Where have the Great Composers gone?

[Jo498]

The misleading thing about the Bach story is that compared to most of his contemporaries some of his music was rather well known to a relevant audience (mainly other musicians and conoisseurs). Comparing how well known JS Bach was in 1790 to how well known Beethoven was in 1867 to the general public is not very illuminating. Of course, Bach was obscure compared to the fame of Beethoven in the 19th century.

But comparing Bach with other composers with a floruit in the 1700-40s there are not many whose music was certainly better known than Bach's in the 2nd half of the 18th century. The only one I am pretty sure about is Handel (and about half of his work, all the italian operas, were forgotten as thoroughly as Bach's cantatas) but Corelli's music was also frequently reprinted throughout the 18th century so he might qualify as well. Maybe another one or two although I am not sure who might qualify; e.g. Vivaldi, one of the most influential in the 1710-20s, was already half forgotten at the time of his death.

[James]

To paraphrase Charles Rosen .. all the great composers learned how to compose from playing Bach on the piano, and with no Bach - Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Schumann, Wagner etc. would not be the same as we know them. Ditto Western music itself.

[Monsieur Croche]

The misleading thing about the Bach story is that compared to most of his contemporaries some of his music was rather well known to a relevant audience (mainly other musicians and connoisseurs). Comparing how well known JS Bach was in 1790 to how well known Beethoven was in 1867 to the general public is not very illuminating. Of course, Bach was obscure compared to the fame of Beethoven in the 19th century.

But comparing Bach with other composers with a floruit in the 1700-40s there are not many whose music was certainly better known than Bach's in the 2nd half of the 18th century. The only one I am pretty sure about is Handel (and about half of his work, all the italian operas, were forgotten as thoroughly as Bach's cantatas) but Corelli's music was also frequently reprinted throughout the 18th century so he might qualify as well. Maybe another one or two although I am not sure who might qualify; e.g. Vivaldi, one of the most influential in the 1710-20s, was already half forgotten at the time of his death.

I get you, but this is not a defense of why Bach fell out of favor with the public, nor is mentioning his absence from public venues meant to raise a question of his merits as a composer.

My general drift is -- that until "Classical Music" was dubbed "Classical Music" in ca. 1830, catalyzing a major sea-shift in what was programmed to include the 'old great rep,' the vast majority of music being performed was contemporary, with audiences expecting only the newest and most current, and that most anything programmed was no more than about five years old.  The great trend was for the new and newest; anything older, no matter how good, was simply "Old News."  Dead composers were dead, and the public got (and expected) only recently composed works.

The fact that later, Liszt and Berlioz were staunch advocates and lobbied -- hard -- to persuade concert programmers to program the works of Beethoven shows that little if any of Beethoven's music continued to be publicly performed after his death. Certainly, there were amateurs who still played the piano sonatas, string quartets and chamber music at home, but the larger works were not at all in general circulation and programmed in the concert halls... and of course many a musician knew more than a little 'of' Beethoven, though publicly, you could say he was also 'forgotten' for a while.

This was the way of the European musical world until, catalyzed by Mendelssohn programming a public performance of Bach's St. Matthew Passion, an intellectual community of Germans became aware of great music of the past composed by Germans; with nationalism then in the air, that group became the force behind wanting to present and promote the older (Germanic) repertoire, partly out of appreciation, as well very much out of that nationalist identity and a sentiment of wanting it known that "The Germans are the Musical People." (Like the neighboring principalities and nations were not, lol.)

With that catalytic moment in 1830, concert programming policy was, if you will, a matter of, "Bring out the living," with only a very few old works programmed (this was new to the public), the balance of programming still the new, the latest.  That changed over ca. seven decades to a policy of "Bring out your dead," with a majority of works programmed then being older repertoire, with but a small percentage of newer works on the program.

Pre 1830, most music, the greatest to the most mediocre, had its brief exposure, was set aside for the next new piece... musicians and audiences made and listened to almost nothing but contemporary music.


Best regards.

[Florestan]

I get you, but this is not a defense of why Bach fell out of favor with the public, nor is mentioning his absence from public venues meant to raise a question of his merits as a composer.

My general drift is -- that until "Classical Music" was dubbed "Classical Music" in ca. 1830, catalyzing a major sea-shift in what was programmed to include the 'old great rep,' the vast majority of music being performed was contemporary, with audiences expecting only the newest and most current, and that most anything programmed was no more than about five years old.  The great trend was for the new and newest; anything older, no matter how good, was simply "Old News."  Dead composers were dead, and the public got (and expected) only recently composed works.

