Who was the most innovative of the 19th Century Unsungs?

[petershott@btinternet.com]

Clearly not possible to offer a single, unambiguous answer let alone a demonstration that it is the correct answer. With all respect, 'who is the most innovative....?' is rather a potty question!

However Draeseke should certainly rank high on anyone's list - along with Raff and Spohr and a good few others (though not perhaps Rott, for much as I am knocked out by that Symphony it does strike me as an often brilliant but sometimes clumsy and wayward effort by a composer so obviously bristling with potential and who tragically do not live to manifest that potential).

With Draeseke it is yes, yes, and yes. (And even including the notorious Christus, which seems to induce sleep in some but which I have come to very much admire). There's no disagreement with Alan's comment on the symphonies above - in fact every agreement. But the works I hope to hear again and again if and when I get to heaven (a pretty long shot) would be the three String Quartets.

One question which utterly baffles me is why these quartets remain so 'hidden'. As far as I know there has only been one recording of them - the Holderlin Quartet on the admirable and indispensable AK/Coburg label (moral for anyone of sound mind: if you ever come across one of those discs then grab it without hesitating a moment). And in the 40 or so years I've spent in going to chamber music concerts (starting with forking out the grand sum of 1s 6p five or six times a term in my student days to sit in the front row and listen to the Amadeus) I've never, ever, come across a quartet in the UK playing one of the Draeseke quartets. There was another very great German composer born just two years before Draeseke and who also wrote just three quartets. Wonderful as those works are, they must be in the repertory of every string quartet around, and ever since record labels became part of the furniture of the universe we've had a multiplicity of recordings of the Brahms quartets from just about every record label. Thank the deity (if he exists) one might think to that. But why, oh why, no performances of the Draeseke quartets and just one (rather difficult to obtain) set of recordings of them? That is surely baffling!

[chill319]

I'm not sure what makes one innovation quirky and another not, but for my money, Reicha's innovations were quirky -- often delightfully so and often very forward-looking. However, when Reicha is not being quirky, his music sounds bland to my ears.

[Alan Howe]

Peter has it absolutely right about Draeseke's String Quartets: simply put, they are among his greatest works and contain extraordinary riches - and depths. Of course, they are also among his most characteristic works, with No.2 having a wonderful fund of lyricism and No.3 being a much tougher nut to crack. For me, Brahms' best music is not to be found in his string quartets; the opposite is true with Draeseke.

[saxtromba]

I agree with the posters above who suggest that a single 'most innovative' composer, unsung or otherwise, cannot really be decided upon.  But as long as we're considering people whose innovations have gone unrecognized, I'd like to nominate Anton Rubinstein for consideration.

1) He was the first composer to have a cyclical piano concerto performed (#3, in 1854; though a case can be made that his concerto #1 (1850) uses material in mvt. 3 which is developed from material in mvt. 1).

2) He appears to have invented, or at least first notated, the full chord tremolo (in the concerto #1).

3) He wrote the first seven movement symphony.

4) He appears to have been the first composer to use a solo double bass in a symphony (in the section for solo string quintet at the end of the scherzo of his 4th symphony).

5) He wrote the first symphonies,concertos, and string quartets of any significance in Russian music history (locally innovative, so to speak).

6) He was the only composer (unless you count his brother Nicholas, who did write a small number of piano pieces) in the 19th century to found a full-scale conservatory which remains functional to this day (that is, not a piano school, but s music school with a full range of instrumental classes, composition and theory classes, and music history classes).

[Josh]

Except that Dittersdorf wrote a symphony with 7 movements in 1771.  That's just off the top of my head (well, I had to look up the year it was written, but I remembered it being in my collection).  Actually, while typing this message, I went ahead and started it up!  It's his symphony D.16 Il combattimento delle passioni umani ("Battle of the Human Passions").  Here are the movements:

1 Il Superbo (Andante con maesta)
2 Il Humile (Andante)
3 Il Matto (Minuetto poco allegro); Il Amante (Trio)
4 Il Contento (Andante)
5 Il Constante (Minuetto e trio)
6 Il Malinconico (Adagio)
7 Il Vivace (Allegro assai)


As for a cyclical piano concerto, what about Moscheles #6? Wasn't that from the early 1830s?

[Alan Howe]

I'd like to nominate Anton Rubinstein for consideration.

For me, though, his actual music is not really all that innovative. He's an important historical figure who wrote some extremely attractive compositions.

[JimL]

I agree with the posters above who suggest that a single 'most innovative' composer, unsung or otherwise, cannot really be decided upon.  But as long as we're considering people whose innovations have gone unrecognized, I'd like to nominate Anton Rubinstein for consideration.

