Unsung Composers

At Alan Howe's request I have moved this to a new topic!

Who are the composers that, while famous and loved around the world, you personally just can't get your head round?  It could just be that you have not listened to the right pieces first.  For example, if your first exposure to Shostakovich was to his String Quartet you would probably run a mile, whereas if you came to him via his piano concertos, jazz suites etc you would then move on to his more challenging works.

In my case, the composers who come (broadly speaking) from the period that I love that I just don't get are Stravinsky, Mahler (with the exception of his 5th Symphony), Glazunov (so bland! And I am a Russianist) and Miaskovsky.  Maybe I just haven't listened to the right pieces first?  In another string, people here have suggested Miaskovsky's 21st Symphony as the way into his music. 

So, who are the sungs that you can't appreciate, and what pieces do others suggest as a remedy?

Apart from the early VC and the monstrous PC (which I admire rather than love), I cannot get into Busoni at all. Can anyone help me?

Gershwin. Can't bear a single note of his music.

Bruckner, it is interminable. From 00 to 9 it just goes on like a running tap.

Reger, Reger and Reger.... No matter How many time I try. I dont; Get him..
Also...(and please forgive me for saying this)... I don't get the hype about Bruckner.. except for his Symphony No. 4 and 6.. 

Quote from: kolaboy on Monday 15 August 2011, 09:36
Gershwin. Can't bear a single note of his music.

You are to be pitied.

I find Glazunov's symphonies rather bland, but I suspect I should try harder. There must be plenty to enjoy in them. I have tried very hard with Reger and I appreciate his masterly contrapuntalism, BUT, in the end, his music (for the most part) simply fails to engage me emotionally - and ultimately I get to the point where I say "I just don't care..."  For me, this is especially true of his organ works which seem to my ears to be monuments of dullness - quite loud dullness too sometimes. But I have an organist friend who thinks they are wonderful and can't understand my disenchantment.

A whole range of light and ballet music, for example Offenbach.  Though Glazunov's ballet, for example, "Les ruses d'Amour" almost redeems the genre for me, not to mention Tchaikovsky's!

My top candidate: Richard Strauss. Ok, "Metamorphosen" is one of the best works ever written for string orchestra, the early string quartet isn't bad. But the most works between... Strauss was a great technician, but I can't find much inspiration in his music. The tone poems mostly seem to me soulless, cold, superficial virtuoso stuff for orchestra, without truely symphonic energy. It's hard to imagine for me, that this composer is sung, and not, eg. Hausegger, Reznicek, Friedrich Klose, who are far greater masters in my opinion.

Grieg is at the top of my list. Why is that Peer Gynt suite so famous???

Quote from: giles.enders on Monday 15 August 2011, 10:24
Bruckner, it is interminable. Form 00 to9 it just goes on like a running tap.

Symphony No.4 was my way into Bruckner, and then his masses.... Which Bruckner have you listened to?

Quote from: Gareth Vaughan on Monday 15 August 2011, 13:38
I find Glazunov's symphonies rather bland, but I suspect I should try harder. There must be plenty to enjoy in them. I have tried very hard with Reger and I appreciate his masterly contrapuntalism, BUT, in the end, his music (for the most part) simply fails to engage me emotionally - and ultimately I get to the point where I say "I just don't care..."  For me, this is especially true of his organ works which seem to my ears to be monuments of dullness - quite loud dullness too sometimes. But I have an organist friend who thinks they are wonderful and can't understand my disenchantment.

Interesting that you also use the word "bland" to describe Glazunov!  I like his symphonic poem Stenka Razin (Op.13), it's very dramatic, but that's about it.

Mozart zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Haydn, Handel, Vivaldi  zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Liszt, Prokofiev, Shostakovich  grrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Franck, Bruckner (overall, but not individual movements), Shostakovich...

Handel, definitely.
Webern, non-early Schoenberg.
Hovhannes (don't get me started!)
Birtwistle, Boulez, Messiaen and most 'important music' written post-1960 (if it's 'important', it's probably just incomprehensible and intolerable noise.) There are of course exceptions. But not many. 

Almost all (sung and unsung) composers who wrote atonal music. Almost, because I love Alban Berg's VC for its haunting atmosphere.
And yes, all those composers who wrote such very predictable music. So boring, like Amphissa expressed so clearly (I disagree about Liszt). One sung name? Haydn. One unsung name? Ries in his symphonies (how different I judge his solo piano music and his concertos). Mea culpa.

What was it one critic said of Richard Strauss's music?  "There's less there than meets the ear....."  haha

But I like Strauss. 

I don't get 12 tone, atonal, serial music.  Period.  No, I don't care for Reger either.

Jerry

I really dislike almost everything I've heard post-1900, excepting some Mahler (still getting into the symphonies) and Strauss. There are things I like post-1900 but if you call if modern, I'm 95% sure I'll hate it with a passion. Also, Ravel is right there in the bottom with Grieg (from my previous reply).

There is much to Mozart that I don't get or simply don't like. I have a nice CD of night music from HM (with Andrew Manze) that ends with the Musical Joke. It's a joke I don't care for and would like not to have heard. I like the symphonies (not all), the concertos (idem) and the quartets, couldn't care less about the sonatas.
I understand how people don't like Haydn, but well played Haydn will blow Mozart out of the water. I rank the London Symphonies right there with Beethoven's 1st and 2nd. His late quartets > Beethoven's Op.18, his late sonatas > Beethoven's first opii (sp?).

I still have no liking for Tchaikovsky's 1st and Manfred Symphonies or his 1st concerto. Liszt is interesting to play, not much else there. Chopin doesn't do it for me, I have no respect for his concertos, I like to play his music, but not much to hear. I really don't get how Chopin ended up in the "sung" list and Hummel got shafted.

But Grieg... don't get me started on Grieg.

I don't like Paganini (even if I have to recognize he was influential for very great composers - not violinists-composers).

Almost all the virtuoso violinist-composers wrote a lot of dross. Naxos: STOP RECORDING THEM!!!

For starters?
-Bruckner. Outside of his beautful acapella choral music it just prods and prods
-Most of Brahms, including the first three symphonies, German Requiem, Alto Rhapsody, the majority of the piano music, etc etc.....just so boring
-Mahler outside the first symphony. Like with Bruckner, it doesn't do anything for me, despite some other composers who are compared to him that I *do* love

And then there's a lot of both Bach and Beethoven I just find a bore as well, though I love much of those composers works as well....

I could go on but won't.

Anything atonal just drives me mad and I really can't get Mahler either (and I have tried).  I also agree about Grieg although one or two of the Lyric pieces are ok.
I'm sure I'll think of others...

Quote from: ArturPS on Monday 15 August 2011, 20:14There is much to Mozart that I don't get or simply don't like. I have a nice CD of night music from HM (with Andrew Manze) that ends with the Musical Joke. It's a joke I don't care for and would like not to have heard. I like the symphonies (not all), the concertos (idem) and the quartets, couldn't care less about the sonatas.
I understand how people don't like Haydn, but well played Haydn will blow Mozart out of the water. I rank the London Symphonies right there with Beethoven's 1st and 2nd. His late quartets > Beethoven's Op.18, his late sonatas > Beethoven's first opii (sp?).

I believe the word you're looking for is, believe it or not, "opera".  But that would be confusing.

My instances of "not getting it" tend to be of a composer's specific work(s) rather than of a composer per se.  I enjoy most of Cesar Franck's organ music, but his symphony leaves me absolutely cold.  And while I love Brahms's symphonies, choral works and concertos (with the exception of the 2nd piano concerto), I really have a hard time sitting through most of his chamber music, piano music and songs.  I don't have any real difficulties with atonality or twelve-tone music - those are languages, and it all depends on how the composer handles the language.  I do enjoy Birtwistle and Maxwell Davies.  The only two composers whose music I dislike tout court are Philip Glass and Elliot Carter. 

Britten. Not that I don't understand or like a small amount of it (mainly Grimes and before), but the Anglo-American instance that he's the greatest English composer since Purcell is baffling to me. Nothing of his pallid, semi-persuasive music convinces me that he's remotely comparable to Elgar or Vaughan Williams in either magnitude or universality of achievement (and no I don't close my eyes and think of England when I listen to these latter two; they are greater than that) or so vastly superior to Walton and others of that generation that we needn't talk about it. Every hotshot composer out of the UK (I'm writing from an American perspective, so perhaps inaccurate?) is immediately hailed as "the new Britten" before being cast aside to make a clear path for the next NB. No talk ever of a new RVW, but that's becuase we've been taught by our cultural betters (the same who panned the Gothic last month) to lower our expectations of what music might be and mean.

This thread is testimony to the diversity of tastes - I am left completely stunned that someone who loves music could not 'get' Mahler, who plumbed the depths and heights of emotion, or be utterly dazzled by Britten's sheer genius in his Frank Bridge Variations or Young Person's Guide, and Gershwin - half my life has been spent whistling, humming or singing his music ..... and so it goes on....

OK - now my confession - Tchaikovsky! utterly meaningless, repetitive, empty-headed, crash-bang-wallop, confused drivel, all fancy wrapping and no contents. (dives for cover!)

For sheer genius I'll take Frank Bridge himself. Compared to the utterly shattering Oration, the War Requiem seems to me just so much finger-wagging, above-the-fray moralising that adds nothing to the anger and compassion of Owen's poems.

Quote from: febnyc on Monday 15 August 2011, 13:12

Quote from: kolaboy on Monday 15 August 2011, 09:36
Gershwin. Can't bear a single note of his music.

You are to be pitied.

I think not. A maintaining of basic standards is not a pitiful pursuit. At any rate, opinions were solicited and I offered mine in the spirit of participation. I'm not personally insulted when someone's personal taste doesn't jibe with my own - though I might have been in my formative years.

My conclusion after many years of listening to Glazunov is that he wrote a sort of Russian Symphony Minus One eight times, the One minused being memorable thematic material or in the case of the Fifth (the only one I like) good, though rather short-winded tunes. Only compare him to Kalinnikov in this regard or, to choose a non-Russian parallel, Atterberg whose vein of melody was inexhaustible. I do like Stenka Razin though.

I like quite a lot of music out of court for many people in this forum ("history" having decided that Schoenberg was off his rocker in thinking that his music was evolutionary rather than revolutionary; I agree with the composer on that point, though) but I no more expect people to convince me that I am mistaken for this than I expect to convince people who have come to considered opinions about these or other composers I enjoy, appreciate and respect that they are mistaken for not doing so. It's not that sort of thread, peeps.  Be marshmellow- I mean, mellow, please :)

Further dislikes: Post-Sacre Stravinsky: tiresome stuff, mannered and irritating whether silly-clever chic or freeze-dried pseudo-profound. Sheer agon-y. Milhaud: A case, I think, of a composer who allowed his natural voice to be choked and strangled by Stravinskyism; Poulenc, by contrast, took what he needed and went his own lyrical way. Virgil Thomson: more silly-clever vapidity. Charles Ives: More interesting to read about than to listen to, e.g., the faltering visionary quality of the Fourth Symphony kept earthbound by his straitlaced Yankee puritanism, a dubious tradition unnecessarily prolonged by the anhedonic and perfectly named Cage. However, any amount of any or all of these composers rather than a single bar of Rossini.

Quote from: dafrieze on Monday 15 August 2011, 23:33
My instances of "not getting it" tend to be of a composer's specific work(s) rather than of a composer per se. 

Yeah, same here. Take Beethoven for example -- LOVE the 1st, 6th, 7th...the 3rd is an utter BORE and the 2nd isn't much better. Love Moonlight, Appasionata, Pathetic, and Tempest sonatas, but many others, including the Hammenkalvier just don't do it for me. String quartets? Boring. Wind music though? Love it. Missa Solemnis? Meh. Mass in C? Nice.

Mozart my main source of 'meh' is the operas (sans Magic Flute which I love) and of the more popular works, the violin concerti.  Still, I rank Mozart high on my list of composers I like.

X-Trapnel - hmmm, I can't really argue with you there, except just maybe you're a bit harsh on Ives. After all it was only a hobby, he was producing some pretty radical stuff pre-WW1 (I am always amazed that Three Places in New England is from 1910!), and surely nobody can deny that the Adagio from the early 1st Symphony is a beauty.

I think rather than list dislikes, it would be interesting to see which music you can appreciate on a rational level, but can't get your ears around on an emotional one. For me that would include Carl Nielsen (believe me, I've tried), Sibelius, and, yes, most of Glazunov.

The 'big one' is Bach. I'm quite sure there is some critical enzyme missing from my brain, but I simply don't understand it, on an aesthetic plane. Conversely, I can enjoy some music that my frontal lobes tell me is rubbish, or at least not of the highest quality.

On another note, I have to say that sometimes I get slightly irked by statements of the 'I like nothing after 1890' variety. No one can convince me they like NOTHING from the immense spectrum of post-romantic music, from Schoenberg to Schmidt-Kowalski and from Tveitt to Vasks - there's just SO much. You should pay more attention.

A word of gentle admonishment here: please resist the temptation to post "shock horror" responses to others' personal opinions. It'll only end in tears...

Quote from: semloh on Tuesday 16 August 2011, 01:17
This thread is testimony to the diversity of tastes - I am left completely stunned that someone who loves music could not 'get' Mahler, who plumbed the depths and heights of emotion, or be utterly dazzled by Britten's sheer genius in his Frank Bridge Variations or Young Person's Guide, and Gershwin - half my life has been spent whistling, humming or singing his music ..... and so it goes on....

OK - now my confession - Tchaikovsky! utterly meaningless, repetitive, empty-headed, crash-bang-wallop, confused drivel, all fancy wrapping and no contents. (dives for cover!)

