how in relistening to a bit of music you may notice things which you hadn't noticed before, his analogy was taking the same path in a forest several times. Maybe that's got something to do with it.

I once met a bloke in his late 80s who'd been in music all his life, orchestral performer and manager of a record store. His hifi had broken and he couldn't hear anything but he wasn't bothered - he said he had it in his head, there was little to be gained from hearing it. I can kind of see where he's coming from.

Quote from: Mandryka on June 17, 2020, 07:34:41 AM
I don't go back to the same music in the same music much, even less so in the same performance, but I can see that some people do treat music like that. I don't know why, it's interesting.

On Talk Classical there's a lot of discussion about Lachenmann's Gran Torso. Someone said that as a result of the discussion he's listened to it  and he seems to have got quite a lot from the experience, and then he commented that despite this, it's not a piece he would go back to often. It's as if Gran Torso is failing to give him something which he gets from those pieces (unnamed) which he does return to frequently.

Giles Deleuze talks about identity and difference a lot, some people seem to get a sort of comfort from familiar things, things they already know. Identity.

I find some recordings evoke certain feelings in me which I can't define but are often unique to that recording and which I like to feel again. Possibly that set of feelings constitutes part of my identity. Cage's comment is also helpful; Birtwistle said something similar about looking around and seeing different things each time.

He'll correct me if I'm wrong, but I think Mandryka was saying that wanting a reliable listening experience can be seen as risk avoidance. ("Reliable listening experience" being roughly synonymous with "going back to....")

As for the "process of discovery," I suppose that that way of characterizing things is at least partly owing to the subject heading of this thread. Someone else looking at my "process" would doubtless conclude that I favor exploration of the new over everything else. (And "new," as I use it means "new," not recent or new to me. New to me is a strange phrase that means, as far as I can tell, "a piece I've never heard before but is stylistically familiar.")

But I don't think of what I do as either exploring or sticking, not really. I think I'm listening to music. I did get to the point a few years ago, after about a decade of travelling the world to listen to new music, of really starting to crave something genuinely new. By then, even the most recent manifestations of eai or intrumental exploration were starting to sound familiar. And familiar is fine. But still....

I read countless screeds by classical listeners of how much this or that (really old and familiar) piece by Schoenberg or Boulez really pisses them off. I, too, want to hear some music so new that it pisses me off! That really bewilders and disorients me. Because bewilderment and disorientation are fine, too.

Whatever. I also don't quite understand the whole "getting older" thing, either. That is, I don't correlate age with anything. I have 68 years. OK. Next year, with any luck, I will have 69 years. And then 70 and so forth. Just like always. Every 365 days or so, I add another number. And as far as I'm concerned, 68 years has most definitely not been enough time in which to do anything to the point of satiation. I've had about 60 years of discovery in music, "classical" or otherwise. It's not a very long time.

I'm still hungry.

Quote from: Old San Antone on June 17, 2020, 02:16:16 PM

Obviously, YMMV - and I cheer you on.  Neither approach is better/worse than the other.

8)

In total agreement with this.

Aye.

Quote from: Mandryka on June 17, 2020, 07:34:41 AM
I don't go back to the same music much, even less so in the same performance, but I can see that some people do treat music like that. I don't know why, it's interesting.

On Talk Classical there's a lot of discussion about Lachenmann's Gran Torso. Someone said that as a result of the discussion he's listened to it  and he seems to have got quite a lot from the experience, and then he commented that despite this, it's not a piece he would go back to often. It's as if Gran Torso is failing to give him something which he gets from those pieces (unnamed) which he does return to frequently.

Giles Deleuze talks about identity and difference a lot, some people seem to get a sort of comfort from familiar things, things they already know. Identity. I guess people like me don't look for that.

I guess also some people don't like risk, and maybe going back to music you've already heard is about risk avoidance.

Cage talked about how in relistening to a bit of music you may notice things which you hadn't noticed before, his analogy was taking the same path in a forest several times. Maybe that's got something to do with it.

I once met a bloke in his late 80s who'd been in music all his life, orchestral performer and manager of a record store. His hifi had broken and he couldn't hear anything but he wasn't bothered - he said he had it in his head, there was little to be gained from hearing it. I can kind of see where he's coming from.

I'm curious, how did you operate when listening to recorded music generally meant buying it?