1) He was the first composer to have a cyclical piano concerto performed (#3, in 1854; though a case can be made that his concerto #1 (1850) uses material in mvt. 3 which is developed from material in mvt. 1).

2) He appears to have invented, or at least first notated, the full chord tremolo (in the concerto #1).

3) He wrote the first seven movement symphony.

4) He appears to have been the first composer to use a solo double bass in a symphony (in the section for solo string quintet at the end of the scherzo of his 4th symphony).

5) He wrote the first symphonies,concertos, and string quartets of any significance in Russian music history (locally innovative, so to speak).

6) He was the only composer (unless you count his brother Nicholas, who did write a small number of piano pieces) in the 19th century to found a full-scale conservatory which remains functional to this day (that is, not a piano school, but s music school with a full range of instrumental classes, composition and theory classes, and music history classes).

Beg pardon?  First cyclical piano concerto?  Mendelssohn's 1st PC (1835) recalls material from the first movement at the end of the finale.  Schumann's concerto (1841-1846) uses the first movement motto theme as transitional material between the Intermezzo and finale, and actually quotes some material from the second movement in the coda of the finale, a reference that is little noted by analysts.   I'm not sure what material from the first movement in Rubinstein's 1st PC gets recycled in the finale - none that I can recall.  There are probably some other examples of the cyclic approach used prior to 1850 in PCs that escape me besides the Moscheles 6th and the examples I have already cited.

[jerfilm]

I'm not so sure about "innovative" but Alan is right, he's an important figure who wrote a lot of attractive music.  Rubinestein has long been one of my favorites of the unsungs.  His prodigious output, like that of another of our favorites, Carl Reinecke, is sprinkled with hidden gems which take some time and partience to ferret out......and worth doing......

Jerry

[Alan Howe]

Reinecke is an apt comparison here - although I think that, as a composer, he was superior to Rubinstein. Hardly all that innovative, though; not that I mind - there's bags of room for well-crafted, memorable music of a conservative stamp.

[jerfilm]

Agreed, Carl definitely has the edge......also one of my favorites.

J

[Ilja]

We should, I think, clearly distinguish between 'innovative' in the purely musical sense, and 'important' in other senses: culturally, organisational, didactically. While I think someone like Raff is very important as a conduit of musical ideas, I'm not quite sure I find his own music particularly innovative. But innovation does by no means imply quality: sometimes innovators are looking for new ways because they see themselves hampered by their poor mastery of the old. I'm always reminded of a comparison (I don't know by whom): "Saint-Saëns was a very good composer, but not a very important (read: innovative) one - you could claim just the opposite about Schoenberg".

[Alan Howe]

Actually, I think Raff was innovative in number of ways - the most important of which was to synthesise the ideas of the New Germans with those of the conservatives/classicists. In this respect I'd have thought that, as symphonies, Im Walde and Lenore were pretty obvious trend-setters.

[eschiss1]

I'd put in a vote, loud voice and an attempt at a case  for Berwald- and yes, he is still unsung, it is safe to say (not as unknown as Rufinatscha but a far sight less known than many another composer.)  His symphonies and chamber music contained, not the first examples of their kind I suppose, but early examples, of certain formal experiments (see the septet, E-flat string quartet, violin concerto, C major symphony - and several interestingly eccentric slighter cases of thematic/cyclic reuse, e.g. the finale of the 1st symphony (by the way, an archive performance of this is downloadable as a free podcast from Swedish P2 Radio, if you're not familiar with the work).  And the symphonies date only from the 1840s...

Allison- re Berwald: there's quite a bit of unrecorded Berwald, I think- the operas, to start with- and some rarely-heard Berwald works on a Sterling CD, too, if memory serves.  My own recommendations aside from the symphonies would be the piano trios... (esp. the memorable, lyrical F minor.)

[Alan Howe]

Actually, I wouldn't call Berwald unsung, just unperformed. But I take your point, Eric: his music couldn't be by anyone else.

[Syrelius]

I too would put my vote on Berwald. I would absolutely call him an unsung. There have been a fairly good number of recordings of his symphonies during the years, but he only turns up from time to time on the big "prestige" labels like DG, he is hardly ever performed by the biggest "stars" (conductors like Karajan, Bernstein, Abbado etc have never cared for his music) and you will hardly ever find his name in summaries on the history of classical music. To sum up: you have to know quite a lot about classical music in order to realise that Berwald's music might be interesting - or that it actually exists!