I completely agree with you re the diversity of tastes, and so in that same vein completely disagree with you about Tchaikovsky - for me it is he who "plumbs the depths and heights of emotion..."!  Mahler I, so far, just don't get (with the single exception of the second movement of the 5th Symphony, "Stürmisch bewegt...", not the overplayed fourth movement "Adagietto").

And please remember, this string has two halves:  many have commented on which masters they don't get, but it would be great to hear other people's suggestion of pieces they might try in order to "get" them!

Couldn't agree more - and I think we're all being appropriately respectful. I'm sure we don't confuse our distaste for certain composer/works for distate toward those who feel otherwise. It's just so amazing to become aware of such diametrically opposed reactions to music....

As to Bach... well most of his work leaves me stunned. I find it transcendent, and I can say no more. As to ways of approaching those composers we don't like, well can I say that I was never a Mahler fan until I saw Ken Russell's film, this p[rompted me to sit and immerse myself in Bernstein's early account of the 6th and I was absolutely bowled over. I think we find our way by all manner of routes!

I enjoy Bach, but (to use a cliche) with my head not my heart.  His music doesn't move me, I don't find it spiritual, but supremely logical, which is a different experience entirely.  Apparently people of a mathematical bent find perfection in him.  I am not a mathematician!

I've listened to all the Bruckner symphonies a number of times with different conductors, over many years and I take no pleasure from them. To me they are an endless drone.

Quote from: giles.enders on Tuesday 16 August 2011, 10:17
I've listened to all the Bruckner symphonies a number of times with different conductors, over many years and I take no pleasure from them. To me they are an endless drone.

Agreed!

Quote from: giles.enders on Tuesday 16 August 2011, 10:17
I've listened to all the Bruckner symphonies a number of times with different conductors, over many years and I take no pleasure from them. To me they are an endless drone.

I disagree - profoundly.

My way into later Stravinsky was through the Symphony in Three Movements and the Symphony in C. Try Dutoit in these works. Very exciting.

I have listened to Bruckner since my school days forty years ago - hence he's always been around for me. Same applies to Mahler. IMHO, the best way into the former would be through either Symphony 4 or 7.

Bach's Brandenburgs conducted by Abbado on DVD are sublime, as is his B minor Mass conducted by Gardiner.

Tchaikovsky 1 drivel? Try again, sir, I say (humbly)!

And please don't dismiss Haydn until you've heard the finale to symphony No.90. Hilarious. (Try Rattle with the BPO live on EMI). And then there's The Creation. Just glorious...

Semloh--My favorite Ives is the Second Orchestral Set, Central Park in the Dark, 3 Places, and The Unanswered Question. Brevity helps; I've never made it to the end of the Concord Sonata, to my ears great fistfuls of notes accomplishing very little. As far as composer-hobbyists go I'll take Borodin.

On the last BBC Music several English critics are asked about "the most boring work" according to them. Some, with more or less humour, talk rather about the work (or works) they most dislike.
Indeed I didn't exspect to find in the list "Tristan und Isolde", Bruckner Seventh or the "Deutsche Requiem", or Purcell "Dido" (nor, on a slightly -but only slightly- subordinate plan, Madama Butterfly, Rossini Cenerentola, Britten "Dream" or Elgar "Kingdom").
Some of you could object that in this thread we are doing roughly the same thing as the critics asked  by BBC Music.
But I think there are at least two differences:
1) We are obviously more free than professionals.
2) None of the professionals has listed one contemporary or truly modern work (really sure that no one is boring, maybe a little more boring than Bruckner Seventh?). The most "advanced" listed is Britten "Dream". Isn't that again witnessing or proof that we-you are really more free than the professionals (of course I am not saying more skilled, maybe I am saying less snobbish)?
I would appreciate some comment.

Haydn is a funny case for me. Most of his symphonies I find somewhat boring (I like 88 and the Paris symphonies best, I guess), but most of the string quartets -- especially, oddly enough, the earlier ones -- I find much more interesting. I find Haydn is best when he's "light' as it were. So I'm not big on The Seasons or The Creation either.

As for Bach, I oddly find I enjoy him best in symphonic transcriptions. I have five/six separate discs of those and love them all.

Alberto--I saw the results of BBC poll and found it peculiar. Was there any explanatory apparatus? Admittedly, I don't find any of these works, apart from the Rossini, boring (why Bruckner 7 and not 5?). One may not like these works, find the aesthetic alienating (I think this is what they meant by "boring") but most are of unflagging inspiration/invention. Simply to state these non-preferences in a journalistic context with no discussion is intellectually lazy.

Re symphonic transcriptions, it was in hearing a performance of a recording of Bernstein's string orchestra performance of Beethoven's opus 131 that was my first clue how much I later came to treasure the work, if I make any sense. (But then, I became obsessed with classical music in part and most proximately because of my exposure to Borodin's music in Wright and Forrest's Kismet; if that sort of thing was their purpose they succeeded.)

This is an endless source of interesting exchanges, and I think they are very relevant for a group championing works which lie outside the approved canon.
Haydn - my first real delight in classical music; his wit and endless invention tell us a lot about the man, I think.
Mozart - my second, attracted by the tinge of sadness that I feel inhabits much of his work (especially the pieces that seem most jolly!) and marks him out from Haydn.
Yes, I know what you mean about Bach being cerebral - I am 'mathematical', though not by profession, and my sister is a maths professor.... but I really believe that the magic of a lot of Bach is that it can bring the cerebral and the emotional together - joy in life, sadness at its loss, and so on, they're all there in Bach - though as a non-religious person I do find it more difficult to appreciate that side of his work.
The comments about Bruckner have been interesting - one very long symphony with 10 movements? For me the jury is still out.
X-Trapnel - re the Ives - yes those are so good!
Eschiss1 - you have prompted me to seek out that Bernstein recording - sounds like just what I need to help me appreciate the Op.131.
Allan - It's hilarious really - Tchaik 1 is exactly what I had in mind (plus those dreadful plinky-plonk ballet scores!) as I assembled my disparinging comments. Sorry. But, isn't musical taste a wonderful thing!

Lastly, I would hate to parade the results of the Australian music polls - very little beyond what you'd expect - except perhaps a rise of appreciation for Mahler and VW (most Aussies say "who?" when you mention his name). Although votes on popularity don't have much meaning I think they do influence the radio programmers and CD producers! Thank goodness we haven't had a "most boring" poll.

Bartok! For the most part (3rd Piano Concerto and Concerto for Orchestra excepted) ugly, ugly, excruciating drivel.

I don't like Bartok either....excepting, oddly enough, his pedagogical pieces which usually have a catchy little tune or something else.

This is a very nice topic,
Rossini, all his music apart 2 or 3 operas (Barbiere di Siviglia, italiana in Algeri...maybe Cenerentola)
Guglielmo Tell is without end and I am not able to understand all the instrumental music, expecially piano music.
Many people suggest there are treasures of sublime irony and amazing inventions...I don't find anything of this...also empty pedantry and self-congratulation...irony for me are for example Hummel's rondò op.11, Haydn piano sonatas, Saint-Saens piano concertos...ecc
In this way the direct Rossini's son is Eric Satie..
Mozart piano sonatas....a little boring compared with Haydn's ones
then Mahler symphonies...but i like very much all the lieder
For finding pleasure in Reger's music (I love it all) I can suggest clarinet quintet
for Busoni I agree completely with Alan
and for a lot of contemporary music, mi humble advice can be to try with live concerts...i consider music only for ears...but for contemporary music, the visual side can help. (Le marteau sans maitre for example)
bye, Andrea

Several people have mentioned Reger in this string as a composer who is widely enjoyed.  To be honest, I had never even heard of him until joining this site 6 months ago!  Is he really that popular and there has been a gaping hole in my knowledge?  Or is he more of an unsung?  And what should I listen to first by him?

Reger: start, perhaps, with the the Four Böcklin Tone Poems.

Quote from: semloh on Wednesday 17 August 2011, 04:55
Allan - It's hilarious really - Tchaik 1 is exactly what I had in mind (plus those dreadful plinky-plonk ballet scores!) as I assembled my disparinging comments. Sorry. But, isn't musical taste a wonderful thing!

I meant Tchaikovsky's beautiful 1st Symphony in case there was any misunderstanding...

Quote from: fuhred on Wednesday 17 August 2011, 06:15
Bartok! For the most part (3rd Piano Concerto and Concerto for Orchestra excepted) ugly, ugly, excruciating drivel.

Or the composer of some of the most rhythmically exciting music ever composed? And the glorious VC2...

Quote from: reineckeforever on Wednesday 17 August 2011, 14:18
Many people suggest there are treasures of sublime irony and amazing inventions...I don't find anything of this...also empty pedantry and self-congratulation...irony for me are for example Hummel's rondò op.11, Haydn piano sonatas, Saint-Saens piano concertos...ecc

Why do you have to 'understand' the music to enjoy it? Much of Rossini's piano music is pleasant and tuneful and it doesn't aim to be anything else. It doesn't make sense that, on THIS forum especially, people just dismiss something like that.

hi Terra Epon,
I'm sorry for my basic english. With "I am not able to understand" I meant only that I don't find beauty in much of Rossini's music. Simply, I don't find it neither pleasant neither tuneful. I think that on this topic we can post our opinions. Bye, Andrea

Terra Epon--One person's "pleasant" is another person's "inspid." The question of taste is unaswerable.

Quote from: Alan Howe on Wednesday 17 August 2011, 16:15
Reger: start, perhaps, with the the Four Böcklin Tone Poems.

...and definitely the Mozart Variations. A really fun work.

Quote from: Alan Howe on Wednesday 17 August 2011, 16:19

Quote from: fuhred on Wednesday 17 August 2011, 06:15
Bartok! For the most part (3rd Piano Concerto and Concerto for Orchestra excepted) ugly, ugly, excruciating drivel.

Or the composer of some of the most rhythmically exciting music ever composed? And the glorious VC2...

Rhythmically exciting, maybe... but attach that to a harmonic sense that sounds like someone scraping their fingernails down a blackboard covered in rancid dromedary giblets - well, you get the idea (lol)  ::)

Well, I find Bartok's VC one of the supreme pieces of 20th Century music - so, as has been previously said, taste is obviously central in this discussion. Having said which, I have deliberately given myself time to come to grips with Bartok, buying some of his music and coming back to it later with (I hope) an open mind...

Alan - would you suggest his VC as a "starter" piece for Bartok?  He is definitely one of the ones I have not been able to get to grips with.

I'd start with the Concerto for Orchestra, I think; but VC2 has plenty of memorable, lyrical music - as well as plenty of typically Bartokian rhythmic material.

Quote from: eschiss1 on Wednesday 17 August 2011, 01:21
I became obsessed with classical music in part and most proximately because of my exposure to Borodin's music in Wright and Forrest's Kismet; if that sort of thing was their purpose they succeeded.)

Call me a cynic but I suspect their purpose was actually to trouser large quantities of cash!

Quote from: Alan Howe on Thursday 18 August 2011, 14:06
I'd start with the Concerto for Orchestra, I think; but VC2 has plenty of memorable, lyrical music - as well as plenty of typically Bartokian rhythmic material.

And for those that aren't quite up for Bartók's rhythmic side, there's always Kossuth, of course - the piece that drew me into 'serious' music to begin with...

...and, if you like opera, Bluebeard's Castle.

Wright & Forrest? Well, secondary purpose. I mean porpoise. I mean dolphin. I mean divergence from topic. Apologies.

about bartok, why not the quartets?
rich of marvelous timbric effects, they allow to follow stylistic evolution, structural coherence...think to music of the night effects!
Andrea

Perhaps Bartok requires a bit of easing into. There are flowers to be found among the "thorns", to be sure.
I remember the first time I heard Bartok's string quartet no.1. Actually, I remember the date: August 9 1981. It was televised on the now non-existent TV channel ARTS (currently known as A&E). Powerful work; especially in the first movement when the cello rumbles like a foghorn, lost in the mists...
Following the Bartok, there was a performance of Liszt's Christus, and it's also a piece that I've loved ever since.

Two masterpieces in one night. Good luck finding programming like that on broadcast TV nowadays.

I respond weakly at best to the Handel I've heard. Not enough shadow for my taste, unlike late Beethoven, who so loved Handel. It's me, not Handel, but I still don't get him.

Shostakovich has always struck me as a lightweight, despite the dollops of gloom in later works.

Some Liszt has grown on me considerably over the years, but I don't think I will ever "get" PC2 with its banal and merrily martial melodic transformations.

Regarding the Bartok quartets, in my experience they are quite approachable as played (authentically!) by the Hungarian Quartet on DG.

Small comfort for such as don't like Schoenberg (and he spent quite a lot of time arranging a work of Handel himself) but as to not getting Handel, Schoenberg, in an article I seem to recall, mocked people who placed Handel on the same level as Bach...

On Alan's hearty recommendation above, I decided to bite the bullet and download from Classics Online the Bartok Violin Concertos (with Georgy Pauk on the Naxos label). I actually quite enjoyed the 1st Concerto, but after a couple of listens, the rambling 2nd still eludes me. Strangely enough, it reminded me of a noisy class at school, with the teacher as violinist (some of the soaring solo passages were quite impressive, I have to admit), and the orchestra as a bunch of naughty students making rude noises at the back of the classroom. Yes, as you said, it's all a matter of taste (or more properly, aesthetics).

Well, I'll leave the subject with an amusing observation from Australian composer Alfred Hill:
Sydney, 1948, at a meeting of the Society for Recorded Music, where Hill's String Quartet No.1 "Maori" and Bartok's String Quartet No.5 were played. Hill said: "My string quartet is like a young damsel, tripping along six inches above the ground in the woods, so ethereal is she. While the Bartok music is like today's painted tarts that one sees up at the 'Cross." (i.e. Kings Cross, Sydney's red-light district).  ;D

Hill was of course entitled to his opinion and to not getting or not appreciating the literally offkey joke toward the end of the Bartók besides (admittedly, unsubtle.) Have only seen his first quartet in parts so far.