The fact that later, Liszt and Berlioz were staunch advocates and lobbied -- hard -- to persuade concert programmers to program the works of Beethoven shows that little if any of Beethoven's music continued to be publicly performed after his death. Certainly, there were amateurs who still played the piano sonatas, string quartets and chamber music at home, but the larger works were not at all in general circulation and programmed in the concert halls... and of course many a musician knew more than a little 'of' Beethoven, though publicly, you could say he was also 'forgotten' for a while.

This was the way of the European musical world until, catalyzed by Mendelssohn programming a public performance of Bach's St. Matthew Passion, an intellectual community of Germans became aware of great music of the past composed by Germans; with nationalism then in the air, that group became the force behind wanting to present and promote the older (Germanic) repertoire, partly out of appreciation, as well very much out of that nationalist identity and a sentiment of wanting it known that "The Germans are the Musical People." (Like the neighboring principalities and nations were not, lol.)

With that catalytic moment in 1830, concert programming policy was, if you will, a matter of, "Bring out the living," with only a very few old works programmed (this was new to the public), the balance of programming still the new, the latest.  That changed over ca. seven decades to a policy of "Bring out your dead," with a majority of works programmed then being older repertoire, with but a small percentage of newer works on the program.

Pre 1830, most music, the greatest to the most mediocre, had its brief exposure, was set aside for the next new piece... musicians and audiences made and listened to almost nothing but contemporary music.


Best regards.

That is true. But then again, why all the disdain and animosity you clearly show with respect to (German) Romanticism? You´ve just proclaimed urbi et orbi that, had it not been for it, we´d have had no idea about Bach, Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. Heck, even Brahms, Mahler and Schoenberg would be utterly forgoten today.

[Turner]

The fact that later, Liszt and Berlioz were staunch advocates and lobbied -- hard -- to persuade concert programmers to program the works of Beethoven shows that little if any of Beethoven's music continued to be publicly performed after his death. Certainly, there were amateurs who still played the piano sonatas, string quartets and chamber music at home, but the larger works were not at all in general circulation and programmed in the concert halls... and of course many a musician knew more than a little 'of' Beethoven, though publicly, you could say he was also 'forgotten' for a while.

I think you are stretching the argument a little too far here; for example, it doesn´t really seem to apply for even a provincial place like Copenhagen. Some Beethoven works, including some symphonies and especially the easier ouvertures, were performed in his own lifetime there, but generally the public had a taste for the less advanced works he produced.

However, as http://dvm.nu/files/musik_forskning/1996/mf1996_05.pdf says, Beethoven scores & local editions became more widely available from shops & rental libraries after his death, so they must have gained popularity too; and "Fidelio" was performed for the first time in 1829.

In the mentioned PDF, Beethoven is proven to be the domineering and most popular composer at the programmes by the first major symphony orchestra in Copenhagen (it was established in 1837), meaning that symphonies 2-9 were performed in its early years 1837-1847, and the number of performances increasing especially after 1842.

Thus there were 295 Beethoven performances by that orchestra in 1836-1886, constituting 1/6 of the total number of entries.

So one cannot really speak of a period of forgottenness there.

[Jo498]

Beethoven was "canonized" alongside Mozart and Haydn already during his lifetime by Hoffmann. There might have been another boost once the next generation of romantics came around but there was no danger of Beethoven becoming obscure.

And while it is generally true that most music was contemporary music from the last few decades (this was also my point why the idea of a "Bach neglect" is unhistorical) there are exceptions to that, beginning already in the mid/late 18th century: Mozart's Figaro, Don Giovanni and Magic flute became repertoire pieces basically after their premieres, they never left the stage. Similarly the late Haydn oratorios. To a lesser extent the same is true for Gluck's Iphigenies, I think. And also for a bunch of Handel oratorios. E.g. Acis and Galatea was re-orchestrated by both Mozart and Mendelssohn.

[Florestan]

Beethoven was "canonized" alongside Mozart and Haydn already during his lifetime by Hoffmann.

1. In the German-speaking world, perhaps. But then again who read, understood, and approved, Hoffmann outside?

2. Our esteemed Gurn would contend that, far from "canonizing" them, he minimized and mocked them --- at least, with respect to Haydn.

