Most Underrated Composers

[modUltralaser]

You mean the "two thousand unknown works, generally listed without any reasons given" thread? I could have written it without reading it. Garbage is garbage, whether it's sung, unsung, or barely croaked. As Schumann once wrote, he who is afraid to attack music that's bad is only a half-hearted supporter of music that's good.

This is what GMG needs more of.

[(poco) Sforzando]

You need to step out of your little comfort zone of Bach, Beethoven and Mozart and see what riches and variety the classical music world has to offer.

Perhaps I better stick to the Art-Music Forum, where the members appreciate my knowledge of lesser-known music.

Yawn......don't feel like reading all this......

In other words, you are entitled to dictate to other people, but unless you are treated with the adulation you deserve, you parade your boredom at being challenged by someone genuinely thoughtful.

[kyjo]

Man, you're a twat. It's a small wonder why you like Mirror Image.

How old are you, Philo? That's the kind of post I would expect from someone 15 years old or younger. Also, that's quite rude how you had the nerve to bring John into this discussion. You're just jealous of people like John and I who actually have meaningful things to say around here.

[kyjo]

In other words, you are entitled to dictate to other people, but unless you are treated with the adulation you deserve, you parade your boredom at being challenged by someone genuinely thoughtful.

Listen Sforzando, I'm done arguing with you. Your posts make no sense to me. If you don't like my posts, then, go ahead and block me. I really don't care. I would never block you, but, go ahead, block me.

[(poco) Sforzando]

I'm sure that at least a few of the "unsung composers"/"alternative musicology" gentlefolk have their own reasons for exploring those works that are unrelated to historical revisionism. That has seemed to be the major motivation in my experience though, above and beyond any kind of elitism. The standard-repertoire-only people have their own elitists, too.

Thanks. A pleasure to read such a thoughtful comment. To take your second point first, I did stress that I was talking about what I see as the extreme position, and it undoubtedly exists. I am more likely to take a recommendation for a lesser-known composer seriously, for example, if I sense the person making it is also grounded in the established canon, which is not some arbitrary dictate by a handful of snobs, but a cultural heritage that has been built by centuries of audiences, scholars, performers, and other composers. I am thinking for instance of a major film critic, Ray Carney of Boston University, who is an authority on film makers like John Cassavetes and Mike Leigh, and who, when challenged why he never wrote on Fellini, Bergman, Renoir, etc., said that those great directors already had their advocates; his job was to promote others he felt insufficiently appreciated. But he also had the intellectual chops to make his case.

[Brian]

You're just jealous of people like John and I who actually have meaningful things to say around here.

Seems to me you've just proudly ignored the most meaningful things in this thread, written by three or four people besides myself.

I think what it comes down to is a philosophical difference. "Meaningful things to say," to you, are that you love certain music and want everyone else to hear it, and want everyone else to tell you that it's just as good as you think it is. You also want to rank recordings so we know which conductor is best in every piece.

How can we even explain it to you that those conversations barely scratch the surface of the meaningful discussions which art can inspire? How can we explain it that because you're happy to remain on the surface, you shouldn't insult and belittle those who are curious and articulate enough to go beyond the who and what to explore the why and the how?

[modUltralaser]

Thanks. A pleasure to read such a thoughtful comment. To take your second point first, I did stress that I was talking about what I see as the extreme position, and it undoubtedly exists. I am more likely to take a recommendation for a lesser-known composer seriously, for example, if I sense the person making it is also grounded in the established canon, which is not some arbitrary dictate by a handful of snobs, but a cultural heritage that has been built by centuries of audiences, scholars, performers, and other composers. I am thinking for instance of a major film critic, Ray Carney of Boston University, who is an authority on film makers like John Cassavetes and Mike Leigh, and who, when challenged why he never wrote on Fellini, Bergman, Renoir, etc., said that those great directors already had their advocates; his job was to promote others he felt insufficiently appreciated. But he also had the intellectual chops to make his case.

This reminds me of the Gadamer debates in which he was accused of conservatism for recognizing the reality of an already established tradition, and in which he rehabilitated the idea of prejudice.

[(poco) Sforzando]

Well, your problem. It is something of the most sensible written on this board for a long time.

It is indeed. I always enjoy reading anything Brian writes, for its good sense, wit, and felicity of style.

[(poco) Sforzando]

This reminds me of the Gadamer debates in which he was accused of conservatism for recognizing the reality of an already established tradition, and in which he rehabilitated the idea of prejudice.