Rejoining this conversation, I'll add a few more notes.

I did not list Bach. I find almost all Bach dreadfully boring. However, to me the solo cello suites is one of the great masterpieces of all time. I own dozens of recordings and always seek out opportunities to hear them performed live by outstanding cellists.

Each year during December, the chamber music society in NY plays the complete Brandenburgs each night for multiple nights at Alice Tully Hall. It is a tradition and I've enjoyed it as an event. But I've never been able to warm up to recordings. I tend to avoid Bach in concerts. Like Mozart, Haydn, Vivaldi, Handel, et al, I just become bored.

Mozart was on my list, but I do enjoy The Magic Flute quite a lot, more for the fantastical story than anything else.

As for Mahler, I was deeply into Mahler for a decade. I own several hundred recordings, I read books, I hung out on Mahler discussion boards. But then something just snapped. I thought if I ever heard a Mahler march ever again that I'd begin throwing stereo equipment out the windows. So much of his music now seems a calculated effort to be over-the-top in every way. And even a rather innocuous symphony like the 5th suddenly just seems now to be a hodge-podge of musical snippets threaded together. I once believed that I got Mahler, I now believe I get him, but in a different way, but whether I get him or not, I just no longer like listening to Mahler.

I forgot about Bartok. I've actually heard quite a lot of Bartok in concert the past two seasons. He seems to have suddenly entered the standard repertoire of U.S. orchestras. I admit, I've been rather unimpressed by his orchestral music, including the Viola Concerto and piano concertos.

That said, I like Bartok's string quartets. They are more astringent than most music that I listen to, yet I find them interesting and sometimes compelling.

I don't mind atonality (uncertain key). So I do not automatically eschew modern music. However, I intensely dislike abrasive dissonance, especially when combined with relentless loud brass and percussive onslaughts. And I really do not like attempts to be humorous. Perhaps this is why I dislike Shostakovich so much.

The place to start with Shostakovich would be the 5th Symphony. Try Haitink's magnificent recording.

Amphissa, perhaps your dislike of Mahler comes from over-exposure.   I think it's like hearing the latest popular song for the 483rd time.  You loved it when you first heard it but now you're just plain sick of hearing it.   For me, one of the things that turned me on to looking for unsung compositions was, I was tired of hearing the Beethoven Tchaikovsky, etc.   I love music; I wanted to hear something new.  Something different.  I love Mahler. He speaks to me in ways that no other composer does.  But if I got a steady diet of him,  he'd soon go the way of Beethoven 6.  Not being a concert hall musician or conductor, when I get to the point where I can hum my way through a 65 minute symphony - and I love being able to do that - I realize I am about saturated and tell myself, "Self, you'd best not be listening to this piece often, any more or you're going to be tired of hearing it...."

Except that, perhaps sadly, I have never been able to assimilate the experimental and non-tonality based compositions of the last century.  Recalling the first time I heard something along these lines, Webern I think, I remember thinking "He can't be serious...." but obviously he was.   Over the past 50 years, sitting in Orchestra Hall, I've been moved to tears probably a dozen times.  And I always end up reflecting - how can ANY human being conceive anything so beautiful; so moving??  Perhaps that would make an interesting thread - what work or works has moved you to tears.......???

One of the very best things about this forum is that we don't call each other names when we disagree. 

Aw crap, I ramble.  Sorry about that.  A prerogative of old age, I hope....

Jerry

And which version of the 5th would you propose, Alan? The version with the traditional over-the-top bombastic final movement? Or the supposedly more accurate/authentic version of Rostropovich, which is supported by the notes in Testimony?

To me, Shostakovich symphonies are Mahler with coffins and clowns. I've never been able to warm up to him.

The reason I mentioned Haitink was that his version is exceptionally beautifully played and recorded and seems to give the piece greater stature. Others would say that it is too serious and plays down the composer's sense of irony. It was simply my suggestion as a possible way in to S5 for a listener who hadn't really tried the piece. If someone knows the work and it doesn't appeal, then Haitink's noble performance probably won't make much difference...

Even back when I listened to Mahler a lot, I still couldn't stand those damned marches. I hate marches. My father was career military. After decades of marches, I can testify that marches are not music, have no genetic affinity with music, and have no earthly purpose other than forcing clones to stomp along in synch. A plague and a curse on marches.

Except those that include bagpipes, of course, the musical instrument of the gods.

Amphissa, you're a gem! At last, another bagpipophile! Where ARE all those Concertos for Bagpipes and Large Orchestra?!
You referred to "the traditional over-the-top bombastic final movement" of Mahler's 5th, but as a fan of the Bernstein recordings, I wonder if it is ever possible for Mahler to be over the top.
Didn't you mean, by the way, that it is Mahler who is Shost. with coffins and clowns, rather than vice-versa? I can still see a clown like figure dancing on top of a coffin, to Mahler's 1st sym. in Russell's film...

Apologies if I've misundertood.

re bagpipes: don't ask for any work combining bagpipes and conventional orchestra unless you're a fan of microtonality (as far as I know, which is admittedly not very far, a bagpipe's tuning is not that of the 440 orchestra. Still, with the MIDI bagpipes and other innovations mentioned in the Wikipedia article, maybe this is adjustable after all...)

re BAGPIPES: Try Peter Maxwell Davies' brilliant piece (if you already haven't) An Orkney Wedding and Sunrise. It's not a concerto, but it's the only piece I've heard that adds bagpipes to the orchestra.

Quote from: semloh on Monday 22 August 2011, 00:53
Amphissa, you're a gem! At last, another bagpipophile! Where ARE all those Concertos for Bagpipes and Large Orchestra?!
You referred to "the traditional over-the-top bombastic final movement" of Mahler's 5th, but as a fan of the Bernstein recordings, I wonder if it is ever possible for Mahler to be over the top.
Didn't you mean, by the way, that it is Mahler who is Shost. with coffins and clowns, rather than vice-versa? I can still see a clown like figure dancing on top of a coffin, to Mahler's 1st sym. in Russell's film...

Apologies if I've misundertood.

I think he was referring to the finale of Shostakovich 5, not Mahler.

Okay, okay, I'm not really a curmudgeon. I do like Shosty's 5th okay. I don't care for most Shostakovich, but there are a few pieces I do like, including the 1st cello concerto.

As far as bagpipes and orchestra, well, this is obviously a deficiency of the orchestra. It has not yet evolved adequately to accompany pipes.

As a child living amidst the wilds of California coastal range, north of San Francisco, I often heard the sound of a solitary Scottish piper wafting across the Russian River from somewhere on the forested eastern hills. It was thrilling to finally see him one day on the crest of a distant peak. No setting could be more perfect for bagpipes than a natural one similar to that in which they were conceived.

By some odd coincidence, on the other side of the North American continent my high school band comprised a score of pipers and no other instruments. To my mind, nothing could be more comical than those instruments essaying the typical marching band repertory unless it would be the same group playing their director's Gershwin-inspired Bagpipe Rhapsody. I've forgotten the director's name, but I didn't "get" his music.

Ah yes, the bagpipes. My favourite instrument. Especially when fading into the distance... ;)

Talking of orchestra & pipes (!) ... yes, PM-D's 'Orkney Wedding' is an interesting and rather enjoyable piece. If we are prepared to diversify slightly, there's also 'Uillean Sunrise' by O'Boyle and, in a more folkish vein, 'The Brendan Voyage' by Davey & O'Flynn. After that I'm afraid we're down to McCartney's 'Mull of Kintyre'! As you rightly said Amphissa, it seems that the orchestra has yet to develop the subtlety required to accompany the Scottish pipes.

Getting back on topic.... my number one pet dislike (not just "don't get") is Philip Glass and all who emulate his pathetic excuse for a style. In think he should have stuck to truck driving, but I promise not to be rude to anyone who has the courage to say they like his work....

Quote from: semloh on Monday 22 August 2011, 08:54
Getting back on topic.... my number one pet dislike (not just "don't get") is Philip Glass and all who emulate his pathetic excuse for a style. In think he should have stuck to truck driving, but I promise not to be rude to anyone who has the courage to say they like his work....

I like Glass - until I realise that the music that sounds as though it should introduce something else more interesting is all there is. Then I don't like it...

You ought to try playing Glass -- mind numbingly boring. Most of the great composers, and plenty of the not-quite-so-greats knew how to write parts to keep the players interested and involved. Few exceptions. But composers in the last 50-60 years don't care or don't seem to know how to treat performers.  Although for percussionists, a lot of modern music is more interesting than slogging through another Tchaikovsky symphony. The other sin of modern composers is to write music so staggeringly complex and difficult that it is impossible for mere mortals to play: looked good on the computer, but doesn't work for players. And that's one reason among others that a lot of the music written in the last 50-60 years will never make it into the mainstream: if amateurs can't take it up, acceptance is doubtful. Speaking of amateurs, I've played in orchestra where you would swear there are bagpipes. But no, it's just the oboe and bassoons playing in what could charitably be called close-enough tuning. ;)

On the subject of bagpipes, I generally agree with whoever defined a 'gentleman' as 'someone who can play the bagpipes -- but doesn't'.  However, to demolish my own prejudice, I once heard the Scottish National Orchestra (or maybe it was the BBC Scottish SO) play a piece by Ian Whyte, the Scottish conductor and composer -- it may have been his ballet 'Donald of the Burthens' but I can't swear to that at 40 years' distance -- in any event, the climax involved a rip-roaring bagpipe obligato that I have to admit was wonderfully effective.  The one thing I do definitely remember was that the pipes were played by George McIlwham who was perched atop the console of the organ in the Usher Hall.  Great fun.

Quote from: mbhaub on Monday 22 August 2011, 14:11Speaking of amateurs, I've played in orchestra where you would swear there are bagpipes. But no, it's just the oboe and bassoons playing in what could charitably be called close-enough tuning. ;)

And just HOW do wind instruments get out of tune? ;) ;D

They start that way!

Once one hears "Amazing Grace" played by a solo piper, it never sounds "right" played any other way.

Having a bit of Scot in me (from many, many generations ago), I hope someday to attend the Edinburgh Tattoo. Massed pipes accompanied by Highland drumming -- it is not so much a march as it is a swagger. Surely it must be a deafening experience!

There are many wonderful, hilarious jokes about bagpipes. Some of them can even be repeated in polite company.

The most appropriate here might be: "Bagpipes are the lost connection between noise and music" - Jim Davis

But there are others worth reprising as well.

"Bring not bagpipes to a man in trouble" - WC Fields.

"I firmly believe that distance adds enchantment to the bagpipes" - WB Yeats.

"Definition of a 'gentleman' - someone who knows how to play the bagpipes but doesn't" - Ronnie Corbett.

"Some men there are ... when the bagpipe sings...cannot contain their urine" - William Shakespeare

The Brazilians call the bagpipe gaita de foles, which is Portuguese for "screams of the tortured monkey".

"If thy neighbour offend thee, give each of his children bagpipes" - Old Scottish Proverb

One must remember that, in addition to bagpipes, the Scots also inflicted upon the world the modern game of golf. Thus, two different methods of driving men crazy. It is said that only a true Scot can enjoy both simultaneously!

It is also said that the Scots invented the bicycle, the overhead valve engine and pneumatic tires, all in the effort to devise methods to quickly escape the bagpipers, but I think they were actually just looking for ways to get to the golf course more quickly.

I'm very sorry that I've gotten us so far off course from the original topic of discussion.

WELCH, MATTHEW   THE SELF AND OTHER (BAGPIPE AND ORCH)
MCGUIRE, EDWARD   CALGACUS (BAGPIPE AND ORCH)
AUGUSTO, AUGUSTO   LUGARNENHUMREGIONALFOLKMUSIC (BAGPIPE AND ORCHESTRA)
MALEK, JAN   BAGPIPE CONCERTO
AUGUSTO, TULIO   CTO BAGPIPE AND ORCH

I'm not, given the circumstances of the topic and the diversion. Thank you, in my honest &c.

Quote from: JimL on Monday 22 August 2011, 15:34

Quote from: mbhaub on Monday 22 August 2011, 14:11Speaking of amateurs, I've played in orchestra where you would swear there are bagpipes. But no, it's just the oboe and bassoons playing in what could charitably be called close-enough tuning. ;)

And just HOW do wind instruments get out of tune? ;) ;D

It is impossible to physically make any wind instrument that plays perfectly in tune. It's the physics of sound. Has to do with the overtone series. Every modern wind instrument is the result of years and years of experimenting and is ultimately the result of compromises to make the thing the best it can be, all things taken into account. I play bassoon, and the number of variables that effect tuning are staggering: reed width, strength, length. Bocal (that's the tube connecting the reed to the body of the instrument) materials, length, wall thickness, taper...the bassoon itself: how wide is the bore? how are the chimney's formed? How high are the key pads from the body, what is the u-tube made out of? How cold, or hot, is the room? Then there's the player: what's the embouchure like? How big is the oral cavity? And it goes on and on. To play any wind instrument in tune requires years of training, incredibly discipline to balance all of the variables, and above all a really good ear. It's not just punching buttons and out comes the sound. Not like a piano at all. Even the "simpler" brass instruments have their challenges. Watch any professional trumpet player and watch the third finger on the left hand as it constantly adjusts the 3-rd valve tuning slide to compensate for the overtone produced.  That's why listening to a great, virtuoso orchestra like the Berlin, LSO, Concertgebouw, Cleveland is so thrilling. They play flawlessly in tune. Amateurs on the other hand...well, not so much. BTW: there are some instruments that theoretically shouldn't have tuning issues: the strings (except on their lowest notes on each string) and the trombone. And in another sense no piano or organ ever plays in tune. To give you one example: on a piano the leading tone in C major is fixed by the length of the string. But if a good orchestra is playing in C, the leading tone is NOT the same pitch as the piano: it's slightly higher. Tuning is an enormously complex issue. And bagpipes are notoriously out of tune -- and there's nothing that can (or should!) be done about it.

bagpipes are in tune with each other, just not with a 440- or 415-orchestra.  that's not meant as a joke, in these post-early- (post-pre-Ives/Busoni-Haba?) days of microtonality, E. Blackwood etudes, etc. ... (Blackwood, not Finney. Both were sons of equally famous in their own other field parents of the same first name - Finney for a still-used mathematics textbook..., but that's no excuse for confusing them...)

