Emilie Mayer symphony 6, performance by Ensemble Reflektor in Germany live streaming today (Sunday October 2nd, 2022) on YouTube:
https://youtu.be/Ft1BDlAWUNc
Mayer 6 starts at 49:16. HIP, but a good-sized orchestra. Very enjoyable indeed.
I'm not entirely convinced of the stature/quality of EM's music, though. To pose a provocative question: would we be paying as much attention to it if it had been written by a man?
Everything is in the interpretation and playing - Holly Hyun Choe understands the score better, I believe, than previous conductors and, together with her young players, delivers a performance that is exciting to hear.
There is subtlety in her writing. She makes, for instance, much use of enharmonic transitions which may not be immediately apparent to a listener. In my opinion, her symphonies can stand alongside those of her contemporary, Robert Schumann.
QuoteIn my opinion, her symphonies can stand alongside those of her contemporary, Robert Schumann.
I would love to believe that, but in all honesty I can't. Don't get me wrong: I'm truly grateful to have had the opportunity to get to know them, but I don't rate them any higher than 'second tier'. And I'd rate Louise Farrenc slightly higher as a (female) symphonist overall. Consider also what Rufinatscha had achieved by the time EM was writing in the 1850s - and the much more original symphonies by such figures as Kufferath and Grimm.
Which brings us back to the elephant in the room...
I'm sure you will agree that it's always good to give reasons in a discussion on the merits of a composer's works. What, then, are your reasons for rating Emilie Mayer's symphonies 'second tier' and no higher, and what is it that makes you rate Louise Farrenc slightly higher as a (female) symphonist than Mayer? Also, do we need to distinguish between female and male symphonists, shouldn't the music speak for itself, regardless of gender?
I for one am happy to learn something here, that is one of my main reasons for being a member.
Quotedo we need to distinguish between female and male symphonists, shouldn't the music speak for itself, regardless of gender?
To be fair, I think that was partly Alan's point. The suggestion is that we may be paying more attention to Emilie Mayer's work simply
because she is a woman. If the symphonies had been composed by someone called
Emil Mayer (say) would we regard them in the same light? We ought to, of course. I know Alan would agree 100% that the music must be allowed to speak for itself, irrespective of the gender of its creator.
For my part, I have never been able to warm to Farrenc. But I have a female flautist friend that raves about her, so all this is pretty subjective.
Emilie Mayer's symphonies (with the possible exception of the Third) stand up pretty well in a measurement against her contemporaries. But they aren't particularly individual, and that is what sets them at a lower tier to those of Robert Schumann.
My reason for preferring Farrenc over Mayer is simply that her music 'grabs' me more than Emilie's. I rarely find myself really swept along over the length of a whole movement in any of EM's symphonies. Neither do I find much of a personality in her music - which I do in, for example, Kufferath, Grimm or Rufinatscha.
As for the comparison with Schumann, I just don't think there's any comparison. His symphonies are choc full of memorable material; where in EM's symphonic output is there anything to rival the glorious transition into the finale of Schumann's 4th? Or the high-flown solemnity of Rufinatscha's Symphony in B minor? Or the Bruckner-like theme in the first movement of Grimm's Symphony in D minor?
https://www.unsungcomposers.com/forum/index.php/topic,8729.msg90147.html#msg90147
All of these are of more interest to me than anything in EM's output.
Back, then, to the elephant in the room...
I am actually "grabbed" by quite a few of Mayer's symphony movements, e.g. the first of the f-minor or the slow movement of the b-minor (instrumentation not hers, but still). I prefer them to Farrenc's. Both of them however did their best in chamber music IMHO (like many male colleagues BTW).
There is one thing about Mayer that occurred to me only recently: Not only isn't she the female Beethoven, in one respect she is Beethoven's opposite. At the beginning of her career she went straight for the most prestigious genres: the string quartet and the symphony. Then, at some point around 1860, she gave up on them and proceeded to write in such "minor" genres as piano trios or violin and cello sonatas. I'd say Loewe ought to have guided her better on this.
I have recently taken a deeper look at her violin sonatas and found some really good music among them. Unfortunately the only recording of them (Alexandra Malarovich) is not well played (the pianist is ok). Among other things there is an egregious rhythmic error in the the first movement of the e-minor sonata.
We will never know how a symphony of hers from the 1870s would have sounded.
I'm sorry, but I just don't think that EM is more than a moderately good composer.
Back to the elephant in the room...
I think the elephant is useless. It can be made to work either way.
But the question remains. I think her symphonies are in serious danger of being overrated - and over-exposed.
I suspect her real talents lay elsewhere...
after 1-3 recordings each and fewer than a dozen performances (including at least (edit: two) in the US, in 2019) this century (I think)?
Sure, ok...
The overrating of her talents results from studies such as this which hails her as 'Europas größte Komponistin' (Europe's greatest female composer):
https://www.amazon.com/Emilie-Mayer-Europas-Komponistin-Spurensuche-ebook/dp/B09JPK5F9X
I'm sure we could all think of at least a dozen female composers equally worthy of the title (notice the book title doesn't specify any particular time-period). It's just plain silly.
