Music on the verge (effectively) of becoming extinct

[Roehre]

..
However, that does not mean that I am not grateful to forum members who have taught me a great deal musically (among other areas). Radio 3 used to fulfil that function when I was younger, not so successfully now.

My "use" of R3 has changed - if you take the trouble to have a look at the lists which Andrew Slater puts on this site every week, you'll discover that there is a lot of less(er) known music to "discover".
But you have to find the items yoirself and take the time -especially for those broadcast TtN- to iPlay them.
Many of the Afternoon on 3 and some of the evening concerts present less known material as well.

TtN, EMS and H&N are for me now the main suppliers of music on R3, sometimes CotW is, and I miss Stephen Johnson's programmes terribly.

I love the war horses, but I hardly listen to them on R3. Life is too short.

[Serial_Apologist]

here is S-A's neglected Frenchies theread.

http://www.for3.org/forums/showthrea...ghlight=french

For which I am most grateful to you, TS - many thanks for going to all the trouble of disinterring that message!

[Historian]

Thank you, Roehre, for reminding me that there is so much still to discover on Radio 3. I will go and see what I can find.

I do make discoveries from time to time, Thierry Escaich was one recently; I se he is mentioned in the neglected French composers thread.

Perhaps I didn't phrase my point as well as I might. I feel that there was more variety in what was offered and also perhaps more erudition from the presenters say, 30 years ago. However, that thought takes us away from the point of this thread and into waters already well-travelled.

[richardfinegold]

Yesterdays obscure Composer can become today's mainstream. Trying to find RVW recordings here in the 1970s and you were pretty much stuck with Tallis, Lark, or the London Symphony. Vainberg exploded on the scene here in the late 90.
Concert performances of both are still rarities.
My guess is that Forums such as this are the road forward. Perhaps we should all take turns a week in advance recommending a piece. Everyone listens and we have a book club type discussion. The pieces would at least have to be available on a current recording. After announcing the new work a week in advance, the discussion would last a week .

[Dave2002]

Yesterdays obscure Composer can become today's mainstream. Trying to find RVW recordings here in the 1970s and you were pretty much stuck with Tallis, Lark, or the London Symphony. Vainberg exploded on the scene here in the late 90.
Concert performances of both are still rarities.
My guess is that Forums such as this are the road forward. Perhaps we should all take turns a week in advance recommending a piece. Everyone listens and we have a book club type discussion. The pieces would at least have to be available on a current recording. After announcing the new work a week in advance, the discussion would last a week .

An interesting idea, though I think it might require more than a month. There was a suggestion last year for the symphonies by Magnard (Ok - there are 4 - and you mention just one piece ...) but it took me quite a while to get in on those, and it's only fairly recently that I've tried several times to listen to them. I'm afraid I still haven't been converted, but I'm not averse to trying again.

One other thing - maybe just one work in isolation doesn't work. Having several works by the same composer gives variety, and also allows comparisons to be made, and perhaps some discussion about how a composer develops/ed.

There is the possibility of a few people (including me) inflicting their pet composer on others. One such that I have grown to accept - at times even like - is Glazunov, but it took me a long while to get to like/know some of his symponies. Over time it's also possible for likes to fall away, and for works which seemed unlikeable at first to become preferred. I challenge most of the readers round here to like Glazunov's 8th sympoony at first hearing - perhaps even at the 10th hearing also, thuugh now I do sometimes listen to it, and get some form of enjoyment from it. I hardly ever listen to numbers 1 to 3, though they are relatively easy at first.

However, taking you up on your suggestion, I'd be prepared to "review" suggested works by Vainberg/Weinberg and Myaskovsky, and perhaps others such as Xenakis over the next few months, or maybe other works by other composers I may not even have heard of.

However, that probably won't prevent some composers from disappearing out of sight, and if their music is barely visible now it may just be too late to turn things back - though occasionally rebounds are possible. Someone must have thought it worth while producing Robert Kahn's violin sonata CD fairly recently - and preserving interest in some pieces which are in a Brahmsian style, perhaps for a few more years.

[richardfinegold]

[QUOTE=richardfinegold;488608

]As usual with you, Dave, a very thoughtful response.
As I understand the inclusion criteria the works would have to be available but not mainstream. This could include a complete unknown such as your Kahn, but also more fringe Composers such as Ives, Rubbra, Piston, Magnard, Howell, Finzi, Martucci...frankly, I would love it if someone like Roehre or Suffolk Coastal would make the choices, but there is some value to each of us making a suggestion, doing some research, etc. I haven't seen SC on the forum lately but his threads must be easy to pull up for a wealth of ideas.
It should be one work to a Composer. If I had to listen to multiple Glazunov pieces in a week I may regret surviving my recent Surgery.
We should also exclude Composers that participate here on the Forum, to prevent any bruised feelings. Pity, because I listened a Richard Barrett work this morning on Spotify and rather enjoyed it.
Do others have an interest or suggestions?

[french frank]

neglected Frenchies

On the subject of which - I know CotW has always had the custom of regularly repeating the Big Names, esp JS Bach, Mozart - usually once a year and usually finding something new to say. But perhaps featured weeks, specially flagged up, going into composers whose work is difficult to find? Six weeks a year (for six separate composers, and emphasising the music rather than biography) surely wouldn't be too many? It would need a bit more digging around, but there will be experts in all fields who could help DM out :-)

Perhaps we could construct a 'suggestion' list of composers who - as Dave mentioned - we have had difficulty tracking down on record?