I saw Glass improvise on piano for an hour or two. It took chutzpah to do what he did in public, but honestly, the musical ideas were pretty darn sparse, like events in a 10-hour Warhol film. Still, less sparse than the 90 minutes Miles Davis spent one evening practicing his trill technique in front of a rhythm section.

Eric, are you referring to Ross Lee Finney? I don't associate him with microtonality... Ben Johnston, on the other hand...his string quartets sound like meaningful music to me. I think the Harry Partch influence has kept his emotions and intellect in balance.

Circling back to the era addressed by this forum, I confess to liking early Tchaikovsky better than late. The revised second symphony sounds so fresh to me, the second string quartet so remarkably inventive. I'm more likely to play them than, say, the Pathetique or Souvenir de Florence.

Our contemporary lust for boredom will mystify many generations to come.

Alan - I like your suggestion that Glass's music sounds like it's about to introduce something, but then doesn't and instead just keeps keeping on. Pity he didn't follow  Webern's example, who at least had the decency to keep his efforts short (albeit not short enough, for some of us!).
mbhaub - our morning classical radio presenter here clearly dislikes Glass; whenever his music is played, the covert sarcasm oozes through her intros and back announcements, along with a heavy dose of apology. One reason (she has intimated) is because of the lack of respect it has for the players - and personally I would add for listeners too.
chill319 - funny you should say that, because the Souvenir de F. is one of the few pieces of Tchaik. I actually enjoy, preferably as the sextet. Perhaps that's because in my head in becomes Dvorak - whose own Op.48 Sextet is unjustly neglected.

Quote from: Amphissa on Monday 22 August 2011, 21:02
The Brazilians call the bagpipe gaita de foles, which is Portuguese for "screams of the tortured monkey".

Being Brazilian I can say that "gaita de foles" means, literally, "harmonica with bellows".

The reference to Finney was a mistake, I meant Easley Blackwood. What Finney and Blackwood have in common includes a certain relationship to their (same-name) parents of the kind that requires each having their own Wikipedia article (like the three generations of Eugene Goossens, but in different fields instead of all in music.) And my odd-relation mind makes associations on those lines sometimes which is a fact I really need to keep behind-scenes- more...

Could not resist anymore.. dont know if i dont get it or what, but i just really hate liszt and tchaikovsky.

Tony

I used to hate Liszt except for the late piano pieces; then the earlier ones began to take me by stealth (it may have been the use of Un Sospiro in Max Ophuls' Letter From an Unknown Woman). The tone poems and concertos remain mostly borderline unlistenable but I still prefer Liszt at his vapid, bombastic worst to the best of Tchaikovsky (And as for the worst of Tch., Dante, had he known it, might have included the Variations on a Rococo Theme among the tortures of the damned)

Fyrexia - yes, I agree - Tchaikovsky (PI) and Liszt - with the exception of the Hungarian Rhapsodies maybe? I've been listening to the Leslie Howard recordings, and he sym. poems and I just can't see what he's getting at...

Tchaikovsky's critical fate has always been decided by his (still) immense popularity and the high-brows frowning upon it and dismissing it for that reason. Usually, I find that those that dismiss him off-hand have either heard very little of his work (and I can't really blame someone getting bored with the Nutcracker or the Pathetique after 100+ listenings) or have based their judgment on a markedly inept performance (Solti's recordings of the symphonies, for instance). Tchaikovsky is a difficult composer to 'get right', and the most important prerequisite is to shun sentimentalism: the legendary Mravinsky recordings are, to me, still the yardstick. But Tchaikovsky's music still gives me one of the widest arrays of emotional expression of any composer, sung or otherwise. The trick is to listen to everything.

To return to the thread, my point is this: the quality and quantity of the available recordings can also lead you away from 'getting' a composer. Many 'sungs' are presented as one-trick ponies, and if you only hear, for instance, the Organ Symphony you will gain little insight into the tremendous wealth of the rest of Saint-Saëns' work.

I really don't get that dreary hymn at the end of Beethoven's ninth, it is utterly banal.  Something Stalin would have approved of!

Beethoven's 'hymn' in the finale of the 9th cast an enormous shadow over the 19th century symphony with a number of such tunes being attempted in symphonic finales. I 'get' the tune (it never fails for me) - it's the words ('alle Menschen werden Brüder', etc.) which I find so sad in the light of man's inhumanity to man in the intervening two centuries or so.

No thread has amazed me so much as this one. Many posts leave me stupéfait. One the one hand I cannot believe and understand what I read about composers such as Tchaikovsky, Liszt, Mahler, Bruckner, Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms and even Chopin, but on the other hand it is just as it is: tastes differ enormously. What I think is genial and monumental, isn't considered like that by others at all. What I consider as disgusting, sickening noise can be praised and immensely loved by others.

Just an example. I think that Mozart was the greatest genius of his time. It's very likely that he learned a lot from contemporaries, Haydn above all. However, what makes Mozart in my opinion by far the greatest classical composer are his creative skills to compose brilliant and very memorable tunes, in solo piano works, symphonies, concertos (never heard more excellent horn concerto melodies than composed by Mozart), and so on.

Rossini was right by saying that all that really matters is the melody. But that is how I see it....

It may be true that melody is the most important thing, but in modernist aesthetics melody is customarily denigrated ("The trouble with Rachmaninoff is you can't get the tunes out of your head"--Eduard Steuermann); indeed when we speak of a melodic "gift" it almost signifies something unearned, as though the composer made no intellectual effort to get it right.

Quote from: Alan Howe on Saturday 27 August 2011, 12:30
Beethoven 'hymn' in the finale of the 9th cast an enormous shadow over the 19th century symphony with a number of such tunes being attempted in symphonic finales. I 'get' the tune (it never fails for me) - it's the words ('alle Menschen werden Brüder', etc.) which I find so sad in the light of man's inhumanity to man in the intervening two centuries or so.

I find that with Beethoven, it's never so much the theme material as what he does with them.

Peter1953: I try to avoid language like 'greatest' (or even 'genius') since it suggests an objectivity in judgment that's just not there, and is unfair on a number of levels.

Quote from: Ilja on Saturday 27 August 2011, 09:17
Tchaikovsky's critical fate has always been decided by his (still) immense popularity and the high-brows frowning upon it and dismissing it for that reason. Usually, I find that those that dismiss him off-hand have either heard very little of his work

Ilja I dare say that some awkward people would dismiss a composer simply because of her/his popularity (and perhaps some of them would be attracted to an "unsung composers" forum!). But, I think you would accept that not everyone is going to like a particular composer's work, no matter how familiar they are with it, or how low/high-brow they might be, or how popular or otherwise it is. In the end, as Peter1953 said - it's all a matter of taste, and the variety of taste is truly amazing. Long may it be so... a monoculture is a depressing possibility!

I'm not so sure that melody is the most important thing in "art" music. Of course in folk music, the chants of the early church, and in popular music, melody is THE thing. But in the 19th c it was harmony that became the dominant feature. Beethoven, among others, threw off the shackles of tame harmony of earlier composers and opened up whole new vistas. The 2nd movement of Beethoven's 7th doesn't have much melody: it's the harmony that makes it interesting. Then on to Wagner and so on. What makes Tchaikovsky so memorable isn't just the melody. It's also how he harmonized it. Would the 2nd theme of the Pathetique be less effective if he had harmonized it with I-IV-V chords? No way. For me, that's what makes Mozart and to a lesser degree Haydn so boring. The harmony may be "perfect", but it's also so utterly predictable. Mozart did do some amazing experimenting in the late symphonies, and that's one of the reasons they are his most popular. If you really examine many of the works of forgotten composers, oft-times it's because the music is dogged by really dull harmonization. Every loves a good tune, but I believe it's the harmony that seals the emotional deal.

I can't forget when my old teacher of composition gave me for an exercise of harmony the melody of "Apres un reve". listening the original harmonization by Faurè after my poor attempt proved, IMHO, that melody isn't all.

sort of like asking a student to write a development section/carrying through/Durchführung for an especially imaginatively done "sonata-form" movement given only the exposition, then comparing it with what the composer actually did do, I think... some examples being much harder to predict than others, for that matter...

Ancient thread.  Never mind - I've only just read it  :) Can anyone explain to me why I find Delius so interminably boring?  I have yet to find anything by him I like except for the trivial but charming sleigh ride.  I find his harmonic progressions particularly unfamiliar and unsettling and melodically he does nothing for me either.  Help!  Loads of eminent conductors and musicologists praise him to the rafters but I can't see why.  Am I musically defective?  BTW - nearly all the other composers mentioned in this thread I enjoy to a greater or or lesser extent - just not bloomin' Fred Delius.....

What Peter1953 writes above about Mozart reminds me somewhat of some points made in a rather - very - interesting book about him by Alfred Einstein (Mozart: His Character, His Work) which I recommend highly...

Don't grieve over it! I share your response. Maybe the reason for it is that the music (and the orchestral music especially) just goes on and on and on....and nothing of much musical interest ever seems to happen. That's a rather crude answer, but an honest one!

I do make a slight exception in the case of 'A Mass of Life'. But then I suppose that rather rambles on and the tedium is only relieved by a few 'good' bits. Oh dear. Poor Delius.

Quote from: bulleid_pacific on Sunday 31 March 2013, 22:50
Ancient thread.  Never mind - I've only just read it  :) Can anyone explain to me why I find Delius so interminably boring?  I have yet to find anything by him I like except for the trivial but charming sleigh ride.  I find his harmonic progressions particularly unfamiliar and unsettling and melodically he does nothing for me either.  Help!  Loads of eminent conductors and musicologists praise him to the rafters but I can't see why.  Am I musically defective?  BTW - nearly all the other composers mentioned in this thread I enjoy to a greater or or lesser extent - just not bloomin' Fred Delius.....

Hear hear re Delius (whom I wish not to hear hear...) - I can't discern a melody, rise, fall, climax, beginning, end, it's just a kind of noise...or drone...

For decades, I also thought of Delius as a meandering drone and was bored stiff by it. Nowadays, I rather enjoy not going anywhere, and I just relax into the sloshy atmosphere he creates. It's a musical equivalent of an episode of Last of the Summer Wine ...  a couple of minor highlights, otherwise not much happening, but all located in an atmosphere of unruffled acceptance, and quiet good humour. Despite the American and European influences of which the musicologists speak, to my ears Delius is emblematic of English reserve, and even Paris - Song of a Great City, sounds to me like a portrait of an English county town - on a Sunday!  :)

As to Delius actually a (no longer in my possession) commercial tape of his 3 violin sonatas and cello sonata much improved my opinion of him, for what that's worth. (Sorabji, who was very much a Delius fan, didn't care for several of those works, I think (seem to recall reading that he wrote), finding Delius often though not always hemmed in by a perceived need to conform to pre-existing formal rules when the word sonata or concerto popped up - the violin concerto, for instance, excepted.  ... .Anyway.)

I'm glad I'm not the only Delius lover.  You can't account for taste.  he was not a great symphonist and no one would argue that he was.  By the same token, he was something of a miniaturist- short, lovely tone pictures.  And among my favorites are Sea Drift and Idyll: I Once Passed Through a populous city.......

Jerry

I love Delius, but definitely need to be in the right mood. And I can see that he is not to everyone's taste and never will be

A good piece to try is the piano concerto. A Delius piano concerto seems almost like a contradiction in terms, but it's a great piece with a really beautiful "big tune".

A piece I would love to hear again is "The Shocking Affair" by Arthur Hutchings. It consists of a set of variations on "Widdecombe Fair", each in the style of a different British composer, from Purcell to Walton. The Delius variation is hilarious. It ends with a "pom tiddly-om-pom, pom pom!" in long drawn-out harmonies: "po-om tid-elly om pommm, po-o-o-om pommmmmm". (I hope that is intelligible!)

I'm from Bradford, so I feel I have to go in and bat for our native composer... but there could be a more incongruous composer/birthplace combination then Delius and Bradford?

I tend to prefer the shorter 'popular' pieces such as 'First Cuckoo in Spring', 'Summer Night on the River', 'Walk to the Paradise Garden' etc.  Apparently the Paradise Garden was a pub, so I'm all in favour of that.

When I do hear his bigger pieces, I'm always surprised at just how big they are.  And a tough prospect so sit through, I have to say.

I thought the Paradise Garden was an excerpt from A Village Romeo and Juliet (the interlude between scenes 5 and 6 - " Self‑conscious, they leave the fair, and make for the Paradise Garden, another dancing place. ...   Scene VI. The vagabonds are heard in the distance before the curtain rises. When it does, it is to reveal a dilapidated country house, now used as an inn."... (Synopsis to A Village Romeo and Juliet (http://www.steenslid.com/music/delius/lyrics/villageromeojuliet.htm))

"...could be a more incongruous composer/birthplace combination then Delius and Bradford?"

How about Havergal Brian and Stoke-on-Trent? Dreadful place! No wonder Brian got out when young.

And Eric of course is quite right - the 'Walk to the Paradise Garden' is an interlude to the opera A Village Romeo & Juliet (though that interlude is often performed in orchestral concerts).