I would appreciate your expanding, Philo. I know the name, but don't have your grounding in philosophy.

[modUltralaser]

I would appreciate your expanding, Philo. I know the name, but don't have your grounding in philosophy.

It'll have to wait until tomorrow, as I currently am on my mobile. But I will respond first thing tomorrow.

[bhodges]

Folks, I've temporarily locked this thread, just for 24 hours or so. Let's all take a deep breath (and no usage of the "t" word, please  ).

Let's all go listen to some old Diana Ross records - oops, wrong board - and this (hopefully) interesting discussion can be continued tomorrow.

--Bruce

[modUltralaser]

I would appreciate your expanding, Philo. I know the name, but don't have your grounding in philosophy.

To give somewhat of a background, Gadamer's main idea was philosophical hermeneutics, as contrasted with Habermas, Foucault, and Derrida (all who stem from a critical theory perspective). These last three accused Gadamer of being conservative and that his thought could be viewed as counterproductive for what they might call progress. This was so mainly because of how Gadamer tied understanding/truth/etc. to tradition and the importance of prejudice for understanding/truth/etc.

Essentially Gadamer asserts that all understanding stems from the knowledge that comes from tradition, but he states further that tradition is not a static concept, but rather that it does change with the times, but only if those new ideas are deemed acceptable to the history of the tradition. One cannot simply invent a new idea and then expect it to be accepted as norm if one has not put in the work, or more importantly, if one has not actually studied the classical tradition, which existed long before they made their pronouncement. Piet Mondrian is a great example from the art world of someone who understood the classics, and whose work was informed by that knowledge, who then created something new, which then later became part of that tradition.

The second point, which is where many people get stuck, is that of prejudice. He doesn't mean it in the way that Americans understand it (this was something he was warned about though). What he means is that everyone comes into a text, whatever it may be, with preconceived notions about it, even before they really know what it is. This might be their belief system, their culture, their so on and so forth, but it would be a fool's journey to deny its very existence. Instead one must seek to acknowledge their own prejudices and work within their framework, as some of them are unlikely to change, but to return back to the point of tradition, prejudices aren't static either. Instead, prejudice is a tool of parsimony which aids in our ability to understand and thereby decide.

[(poco) Sforzando]

To give somewhat of a background, Gadamer's main idea was philosophical hermeneutics, as contrasted with Habermas, Foucault, and Derrida (all who stem from a critical theory perspective). These last three accused Gadamer of being conservative and that his thought could be viewed as counterproductive for what they might call progress. This was so mainly because of how Gadamer tied understanding/truth/etc. to tradition and the importance of prejudice for understanding/truth/etc.

Essentially Gadamer asserts that all understanding stems from the knowledge that comes from tradition, but he states further that tradition is not a static concept, but rather that it does change with the times, but only if those new ideas are deemed acceptable to the history of the tradition. One cannot simply invent a new idea and then expect it to be accepted as norm if one has not put in the work, or more importantly, if one has not actually studied the classical tradition, which existed long before they made their pronouncement. Piet Mondrian is a great example from the art world of someone who understood the classics, and whose work was informed by that knowledge, who then created something new, which then later became part of that tradition.

The second point, which is where many people get stuck, is that of prejudice. He doesn't mean it in the way that Americans understand it (this was something he was warned about though). What he means is that everyone comes into a text, whatever it may be, with preconceived notions about it, even before they really know what it is. This might be their belief system, their culture, their so on and so forth, but it would be a fool's journey to deny its very existence. Instead one must seek to acknowledge their own prejudices and work within their framework, as some of them are unlikely to change, but to return back to the point of tradition, prejudices aren't static either. Instead, prejudice is a tool of parsimony which aids in our ability to understand and thereby decide.

I'm too tired to write much now, for which undoubtedly most will be grateful, but I've always felt your second point to be true, and as for the first, it sounds extraordinarily similar to T.S. Eliot's main point in "Tradition and the Individual Talent." Eliot was of course primarily writing about poetry, but everything he says applies to music and our understanding of music as well:

[The] historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence; the historical sense compels a man to write not merely with his own generation in his bones, but with a feeling that the whole of the literature of Europe from Homer and within it the whole of the literature of his own country has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order. This historical sense, which is a sense of the timeless as well as of the temporal and of the timeless and of the temporal together, is what makes a writer traditional. And it is at the same time what makes a writer most acutely conscious of his place in time, of his contemporaneity.

