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While reading this topic a crazy question came upon me: who composed only one work?

Not your slip, Alan

Unless we're dealing with a 'Birmingham School'

With the great exception of Vienna, I'm not aware of any town or city which has an identifiable distinct stylistic/folk music tradition actually drawn on across local composers (as opposed to simply a group of composers being around at the same time), unlike say Scottish, Czech, Russian... Arguably counties can have (e.g. Arnold's Cornish Dances) but below this level even London hasn't been established in this way. (Why not? Is this true?)

Certainly we haven't found it in the other popular postings of this ilk (Birmingham here, Northampton ...). Maybe it's about scale and boundaries of cultures (although pop in the Beatles era had a recognised Mersey sound).

Have I got this right or is there a counter case to be made?

http://sdtom.wordpress.com/2013/10/24/symphony-in-f-majorrott/]
My take on the new Rott.

The new Acousence recording arrived by post

Do the site rules for posting in 'New Recordings & Broadcasts' require even a decade-old CD to be called new?

We've been over this before in 'Rott and Bruckner Quartets' but there's a Rott orphan movement that may belong to this work, a 2 minute Menuet inserted as a 4th movement. 

* 4 movement versions: Israel/Quintone; Rosamunde.
* 5 movement versions: Mandelring/Real Sound - Toblach; Mainzer/Acousence.

Missing much without 4th movement? No, but irrelevant as Mandelring is the outstanding recording anyway. Downside - expensive as part of a 3-CD box.

(Andrusier Ensemble also premiered Rott's (complete) Dachs String Quintet in 2002)

improvements on Beethoven's work.  Rott had this friend named Gustav Mahler.

I'm not convinced Mahler was attempting to improve on Beethoven. He had a thing about fitting music to concert hall, even for his own works. He also had a thing about adapting Schumann and Beethoven to fit the orchestra of his own time. I don't recall thinking when I heard his editing that he had really messed with their symphonies.

But perhaps Mahler would have messed with Rott's symphony, which he studied again in 1900, with a view to a performance in Vienna. This of course never happened and some have suggested that the reason was not because he felt it missed the mark but that his frequent lifting of quotes from Rott's symphony (done as a memorial and to preserve Rott's music as a legacy within his own) would have exposed him to false accusations of plagiarism.

I think the reason why Mahler didn't perform Rott's symphony is that he had improved on it in so many places it would have been odd for him to go backwards to the original and it would be wrong to re-write it. Also, he couldn't just get it performed. The 1989 premiere required a lot of work on the score by Paul Banks, just as Mahler's 1889 Symphonic Poem took a lot of work to construct a performable score before New England Conservatory Philharmonia could play it in 2011. It was in that work Mahler began his use of Rott's music and those bits remained unchanged when revised into the Mahler 1st symphony we know today.

It must be recognised that Rott's symphony is a work in its own right and not just of interest in how Mahler recycled the music in his own symphonies, or the ideas (such as the ghost waltz in his 5th). Mahler hardly ever used a straight Rott quote. The clearest exception isn't from Rott's symphony at all but the core theme from his Suite in E which Mahler used for the Chorale right at the end of his first symphony (adding just 1 intro note) but Rott completely missed that this made for a great finish.

Mahler invariably enhanced what he quarried from Rott, so it was more than cut and paste or just tweaking or sprucing it up but it was developed, Mahlerised, into so much more. Mahler's approach was like genetic engineering, like cutting up and altering a string of DNA. Mahler messed with Rott's music in all kinds of ways, which make some of these quotes hard to spot in Mahler's symphonies. It can be a key change, alteration of a note, change in orchestration, running two tunes together – either with one of his own or even joining up two bits from different movements in Rott's symphony, then adding his own intro to it as a build-up and running it with another tune of his own at the same time, as in the three-fold climax builds in the opening movement of his third symphony.

When Mahler drew on Rott's symphony in and around the resurrection theme in his 2nd Symphony, fifth movement, it was completely out of context of Rott's biographical narrative, Mahler having an altogether bigger theme. Whereas Rott's biographical narrative is introspective and envisages his own end, Mahler's reaches out to all humanity and brings them to eternity. Also significant to Mahler's 2nd Symphony is analysis by James Zychowicz on Rott's third movement being the predecessor to Mahler using the same 'Ewig war ich' quote from Siegfried Act 3.

I'm not sure of the value of hearing them all, quite apart from the difficulty of obtaining them. Four recordings are hard to get (van Steen, Layer, Campestrini, Piehlmayer) and doubtfully worth the effort of doing so.

Of the live non-CD recordings, two were members-only Hans Rott society: the Segerstam 1994 being remarkable but ultimately wrecked by the brass in the finale and Sammuel 1993 with Baden-Baden, which suffers from an odd pitch and was nothing to get very excited about anyway. Jarvi's 2010 Cincinnati SO is very similar to his Frankfurt CD, Meister's 2011 Orf RSO isn't especially distinctive and Gilbert's 2003 Houston SO has disappeared.

The Russell Davies and Weigle CDs have always been readily available and though some rave about them, they are disappointingly wooden. Different but of value is Erwin Horn's 2007 organ transcription of the first two movements, given that Rott composed his symphony on this instrument.

So whilst there seems to be a quite a range of listening choice the practical field, without really missing anything of quality, boils down to the first two issued - Sammuel/Cincinnati PO and Segerstam/Norrkoping PO, the Rückwardt and the Jarvi/Frankfurt.