I've felt mildly guilty since posting that dismissive comment on Delius a few hours ago, and have been thinking I'll give this opera another go. Somewhere in the store room is the Argo recording conducted by Mackerras - and from 20 years ago or so I remember it as a quite wonderful thing. (The other Delius operas just aren't in the same league).

I'm curious about "A Mass of Life", myself- a Delius work much praised by Brian.  Going to put that on my listening list... (unsung music by a sung composer?)

QuoteHow about Havergal Brian and Stoke-on-Trent? Dreadful place!

Seems an entirely appropriate place, then, to me. ::)

Why, did Brian go through a Rastafarian period?

 ;D Very good, Eric!

Quote from: eschiss1 on Monday 01 April 2013, 20:52
I'm curious about "A Mass of Life", myself- a Delius work much praised by Brian.  Going to put that on my listening list... (unsung music by a sung composer?)

Hardly unsung, I would say. Besides, it's a choral piece, of course it is sung!

A Mass of Life has been recorded, but is definitely unsung. Not the same thing at all.

Handel, Reger and Bruckner.  I've really tried to understand all three of these composers even going to concerts to see if it makes any difference  I have to switch off Handel at times, almost injuring myself in the process. It is torture for me.  Reger just bores and as for Bruckner, it is all much of the same, it doesn't seem to lead anywhere, though I don't feel the necessity to rush to the off switch, which I do with Handel and The Archers signature tune.

Handel:  I had a vinyl box set of the Concerti Grossi, Op 3 and Op 6, (ASMF, not period instruments) and I would have to say I got more joy and pleasure out of that box than almost anything else I've owned. 

I'm not particularly a lover of Baroque music, but those concertos ought to appeal to almost anyone, I would have thought.

I agree that some sections of Bruckner symphonies might be boring.. But the Scherzo of each symphony are great! Hands down  the best section to  listen to.  ;)

I'll pitch in my tuppenneth-worth.

Brahms. Sad to say, I struggle with a lot of Brahms, despite recognising that there is a great technician at work. However, too much Brahms lacks 'soul' for me and some of it is, to my ears, just downright turgid (I nearly cried with boredom during a performance of Ein deutsches Requiem several years ago).
Bruch. Poor Brahms (and that oh-so-overplayed First Violin Concerto; I can't bear to hear it anymore).
Chopin. I know he was very important in the development of the piano and piano music, but there's just too much effete fiddle-faddling for me. And a composer who can't write a single piece that doesn't involve the piano has to be viewed with a little suspicion in my view.
Philip Glass. Glad to see I am not alone here. Glass is to me the "emperor's new clothes" of music - greatly lauded (by those who think they should), marketed to the point of hype and so over-performed it makes me despair. I don't have a problem with a lot of so-called 'minimalist' music per se, just the charlatan Glass. The exceptions to this are his trilogy of film scores, Koyaanisqatsi, Powaqqatsi and Naqoyqatsi, all of which I think are very effective in the context of the films they accompany.
Hovhaness. Urged repeatedly by people who claim to love this music ("try THIS piece, or THAT piece") I have really tried to find something of substance in Hovhaness's music. However, I have failed to do so; to my ears, his music is overblown, over-praised second-rate film music (and I LOVE first-rate film music, make no mistake) feebly wrapped-up in quasi-symphonic form.
Michael Nyman. With one or two notable exceptions, my comments about Glass above could equally be applied to Nyman.

To those of you who struggle with Bruckner (and I can see why people might), I urge you to try recordings by Gunther Wand and, more recently, Donald Runnicles. These conductors REALLY know what Bruckner was about and manage to communicate it more successfully than anyone else.

...and start with Symphony No.7. Karajan's your man here, either for EMI or DG.

Quote from: Alan Howe on Tuesday 02 April 2013, 09:30
A Mass of Life has been recorded, but is definitely unsung. Not the same thing at all.

It's been recorded four times I think. It's not performed that often, because it requires such large resources. One would need to compare it to the number of performances of say, Berlioz's Requiem. It's not as if few people knew of its existence, as one might say of Wagner's Das Liebesmahl der Apostel, for instance.

I frankly doubt whether the average music lover has heard of, let alone heard, Delius' mass.

And - if they had encountered it - would have been utterly at sea with its sung text deriving from Nietzsche.

Actually, Gauk, I think one reason why it is so rarely performed is not so much on account of the large resources required but because it is the absolute devil to pull off satisfactorily. Not the sort of thing to stake your credentials as a conductor upon!

Hmmm ... I didn't know Delius is a "sung" composer. He's certainly not here in the U.S.

Apologies for continuing the tangent, but just wanted to check - Delius performances in this next year in the US (as noted @ Delius.org.uk (http://www.delius.org.uk/forthcomingconcerts.htm), anyway) include-
(just missed: violin sonata no.3 arranged by Tertis for viola, in Washington DC, 24 March, with works by Benjamin Dale, Bowen and Brahms)
*song recital with works by Delius (April 7, hosted by the German Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia)
*his Romance for cello and piano in a cello concert on April 14th; and yes, that's it that they know of, for awhile. Hrm. Ok- no argument...

Bruckner? I get them all. I enjoy every single note. Cannot be long enough. No better advocate than the KCO under the baton of Bernard Haitink. IM more than HO of course.
I don't like Reger. Too mechanical. Music is not mathematics. Well, maybe a lot of modern music is, but that's to my ears hardly anything else than a curious way of using instruments. In that case I prefer Roger Waters. But how sung is Reger anyway?

Reger and Szymanowski and others, at a guess here if I may, fall into a limbo of too sung by one standard and definitely unsung by another :) (admittedly, Szymanowski after a certain point wouldn't particularly qualify for this forum anyhow because of the sort-of-impressionism (... or something) of his middle works... Enescu comes to mind for some reason as a very vague parallel- likewise very original/imaginatively new (original has this connotation of "returning to origins" that makes me think of Hubay's Venus de Milo with its attempt to evoke a Greek scale- and similar things... - but not really that much else...), modern later works (in a different way).)

Quote from: Alan Howe on Tuesday 02 April 2013, 18:19
...and start with Symphony No.7.

Oddly enough, Bruckner 7 was the second piece of music I ever listened to (exploring the family LP collection at random). Which probably explains a lot.

I agree partially about Chopin. He did write some great music, but a lot of warbling too, and I cannot understand why anyone bothers with those tedious piano concertos.  Definitely not a "rounded" composer in terms of competence, but you might say that about Verdi as well.

Quote from: Gauk on Wednesday 03 April 2013, 08:39
I agree partially about Chopin. He did write some great music, but a lot of warbling too, and I cannot understand why anyone bothers with those tedious piano concertos.  Definitely not a "rounded" composer in terms of competence, but you might say that about Verdi as well.

Both were specialists - but I can't think of two more rounded specialists in their particular fields. If there's a more rounded, life-enhancing opera than Falstaff, I don't know it...

Re Bruckner: Many commentators say his 4th, but I agree with Alan that the 7th might the best place to start. I also have a soft spot for the String Quintet.

I have to respond re Delius: The few early performances in New York were not well received, and there has been no subsequent champion in the US comparable to Beecham in Europe. It has been left to Floridians - notably Jacksonville University - to promotes his music, which it does with a passion.

Without being exactly 'popular', his music seems to be consistently represented in performance (e,g, Proms 2012; A Mass of Life was the opening concert of the 2012 Edinburgh Festival; and, see http://www.delius.org.uk/forthcomingconcerts.htm for an example of forthcoming Delius concerts), on CD (The Delius Society currently lists 16 new releases devoted exclusively or mostly to Delius), and on the radio - a steady stream. I haven't looked at representation in the rest of Europe, but he also gets a fair go here in Australia

In February 2012 Delius was one of ten prominent Britons honoured by the Royal Mail in the "Britons of Distinction" stamps set, and from my Anglo-Australian perspective, I couldn't possibly regard him as unsung, even if his qualities are not widely recognized in the US.

Quote from: Gauk on Wednesday 03 April 2013, 08:39

I agree partially about Chopin. He did write some great music, but a lot of warbling too, and I cannot understand why anyone bothers with those tedious piano concertos.  Definitely not a "rounded" composer in terms of competence, but you might say that about Verdi as well.

The Requiem (OK, a sacred, unstaged opera...!)?
Four Sacred Songs?
String Quartet in E minor (WELL worth a listen!)?

A rounded composer doesn't have to have written in every genre. Depth of exploration of that genre and originality of compositional thought are much more important. Otherwise we write off Wagner and Bruckner too.

Are there two more influential operatic composers from the nineteenth century than Verdi and Wagner? Both are pretty rounded composers in terms of the depth and breadth of the world that is to be found in their compositions.

Sung composers I just don't get (or maybe just don't enjoy) , since I haven't answered the question myself and there's a long enough list - up there would be Offenbach. (Then again, for me those obligatory ballet sequences have only really worked when done by Tchaikovsky, Glazunov, a few others who made music, and rather good music, out of them, not just "is it over yet?" sequences of not-enjoyable-enough dances.)

At least with Verdi I really like the string quartet and, the once or twice I've heard it, the Requiem, and the rest will probably follow in due course, maybe starting with Otello...

Ah Bruckner - i guess either you love him or pretty much dislike him.  The first Bruckner i ever heard was the 7th under Skrowaczewski  and while I was being captivated, about a fourth of the audiene walked out about 3/4ths of the way through.  But Minnesota audiences now cheer wildly - an 8th last season brought the audience to its feet.

For a starter, tho, I love his 9th and the old Bruno Walter Columbia recording.....

Jerry

By "rounded", I specifically mean someone who explored most musical genres, not someone whose output was 95% operas, or piano music, or symphonies. And writing ONE string quartet doesn't make Verdi less of an opera specialist.

That said, of course no-one is suggesting that Wagner or Verdi were bad composers because they stuck mostly to operas. But personally, I am less drawn to composers who were specialists in one mode of output, with the possible exception of Bruckner.

By 'rounded', you really mean 'all-round' in the sense of 'versatile'. The dictionary definition of rounded' is 'full', 'mature' or 'complete' - and certainly such specialists as Wagner, Verdi and Bruckner were complete musicians and mature composers. Hence the confusion being perpetuated here.

There's no problem in being drawn to versatile composers; it's simply that this shouldn't be a reason to regard them as necessarily superior to their more specialist counterparts. 

Quote from: Alan Howe on Wednesday 03 April 2013, 22:16
By 'rounded', you really mean 'all-round' in the sense of 'versatile'.

Yes, but "all-round composer" sounds stilted, and "versatile composer" is not quite the same. I hoped the sense was clear from the context.

Quote from: Alan Howe on Wednesday 03 April 2013, 22:16
There's no problem in being drawn to versatile composers; it's simply that this shouldn't be a reason to regard them as necessarily superior to their more specialist counterparts.

Of course, but the thread is about composers that you just "don't get", and I have an irrational distrust of composers who were such specialists that they seldom strayed from one single medium. Chopin being a case in point, which is how we got on to this. Not, though, to the point where I won't listen to them or can't enjoy their music.

I don't get Schumann. It is restrained romanticism.

He lacked the ability to let himself go and the vast majority of his piano works bore me.

Thal

My nominees have mostly been suggested already: Chopin (pretty, but too flowery for me), Bruckner (all those pauses and just over-long) and Delius (with a couple of exceptions the music doesn't go anywhere). I'll add Wagner whose orchestral world I absolutely love, but try as I may (and despite loving opera as a rule) I can get no pleasure from his vocal writing. As always, I recognise that these blocks are my loss and I'm not making a case denigrating any of these composers, they just don't work for me.

Quote from: Gauk on Thursday 04 April 2013, 07:56..."all-round composer" sounds stilted, and "versatile composer" is not quite the same. I hoped the sense was clear from the context...I have an irrational distrust of composers who were such specialists that they seldom strayed from one single medium

1. 'All-round composer' is perfectly good English. Not stilted at all. Try googling the phrase!
2. 'Versatile' is in fact a virtual synonym for 'all-round'. See:
http://dictionary.reverso.net/english-synonyms/versatile (http://dictionary.reverso.net/english-synonyms/versatile)
3. The sense wasn't clear at all because of the confusion of 'rounded' with 'all-round'.
4. The distrust described is indeed irrational. Why should one 'distrust' a composer of operas such as Verdi? Should one distrust a poet because he didn't write novels as well? Or a painter of impressionist nature scenes because he didn't do portraits too?

Re Schumann: that's a criticism I usually hear of Mendelssohn (outside of   the F minor string quartet and a few other works...) - and as to Schumann I suppose I can see it somewhat the A minor (1st, not 3rd op posth) violin sonata seems mostly to me to be an exception (likewise the 2nd piano sonata), likewise some other works, but "seems" is the keyword and this is all subjective anycase...

Can I say Mahler?  (runs away and hides...)
Don't know why, I have tried but his music just doesn't connect with me somehow.

We're all permitted not to 'get' particular composers. The problem arises when a subjective view is paraded as having some sort of objective justification. Much better to do what my fellow moderator has done here and simply acknowledge one's own subjective preferences and failings. For example, I don't really 'get' organ composers; however, I wouldn't regard them as somehow suspect or of less value than their more versatile colleagues.

Actually, I read more and more posts I just don't 'get', I'm sorry to say. All about sung composers I admire. Well, everyone to his taste I suppose.

I agree, Peter. But this thread is all about the subjective issue of 'not getting' particular composers, so there are bound to be expressions of opinion which we just 'don't get', precisely because they are subjective.

I have a similar problem as Peter. Quite simply, I don't understand the point of this thread at all. How is anyone else any wiser from reading the confession that a particular friend on the forum happens not to "get" a particular composer? (And what on earth does "get" mean here?) If someone says they don't 'get' for example the proverbial Piotr Zak are the rest of us supposed to throw up hands in horror, or weep with sympathy, or emit a gentle 'tut, tut', or what?

