Macdowell's Op.35

[J Joe Townley]

Well, I've discussed this with musicians and many have their own favorite neo-Romantic composer but with a few notable exceptions like Lowell Lieberman nobody has advanced to the front of a very large pack. It's interesting that when the population was a 10th of what it is today (Romantic period) we produced a Chopin, Schumann, Tchaikovsky, Listz, Grieg, and about 50 other genius composers who became famous all over the world, most in their lifetimes.

Today, we have advanced communications and 7 billion people and have yet to produce another Tchaikovsky--I mean someone who could knock the world on its butt with their superior melodic music comparable to Tchaikovsky. I can only think that the more we advance technologically the further we regress original music-wise. As you say, Alan, the best music sadly is to be found in films. For example here's a masterpiece of orchestration and mood by a film composer name Harry Gregson-Williams that I think could compete with the short tone poems of Liadov like Baba Yaga and it's from a cartoon!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujAfhLLVM7E&list=PLMaHaORjlMMzUMFnpAcW6m1lwmtXz0oUB&index=11

[Alan Howe]

We're getting off-topic here, but it's frankly hard to imagine a replica romantic symphony being written today - it would be an anachronism. However, there are composers working in conscious connection with the past whose works communicate with audiences - they're just not writing in a romantic idiom.

Of course, we have produced an Andrew Lloyd-Webber. And a John Williams. The world has certainly heard of both of them...

[J Joe Townley]

I think that's probably it. What we saw yesteryear cannot be duplicated. And it's arguable whether it should be. 

[Alan Howe]

Of course, what this website is at least partly about is discovering whether the romantic era produced masterpieces outside the accepted canon. And the more we look, the more candidates we seem to find. Kiel's Viola Sonata, recently recorded on the TYXart label would be one. Lassen's unique Violin Concerto - not yet commercially recorded, but available for the first time this year on YouTube - would be another. And any one of Rufinatscha's five highly individual symphonies could also be cited. So, although we may give up on the present, let's continue to mine the past. There are riches out there...

[Mark Thomas]

Alan Howe wrote:

And most music that could be described as fully romantic in style is probably associated with the movies these days.

That's absolutely right. As a general rule once any artistic idiom (not just music) threatens to become so mainstream that the "man in the street" embraces it and it becomes common currency, then the artistic establishment moves on to a more "advanced" idiom which pushes the boundaries further, beyond what the general public will understand or enjoy. I can't think of an instance where the clock has been put back in any branch of the arts, either.

[eschiss1]

In inverse (?), I recall a suggestion, after a half-dozen or so (or more) film scores made use of twelve-tone technique etc., that - wrote some critics and composers - that movies/cinema might be the "natural place" for the use of these methods. (Well, critics, composers in critical/journalist mode, journalists will make various, often rubbish, pronouncements one way the other, composers- will compose (whether for a sponsor, or otherwise... but...))

[chill319]

I have listened to his Lancelot & Elaine and Hamlet and Ophelia and Tchaikovsky they are not.

Forgive the directness, J Joe, but it precisely that kind of social parroting that this forum seeks to replace with thoughtful commentary. There isn't a single composer discussed on this forum who has Tchaikovsky's particular mix of virtues and faults. Tchaikovsky is certainly no Bruckner. Bruckner is certainly no Chopin. Chopin is certainly no Rossini. as his Tarantella demonstrates.

The vast majority of music by Tchaikovsky that we listen to was either conceived or significantly revised after he was 30. The MacDowell tone poems you mention were written in the composer's early 20s. They are definitely less distinguished than Tchaikovsky's well-known tone poems. Lamia, the last of them is more intriguing. And the second suite for orchestra, written when MacDowell was 32, has much more to say than some orchestral music by Tchaikovsky. Unfortunately modern recordings of the suite are performed in a way that would end one's recording career if the work in question were not by an unsung composer.

[J Joe Townley]

I've offended and I'm sorry, I didn't mean to. I probably didn't explain myself well. I realize that the two tone poems were early efforts of MacDowell and one I believe immediately preceded his Piano Concerto No 2 which of course put him on the map. I was in part recognizing the dichotomy of an immediate hit not managing to lift earlier efforts out of the "to be forgotten" file tray. Even Hamlet by Tchaikovsky or his Piano Concerto No 3 manages an occasional hearing by virtue of his name, but MacDowell's Lancelot  and Hamlet doesn't get beyond a single recording which puzzles me. When I said totally forgettable I was commenting from a POV outside myself, maybe the way an occasional listener of classical music might react. I found the tone poems lovely, tuneful and well-crafted with that hallmark MacDowell European/American sound. But listeners who savor the "hits" might find these totally forgettable in that they carry no memorable tunes even though the atmosphere they create is beautiful, if anticlimactic. The one, Lancelot is almost like a Siegfried Idyll in that it rarely rises above a pianissimo.   

[adriano]

Well, after McDowell came George Templeton Strong: although he was 4 years older than him, he lived until 1948, meaning 40 years longer.
Some of Strong's pieces are a bit more "modern" and dissonant than McDowell's, but formally still faithful to his early masters Jadassohn and Raff. He used to warn other composers, by saying that modern dissonance should be used "like cayenne pepper in culinary art". He had to realize that to return to Europe and settle down in Switzerland had not been a very good idea: Ansermet occasionally would perform some of his works in Geneva, and Toscanini had even performed (and broadcasted) his wonderful suite "Die Nacht" in 1939 in the USA - but this too, did not help very much to promote his music. Strong got a complex from having all kind of exciting modern music around him, he admitted himself to be old-fashioned. But judged Gershwin's music "much noise about nothing" and he considered Stravinsky 's dissonances "too easy to set", but he loved Mahler, Strauss, Glasunov and Ravel: they were "able to draw lines" and their music was "not cubism". Author William C. Loring, was perfectly right to entitle his biography of Strong "An American Romantic - Realist Abroad".

[J Joe Townley]

George Templeton Strong used to warn other composers, by saying that modern dissonance should be used "like cayenne pepper in culinary art". 

Something Charles Ives obviously never took to heart.    Concord Sonata, anybody?   

[eschiss1]

And good on him that he didn't!

[J Joe Townley]

And good on him that he didn't!

You are a Concord Sonata Fan? 

[kolaboy]

My first exposure to MacDowell (in my early 20s) was the Sea Pieces, which spoke to me in a way that Schumann's piano works did (and do). I then proceeded to devour everything I could find by him - which wasn't very much at the time. Red letter day when I found a disc of the early tone poems via Records International, back in '89. I can say that even these early efforts - in my humble opinion - yield their rewards. May take more than a listen or two.
But then I've always been fascinated by those individuals who died before reaching their full potential...