Reputations

[kernelbogey]

I've just read this interesting piece in the Guardian by DJ Taylor on authors' reputations - why they wax and wane. It's set me thinking about the same issue with composers.

I remember my brothers listening to Sibelius with enthusiasm in the early 1950s - then he seemed to go out of fashion for a while after his death, before a revival.

I find the reputation of Mozart in various centuries intriguing.

And have always been curious about the role played by William Glock et al in promoting certain kinds of contemporary music over others.

And so on and so forth.

As far as I know this has not had a thread before (though I may well be wrong). I decided not to put Composers' in the thread title as there may equally be conductors whose reputation is worthy of comment. Klemperer springs to mind.

[amateur51]

One of the joys of the reputation phenomenon in the 21st century is that novels/stories by the likes of Pym and Wilson can be picked up for a song in second-hand/remainder bookshops and on-line thus pleasing those discriminating readers in the know and those of an adventurous disposition

[kernelbogey]

One of the joys of the reputation phenomenon in the 21st century is that novels/stories by the likes of Pym and Wilson can be picked up for a song in second-hand/remainder bookshops and on-line thus pleasing those discriminating readers in the know and those of an adventurous disposition

But clearly not always:

[...] Angus Wilson (1913-1991), knight of the realm and president of the Royal Society of Literature, the collected edition of whose works, urged into print by his admirers after his death, ended up in the remainder bins?

[french frank]

As for Glock - I'll try to find some of the new composers he tried to promote on the Third to see if they rose or fell.

[amateur51]

But clearly not always:

That's my point - in remainder bins they are very cheap

[aeolium]

Very few composers have not suffered from dips in popularity or periods of neglect at some time: perhaps only Beethoven, Wagner and Brahms of pre-C20 composers. In some cases, it's taken changes in performance style to bring back composers into fashion, as with the period instrument performance movement with Monteverdi, Handel (the operas particularly), and more recently Rameau. It's rather sad that as Britten's star has risen since his death, Tippett's has declined, as I remember quite a lot of Tippett being performed in the 1970s partly due to the championing of people like Colin Davis, Paul Crossley and the members of the Endellion Quartet.

At least with the huge expansion in the recorded repertoire compared with 50 years ago, listeners are less dependent on the vagaries of musical fashion.

[verismissimo]

... Tippett's has declined, as I remember quite a lot of Tippett being performed in the 1970s partly due to the championing of people like... the members of the Endellion Quartet.

Lindsays, surely, aeo?

"Lovely boys," he said to me on the one occasion I had a conversation with him!

[aeolium]

Lindsays, surely, aeo?

"Lovely boys," he said to me on the one occasion I had a conversation with him!

You may well be right, verismissimo, though I remember going to quite a few concerts in which the Endellions played Tippett. Anyway, good on them both!

[Serial_Apologist]

Very few composers have not suffered from dips in popularity or periods of neglect at some time: perhaps only Beethoven, Wagner and Brahms of pre-C20 composers.

I would think Wagner not very popular at all in the 1920s and 1930s.

The example of Sibelius cited by KB is remarkable: one wonders what the young Peter Maxwell Davies would have thought of his later self!

Atonality in general, not just serialism, seemed to suffer a considerable backlash after about 1975: retractions by composers such as David Bedford, Cornelius Cardew and Richard Rodney Bennett on the one hand, and the rise of Minimalists Mk 2 on the other, though as in recent architecture, modernism seems to have been something of a comeback, thank goodness.

[aeolium]

I would think Wagner not very popular at all in the 1920s and 1930s.

I think there was quite a lot, at least in this country. Bruno Walter conducted (and recorded) Wagner in London in 1930, Beecham conducted in a Wagner festival in London in 1932 (shared with Robert Heger), Furtwängler conducted Die Walküre and Götterdämmerung in Covent Garden in 1937 and Toscanini conducted an all-Wagner concert in that year. If you look at Wagner's works in the Proms archive and see in which seasons they were performed, they appear pretty continuously throughout those decades.

[amateur51]

Lindsays, surely, aeo?

"Lovely boys," he said to me on the one occasion I had a conversation with him!

You sure that wasn't Windsor Davies verismissimo?

[kernelbogey]

If you look at Wagner's works in the Proms archive and see in which seasons they were performed, they appear pretty continuously throughout those decades.

Though presumably not 1938 - 1945...?

[aeolium]

Though presumably not 1938 - 1945...?

Yes indeed, plenty of Wagner in each of those seasons. There were 3 concerts including Wagner orchestral music in the 1939 season before Hitler's invasion of Poland, after which remaining concerts were cancelled (another concert including several Wagner overtures was scheduled for 4th September).

[Serial_Apologist]

Interesting - I got that one wrong then!

[kernelbogey]

I read part of the New Grove article on Mozart yesterday to see if it had any comment on his reputation. It really dealt only with scholarly interest in his music, which has been pretty consistent since his death. However, it does comment that throughout the 18th century, the number of his works that were known to the public was fairly limited, although this increased it the early years of the nineteenth century. There is an implication that his music has always remained well-known. But I feel fairly certain that I've read somewhere that his star shone much less brightly in the inter-war period of the last century. (For example, Idomeneo and Clemenza were unknown in Britain until the 1930s.) That would seem strange since we now rate him as incomparable.