Seems to me a quite pointless thread. Clearly I don't 'get' it at all.

Well, this is the problem with pure subjectivism - i.e. opinions without proper reasons with which we can all engage.

Perhaps we'd better leave this thread here. Of course, nobody was forced to participate in it...

Peters: it's simple. Just ignore the thread!

Quote from: petershott@btinternet.com on Thursday 04 April 2013, 21:54
I have a similar problem as Peter. Quite simply, I don't understand the point of this thread at all. How is anyone else any wiser from reading the confession that a particular friend on the forum happens not to "get" a particular composer? (And what on earth does "get" mean here?) If someone says they don't 'get' for example the proverbial Piotr Zak are the rest of us supposed to throw up hands in horror, or weep with sympathy, or emit a gentle 'tut, tut', or what?

Seems to me a quite pointless thread. Clearly I don't 'get' it at all.

Interest? A bit of fun?

I actually find it interesting to read about what makes other music lovers tick (or not). I don't feel I need any the wiser from some threads; some are just flippant and a light-hearted. Nothing wrong with that in my book.

All taste is essentially irrational, as Chesterton pointed out: remarks such as "if you like X then you ought to like Y" are wrong, because liking is not logical. Thus it is important not to confuse judgements about whether you like a work or a composer with a judgement about the quality of that composer's work. One can not like Schumann's music and still recognise his genius.

But to try and put the thread back on track, I think the idea of "not getting" a composer is not a question of liking but a question of understanding. I really had this issue with Scriabin when I first encountered his music. He sounded like the sort of composer I ought to enjoy, but whenever I heard any of his music, I had real difficulty in comprehending the language. However, I decided this was my fault and not Scriabin's. So one day I borrowed a copy of the score of Prometheus (it was Sir Hamilton Harty's conducting score with his pencil markings; amazing that in those days one could borrow such an item), and spent an afternoon listening to the LP about five times in succession.

On the fifth hearing it was like a curtain coming down, and the music suddenly became accessible. What I found really interesting was that after this experience, I did not have to repeat the exercise with (for instance) each piano sonata. Every new piece of Scriabin I listened to afterwards was enjoyable at first hearing.

So it is possible to overcome a barrier between a listener and a particular composer.

Quote from: petershott@btinternet.com on Thursday 04 April 2013, 21:54
I have a similar problem as Peter. Quite simply, I don't understand the point of this thread at all. How is anyone else any wiser from reading the confession that a particular friend on the forum happens not to "get" a particular composer? (And what on earth does "get" mean here?) If someone says they don't 'get' for example the proverbial Piotr Zak are the rest of us supposed to throw up hands in horror, or weep with sympathy, or emit a gentle 'tut, tut', or what?

Seems to me a quite pointless thread. Clearly I don't 'get' it at all.

I started this thread, and the point was this: to explore whether there are better ways in to a composer that is just not working for you. So in my opening thread I also also what pieces others would suggest to open up such a composer.  For example, I would like to enjoy Mahler, honestly I would. He seems to lighten up the worlds of others. But not mine.  So maybe others who do like Mahler, or who have come round to Mahler, can suggest pieces or recordings that might open him up for me.

All threads like these are likely to end in tears, no matter how mature the posters.

It is difficult, but best to leave them alone.

Thal

Well, Thal, no tears for me although some posts leave me flabbergasted. I cannot just simply ignore this thread, on the contrary. I'm really interested in what fellow members think and write. And I respect other opinions, how different they are from mine. Chopin too flowery? I'm a bit stupéfait. Mark, what do you precisely mean by flowery?

Quote from: Gauk on Friday 05 April 2013, 11:36
All taste is essentially irrational

Really? 'Irrational'...
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/irrational  (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/irrational)
...means 'inconsistent with reason or logic; illogical; absurd'.
That would mean that we couldn't even discuss the subject in a reasoned way. Of course, discussing personal antipathies is tricky, but I don't believe my likes/dislikes cannot be explored rationally. For example, I don't 'get' later Schoenberg because he is writing in a language which deliberately undermines the basics of music.

Karajan gave an interview during the period when he was recording his third cycle of Beethoven symphonies. In it he said that he took tapes of the performances to his place in Switzerland and when he listened to them there, they were *all wrong*. Back in Berlin they sounded right. He concluded that his systemic (metabolic?) response to environment affected his experience of music.

I have found that some music I didn't get at 3 in the afternoon really got to me at 3 in the morning. At the same sea level.

(I have this image of Schoenberg "deliberately undermining the basics of music" that contradicts absolutely everything he ever said or wrote (on paper or in score) , let alone... ah well. Never mind, never mind, never mind... )

Christopher says that one reason for starting this thread was to hear about our experiences of attempting to change our opinions about composers that we don't "get" or don't enjoy.

My own experience of Brahms and Mahler shows that one can sometimes "see the light" and embrace music that one has - perhaps even for many years - thoroughly disliked. I've described my Brahms awakening elsewhere on the forum; my Mahler awakening was equally sudden, and followed seeing Russell's film Mahler at the cinema in about 1974. It was like the proverbial light bulb being switched on! I soon decided that were I marooned on Roy Plomley's desert island and could take the symphonies of only one composer it would be those of Mahler, and that would still be my choice.

However, I think changes of musical taste usually occur very slowly. With these two exceptions, my tastes in classical music have largely remained the same for over 50 years, and those composers I have never "got" I still don't get!  ::)

That could be, or already has been, a thread in itself; for me it was Liszt, with the catalyst- not the cause, I hope, the proximate cause should ideally be relistening to the music itself :D - being reading Alan Walker's fine biography and seeing that what was getting between me and the music, was not the music but my mistaken preconceptions about e.g. the symphonic poems...

Quote from: Alan Howe on Friday 05 April 2013, 16:32

Quote from: Gauk on Friday 05 April 2013, 11:36
All taste is essentially irrational

Really? 'Irrational'...
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/irrational  (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/irrational)
...means 'inconsistent with reason or logic; illogical; absurd'.
That would mean that we couldn't even discuss the subject in a reasoned way.

Absolutely. Is it logical to prefer tea to coffee or vice versa? Can I persuade you to like coffee if you don't?

I like tea AND coffee. I just don't like Gershwin.

I like both tea and coffee - and I can tell you why. Tea is more refreshing, so I would choose it, say, eight times out of ten. However, I do love the flavour of a good, strong coffee - and I like its ability to give me a caffeine kick when I want it. Perfectly logical, actually, because the two drinks do different things...

I'm afraid I want people at least to try to explain their preferences/dislikes/'don't get its' when it comes to music.

Gershwin's particular melding of jazz elements within a classical framework (however much assistance he had) just present themselves to me as an unwholesome chimera. I cringe every time I hear the opening of An American In Paris. I love jazz. I love classical music of all eras. But HIS particular mixture sends me running for the hills. Doesn't mean it's intrinsically bad - just means I don't care for it.
And then there's ol' Brahms. Love Brahms chamber music; songs; choral works. Pretty much his entire output - except for the symphonies. The symphonies just do not click with me....

But hey, Brahms went to sleep whilst Liszt played his piano sonata to him. I can't imagine that. Maybe he had low blood sugar.

Yes, Brahms going to sleep during Liszt's Piano Sonata is an extraordinary historical detail, isn't it? Didn't he 'get it'? Or had he simply had too much bratwurst and beer beforehand?

"I like oboe sonatas because of the wonderful reedy sound."
"I don't like oboe sonatas because of the horrible reedy sound."

Which is more logical? It comes down to the old saying "de gustibus non disputandum".

I'm not advocating that people should post things that just say "I like Brahms"; I'm absolutely with you there. But equally, "I like Brahms because his music is gorgeous" is also not very helpful.

What perhaps is useful in this thread is accounts of overcoming bafflement, which I think was the OP's intention, and the recipe seems to be heavy immersion in the "difficult" music. I'm sure it is easier to overcome a failure to understand something than an aversion to a composer's style.

Quote from: Gauk on Sunday 07 April 2013, 16:37
"I like oboe sonatas because of the wonderful reedy sound."
"I don't like oboe sonatas because of the horrible reedy sound."

Which is more logical? It comes down to the old saying "de gustibus non disputandum".

Well, it's possible...
(a) that the sound is actually needlessly reedy in comparison with most other oboes and therefore worthy of criticism;
(b) that the sound is actually no more reedy than any other oboe and that the listener hasn't really taken the time to accustom him/herself to the sound - and needs to try harder!
(c) that the reedy sound is required by/suited to the music involved.
(d) that the reedy sound is characteristic of a certain national style of playing and should be accommodated accordingly.

I find the two reactions quoted absolutely meaningless without the context in which they would be made. And if a reviewer came up with such a remark without further comment I'd regard it as lazy journalism in the extreme.

I'd ask (yes, I know, hypothetically/analogously, therefore the I would ask) "why bring sonatas into it? if what you don't like is the oboe sound, then what does it matter if it's an oboe sonata, an oboe suite, an oboe concerto, concertpiece,..."? (... people..)

Quote from: Gauk on Sunday 07 April 2013, 16:37
"I like oboe sonatas because of the wonderful reedy sound."
"I don't like oboe sonatas because of the horrible reedy sound."

Which is more logical? It comes down to the old saying "de gustibus non disputandum".

I'm not advocating that people should post things that just say "I like Brahms"; I'm absolutely with you there. But equally, "I like Brahms because his music is gorgeous" is also not very helpful.

What perhaps is useful in this thread is accounts of overcoming bafflement, which I think was the OP's intention, and the recipe seems to be heavy immersion in the "difficult" music. I'm sure it is easier to overcome a failure to understand something than an aversion to a composer's style.

I have a very strong aversion to both Boulez, and buttermilk.  You could immerse me in a rank mixture of both for a year - and I would emerge none the wiser, and none the happier.  Sometimes there isn't a ten volume proustian answer as to why one likes or does not like a particular composer. Strong reactions are more often than not visceral ones.  If any desire to explore the reasons as to why a particular person does not care for a particular thing... well, that's a shadow-laden closet that's surely unique to every individual.
Why do I like early Penderecki, and tonic water straight? Because they taste good to me.
Selah...

But I'll wager you could tell me why you can't bear Boulez if you tried. I'd be amazed if you couldn't give any reasons at all. Go on, give it a go - and I'll bet a number of us would agree.

For example, as a starting-point one might argue that, once music has abandoned recognisable melody, harmony and rhythm, it ceases to be music and becomes something more akin to incomprehensible sound-patterns or mathematically constructed noise. Any good?

As what you might call an outsider to this forum, not a regular contributor episodes like this remind me why I don't join in very much. The real tone of some the comments here shines through the polite veneer and the obsessive way a reasonable poster is worried away at by an admin verges on baiting and not for the first time. . I'm sure it'll  all be tidied up soon and threads will be frozen and posts selectively deleted. I love this site for all it's opened up to me but, goodness me, how does this pettiness look to a newcomer or a potential one or artists and producers in the record industry???  :(

Quote from: Alan Howe on Sunday 07 April 2013, 19:25
But I'll wager you could tell me why you can't bear Boulez if you tried. I'd be amazed if you couldn't give any reasons at all. Go on, give it a go - and I'll bet a number of us would agree.

For example, as a starting-point one might argue that, once music has abandoned recognisable melody, harmony and rhythm, it ceases to be music and becomes something more akin to incomprehensible sound-patterns or mathematically constructed noise. Any good?

Alan, it doesn't even get that far. Boulez - before any analytical or personal aesthetics can kick in - literally gives me a headache. It is such an unsavory aural cocoon of studied dissonance that out-clevers the self-realized elite (who delight in "out-clevering" themselves). I've heard rumblings at a fork lift repair garage that were both more appealing AND more profound.  And, many of the connoisseurs of this ping bang dithering treat it as something akin to a religion - and God help the uninitiated bumpkins who do not bow the knee to said naked emperor...

As for myself, I'll opt for the fiery furnace.

But, to those who relish the relish - please wear headphones  :)

I'll settle for that. Great answer!

khorovod- rather good question.

Quote from: khorovod on Sunday 07 April 2013, 19:46
...the obsessive way a reasonable poster is worried away at by an admin verges on baiting and not for the first time.

The problem is that a thread like this can easily become a mere exchange of names of composers we 'just don't get' - no explanations, nothing. And that would be very, very boring. So, if folk feel they have been 'baited', I humbly apologise - but 'resistance is futile': I want your elaborations, please!! And if that makes me appear rather too Borg-like...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borg_%28Star_Trek%29 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borg_%28Star_Trek%29)
...don't worry, it's for the good of the forum.

Anyway, as I said: humble apologies to anyone who feels I've worried away at them excessively.

Quote from: Alan Howe on Monday 08 April 2013, 05:11

Quote from: khorovod on Sunday 07 April 2013, 19:46
...the obsessive way a reasonable poster is worried away at by an admin verges on baiting and not for the first time.

The problem is that a thread like this can easily become a mere exchange of names of composers we 'just don't get' - no explanations, nothing. And that would be very, very boring. So, if folk feel they have been 'baited', I humbly apologise - but 'resistance is futile': I want your elaborations, please!! And if that makes me appear rather too Borg-like...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borg_%28Star_Trek%29 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borg_%28Star_Trek%29)
...don't worry, it's for the good of the forum.

Anyway, as I said: humble apologies to anyone who feels I've worried away at them excessively.

Personally I didn't feel "baited" in the slightest. I welcome an opportunity to vent  ;)

To say you "don't get" Boulez is to say you don't understand him (as in "I don't get that joke").

So the discussion then becomes one of the musical language used by Boulez and the musical language understood by any particular listener. Personally, I have reservations about criticising what I don't understand if my lack of comprehension might be due to insufficient effort on my part to understand it (rather than it just being unintelligible nonsense).

