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Jasthill raises an interesting question as to what Mahler would have done if he had lived say to 65 thus 1925. On the basis of the Sym 10 which he did complete in short score and orchestrated much of the first half of the work, there is not really a fundamental change. The Sym 10 is not shorter than his other symphonies and the style is still romantic. The main difference I hear is an almost continuous lyricism in the outer movements. Would this have survived WW1? It seems highly unlikely. It's quite possible he would have just retired as a composer like Sibelius and moved to the US. 

I would also note that Germano Austrian composers even slightly younger than him like Richard Strauss and Alexander Zemlinsky never bothered much with symphonic writing after their student days. So he was increasingly alone.

Thanks for alerting me to this composer. I'm enjoying his String Quartet 1 via utube at the moment and the snippets I heard of Aladdin seem promising. Speaking for myself I didn't come to this site expecting great unknown symphonies as that is a very specialized talent. Chamber music is a much more level playing field and even good operas can get pushed off the stage because of the relatively small repertoire the opera audience wants to go to. So I'm happy already with 2 new discoveries of Emilie Mayer and C F Horneman.

I suppose with the completion of the unfinished orchestration of Symphony 10 one is choosing between the typical orchestration of his earlier symphonies or where Mahler seemed to be heading with Das Lied von der Erde. Since I strongly  prefer Mahler's later orchestrations post Sym 8  I lean towards Cooke's version as it is also quite lean by earlier standards. But bigger Mahler fans than myself are naturally going to go the other way most of the time.

I liked the g minor quartet of Mayer. I'm going to investigate her music further. Thanks for the thread. As a former high school violinist  i tend to be a bit demanding of string music but this was a good listen. I particularly liked the rhythmic drive.

I'm not sure I understand the conversation above about bowing techniques. Generally string quartet music in the 19th C was not filled with sound effects. I don't see notably sophisticated string techniques until Debussy and Mahler but that was at the very end of the 19th C. 

I have this recording and can highly recommend it. Note that it comes in a very finely done book format with CD slip sleeves to hold the discs. so it won't fit in a standard CD case

Yes of course there must be both chickens and eggs. Without the business side of classical music (halls, trained musicians etc) it would be hard to get to the aesthetic side. And yes, regarding serialism,  radical solutions have a low probability of success. As I said the OP question was interesting, but on reflection I think it quite difficult to dislodge concert audience preferences of long time favorites.

We are fortunate that there is another avenue for the unsung composers, namely recordings. Since these can tap a worldwide audience they can be very viable as opposed to local concert audiences. On rare occasions they will provoke some interest in conductors, orchestra and opera houses etc. Without recordings would Korngold or Zemlinsky have begun returning to the concert hall? So supporting the recordings either by buying physical media or with streaming services is the best way to retrieve worthy neglected composers.

This is an interesting question that the OP raises. As a counterpoint I would mention that Bernard Shaw was complaining in the late 19th C on the infrequency of Beethoven symphonies played at English concerts vs Spohr and Mendelssohn. There is also a confoundment in using the late 18th C as the benchmark since there was a stylistic break between Baroque music and the Classical style only a few decades prior. So listeners in 1785 were hardly going to demand more Vivaldi and Buxtehude.

As for Schoenberg, I think one has to also credit his rather logical analysis of where musical style was heading, i.e, the steadily increasing use of chromaticism. The problem with serial theory was not knowable in advance but only with the practical results of composers using it. My own feeling is that in the event, serial harmony was the stumbling block of the 12 tone method much more than melody. One just has to look at Schoenberg's greatest students Berg and Webern to see that both dealt with serial harmony by evading it. Berg used quasi tonal tone rows and Webern used the most tenuous harmonies.

To get back to the main point, I think audiences always prefer the established comforts over the new. It's just that this is always a relative process. When there is  a lengthy list of old favorites, audiences don't look for new music. If there has been a recent stylistic break then they want to hear the ascendant style even if new.

Glad I passed the test. It took me 3 hours of extensive research I might add.

Anyway I want to thank the OP for starting a thread on poor Jules Massenet. Yes he was a great operatic composer - one of the greatest. Unfortunately  he lived during the era of Wagner so of course he merited no interest. It's also a sad fact that the French are so dismissive of their own artists.

Anyway I wanted to mention Massenet's late opera Ariane alongside the others mentioned here. Finally a legit CD issue of this opera has been issued in a beautiful book format with CDs included. Originally the opera was performed by the St Etienne opera which specializes in Massenet. There was an in house recording of that performance that came out on an unofficial CD recording. Recently however the Munchner Rundfunk (Laurent Campellone conductor) issued the conventional CDs as noted above. Really a marvelous opera and performance. Ariane of course is Ariadne. In Massenet's version Ariadne commits suicide at her abandonment by Theseus. The sequel Bacchus mentioned by a poster earlier from the few bits I have heard is significantly inferior to Ariane. I have no knowledge as to whether  Strauss  was even aware of this Massenet opera on Ariadne composed a few years before his own marvelous version.