The Great American Symphony

[hpowders]

He's the English Mennin. 

Seriously? He composed in a modern style? I thought he was a neo-Romantic, perhaps.

[Sergeant Rock]

Seriously? He composed in a modern style? I thought he was a neo-Romantic, perhaps.

No, beyond his first few symphonies, he's terse and craggy. He appeals to few...the few, the proud, the eccentric (some say, the delusional  )

Sarge

[hpowders]

No, beyond his first few symphonies, he's terse and craggy. He appeals to few...the few, the proud, the eccentric (some say, the delusional  )

Sarge

Since I am a bit of all of those, I may have to check him out! Thanks! 

[Sergeant Rock]

Since I am a bit of all of those, I may have to check him out! Thanks! 

Check out the HB thread here (a monument to obscure composers). Pour yourself a gin and tonic, and wallow in the craziness 

Sarge

[Ken B]

Seriously? He composed in a modern style? I thought he was a neo-Romantic, perhaps.

Paul meant he composed a suck-hole 8th.

[springrite]

Since I am a bit of all of those, I may have to check him out! Thanks! 

Now, that's the spirit and a sign of no decay! Hooray!

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

Havergal Brian is just OK. This forum has a few HB nutters trying to get new recruits to their HB thread.....

[Sergeant Rock]

Havergal Brian is just OK. This forum has a few HB nutters trying to get new recruits to their HB thread.....

I don't know a single HB nutter who proselytizes here. The really hardcore HB nutters never even leave the HB thread. When someone mentions HB (as Ken and powders did), we might point out the thread or respond to a question. Other than that, I don't think you will find a Havergalian John the Baptist among us nutters.

Sarge

[Heck148]

Now now, just because he didn't give you a rousing solo...

if he did, it is totally obscured by layers of muddy, murky over-orchestration. 

[Mirror Image]

Havergal Brian is just OK. This forum has a few HB nutters trying to get new recruits to their HB thread.....

Personally, I've never had any Havergal Brian fan try and convert me. They simply know better.

[Monsieur Croche]

Not to mention the most perfect name for that type of music -- Corn + Gold. You can't make up a better name for that! 

It was André Previn who pointed out that Erich Wolfgang Korngold, immigrant German and Jewish composer and a late very romantic style composer, once become film composer in Hollywood, also became 'the sound' of Hollywood in that era.  Ergo, the sound of Hollywood soundtracks from that era, via Korngold, are late German Romantic, adopted by "America."  Refugee composers who had arrived in the states with little else but a suitcase and their skills went to Hollywood, available and ready to work;  the general 'sound' of the era is of a collective group of Europeans, mainly German or Slavic composers. 

Dimitri Tiomkin, Russian pianist/composer, became a U.S. citizen in 1936, the year he scored Frank Kapra's classic, Lost Horizon, and he would later write the scores for High Noon, and Gunfight at the O.K. Corral -- about as quintessentially 'American' as the melting pot gets :-)

Your pun-quip on bankable 'corn,' though, holds more than a kernel (pun intended) of truth.  As fine an original composer as Korngold was, when he turned to film-scoring his music became that very odd (and somewhat creepy?)  thing ~ Korngold composing a parody of Korngold ~ hence, the corn.

[Monsieur Croche]

Now now, just because he didn't give you a rousing solo...

Ooooh, you're good! ;-)

[springrite]

Personally, I've never had any Havergal Brian fan try and convert me. They simply know better.

Well, we know how even as a convert you'd change your mind in no time. It'd be like writing in chalk on the pavement in the rain.

[Monsieur Croche]

I would rate Copland's Symphony 3 as great despite or because of its populist tendencies. However I would also rate William Schuman's Symphony 6. It is a grittier score than Schuman's better known Symphony 3....
I'd be interested to know what others thought of this work.

I think Schuman's 6th might be his 'best' symphony.  It is not his (already extremely well written) third, the 6th not having the catchy-tune themes, motifs, the snappy rhythms of the third, i.e the third is all instantly accessible upon a premiere one-time listen; the sixth, for many, is not. 