But that, I think, is a subject for a different forum.

I've been following this thread with great interest since the beginning and am wondering whether the issue is not so much not getting a particular composer as not getting the reputation. The difference is significant insofar as extramusical demands and expectations often contribute to the latter which many unsung composers do not fulfill regardless of the stand-alone quality of their music. Do a greater degree than matters of taste, the culture politics of reputation can be analyzed with regard to the sung and unsung.

Quote from: Gauk on Monday 08 April 2013, 22:02
To say you "don't get" Boulez is to say you don't understand him (as in "I don't get that joke").

So the discussion then becomes one of the musical language used by Boulez and the musical language understood by any particular listener. Personally, I have reservations about criticising what I don't understand if my lack of comprehension might be due to insufficient effort on my part to understand it (rather than it just being unintelligible nonsense).

But that, I think, is a subject for a different forum.

Ummm, Gauk... allow me to simplify my language a bit - to avoid any further confusion.

I GET Boulez. I know what he's up to (I read books). I just do not LIKE Boulez in the same way that I do not like the taste of buttermilk, or the fragrance of death (I get those too, BTW). What I find to be repellent I do not choose to embrace. Doesn't mean that it is intrinsically bad, just that it is not an avenue that I choose to pursue - given the brevity of an average of 85 or so years of life upon this tattered globe. Should I be blessed with the longevity of a Methuselah I might devote an afternoon to his language, but given the unlikelihood of this, I shall, with all politeness, defer. This is a personal choice dictated by personal taste. If any enjoy this particular composers by-product, well then God bless you, and depart in peace. But I would implore you - for the sake of comity - do not cast aspersions on a individual's intellect simply because he may not choose embrace your particular teddy bear.

Now, let's all be happy. It's springtime, and the sun has got his hat on (hip hip hip hurray).

Good post. I too know enough about Boulez to have an inkling what he might be up to, but I have come to the conclusion that, if I can't manage later Schoenberg, I'm very unlikely to grasp Boulez. And then for me the aversion factor kicks in. Why, I ask myself, should I spend any time at all on music (let's concede that it's music for the sake of argument) that is so impenetrable to the average listener which I count myself as? After all, there's so much more to discover - and rediscover in my own existing collection! Knowing that Boulez was an iconoclast as a younger man - with serialism having been adopted as the sole acceptable method of composition - I also find I have a philosophical objection to his compositions, i.e. a rejection of his musical totalitarianism.

Anyway, I think Boulez has had his day. We have moved beyond musical modernism into a postmodern world in which composers employ a pick and mix approach according to their compositional tastes. There's no way back. Which has left open the door for composers who deliberately compose in continuity with the past - but which has left the musical world in general in flux and without moorings.

In comparison with all this, 'not getting' particular composers that fit UC's stated remit seems a relatively straightforward task. It involves time, effort - and possibly a Damascus Road experience...

Having collected, listened to and studied "Classical" music for about 70 years, here's my humble take.  Many, many friends over the years, having been coerced into listening to something I thought was stunning, have said, "Well, I just don't understand(or sometimes the word is "appreciate") classical music".  My response has always been the same - you don't have to understand it, it's a question of whether you like what you hear or not.   If you like it, you probably appreciate it.  You may not understand it, but so what?

I don't Like Boulez and his ilk.  I've asked numerous "knowledgeable" friends to explain to me how to understand it.  Almost to a person, they don't even try.   Usually accompanied by that "Uncultered Boob" look.  Which simply reinforces my already biased opinion......  I neither envy them nor disparage their tastes.  They have theirs, I have mine.   Although I have noted that almost without exception, they always stick around for the Beethoven, or Bruckner or Brahms or whoevers works closes the program.  Something I probably would not do if the Boulez were the final work on the program.  But of course, the knowledgeable music director ain't about to build his program THAT way.......

J

Quote from: jerfilm on Tuesday 09 April 2013, 19:02
My response has always been the same - you don't have to understand it, it's a question of whether you like what you hear or not. If you like it, you probably appreciate it.  You may not understand it, but so what?

I have often 'not liked' a piece of music I have heard for the first time. That was definitely true with regard to The Rite of Spring, which I now enjoy listening to immensely - but I had to do a lot of listening to 'get' the idiom and I'm glad I did. Mind you, I wouldn't play it to someone unfamiliar with classical music - any more than I would Act 1 of Parsifal or Bruckner 9.

Quote from: jerfilm on Tuesday 09 April 2013, 19:02

I don't Like Boulez and his ilk.  I've asked numerous "knowledgeable" friends to explain to me how to understand it.  Almost to a person, they don't even try.   

I was once told that I am not intelligent enough to appreciate Boulez and others like him.

I will happily remain blissfully dim witted.

Thal

Quote from: jerfilm on Tuesday 09 April 2013, 19:02
Having collected, listened to and studied "Classical" music for about 70 years, here's my humble take.  Many, many friends over the years, having been coerced into listening to something I thought was stunning, have said, "Well, I just don't understand(or sometimes the word is "appreciate") classical music".  My response has always been the same - you don't have to understand it, it's a question of whether you like what you hear or not.   If you like it, you probably appreciate it.  You may not understand it, but so what?

Well, this is a good question. Firstly, I would say there is a skill set for appreciating music that many people do not have. Listening to music by Schumann involves a different class of mental activity than listening to popular music. People who say they "don't appreciate classical music" are listening to it in the wrong way; for instance, they expect rhythm to be pointed out in the most obvious, crude way, with a constant drum track. They can be lost without this sort of ever-present signpost. It can for them be like someone unable to read opening a novel.

Secondly, there are different levels of understanding of music. There is a technical level of understanding that a composer or musicologist needs, where you can write things like "towards the end of the development the composer employs a shifting series of chords based on piling up fourths, while carefully avoiding the dominant". The average listener does not need this. But a good listener DOES have another level of understanding, which operates at a non-linguistic level, in which you follow what is going on, even if you lack the vocabulary to express it.

And it is this, I think, that allows us to form judgements about pieces. If you listen to a piece and find it a really satisfying musical experience, this may be because you have understood the composer's argument intuitively. Alternatively, either (a) you didn't understand the work sufficiently - maybe you will on repeated hearing - or (b) there simply wasn't anything interesting to understand.

While having a good time with the music of some of the aforementioned composers like Reger, Messiaen and Boulez I have but a very limited interest for Mahler, Britten and Bartok. And I still haven't learned to like Schubert, he's so... full of feelings. What's the cynic's way to Schubert?

(I may as well add Stravinsky as well as Offenbach - and the Stravinsky I -do- get is more pieces like Apollon musagete, with its saddening finale, the Debussy-memorial Symphonies of Wind Instruments... and sometimes the Symphony in C and Symphony in 3 movements too, sometimes... , or some of the very intriguing late pieces, late the Piano Movements and the Huxley Variations... but the Rite, Petrouchka, most of the neoclassical work- mostly dull to my ears, so far, I think, and much too much rhythm and pseudo-counterpoint rather than counterpoint, then rhythm to prevent monotony (or other things; I know there are many other approaches, I know Brahms was unquestioned king of the hemiola, etc. ... but!...) in my opinion.)

I can see why Brahms would say that, so different was his concept of the symphony from that of Bruckner. Personally, I'll take both...

Yet he held some degree of regard for him. He DID show up at Bruckner's funeral - even if he didn't actually go inside the church...  :P

One thing that might help the approach to Bruckner is reading Robert Simpson's chapter on Bruckner's symphonies in the two-volume study "The Symphony" (ed. Simpson, publ. David & Charles).

Quote from: kolaboy on Wednesday 17 April 2013, 22:02
Yet he held some degree of regard for him. He DID show up at Bruckner's funeral - even if he didn't actually go inside the church...  :P

The story has it that as the procession left the church, he walked away muttering something along the lines of "Soon it will be my turn".

I don't find any pleasure in the bulk of Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Bach, and most of the standard repertoire. I still find great value in Brahms, CPE Bach, and much of the music written since 1900. For me, Mahler is moving at times, but undisciplined and self-indulgent...Bruckner, Reger and others of that ilk, a bore. Rachmaninoff is a "God" for me.

For me, there is a difference in what I like and what I respect. After several semesters of counterpoint, and playing quite a bit of his music, I have great respect for the music of JS Bach, yet I will almost never listen to it. I can admire the genius of Webern, but will never choose to listen to anything other than Im Sommerwind, the Quartet movement and the Passacaglia.

It seems to me that we don't have to like something to appreciate it. Nor, do I believe that I have to "like" everything I listen to. I think of many plays and novels that convey to me very disturbing ideas. Likewise, I can appreciate a painting that I find troubling. For me there is a great danger in thinking that we must "enjoy" things for them to have value. I am fond of this quote from Koussevitzky, "From the beginning of the twentieth century, music, once the privilege of the 'initiated' became accessible to wide layers of society, bring about a 'mass initiation' of listeners into the sphere of musical art. This spreading of music to the masses, at too rapid a pace, resulted in a profound misconception of music as a means of 'entertainment' and 'enjoyment' to be passively consumed by the listener. Music must be listened to creatively. Only active love can lead to the understanding of art and of its lasting value."

I am also reminded of Copland's book, on listening to music. Copland spoke of the various levels of listening and how we should strive to learn to listen to music on its own terms. I have come to the conclusion that it is a noble goal, which few will take the time to reach.

That said, I hope to God that I never have to hear anything written by Haydn the rest of my life!

Karl

QuoteIt seems to me that we don't have to like something to appreciate it. Nor, do I believe that I have to "like" everything I listen to.

I couldn't agree more. Indeed, I think your whole post, Karl, is a breath of fresh air, although I don't share your likes/dislikes!

Quote from: JollyRoger on Friday 19 April 2013, 02:52

Consider also the issue of genre. Some composers may be inspired to write program music(for example), but are less inspired when it comes to non-program music.

Like Bax.

*hides*

You're right.

*flinches*

Bax wrote sucessfully in all genres..
"scratches his head"

I think Bax 1 - 6 - 7 (symphonies) are fantastic "absolute" works. I lean more towards his less descriptive pieces. Spring fire, on the other hand,  is an almost a too perfect conjuring of extra-musical imagery. I prefer storytelling to be a bit more mysterious. Tapiola over Pohjola's Daughter, in other words.

On the other hand, did he ever equal Tintagel?

Probably not.
It was to be Arnold's golden mean  :)

No mention of Bax's chamber music? I think I prefer his quartets, piano quintet and first and third violin sonatas to most of those works myself...

Quote from: Alan Howe on Friday 19 April 2013, 11:23
On the other hand, did he ever equal Tintagel?

In my 'umble opinion, Spring Fire and the gorgeous Garden of Fand surpass Tintagel.

Quote from: eschiss1 on Friday 19 April 2013, 12:59
No mention of Bax's chamber music? I think I prefer his quartets, piano quintet and first and third violin sonatas to most of those works myself...

I'm glad you flagged up Bax's chamber works. My personal preference is for some of the more unusual works:
Elegiac Trio, for flute, viola and harp
Octet for horn, piano and string sextet
Nonet for flute, oboe, clarinet, harp, string quartet and double bass

This is wandering off-topic, but I think the pinnacle of Bax's achievement in the 3rd symphony. As someone once wrote, the epilogue to the finale is one case where the phrase "of Heavenly length" is actually justified.

Sorry, a modic wandering off-topic also by me about Bax.
For me the absolute peak is Tintagel, rivalled, at distance, by The Garden of Fand and November Woods.
Among the Symphonies , best n.3 and n.1.

Quote from: jerfilm on Sunday 21 August 2011, 14:45
Amphissa, perhaps your dislike of Mahler comes from over-exposure.   I think it's like hearing the latest popular song for the 483rd time.  You loved it when you first heard it but now you're just plain sick of hearing it.   For me, one of the things that turned me on to looking for unsung compositions was, I was tired of hearing the Beethoven Tchaikovsky, etc.   I love music; I wanted to hear something new.  Something different.  I love Mahler. He speaks to me in ways that no other composer does.  But if I got a steady diet of him,  he'd soon go the way of Beethoven 6.  Not being a concert hall musician or conductor, when I get to the point where I can hum my way through a 65 minute symphony - and I love being able to do that - I realize I am about saturated and tell myself, "Self, you'd best not be listening to this piece often, any more or you're going to be tired of hearing it...."

Except that, perhaps sadly, I have never been able to assimilate the experimental and non-tonality based compositions of the last century.  Recalling the first time I heard something along these lines, Webern I think, I remember thinking "He can't be serious...." but obviously he was.   Over the past 50 years, sitting in Orchestra Hall, I've been moved to tears probably a dozen times.  And I always end up reflecting - how can ANY human being conceive anything so beautiful; so moving??  Perhaps that would make an interesting thread - what work or works has moved you to tears.......???

One of the very best things about this forum is that we don't call each other names when we disagree. 

Aw crap, I ramble.  Sorry about that.  A prerogative of old age, I hope....

Jerry

\

I dislike Webern all the more after reading the reason for your aversion to "new music".
I wonder how many people have turned away from classical music because of him and others of his ilk..
BTW: I am driven to tears by Vasks Cantabile for Strings and Lauda..a bit out of our remit no less..

One of the many problems with this, erm, theory?? is that - well, a generational and locational thing no doubt - I know I for one have almost never been able to just randomly been able to happen in on works by Webern without seeking his music out- he's in the occasional concert, an Oistrakh performance of his 4 violin pieces (and a Kremer performance of the Schoenberg violin Fantasy) (and some Lourié, and other things, but mostly standards- but also Myaskovsky, Weinberg, ...- well- never mind, one can see the set's contents listed easily enough elsewhere) can be heard in a set I've been listening to, but generally to hear his music I have to, again, look for it.