[Turner]

1. In the German-speaking world, perhaps. But then again who read, understood, and approved, Hoffmann outside?

When doing research on European subjects of the 19th century, the amount of cultural exchange back then is often astonishing, including the reading and speaking of several languages among the travelling and well-read elite. But the priorities in taste and the focus points can be different from what we would think of as immediately important today.

However there´s no doubt that Hoffmann, directly or indirectly, had influence, and that he was widely read.

A few random literary examples from 1840s or before:
Poe, Balzac, Gogol as well as the young HC Andersen were among those directly influenced by ETA Hofmann;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._T._A._Hoffmann
https://books.google.dk/books?id=72uaXPnVOXYC&pg=PA29&lpg=PA29&dq=eta+hoffmann+influence+balzac&source=bl&ots=cZpNn3OhVH&sig=KGMXktqfN-aBuUDXwtID_gSJVto&hl=da&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj25PPpzLrPAhUEWSwKHbPzAIoQ6AEIGzAA#v=onepage&q=eta%20hoffmann%20influence%20balzac&f=false

Elizabeth Rigby´s and Thomasina Ross´ Beethoven-texts in popular English and American magazines of those days show a good level of knowledge and were also influenced by the ideas and mythology of German Romanticism
https://books.google.dk/books?id=-KbtW917yGoC&pg=PA210&lpg=PA210&dq=thomasina+ross+beethoven&source=bl&ots=7CMswFTC2-&sig=QoLFeD_sbV3eUou4_PjQvW9wjXY&hl=da&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwirncH_yLrPAhVLCCwKHVkLDPAQ6AEIGzAA#v=onepage&q=thomasina%20ross%20beethoven&f=false
http://americanbeethovensociety.org/exhibits/americasbeethoven/newspapers.html

[Monsieur Croche]

But at the same time, music is written according to traditions and processes, and in conceptual spaces, that can be meaningfully evaluated on common ground with a constructive outcome.

Come on:  you got that from the Deepak Chopra Bullshit Generator bot, didn't you?

Looks to me like someone has taken a course in "How to write a generic / current Artist's Statement" (i.e. newspeak hyper-babble) suitable to accompany a new work.

Pabulum comes to mind....

[Mirror Image]

Where have the great composers gone? I ask myself this question quite often but soon realize that history hasn't sorted them out yet. Give it time, folks. Give it time.

[lisa needs braces]

Where have the great composers gone? I ask myself this question quite often but soon realize that history hasn't sorted them out yet. Give it time, folks. Give it time.

"Twentieth-century music is like pedophilia. No matter how persuasively and persistently its champions urge their cause, it will never be accepted by the public at large, who will continue to regard it with incomprehension, outrage and repugnance."

--Kingsley Amis

The fact is this: the true heirs of the Western classical music tradition are not Schoenberg and his acolytes but rather the likes of Bob Dylan, The Beatles, Frank Zappa, Pink Floyd, Radiohead etc. These sort are the equivalent of the great or good "composers" of the previous eras.

[lisa needs braces]

Yay for quote mining.  It can make people say anything.  It's made people attribute stupid things to Darwin, Margret Sanger, or any other figure one wants to malign.

In this case, Schoenberg is not saying that his music is not beautiful; he said often that beauty is a byproduct of the creative process and of the audience's reception of a work, rather than a goal of the composer as such.

If I could whistle (never could), I would whistle his music.  Themes in a 12-tone work are just like themes in any other music.  I could hum many of them for you.

There's actually a page for this line of thinking.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisdom_of_repugnance

Despicable?  I don't understand why you attach such moral revulsion to music.

Me neither. I don't really mean to be disagreeable. Hopefully more exposure and education will leave me better able to express my gut level repulsion or end up changing my mind all together. Nonetheless I still see myself as representative of that pedophilia loathing public.

[Monsieur Croche]

"Twentieth-century music is like pedophilia. No matter how persuasively and persistently its champions urge their cause, it will never be accepted by the public at large, who will continue to regard it with incomprehension, outrage and repugnance."  ~ Kingsley Amis

"If a literary man puts together two words about music, one of them will be wrong." ~ Aaron Copland

Copland, on writers writing about music, has been proved to be correct thousands of times over.

It seems Amis was well ahead of that 50% wrong curve, and instead batted 100 in the blind fool's opinion category.