Because constantly moving on to new music would've been pretty expensive.

I still buy CDs. This strikes me as cost effective because I aim to only buy things that I expect to listen to many times over, maybe over a span of MANY years but the cost per play will be minimal.

Now of course online services mean you can freely graze across big libraries. But that's a relatively recent phenomenon and my listening habits were largely shaped before that.

CDs became rather cheap quickly already in the mid-1990s. I bought probably more than 100 discs per year already as a student with more time than money. If one bought boxes and sometimes used in the early 2000s one could easily buy faster than one could listen to even with a moderate income and I'd guess that many classical listeners have comfortable incomes. I mean, how many opera tickets plus travel an accomodation does one get for $500 and how many CDs... Or how much would be other hobbies like two skiing holidays + gear per year or a motorcycle? $2000 a year will get you more discs than you can listen to and will still be moderate compared to many other pastimes.

Quote from: Madiel on June 17, 2020, 02:55:06 PM
I'm curious, how did you operate when listening to recorded music generally meant buying it?

Because constantly moving on to new music would've been pretty expensive.

I still buy CDs. This strikes me as cost effective because I aim to only buy things that I expect to listen to many times over, maybe over a span of MANY years but the cost per play will be minimal.

Now of course online services mean you can freely graze across big libraries. But that's a relatively recent phenomenon and my listening habits were largely shaped before that.

Oh yes, what you say is true. I would focus on performers - Sviatoslav Richter and Jon Vickers.  I was also interested in opera production and so would buy DVDs.

Quote from: Jo498 on June 17, 2020, 11:17:13 PM
CDs became rather cheap quickly already in the mid-1990s.

Huh? In Finland new normal price CDs were 120 mk (20 euros) and Naxos was priced at 50 mk (8 euros). Apart from Naxos I wouldn't call that cheap. Online stores were at this point a vision in Jeff Bezos' mind and I didn't even have a credit cart until 1998 to order stuff online. Maybe you talk about second hand shops or maybe CDs just were cheap in 90's Germany?

Quote from: Jo498 on June 17, 2020, 11:17:13 PMI bought probably more than 100 discs per year already as a student with more time than money.

Great. When I was a student I had a budget of 170 mk (28 euros/$30) per month so I could buy one album and one single. It was electronic dance music and in 1996/97 I got into classical music and started buying Naxos. I got my first job in 1998 meaning I got much more money and also a credit card so I could buy much more CDs so that I used to buy about 100 CDs per year. In 2002 I got myself a DVD-player meaning less CDs because I had also DVDs to buy.

Quote from: Jo498 on June 17, 2020, 11:17:13 PMIf one bought boxes and sometimes used in the early 2000s one could easily buy faster than one could listen to even with a moderate income and I'd guess that many classical listeners have comfortable incomes. I mean, how many opera tickets plus travel an accomodation does one get for $500 and how many CDs... Or how much would be other hobbies like two skiing holidays + gear per year or a motorcycle? $2000 a year will get you more discs than you can listen to and will still be moderate compared to many other pastimes.

Nowadays I have a buying budget of 100 euros for CDs and Blu-rays per month so that's 1200 euros per year, but I try to save money so I maybe use 70 euros in average and maybe half of that goes to Blu-rays. That's why BIS and Ondine seem expensive for me. Anyway I have cumulated so many CDs after buying them for 3 decades, time is now the bigger problem. 20 years ago I used to listen to music all the time. I couldn't get enough! About 10 years ago I started noticing I almost prefer silence* (I guess it's part of getting old) meaning I listen to music nowadays perhaps 20 % of what I used to now that I have more CDs than ever. Ironic!

* I also enjoy listening to people speak! Nowadays I listen to  a lot of Youtube videos were people speak about something (politics, math, music theory,...).  ??? Just 5-6 years ago I didn't do that at all! I kind of "discovered" Youtube around 2015/16. Before this I watched Youtube very little without realizing how much it has to offer when you discover "your stuff" in the sea of Googolplex videos (and counting...)