Back when I was actually getting into classical music in a big way I just didn't run into pantonal music so often that I would decide, on the basis of my then-dislike for, say, Berg's violin concerto and Schoenberg's Fantasy (1949)... the first works along that line that I ever heard, I think..., that "this stuff's not for me, and neither's the other stuff I _thought_ I liked, so back I go to Cole Porter and Sondheim - and forget about, just forget, this exploring-classical wheeze!" ... just didn't happen that way. I heard that kind of piece- and the Berg is teetering over the divide anyway, it later seemed to me... - occasionally at most on the radio. I caught some Shostakovich and Bartok in concert and on the radio then, never on the radio now (at least, not their quartets or the tougher stuff.) The chance of running into this stuff at random in the USA is ... generally, not high, I think.  Like a convinced Schumannian-Brahmsian of another era, one can generally keep away from the Liszt concerts, usually anyway, again.

(Not that I've left Cole Porter and Sondheim and other great theater anyway, but as I said ten or 100 times, I came in the door via Wright & Forrest's Kismet anyway. Right.)

"Webern and his ilk"- hadn't heard Webern described as having low moral character, by the way.  Naïve as _heck_ politically, but not that.  If one really does blame the decline in interest in classical music on "Webern and his ilk" and not on, frankly, a combination of market forces, differing effects and interactions of popular music, hearing loss, educational system changes, and a large number of things, then I suppose one has a certain reaction to the manner of his death...

I hardly think that one can blame a lack of interest in "classical" music on the 2nd Viennese School. One could perhaps argue that modern concert audiences's risk-averse attitude to contemporary composers, and to unfamiliar names, originates from experiences with difficult atonal music. But that should not affect the market for Brahms.

I know that my risk-averse attitude stems from a few experiences with music by post-modern, eclectic composers of dubious coherence, little interest or apparent promise... (and -- un-dubious? - interest in styles of popular music in which I have no interest - though Steve Reich, I guess, might fit in that category, maybe, sort of (except for the dubious coherence, little interest etc. parts), and I find I like him just fine, now anyway... so goes... ah well...) - though of course- that's me ...! :D

Quote from: Gauk on Monday 06 May 2013, 08:12
I hardly think that one can blame a lack of interest in "classical" music on the 2nd Viennese School. One could perhaps argue that modern concert audiences's risk-averse attitude to contemporary composers, and to unfamiliar names, originates from experiences with difficult atonal music. But that should not affect the market for Brahms.

There are many, many modern composers who I admire. But I, for one, would have little interest in the classics if it were dominated by disciples of the 2nd Viennese School. I will not say it has not had an impact on musical history nor will I say it is without some merit. But I can reflect on how it makes me feel and I find much of it depressing and reflective of a degenerating culture. But again, that's my opinion...others obviously disagree.

My personal stance on disharmony ( and reaching to atonality) is that it needs to be in service of the emotion that want to be expressed by the music.
Often - as with the 2nd Viennese school - this seems to be not always the case anymore and it feels like it happens more in service of achieving goals that have more to do with construction, mathematics or other ideas that come from more from pure headspace than the heart.
To me music is still something for the heart and soul first, regardless of its complexities for which we are also invited to let our mind be stimulated, which I welcome as well. But in my opinion in the end it is the soul that wants to be spoken to. And the key to that is emotion, and for that the musical language must be able to be understood to a certain degree at least. At the same time I understand that each of us have different thresholds, different levels at which we do and do not understand the musical language of a given piece. Therefore I would not want to generalize my opinion.
That being said I do think that much has been done in the 20th century to empty out the concert halls...

Crescendo- The Second Viennese School? Sometimes they were accused of the opposite, I think, though this was only true of a few of e.g. Schoenberg's works either (his opera Erwartung, e.g., might be considered expressionist.) But really I'd just have to consider myself not convinced and the case not made one way or the other. Just speaking for myself of course.

And much has been done in the 20th century to empty out the concert halls, I agree- bad music education going to no music education as money decreases, bad (or I should say meretricious) popular music, availability of acetates/33/78s/LPs/tapes/CDs and other alternatives reducing the popularity of concerts, for a start.

For me (and my father even more) it's an awesome masterpiece; best features of contemporary serious music 'cooked up' into the apex composition. For most, however, it's plain trash, screwing with the instruments, fruit of a perverted bourgeois mind, reflection of receding sanity..

Behold and beknow
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=le84cfV6hOA (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=le84cfV6hOA)

I do apologize though if using a composer outside the forum's remit as example in this particular thread has become illegal in meantime.

Definitely not a UC composition!

Reger, Busoni, Hindemith, Britten  ... all leave me cold or asleep.

Perhaps I need to listen to more of their works but , frankly, my dear, I can't be bothered.. there's too much other stuff out there which merits my attention far more!

Try Busoni's early Violin Concerto. And Reger's Four Böcklin Tone Poems. You may be surprised...

This chapter about personal taste should never have been started! I read horrible things! And this even without real explanations! And, mostly, only based on knowledge of 1 or a couple of more works by these compoers...
Bruckner - Mahler- Busoni - Stravinsky - what would we have become without them?

Thanks for the recommendations, Alan.

I know both of these works and will certainly concede that the Busoni Violin Concerto has its merits, But, the early works of many composers are often more accesible than their later efforts. Take Schoenberg's later works  .... PLEASE!

The Reger Tone Poems cannot (IMHO) hold a candle to Huber's magnificent Symphony No.2 subtitled " Bocklin" in which he pays tribute to eight of the master's paintings.

Actually, Reger's Violin Concerto ain't 'arf bad either!

Ok, I'll take them (but not your wife, Mr. Youngman)- more for me to enjoy.  (I'm sure that the reference in the Dubois thread to iconoclasts etc. was meant to include Schoenberg- and probably Reger- too, but neither of them saw themselves that way at all, though they had plenty of contemporaries, many plenty more popular (Stravinsky, anyone? Perhaps Debussy...) who did...)

I came here to avoid him and do not want to mention his name.

Thal

And with that this thread has probably run its course...

cursed course

The point is this: the thread was begun before the change in UC's remit and therefore contains discussions of composers we no longer cover. So, if it is to continue, composers of romantic music should be the subject of debate here...

Absolutely.

Oh.. OK =)

Hadrianus (and others) - I started this thread precisely because I wanted to examine the issue of personal tastes.  Is the fact that I just "don't get" Mahler (for example) - however hard I have tried - due to my personal taste, or..?  On the other hand, when I started this thread, I just "didn't get" Miaskovsky.  Then there were some most valuable contributions and suggestions, I approached Miaskovsky in a different way, and now I am loving his music.  That is surely a positive outcome, and all the more so if others have had similar come-to-the-light moments as a result of this thread.  In fact - if anyone else's mind has been changed on a composer as a result of this thread, or this forum, do tell us.

As for people saying "horrible things" - well, welcome to free speech - a right to express your own opinions and a duty to be prepared be offended by those of others and all that.... Music makes people feel and express things strongly, no doubt about that.  And it's to be welcomed.  Some music, if rendered verbally, might be unprintable - what would Beethoven's Rage over a Lost Penny look like in text I wonder...!!  We lesser mortals who cannot put our emotions into music must stick to words, profanities and all.

We repeat: the issue is the range of composers that was being discussed, not the discussion itself. Thus, now that UC's remit has changed (from the summer of 2012, i.e. after the start of this thread), some composers are no longer appropriate here, e.g. later Schoenberg, later Busoni, the Second Viennese School, Stravinsky, Hindemith, Britten, Penderecki etc.

We would be grateful, therefore, if discussion were now restricted to the composers people 'just don't get' whose works fall within the remit of this forum.

Could an aria of a baroque composer therefore meet the forum's parameters if it let's say sounds romantic..?

Read this post (http://www.unsungcomposers.com/forum/index.php/topic,3681.0.html), which explains our boundaries. We moderators really are not going to allow this question to be raised again and again in topic after topic. If you are in doubt, email or PM a moderator before you post.

Sir, I really don't get why you hate me that much because I post about Pejačević..??? I honestly apologize, but I have never raised a question without giving context/explanation. I thought one should contact a moderator only if one intends to create a new topic about a composer or his particular work one is not certain if it falls within the Forum's scope. Ultimately, you're not obliged to answer either.

Besides, I've never asked that very question before, it must have been someone else

Peace, and a thanks XX
Eternalorphea

Oh please, how hard can it be? Pejačević fits here - obviously. She's a romantic. But if you post about someone outside our guidelines, we are obliged to respond, otherwise the site becomes a free-for-all, and we are not interested in running something like that. So the motto is: think first, then post. Please! And, if in doubt (according to our guidelines), then contact the moderators first. Simple!

Agreed, in a mutatis mutandis sort of way: speak no good and no ill (or at least get the impression that those who are violating the policy by speaking favorably are being treated the same as those who violate it by speaking ill. This impression I haven't really had...)

Hi Eternalorphea - I would like to say that I very much welcome your posts on this site, and especially your contributions about Croatian music in which you clearly, and rightly, take much pride.  I have very much enjoyed listening to the pieces that you have pointed us to.  It's also great to have a lady's insights into musicians and music - I get the impression that most of the contributors on here are guys... I've been ticked off and knocked down on here a few times, best not to let it get to you!

Eternalorphea, please don't take offence. Nobody hates you. Alan and Mark are just trying to clarify matters because we went through a long process of deciding on the sort of music which we wanted to discuss on this forum (and some people took offence during that process and left - which was a pity) and they don't want to open the whole question up again and possibly rake over old disagreements. Your posts on Croatian music have been very revealing and informative - and, incidentally, I'm really looking forward to getting the latest CPO disk of Dora's orchestral music (even if the overture is perhaps not quite out her top drawer, so to speak).

Yes, Eternalorphea, I certainly concur with Christopher.   And I am a big fan of Dora's music.  What a pity she died SO young.  I just downloaded her Life of Flowers opus for piano - and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Jerry

Just try to understand the basic rules of the forum. No one is a bad guy here. It took me awhile to understand.
Tom :)

If one "gets" music in the romantic style, then it might be thought odd to claim one doesn't "get" a piece of music or a composer that falls within UC's remit.  However, just to prove that one can indeed "not get" a particular romantic composer despite as a general rule loving all romantic music, I confessed in an earlier post to being completely unmoved, indeed quite annoyed, by the much vaunted charms of one of the true 'greats' of romantic music. The problem with this thread is that its title is at odds with our remit - i.e. "Sung Composers....", so let's not revisit that, and maybe stick to UCs.

I cannot think of any examples that I don't "get" that would qualify under UC's remit, unless late-19thC French 'art songs' count!  ::)

It depends what you mean by "get" - understand or like? I don't like most romantic opera much, but I have no trouble understanding it. Verdi is not a draw for me, great composer though he may be.

I agree with Gauk. There are some Romantic era composers, both sung and unsung, whose music just doesn't do anything for me (boring) or I just don't enjoy listening to (irritating). There are also some of the composer royalty outside the purview of UC who bore me to tears. But the thing is, I understand what they are doing, so I "get" them. I just don't waste time on them.

As I pointed out before, this thread dates back to the former incarnation of UC which permitted the discussion of later music. Hardly surprisingly, debate was mostly about this later music and the problem of comprehension ('getting it') involved. As Amphissa has said, Romantic-era music doesn't really elicit the same problematic response. Thus, we might not like a particular composer from this era, but that's not the same as not understanding him/her.

I think this thread has run out of steam.

I find that the more I listen to a composer the more "I get." The exception are some of the newer composers such as Glass who I have a difficult time with.
Tom :)

I agree with Gareth. Still, we'll see...

.... the steam has evaporated .....

What I don't "get" is the level of appreciation for some composers that bore or irritate me.  ::)

Well that's because "one man's meat is another man's poison", I suppose. You may have read on this forum my views on Gorecki's 3rd symphony - it bored me to death, yet hundreds of people thought it was really wonderful. I thought they were being conned... I didn't "get" its popularity. You may disagree, of course, and are entitled to do so.

It really isn't possible to debate, or draw any conclusions from, personal taste. We are none of us obliged to like, or indeed "get" (whatever that means), any individual piece of music, or the whole oeuvre of a composer. That's why discussions along the lines of "I like" and "I don't don't like" are so sterile, even though they might go on for 18 pages! Explaining why we have these preferences is a great deal more illuminating, but that's often much harder to do.

My last word....

Quite right, Mark.  For some folks, it seems to be an attitude.  For many years, we sat next to a delightful couple at the MO concerts - got to be good friends, meet for dinner, that sort of thing.  But he "got" the 20th century stuff and whenever (Which was every week during the Skrowaczewski tenure) they performed one, he'd turn to me and say "Wasn't that inspiring?" or some similar remark.  And he wasn't kidding.  For me, he always made me feel like an ignorant bumpkin from the Boondocks.  I know, I know, that's also an attitude.  Bad one, at that.  But he and his wife were both Doctors and his daughter played 2nd violin in the orchestra....... which simply reinforced my prejudiced attitude......

J

I guess my rolling-eyes emoticon was not enough to clue that my comment was intended tongue in cheek. Yes, it is true that there is music that I do not care to spend time listening to. But if others like it, I have no problem with that, or with them. That applies to those who enjoy modernist abrasive stuff as well as Baroque or other styles of music that I don't really want to spend time listening to.

Except, of course, for those who like Mozart. How anyone can listen to that drek is beyond me. They are so severely brain damaged, I'm surprised they can feed themselves.

Do I need an emoticon for that?

I don't see the point in having a thread that is used to express personal dislikes of 'sung' composers. I dare say we could all name one that we believe is overrated - I certainly have done so - but it just doesn't seem to fit with the purpose and spirit of UC, so I'm all for closing this thread.

OK. Executive decision. Thread closed!!