"The same people who find it quite natural that modern books, plays or paintings are likely to be controversial seem to want to escape being challenged and troubled when they turn to music.  In the musical field there appears to be an unquenchable thirst for the familiar, and very little curiosity as to what the newer composers are up to.  Such music lovers, as I see it, simply don't love music enough, for if they did their minds would not be closed to an area that holds the promise of fresh and unusual musical experience." ~ Aaron Copland

[Crudblud]

My feeling is that our negligible capacity for shock is one of the reasons we have no great composers. I do not mean by that that there are no good composers producing good music today, but goodness is not greatness, greatness (or its polar opposite) is in large part visibility, and it is very difficult to be visible today when you can't simply run up to someone and stick a middle finger in their face. Composers who still try to do that end up having to lace their music with accessorised performance, straightfaced but patently ridiculous theatrics (like Kagel but without the self awareness, the comic or satirical intent) which are designed to distract from and to disguise the fact that the composer has nothing new to say. Ironically they are moving closer to the state pop music has found itself in since the '80s, when MTV ushered in the era of supreme image and personality, the subjugation and reduction of music to a mere vehicle for something else. I think our present condition is in large part due to Stockhausen and Cage, who were, in terms of innovation and controversy, about the closest thing music has had to an atom bomb in the past fifty years. Theirs was a half-century tandem explosion that sucked all the capacity for shock out of the air and neutralised the avant garde. Presently we're waiting for the dust to clear, still clinging to the now safe notion that to push boundaries is a duty, but there are no longer any boundaries to push. So I think the real question is not "where have the great composers gone," but "where are the good composers going?" We are perhaps cursed to live in interesting times.

[Jo498]

The fact is this: the true heirs of the Western classical music tradition are not Schoenberg and his acolytes but rather the likes of Bob Dylan, The Beatles, Frank Zappa, Pink Floyd, Radiohead etc. These sort are the equivalent of the great or good "composers" of the previous eras.

I think this is very doubtful, no mater how often it is repeated. First of all, there is a fairly obvious sense in which almost all of those mentioned cannot plausibly considered "heirs" of Western classical music. Except maybe some stuff by Zappa it is all "popular song-based" not based on the forms or principles of classical music. It might be worthy music but it comes from a different tradition and a song by Radiohead really has not more in common with a Brahms symphony than with Gruppen, Tierkreis or whatever.

The second, again fairly obvious, point: If we cannot be sure about "great composers" of the 20th/21st century in the classical tradition because especially for the last  ca. 50 years it is to early for such verdicts, this is also true for the "high/middle brow popular music" like Pink Floyd etc. of the last 50 years. Why should one have qualms in 2016 about recognizing Stockhausen's work from the 1960s/70s as great but not be similarly reluctant about "The Wall"?

[James]

I think this is very doubtful, no mater how often it is repeated. First of all, there is a fairly obvious sense in which almost all of those mentioned cannot plausibly considered "heirs" of Western classical music.

Agreed.

re: Bob Dylan, The Beatles, Frank Zappa, Pink Floyd, Radiohead etc.

Not to negate what those bands & song-writers did, but they just aren't apart of the classical tradition for one.
Only Zappa wrote & recorded full fledged 'concert music' that gets any kind-of regular performance in that domain.

[James]

"If a literary man puts together two words about music, one of them will be wrong." ~ Aaron Copland

I love his book "What to listen for in music" with it's emphasis on "the musical plane" .. great criteria etched out there.

[Karl Henning]

"Twentieth-century music is like pedophilia. No matter how persuasively and persistently its champions urge their cause, it will never be accepted by the public at large, who will continue to regard it with incomprehension, outrage and repugnance."

--Kingsley Amis

Ah, yes: confirmation bias.  The derisory comparison (pedophilia).  The claim to understand universal truth, and the pitiful attempt to prophesy All Time.

Honi soit qui mal y pense.

[Florestan]

Twentieth-century music is like pedophilia. No matter how persuasively and persistently its champions urge their cause, it will never be accepted by the public at large, who will continue to regard it with incomprehension, outrage and repugnance.

I don´t know the context of this quote, but it is not true about most twentieth-century music prior to 1950 and false about much of the twentieth-century music post-1950.

[Karl Henning]

I don´t know the context of this quote, but it is not true about most twentieth-century music prior to 1950 and false about much of the twentieth-century music post-1950.

Which is why the offer of this quote in this thread is such a dismal puzzle.