But seriously, why would this be a problem? We have always had fads and fashions in classical music: I remember Simeon ten Holt was everywhere for a while, same with Pärt and others. That usually goes away and if it doesn't, well, it just proves enough people disagree to create a demand. Time will tell.
And to those who claim that money being poured into Mayer performances might be dedicated to some other unsung, I don't think this is a zero-sum game. Obviously, a big part of the attractiveness of performing Mayer is because she was a woman, a half of the population that hasn't exactly been overexposed in the annals of classical music. And that's not new, either: motives other than musical ones have long been a reason for classical music performances, often ones linked to a specific identity: just look at the number of collections dedicated to composers from a certain country or city.
Whatever you think of Mayer's merti as an artist, I am glad she is getting the kind of attention she does because it may bring in a stream of revenue and an audience that might otherwise avoid classical music altogether.
It's more than a fad and a fashion, Ilja. We are seriously being asked to believe (a) that she's on a par with the great composers and (b) that she's Europe's greatest female composer. This is (a) clearly and provably nonsense and (b) meaningless hyperbole.
I mean, let's get real here...
I googled the author of this book a while ago. She has written a series of biographies of a rather varied set of people. But she has no particular expertise in music, Mayer is the first musician among her "victims". The big mouth title she has chosen is the consequence of that IMHO. I don't think there is much useful information in the book.
BTW recently I found in various paragraphs on the composer an "eating disorder" that poor Emilie allegedly suffered from. I suspect this bit of guesswork first appeared in this book. Of course there were exactly zero physicians who would have arrived at such a diagnosis among Mayer's contemporaries...
Thanks for dragging us back to reality!
"Of course", you say.
Anorexia was accepted "as a psychogenic disorder in the late 1800s" so it depends on which eating disorder and when. (Liliana del'Osso et al, "Historical evolution of the concept of anorexia nervosa and relationships with orthorexia nervosa, autism, and obsessive–compulsive spectrum", Neuropsychiatr Dis Treat. 2016; 12: 1651–1660. See NCBI (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4939998/).)
If I were to guess what year the composer of this symphony was born, I'd say 1785, 1790 at the latest. It's so firmly rooted in the classical period, so utterly backward looking, so behind the times (as is everything of hers that I've heard), that it's difficult to believe it was written by a composer younger than Mendelssohn, Chopin, Schumann, or Liszt. Oh well, to each his own.
I stand corrected, Eric. I remember from my youth when anorexia appeared in the public press as a major problem for young (mostly) women. I am still wondering where this eating disorder of Mayer's suddenly appeared from. In spite of the venerable age of anorexia Mayer's "eating disorder" was never mentioned until about two years ago and now we find it in many places.
My opinion on the book is low for the reasons I mentioned but obviously my opinion on Mayer herself is not at all dependent on the book. BTW, John: If you had to guess Korngold's birth date from his music which year would you guess?
I'd say what is good for the goose...
Korngold's: based on which work? (And even his somewhat early works - the sextet, eg - have a very early 1900s, but not late 1800s, "voluptuousness"...)
Quote from: Double-A on Thursday 20 October 2022, 03:03BTW, John: If you had to guess Korngold's birth date from his music which year would you guess?
I'd say what is good for the goose...
Well, I'll take Eric's helpful hint and ask, "Which one?" So, to help my case out, I'll select his closest brush with atonality, the three Kaltneker songs of Op. 18, and guess...hmmm...1897?
And with that, back to Emilie Mayer, please.
Bringing it back to Mayer, I think with her work being so retrograde there's not much value in comparing her to Schumann or Mendelssohn merely because they were contemporaries. Stylistically it would be like comparing the piano music of Schoenberg and Rachmaninoff just because they were contemporaries too. Added to this is that she's just no Schumann, Mendelssohn, Chopin, or Wagner no matter what her style.
Instead, perhaps it would be better to compare her against those composers whose sound world she emulates. That is, the world of Beethoven and the composers who followed him. Of course, I don't suggest an uneven comparison against someone like Beethoven, but perhaps we can compare her to Czerny, Ries, or Hummel and then assess where she stands.
I have suggested that her symphonies don't even bear comparison with certain neglected works by her contemporaries, e.g. Kufferath, Rufinatscha and Grimm.
Quote from: John Boyer on Thursday 20 October 2022, 15:00Bringing it back to Mayer, I think with her work being so retrograde there's not much value in comparing her to Schumann or Mendelssohn merely because they were contemporaries.....but perhaps we can compare her to Czerny, Ries, or Hummel and then assess where she stands.
With all due respect, I would suggest that you study more closely some of all the scores that you mention. Texture-wise, you may be hearing a superficial resemblance to the music of 100 years earlier, but harmonically there is no comparison.
The real issue, though, is whether EM's symphonies really impress themselves in a way that her famous contemporaries do. And, as I've said before, there just aren't the sort of heart-stopping moments that characterise, for example, Schumann 4, let alone the more advanced idioms of the best of her unsung contemporaries. For all her talent, they just don't cut it at the highest level.
I think we're getting to the stage in this thread where previously stated positions are just being repeated, so perhaps we can give this topic a break for a while until someone has got something new to say, or permanently if there isn't anything more to add? Seems to me we know where everyone stands and there isn't going to be a consensus.
...and we've wandered off the topic anyway. Mea culpa.