No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. . . . [W]hat happens when a new work of art is created is something that happens simultaneously to all the works of art which preceded it. The existing monuments form an ideal order among themselves, which is modified by the introduction of the new (the really new) work of art among them. The existing order is complete before the new work arrives; for order to persist after the supervention of novelty, the whole existing order must be, if ever so slightly, altered; and so the relations, proportions, values of each work of art toward the whole are readjusted; and this is conformity between the old and the new.

Forgive me, but I do not sense this understanding of history in the comments from our Young Turks here.

[Gurn Blanston]

I'm too tired to write much now, for which undoubtedly most will be grateful, but I've always felt your second point to be true, and as for the first, it sounds extraordinarily similar to T.S. Eliot's main point in "Tradition and the Individual Talent." Eliot was of course primarily writing about poetry, but everything he says applies to music and our understanding of music as well:

Forgive me, but I do not sense this understanding of history in the comments from our Young Turks here.

I thought that was your point to begin with, that without the sense of history and appreciation of the classics, any sense of rebelling from them was wasted. I can see this philosophy as reinforcing that point. And I agree with it too; iconoclasm without knowing what is being rejected lacks far too much to be validated by 'I like...'

[Brian]

iconoclasm without knowing what is being rejected

What have the Romans done for us?

http://www.youtube.com/v/9foi342LXQE

[modUltralaser]

I'm too tired to write much now, for which undoubtedly most will be grateful, but I've always felt your second point to be true, and as for the first, it sounds extraordinarily similar to T.S. Eliot's main point in "Tradition and the Individual Talent." Eliot was of course primarily writing about poetry, but everything he says applies to music and our understanding of music as well:

Forgive me, but I do not sense this understanding of history in the comments from our Young Turks here.

I need to read some more Eliot.

I agree with you. These young Turks seem to like the new simply because it is new (substitute obscure, etc.). I hearken back to Gurn's instruction to listen to Haydn and Mozart with the history of rhetoric in mind.

[vandermolen]

Just caught up with this thread. I am no doubt one of those who promote, in the eyes of some others 'deservedly neglected composers'. However, this is in no way to denigrate the great musical giants of Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Haydn etc. It is just that I don't think that I have much to offer in discussing their music, which is very well known. However, it gives me great pleasure to maybe introduce someone else here to a new discovery and if I hear something which really enthuses me I want to share that with others ( which does not mean that I expect them to necessarily share my opinion ). A recent example is the lovely song by William Denis Browne, which I mentioned on the British Composer's thread and which at least three others seem to have enjoyed too. I don't think that there is anything elitist in this. It would be absurd for me to say 'You must hear Beethoven's Seventh Symphony' (which I do have the highest opinion of and often play) as I guess that more or less everyone knows this work anyway. I fully respect the fact that others may regard some of the composers I like as second or third rate and I have no problem with that.

[Parsifal]

I don't think anyone had you in mind in decrying the gratuitous iconoclast type.

[kyjo]

Just caught up with this thread. I am no doubt one of those who promote, in the eyes of some others 'deservedly neglected composers'. However, this is in no way to denigrate the great musical giants of Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Haydn etc. It is just that I don't think that I have much to offer in discussing their music, which is very well known. However, it gives me great pleasure to maybe introduce someone else here to a new discovery and if I hear something which really enthuses me I want to share that with others ( which does not mean that I expect them to necessarily share my opinion ). A recent example is the lovely song by William Denis Browne, which I mentioned on the British Composer's thread and which at least three others seem to have enjoyed too. I don't think that there is anything elitist in this. It would be absurd for me to say 'You must hear Beethoven's Seventh Symphony' (which I do have the highest opinion of and often play) as I guess that more or less everyone knows this work anyway. I fully respect the fact that others may regard some of the composers I like as second or third rate and I have no problem with that.

Jeffrey, I couldn't have said it better. Scarpia has no idea what he is talking about.

[kyjo]

Whoever said you have to be thoroughly grounded in Bach, Beethoven, Mozart et al before you can listen to other music-let me just say that is complete and utter bullshit. There's no "one way" into classical music. Classical music can be approached from a variety of angles. It's not "wrong" to start with 19th or 20th century music if you are new to classical music. I mean, what if everyone recommends a newbie to Bach, and the newbie in question doesn't like his music. With everyone demanding him/her to start with Bach, the newbie might give up, thinking he/she will have nothing to enjoy in the world of classical music. People need to do the research themselves to find out what composers they connect most closely with. So, those of you who say that if you don't particularly care for the Baroque and Classical "greats", you aren't a "true" classical music fan-let me tell you that you are WRONG.