I hardly ever bought full price which was also 30-40 DM in the mid-nineties. Cheap series or boxed sets were already less than 1/3 of this on average. And there were more and more options. I spent one year in the US at the U of Washington in 95-96 and bought quite a few CDs because full price was relatively cheaper ($13-15 or less on sale which was 20-25 DM, so more like "mid price" in Germany) and I remember that I was surprised that I could keep buying rather cheap when I got back to Germany because there were so many twofers, boxes, budget priced items. As I said, I never bought full price except on sale. I don't think I spent much more than DM 50-60/month, so this was a similar budget but I'd get about 5-8 discs for that money. 
I started buying used on Ebay in 2001 which was much cheaper, often around  5 DM or later around 3-5 EUR/disc, so this was even cheaper.

Quote from: Jo498 on June 18, 2020, 01:23:01 AM
I hardly ever bought full price which was also 30-40 DM in the mid-nineties.

When it was electronic dance music there was no other way than to pay the full price and be happy you where able to get the CD at all! Now I could buy a lot of the same stuff on Amazon Market place at a fraction of the price!  ;D As I said when I started buying classical music around 1996/7 it was almost always Naxos. Sometimes I might buy other labels if it was something Naxos didn't have and I really wanted (Buxtehude's cantatas, Fauré's chamber music etc.) but it was a big hit financially to pay 119,95 mk instead of 49,95 mk for a classical CD. Naxos also had take 4 pay 3 campaigns sometimes which I did take advantage of. Just 5 years ago I could go to "Anttila" (Finnish department store chain that went bankrupt a few years ago) and buy Naxos from the shelf. Naxos even had it's own dedicated store in Helsinki in the 90's, but when I went there the first time in 1996 the door was open, but when I got in the staff said to me they have just stopped doing business and starting to empty the premises!  :P

Quote from: Jo498 on June 18, 2020, 01:23:01 AMCheap series or boxed sets were already less than 1/3 of this on average.

I suppose, but because of budget limitations buying large boxes wasn't "possible" and I have to say I wasn't into boxes at that time*. One of the first bigger boxes I bought around year 2000 was Haydn's Piano Trios by Beaux Arts Trio on Philips. It was on discount (299,90 mk = 50 euros). Now I could buy it online for about half of the that price.

Some composers have much more boxes than others. Mahler has boxes. Wagner has boxes. Clerámbault and Fasch not so much. I have always been into composers who are not so well-served box-wise. Nowadays there are much more boxes (thanks to Brilliant Classics) than 20 years ago and even "somewhat obscure" composers may have boxes, something that used to be very rare.

Quote from: Jo498 on June 18, 2020, 01:23:01 AMAnd there were more and more options. I spent one year in the US at the U of Washington in 95-96 and bought quite a few CDs because full price was relatively cheaper ($13-15 or less on sale which was 20-25 DM, so more like "mid price" in Germany)

Yes, American full price used to be European mid price. Mid price was always one option "between" Naxos and full price releases, but the selection was limited: If Mendelssohn, Brahms and Drořák are offered at mid price and I wanted Hasse what do you do?

Quote from: Jo498 on June 18, 2020, 01:23:01 AMand I remember that I was surprised that I could keep buying rather cheap when I got back to Germany because there were so many twofers, boxes, budget priced items. As I said, I never bought full price except on sale. I don't think I spent much more than DM 50-60/month, so this was a similar budget but I'd get about 5-8 discs for that money.

So your budget was about the same it was for me (about 100 euros/month), but I kept buying non-classical music also + DVD + Bluray's so perhaps only 25 % has been allocated to classical music CDs (the ratio has been changing depending what I'm into. Lately I have been buying mostly classical music whereas last year I bought a lot of Blu-rays. In fact I think my classical purchases are almost done now for the year).

Quote from: Jo498 on June 18, 2020, 01:23:01 AMI started buying used on Ebay in 2001 which was much cheaper, often around  5 DM or later around 3-5 EUR/disc, so this was even cheaper.

I have used eBay very little because I very rarely find anything cheap there. If it costs 18 euros delivered on eBay, Amazon might sell it for 13 euros etc.  However, Amazon Marketplace used to be 10 years ago insanely cheap when older Naxos CDs where sold for £0.01 + £1.79 for shipping. Whenever euro was strong against pound I paid just 2 euros for these CDs delivered.  ;D

