I just don't like the noise it makes.... (those 'blind spot' pieces)

[teamsaint]

I couldn't abide the King's Singers . Their appearances on BBC1 shows in the 1970s put me off classical singing for about 15 years .

Interesting comment Barbi.

This sort of thing can happen, (in any are of music) and might make a good thread.

[jayne lee wilson]

I find the comments above dismissing Deryck Cooke's intense and devoted labour of love in creating a "performing version of the sketch" of Mahler's 10th Symphony very sad, and to say that it is "not at all" the symphony Mahler would have written is simply and profoundly wrong in point of fact. Cooke went to great lengths to say that it wasn't a "completion":

"Given that there can be no such thing as Mahler's own final, definitive score of his 10th Symphony, does his fairly comprehensive sketch of it, put into score by other hands, provide a Mahlerian experience of any real value? My own belief is that it does, simply because Mahler's actual MUSIC, even in its revised and unelaborated state, has such strength and beauty that it dwarfs into insignificance the few momentary uncertainties about notes and the subsidiary additions, and even survives being presented in conjectural orchestration. After all, the leading thematic line throughout, and something like 90 percent of the counterpoint and harmony, are pure Mahler, and vintage Mahler at that."
(Deryck Cooke, in Gustav Mahler: an introduction to his music, faber)

Those of us who have wept over the piece in the hall and at home, who recognise its message about life, love and death, who are haunted by it for days, who hold it in our hearts, who think of the inscription over the final pages, "to live for you, to die for you, Almschi", can only be profoundly grateful to Cooke for the experience the work offers, and the truth it tells about Mahler's creative trajectory.
When Harold Byrns visited Alma with Cooke's revised score and the Goldschmidt recording, and it was played it to her - she immediately asked to hear it again. And then wrote to Cooke, telling him how moved she was, and removing her ban on its public performance. She heard the truth in it, too.

[Petrushka]

I find the comments above dismissing Deryck Cooke's intense and devoted labour of love in creating a "performing version of the sketch" of Mahler's 10th Symphony very sad, and to say that it is "not at all" the symphony Mahler would have written is simply and profoundly wrong in point of fact. Cooke went to great lengths to say that it wasn't a "completion":

"Given that there can be no such thing as Mahler's own final, definitive score of his 10th Symphony, does his fairly comprehensive sketch of it, put into score by other hands, provide a Mahlerian experience of any real value? My own belief is that it does, simply because Mahler's actual MUSIC, even in its revised and unelaborated state, has such strength and beauty that it dwarfs into insignificance the few momentary uncertainties about notes and the subsidiary additions, and even survives being presented in conjectural orchestration. After all, the leading thematic line throughout, and something like 90 percent of the counterpoint and harmony, are pure Mahler, and vintage Mahler at that."
(Deryck Cooke, in Gustav Mahler: an introduction to his music, faber)

Those of us who have wept over the piece in the hall and at home, who recognise its message about life, love and death, who are haunted by it for days, who hold it in our hearts, who think of the inscription over the final pages, "to live for you, to die for you, Almschi", can only be profoundly grateful to Cooke for the experience the work offers, and the truth it tells about Mahler's creative trajectory.
When Harold Byrns visited Alma with Cooke's revised score and the Goldschmidt recording, and it was played it to her - she immediately asked to hear it again. And then wrote to Cooke, telling him how moved she was, and removing her ban on its public performance. She heard the truth in it, too.

Bravo, Jayne. I'm in 100% agreement with every word of this.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Yes - it's a bit depressing after all the discussions about the Cooke "performing version of the draft for the Tenth Symphony" to see the same old prejudices being trotted out yet again. I could quote from the preface of the score, yet again, how Cooke insisted it wasn't a "completion" of Mahler's Tenth*; or repeat yet again how what Cooke did was transcribe Mahler's notes as they exist in manuscript, so that they could be performed by an orchestra and heard by an audience who cannot read those notes. But to what purpose if those who want to believe otherwise simply will not bother with the facts? Instead, I'll simply confine myself to saying (yet again) that there is more genuine Mahler in the Cooke performing version of the Tenth symphony than there is genuine Mozart in the "Mozart Requiem".

* = oh, alright, then; The present score is in no sense intended as a "completion" or "reconstruction" of the work. First of all, no "completion" has been necessary ... Mahler's draft continues without interruption from beginning to end ... It does, instead, quite simply represent the stage the work had reached when Mahler died, in a practical performing version.