[Richard Tarleton]

Sometimes, but perhaps not often, musicians dip below the horizon and yet reappear later.

Forgive my ignorance, I seem to have heard of very few of the composers named on this thread , but is the theme of the thread really "Relatively Modern Music on the verge of becoming extinct"? There are loads of composers who have "dipped below the horizon" for 200-400 years, only to reappear triumphantly in recent times. One example might be Silvius Leopold Weiss (same dates as Bach), who wrote exclusively for an instrument which suffered a Darwinian extinction in the mid-18th century, only to experience a resurgence in the 20th century as the baroque lute has been extensively cloned from the DNA of old instruments? Is natural selection a useful analogy here?

An idle Bank Holiday thought, sorry

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

One example might be Silvius Leopold Weiss (same dates as Bach), who wrote exclusively for an instrument which suffered a Darwinian extinction in the mid-18th century, only to experience a resurgence in the 20th century as the baroque lute has been extensively cloned from the DNA of old instruments? Is natural selection a useful analogy here?

Jurassic Bach? (We began with the blood of a descant recorder retrieved from a mosquito captured in amber, but before we knew it we were being chased round the café by a Theorbo!)

[Richard Tarleton]

[verismissimo]

I can remember when Monteverdi and Mahler were neglected composers, Handel's operas apparently unperformable...

The wheel of musical fashion turns...

[umslopogaas]

A theorbo? Could have been worse, thank your lucky quavers it wasnt a serpent!

Interesting to see what Constant Lambert thought in Music Ho!, which he published in 1934. He thought Sibelius, rather than Schoenberg, was the music of the future. He obviously couldnt know that Sibelius would not write any more, despite living another 23 years. I guess Sibelius's position is secure, but I dont think he would now be described as writing the music of the future. Lambert also thought the music of Bernard van Dieren pointed the way forward. I know nothing of van Dieren and cant comment, but I dont think I've ever heard a note of his music, on R3 or anywhere else.

[Sir Velo]

I guess Sibelius's position is secure, but I dont think he would now be described as writing the music of the future.

Au contraire. I think he was nearer the mark than you give him credit. http://www.sibelius.com/home/index_flash.html

[kea]

van Dieren definitely comes to mind as a composer 'on the verge of extinction'—I only have a recording of one of his works. There are possibly a couple more recordings out there, but vanishingly few.

Others: Theodor Kirchner is definitely in need of a revival, possibly also Josef Matthias Hauer (though he's always been slightly more well known as the 'other' inventor of dodecaphony) and Harry Partch (whose day appears to be dawning thanks to the indefatigable musikFabrik). Also the early Czech romantics, Voříšek, Tomášek, Kalivoda. And some of the Darmstadt people who didn't get involved in the Boulez-Stockhausen-Henze-Nono Manly Man Machismo Contest like Karel Goeyvaerts, René Leibowitz, Gottfried Michael Koenig, Jean-Pierre Guézec etc. (I know it wasn't totally like that ) Maurice Ohana and André Jolivet have been slightly reintroduced thanks to the Timpani and Musicatreize labels but we could probably use similar projects for, like, Édith Canat de Chizy and a few others. Oh and Matthijs Vermeulen who's still really underexposed. And Nikolai Obukhov.

As well, some composers are a bit more exposed but not well represented by their exponents, like J.L. Dussek (only Andreas Staier's 3 recordings of him are really recommendable) and to some extent Frank Martin.

[Dave2002]

Forgive my ignorance, I seem to have heard of very few of the composers named on this thread , but is the theme of the thread really "Relatively Modern Music on the verge of becoming extinct"? There are loads of composers who have "dipped below the horizon" for 200-400 years, only to reappear triumphantly in recent times. One example might be Silvius Leopold Weiss (same dates as Bach), who wrote exclusively for an instrument which suffered a Darwinian extinction in the mid-18th century, only to experience a resurgence in the 20th century as the baroque lute has been extensively cloned from the DNA of old instruments? Is natural selection a useful analogy here?

An idle Bank Holiday thought, sorry

Don't apologise. Didn't much of J.S. Bach's work disappear for a long time until Mendelssohn came along? However there must have been some sort of undercurrent of knowledge which drove composers such as Mendelssohn and Beethoven, even Mozart to look at the work of earlier composers. This raises yet another question - "How did they find time to compose their own music, and also study the works by others?" Some composers, such as Mozart may simply have listened to music (no R3 in those days, though ...) and could almost immediately absorb and memorise the music, and the ideas within it. Others may have had to look at the scores, and spot "interesting" ideas, which they would the incorporate into their own works. Some may have tried to be truly original and not refer to any other works, though I suspect that this is a really hard way to do things.

Even some significantly earlier composers, such as Dufay, Perotin etc. seemed to be well aware of the music of other composers, and a careful analysis of their scores appears to reveal some of the clever devices which they used, and which some of them were aware of. Some of these did spot when a composer wrote something new and innovative. Whether mere mortals who simply listened would notice is another matter entirely. Although now we can exchange music and other documents very quickly, dissemination of musical ideas does not seem to have been particularly slow even in the period from 1200-1600.

Coming back to your question - the suggestions and commentary don't have to relate to relatively modern composers, though from what we've noticed of your interests that could mean anything in the last 400 years!