I have not been active on Ebay for ages but I bought a lot between ca. 2001 and 2010 and probably more in the earlier part of that period.
I distinctly remember that I was never much interested in Naxos in the 1990s because I already had most of the mainstream repertoire and for a lot of other stuff there were recordings as cheap or cheaper from the majors. While the usual budget lines of the majors (like Sony essential classics) often sold for about the same as Naxos (around DM 10), sometimes they were even cheaper. And there was one mailorder store (Zweitausendeins) that had lots of stuff around 5 DM or cheaper, in fact so cheap that I sometimes bought things only because they were cheap.
While still a teenager I was at the rate of one disc a month or so because I could not afford more and in the late 1980s not much was available for budget price. But I also spent most of my Xmas and birthday money on CDs or directly received expensive CD sets as gifts from an aunt who didn't really mind if she spent 50 or 80 Deutschmarks. So I guess it was overall around 20-25 discs/year. Later, in the 1990s, I'd guess it was about 40-50 per year. I seem to recall that I had around 500 (not sure if discs or sets) around 2000. It got out of control when I started buying from ebay in 2001 and also had more money to spend. The zenith was probably 2006-09 when I had enough money AND space and was not yet saturated. But even in 2015-18 I still spent around or more than EUR 500 a year, more and more for ever cheaper used discs. I only reached saturation point last year. I have only bought a handful in 2020 and I am not missing it, rather I am culling my collection and planning on selling a few hundred discs to be able to get along with the shelf space I currently have.

I used to acquire many CD's on Ebay but the snipers ruined the experience for me.  It got to the point that I would never ever win a bid, so I gave up.

Why didn't you use snipers yourself? I did to some extent the last time I was active there which is again already several years in the past.
For me it was a mix of several factors. Ebay become clogged by professional sellers and buy now at fixed price offers and I tended to buy stuff only because it was irrestibly cheap or buy a second item because the shipping was too much for only one. Overall, it was hard to restrict myself and unlike in the early times I had to do this for reasons of space and money. I realized that I shouldn't buy stuff only because it was an incredible bargain or because I could not allow this going away for such a low price... ;)

Yes, there is hardly ANY bidding on eBay anymore.

Which suits me just fine. Tell me the price and I'll decide if I'm willing to pay it.  It's basically the same as Amazon Marketplace only far more reliable and accessible.

Quote from: SimonNZ on June 08, 2020, 05:06:39 PM
Can I ask - I hope its okay to ask - how did your brother's early genius affect his later life?

OT
Oddly enough my daughter just found this photo of my brother, aged 3 I think, playing a Schroeder-type piano (Getty Images) online. It accompanied an article about raising infant prodigy children. That's my mother in the background. Must be c.1951, before my time (just as well really):
(//)

Quote from: vandermolen on June 21, 2020, 05:55:00 AM
OT
Oddly enough my daughter just found this photo of my brother, aged 3 I think, playing a Schroeder-type piano (Getty Images) online. It accompanied an article about raising infant prodigy children. That's my mother in the background. Must be c.1951, before my time (just as well really):
(https://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=29887.0;attach=65250;image)

That's very interesting, Jeffrey. Thanks for sharing!

Quote from: Mirror Image on June 21, 2020, 08:21:39 AM
That's very interesting, Jeffrey. Thanks for sharing!

Thanks John  :)

I'm just glad I was an adult prodigy, when I could enjoy it.

I don't think I would have enjoyed it as a child. Your brother, though, DOES look like he's enjoying it!

Delightful picture.

What a cool photo vandermolen.  $:)

Quote from: 71 dB on June 21, 2020, 11:20:36 AM
What a cool photo vandermolen.  $:)

Indeed!

Quote from: vandermolen on June 21, 2020, 05:55:00 AM
OT
Oddly enough my daughter just found this photo of my brother, aged 3 I think, playing a Schroeder-type piano (Getty Images) online. It accompanied an article about raising infant prodigy children. That's my mother in the background. Must be c.1951, before my time (just as well really):
(//)

Thanks very much for that, and for the reply upthread.

Quote from: steve ridgway on June 11, 2020, 04:02:37 AM
I think I appreciated music more in the days when I had less of it so listened to each album more regularly and came to know it very well. I might try doing something like that again, concentrating much more on the real treasures I've discovered over the years.

Following this up with my non classical collection has turned out well. I've filled a 16 Gb iPod with max quality MP3s of albums I really like all the way through and have been concentrating on listening to just these. A core 142 albums should be plenty to focus on appreciating properly. My newer classical collection must come to a similar amount so I think I'll stop adding to it now and get to know it better too.