[Serial_Apologist]

I find the comments above dismissing Deryck Cooke's intense and devoted labour of love in creating a "performing version of the sketch" of Mahler's 10th Symphony very sad, and to say that it is "not at all" the symphony Mahler would have written is simply and profoundly wrong in point of fact. Cooke went to great lengths to say that it wasn't a "completion":

"Given that there can be no such thing as Mahler's own final, definitive score of his 10th Symphony, does his fairly comprehensive sketch of it, put into score by other hands, provide a Mahlerian experience of any real value? My own belief is that it does, simply because Mahler's actual MUSIC, even in its revised and unelaborated state, has such strength and beauty that it dwarfs into insignificance the few momentary uncertainties about notes and the subsidiary additions, and even survives being presented in conjectural orchestration. After all, the leading thematic line throughout, and something like 90 percent of the counterpoint and harmony, are pure Mahler, and vintage Mahler at that."
(Deryck Cooke, in Gustav Mahler: an introduction to his music, faber)

Those of us who have wept over the piece in the hall and at home, who recognise its message about life, love and death, who are haunted by it for days, who hold it in our hearts, who think of the inscription over the final pages, "to live for you, to die for you, Almschi", can only be profoundly grateful to Cooke for the experience the work offers, and the truth it tells about Mahler's creative trajectory.
When Harold Byrns visited Alma with Cooke's revised score and the Goldschmidt recording, and it was played it to her - she immediately asked to hear it again. And then wrote to Cooke, telling him how moved she was, and removing her ban on its public performance. She heard the truth in it, too.

Well said JLW, and a multitude of thanks. You wouldn't by chance like to have a go at the trashing being given to another great composer (and follower of Mahler) on the Henze thread? I just can't find adequate words...

[Roehre]

...., I'll simply confine myself to saying (yet again) that there is more genuine Mahler in the Cooke performing version of the Tenth symphony than there is genuine Mozart in the "Mozart Requiem".

with thanks to JLW , I like to add that the same applies to Bruckner's Ninth symphony's finale too.

[jayne lee wilson]

with thanks to JLW , I like to add that the same applies to Bruckner's Ninth symphony's finale too.

Yes, absolutely...
... these two great symphonic statements - it's almost a mirror image isn't it?
With Mahler's 10th, once I (and thankfully, many others) had heard (and learned about) that 5-movement version, it seemed almost a betrayal to listen to the first adagio on its own. But with Bruckner's 9th, those same listeners had become so familiar with the "3-movement version", that listening to it with a properly realised finale was a much bigger challenge. Accidentally or not, those three movements constituted a richly meaningful creation. This version has its own tradition and its own culture, of listening and performance.
I listened to Rattle's recording of the finale, on its own, 5 or 6 times before trying the whole thing again... and it worked - but I do need to revisit it. It would take many more performances or recordings to establish a 4-movement Bruckner 9th as part of the same culture. Or to disestablish it.

And then Mario Venzago, recording the most radical and exciting Bruckner cycle for decades, sets down his 9th... without a finale, despite taking a mere 51'40 for the first three...
Oh, Mario!

Well... I live in hope that Venzago will come back to that, as to the original (or at least, fuller and earlier) texts of Nos. 2 and 3.... But more on all of this - another time.

[ahinton]

Yes, absolutely...
... these two great symphonic statements - it's almost a mirror image isn't it?
With Mahler's 10th, once I (and thankfully, many others) had heard (and learned about) that 5-movement version, it seemed almost a betrayal to listen to the first adagio on its own. But with Bruckner's 9th, those same listeners had become so familiar with the "3-movement version", that listening to it with a properly realised finale was a much bigger challenge. Accidentally or not, those three movements constituted a richly meaningful creation. This version has its own tradition and its own culture, of listening and performance.
I listened to Rattle's recording of the finale, on its own, 5 or 6 times before trying the whole thing again... and it worked - but I do need to revisit it. It would take many more performances or recordings to establish a 4-movement Bruckner 9th as part of the same culture. Or to disestablish it.

And then Mario Venzago, recording the most radical and exciting Bruckner cycle for decades, sets down his 9th... without a finale, despite taking a mere 51'40 for the first three...
Oh, Mario!

Well... I live in hope that Venzago will come back to that, as to the original (or at least, fuller and earlier) texts of Nos. 2 and 3.... But more on all of this - another time.

Excellent - and moving - comments upthread from you about Mahler 10, for which vast thanks!