If Segerstam's 1992 CD with Norrkoping SO is too slow at over 10 minutes longer than Jarvi then what do we make of the opinion of the Internationale Hans Rott Gesellschaft secretary on Segerstam's 1994 live performance with Swedish RSO? He says it's even better (apart from the finale's tired fluffed brass) – and that's 2½ minutes longer than Segerstam's CD! And he says it's better, primarily, because of the tempo.

The arkivmusic suggestion that Segersam's is too Brucknerian is odd, given that the core theme of Rott's symphony is based on Bruckner 5. That being so, and given that Bruckner taught Rott (including while he was composing the first movement) and was one of Rott's heroes and Bruckner's music is one of the main quotes (repeatedly) in Rott's finale, then it would be surprising if this work didn't resemble Bruckner's symphonies.

Do Frankfurt sound good? Yes they do. Is theirs a populist rendition? Yes it is. Is it faithful to the score? No it isn't!

Now any of us is entitled to prefer Jarvi's interrpretation but it's not the real thing. Maybe you're thinking it's better than the real thing? Maybe we should commend improvements on Beethoven's work too?

Jarvi is completely on his own, right off the scale of all the other conductors, both in playing so fast and cleaning it up so much (a bit like the crappy restoration of Da Vinci's 'The Last Supper'). What Jarvi does exceeds the parameters of interpretation and it's especially disingenuous to do this with Rott's symphony. The work isn't well known and hasn't an established performing tradition. So, many who hear it will think that's how Rott wrote it and how it's supposed to be. Jarvi takes liberties that he wouldn't dare try with a Mahler symphony.  What makes it such a travesty is discarding the autobiographical narrative which is an essential part of Rott's composition. Jarvi simply has no storyline, no authenticity and (though he may well actually know better) delivers no understanding of Rott's music or personal world.

[tempo variation]

Whilst not as good an interpretation as Segerstam's, Rückwardt on Acousence (2004) is a top Rott Symphony CD. This has been recorded 10 times and concerts are usually not with leading conductors and orchestras: so the work has yet to establish a performing tradition, although what has emerged so far at the extremes is:

* The slow dramatic approach allowing tempo variation, spearheaded by Segerstam who isn't afraid of Rott (like Mahler) mixing mess with beauty

* The over-paced sanitised approach taken by Jarvi.

Rückwardt, though not as expansive as Segerstam, belongs in the first camp which doubtless has more fidelity with what Rott wanted and heard in his head. She isn't ashamed to let us hear triangle or heavy texture and gets into the swing and swagger of  the Scherzo. Where it counts most she scores most, in the dramatic narrative fantasy of this third movement, where she surpasses even Segerstam (although he's still best at varying the tempo and overall in handling the psychological drama) and shows up the unfeeling shallowness of Jarvi who sidesteps all of this and loses the plot.

Rückward is one of the few who, vitally, realises the brief love theme and she does it by far the best. She seems to feel how Hans Rott imagines it would be like to take his Louise out of the Viennese ball for a interlude in which he just can't pluck up the nerve to express his love and returns to the ball without even a kiss.

What is so striking and effective is how Rückwardt transitions through this movement, bringing out the changes in Rott's emotional state, from the love scene to the yearning and pining, and on from the disappointment to Rott's anger and rants, whipping it up into the frenzy as Rott's emotional world starts to collapse because he can't control his feelings and shouts in protest and scorn at the other couples who dance on, obliviously, in what he parodies as a ghost waltz, before he plunges into the crisis of the finale.

in true BBC style it hasn't been aired yet.

Surely Unsung Composers' influence is strong enough to get Guardian/Snowden to release these secret BBC files?

I got the whole Hippo trilogy: 3 jewel cases in a red cardboard box. I do have a down on spoken stuff (enough to put me off Leonore). Maybe originality is an essential ingredient of greatness but I'm not altogether convinced once the music is divorced from its timeline. Sure, at first performance, originality had considerable significance (usually a reason for trashing) but if music is accepted as having enduring value then why should it detract from greatness if when composed a work wasn't especially innovative? As I understand it, the attraction of some composers who have a following here (Fuchs, Gernsheim, Volkmann) is their skill in originality avoidance.

I've yet to work out how to do Hippodamia once in a lifetime and anyway the Bride is heading the procession of Fibich works in waiting. But I think there's loads of spoken bits in Hip I can Skip.

Once unsung composers are allowed to be heard, the field of composed music opens out towards a baffling infinity. So often gangs or individuals will tell us how gr8 one of them is but I have absolutely no doubt Fibich is One of the Greatest Unsung Composers. Like when you know listening to someone telling you a story that it will always be a good one.

is this in Composers and Music because it isn't a New Recording ... yet?

reasoned argument, careful description and persuasive advocacy.

That's kinda wot I like but there's not a lot of it here and the little there is doesn't draw much response by way of appreciation or debate. I wonder why. Is it hard to do? Possibly. Is it valuable? Yes. Ratings don't convey much meaning but sharing a narrative of what it is that you like about a work does. Music can and should be described. Music is language; communication; emotion: for which our brains are wired and by which they are stimulated.  One of the fascinating aspects of music is that in the concert hall the audience has a collective experience but people also have personal individual experiences. The music isn't heard the same by everyone. Surely, to know how others hear and respond to a piece of music can open up opportunities to hear more, whether in something we already know or expand our range of compositions.

So I commend a descriptive approach as something that should be part of posting here, although I hold out little hope of it happening.

The question somehow reminds me of an old story of a Soviet schools inspector visiting a music lesson when a teacher became alarmed that one of the boys wasn't paying attention. "Who wrote that piece of music I just played?" asked the teacher, who was surprised by the reply: "It wasn't me". He became concerned when the boy didn't show up for the rest of the week but on making enquiries was told that he would be returning to school on Monday, now that he had admitted he did write that music.