Schuman's 6th Symphony is a dense work: it is dense in its harmonic language, its polyphonic texture, and, if you will, has an emotional darkness and density very much of its time, without a stripe of that sentimentality of the late romantic era where even the darker realms were also somewhat 'indulged in' and actually enjoyed ;-)

The 3rd will remain his better/best known (or only known) symphony because of that difference in disposition more than it being a matter of a wide disparity of 'quality' between the 3rd and the 6th.  This is nothing new, though, popularity polls regularly name a composer's works as 'best,' while 'the cognoscenti' name others...

Poll: Beethoven
Vox Populi ~ Piano concerti Nos. 3 & 5
Cognoscenti ~ Piano Concerto No. 4

Poll: Bartok
Vox Populi ~ Concerto for Orchestra
Cognoscenti ~ Music for Stringed instruments, percussion and celesta
Vox Populi ~ Piano concerti No. 3
Cognoscenti ~ Piano Concerto No. 2

and I do think it has more or less "ever been thus."

[Ken B]

Personally, I've never had any Havergal Brian fan try and convert me. They simply know better.

I assume though he's already been your avatar?

[Reckoner]

speaking of Havergal, a nice read here if anyone's interested:

If Havergal Brian's Symphony No 30 were premiered today as the work of a photogenic 25-year-old, preferably female or gay, it would cause a sensation

http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/05/our-neglect-of-this-great-working-class-british-composer-is-a-disgrace/

[hpowders]

I think Schuman's 6th might be his 'best' symphony.  It is not his (already extremely well written) third, the 6th not having the catchy-tune themes, motifs, the snappy rhythms of the third, i.e the third is all instantly accessible upon a premiere one-time listen; the sixth, for many, is not. 

Schuman's 6th Symphony is a dense work: it is dense in its harmonic language, its polyphonic texture, and, if you will, has an emotional darkness and density very much of its time, without a stripe of that sentimentality of the late romantic era where even the darker realms were also somewhat 'indulged in' and actually enjoyed ;-)

The 3rd will remain his better/best known (or only known) symphony because of that difference in disposition more than it being a matter of a wide disparity of 'quality' between the 3rd and the 6th.  This is nothing new, though, popularity polls regularly name a composer's works as 'best,' while 'the cognoscenti' name others...

Poll: Beethoven
Vox Populi ~ Piano concerti Nos. 3 & 5
Cognoscenti ~ Piano Concerto No. 4

Poll: Bartok
Vox Populi ~ Concerto for Orchestra
Cognoscenti ~ Music for Stringed instruments, percussion and celesta
Vox Populi ~ Piano concerti No. 3
Cognoscenti ~ Piano Concerto No. 2

and I do think it has more or less "ever been thus."

His best symphonies are the Sixth and the Ninth. No doubt about it.

Conno-Sewers like me LOVE this stuff!!! 

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

I haven't head any Schuman because his music is so rarely played or spoken about in my country. John Cage, John Adams, Steve Reich and Elliott Carter are the main American composers who are performed here, but they aren't exactly known primarily as symphonists. Where should I start with Schuman if I want to get to know his music?

[Mirror Image]

I haven't head any Schuman because his music is so rarely played or spoken about in my country. John Cage, John Adams, Steve Reich and Elliott Carter are the main American composers who are performed here, but they aren't exactly known primarily as symphonists. Where should I start with Schuman if I want to get to know his music?

A good place to start are his rather 'Populist' New England Triptych and the American Festival Overture. But for a more brooding Schuman, you should listen to his Symphonies 6-9. Symphony No. 3 is also a good place to start because it is so immediately accessible like the afore mentioned 'Populist' works.

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

A good place to start are his rather 'Populist' New England Triptych and the American Festival Overture. But for a more brooding Schuman, you should listen to his Symphonies 6-9. Symphony No. 3 is also a good place to start because it is so immediately accessible like the afore mentioned 'Populist' works.

Curious, how are these two styles distinguished? By 'populist' do you mean like Copland's approach from around the 40s of attempting to compose music without the 'experimental' stigma attached to the treatment of pitch and harmony?