You are, of course, correct about the Bruckner 9 performing tradition to the extent tht more people were more accustomed to listening to that work in its truncated version (i.e. its forst three movements and none of the finale that we now know that the composer wrote a good deal more of than was once thought) - but this might beg the question as to which is the more important, the music or its performing tradition (or lack thereof)? - or, to put it another way in this particular context, does the establishment and perpetuation of a performing tradition that determines that audiences should listen only to movements of a sympohony that were completed by their composers matter more than the composers' intentions to complete the entire work as a four or five movement symphony or the music that they wrote towards this end but left incomplete?

A similar - though by no means parallel - issue arises when we consider most of the music of the piano composers Alkan, Godowsky, Medtner and Sorabji, for example, little of which was performed during their respective lifetimes but much of which has since become available for absorption by later generations of listeners; we would surely not advocate that any music that didn't take flight during its composers' lifetimes may as well be consigned to the scrap heap thereafter just because no "performing tradition" in it began to be established until long after the works were composed? I realise that this is not the most apposite analogy here, but the cap nevertheless fits, methinks...

[teamsaint]

Still off topic, nobody in other areas of music seems to have the slightest artistic issue with re using, adapting, finishing, re recording, sampling , finishing, embellishing or otherwise changing other people's music. In Jazz its pretty much staple stuff I would guess.
The end Justifying the means , I guess.

IMO, somebody could make a fortune adapting Schubert Lieder for a Radio 2/2.5 audience .(not that this would necessarily be a good thing. or bad. Depends.....)

(tin hat on....)

[teamsaint]

Still off topic, nobody in other areas of music seems to have the slightest artistic issue with re using, adapting, finishing, re recording, sampling , finishing, embellishing or otherwise changing other people's music. In Jazz its pretty much staple stuff I would guess.
The end Justifying the means .

IMO, somebody could make a fortune adapting Schubert Lieder for a Radio 2/2.5 audience .(not that this would necessarily be a good thing. or bad. Depends.....)

(tin hat on....)

[gurnemanz]

I agree. Barbra Streisand did a classical album. I only know it from YouTube but quite like it. Schubert Sylvia. Wolf's Verschwiegene Liebe is very nicely done. I don't know of many other attempts. I suppose the German language could be an obstacle for some.

[Bryn]

Having got to know much of the music that Bruckner wrote for the finale via the 1985 Chandos recording (an ex-review copy of the cassette version of which I got from Steve's Sounds in that year), a more comprehensive completion is something I have hoped for for many a year. I thought the earlier Samale et al completins used by Wildner (New Philharmonic Orchestra of Westphalia, on Naxos - a very fine performance and recording) and Harding (Swedish RSO, broadcast Radio 3) were each a great improvement on having just the three movements 'completed' (would they have remained in the form they were left in had Bruckner lives a year or so longer?). With the extra material discovered shortly after Harding's performance, his former teacher was able to trump his student. I recall that Rob Cowan was most impressed with Carragan's 2010 revision of his completion, and a performance with that following the completed three is, to me, also preferable to leaving the work hanging at the end of the third movement. There is so much good music Bruckner composed for the finale, and the Samale/Mazzuca/Phillips/Cohrs team have done a great service to the composer's final compositional thoughts in putting it together so convincingly.

[cloughie]

"I like Anthony Payne's Elgar 3 better than either of the symphonies Elgar actually wrote"

It's great, isn't it? I believe that some of the best "Elgarian" moments/themes are those that Payne wrote himself!

Well I'll be John McEnroed! You posted this a day late surely.

[cloughie]

I agree. Barbra Streisand did a classical album. I only know it from YouTube but quite like it. Schubert Sylvia. Wolf's Verschwiegene Liebe is very nicely done. I don't know of many other attempts. I suppose the German language could be an obstacle for some.

Classical Barbra is indeed a good album. It benefits from the collaboration with Claus Ogerman whose influences are, according to Wiki, Max Reger and Scriabin - the former no stranger to using other's work as a basis for compositions! Then Streisand has a good voice which has been applied to a wide repertoire over the years!

[cloughie]

Still off topic, nobody in other areas of music seems to have the slightest artistic issue with re using, adapting, finishing, re recording, sampling , finishing, embellishing or otherwise changing other people's music. In Jazz its pretty much staple stuff I would guess.
The end Justifying the means , I guess.

IMO, somebody could make a fortune adapting Schubert Lieder for a Radio 2/2.5 audience .(not that this would necessarily be a good thing. or bad. Depends.....)

(tin hat on....)

Careful what you wish for,ts - this is what Donald Peers did to Offenbach:

http://search.yahoo.com/search?ei=utf-8&fr=slv8-w3i&p=donald%20peers%20youtube&type=W3i_YT,191,8_4,Search,20111251,18378,0,18,0