Who are the Division 2 composers from Russia and other parts of Eastern Europe?

[cloughie]

.....Matyushin?, Gretchaninov?, Koreshchenko?, Berezovsky?, Paderewski?, Porumbescu?, Goldmark?, Szell?, Erkin?, Rey?

Etc!......in addition to earlier names named.

Also:

Is there any evidence to suggest that Russian nationalism from the mid 1800s onwards was such that the music was especially formulaic, hence comparatively indistinct?

Goldmark definitely should be there even if only for the Rustic Wedding Symphony, another of my long-term favourites.

[Serial_Apologist]

Is there any evidence to suggest that Russian nationalism from the mid 1800s onwards was such that the music was especially formulaic, hence comparatively indistinct?

I think the Russian Five, taking their cues from Glinka and Dzarghomiszky, were in fact keen to break with the formulaicisms they found in the Austro-Germanic tradition such as strictly applied thematicism and enharmonic predictability, i.e. this chord after that one being right, any other one wrong, and started to turn to their own rich folk music traditions for inspiration and establishing national musical identity - think of all those Russian overtures! - as later would Kodaly, Bartok, RVW, Holst, and in a composer like Martinu to a slightly lesser degree.

I wouldn't myself have thought formulaicism of itself makes music indistinct. Resort to formula can act as a way to establishing an individual voice. Concentration on avoiding rhythmic and harmonic resolution may seem exclusionary, and exclusionary in turn limiting and therefore making for lack of distinction, but for the early free improvisers here in the 1960s and '70s it offered an important means to circumventing automatism as well as the surfeit of clichés that are still everywhere largely unchallenged in commercial music unless one goes to radical Techno, which may not be considered commercial!

Ferney has made mention of Rimsky-Korsakov's deployment of the scale of alternating tones and semitones (the octatonic). In his case, and those of a few who more selectively followed in his footsteps in enriching their vocabularies, the scale fulfils the duty accorded to other types of scale in Indian classical music, mode=mood, but its ubiquity of usage in so much of today's contemporary music, apart from some improvising jazz players who find it a useful launching pad into chromatic freedoms, suggests it can become a sort of trap, in the same way as diatonic dependency, or that of any other kind, can. Messiaen for instance clearly isolated certain of Debussy's harmonic practices - his use and invention of modes - to build up his own form-giving vocabulary, resulting in previously unforseen harmonic colours arising from modal juxtaposition*. It probably would depend on the kind of furmulaicism employed, and, nothing being gained in terms of advance, for how long.

(*Few E Europeans (have) used serial techniques - so we won't mention them here! - but looking at the range of musics produced therefrom also dispenses with the label of necessary formulaicism, I would have thought).

[Lat-Literal]

I think the Russian Five, taking their cues from Glinka and Dzarghomiszky, were in fact keen to break with the formulaicisms they found in the Austro-Germanic tradition such as strictly applied thematicism and enharmonic predictability, i.e. this chord after that one being right, any other one wrong, and started to turn to their own rich folk music traditions for inspiration and establishing national musical identity - think of all those Russian overtures! - as later would Kodaly, Bartok, RVW, Holst, and in a composer like Martinu to a slightly lesser degree.

I wouldn't myself have thought formulaicism of itself makes music indistinct. Resort to formula can act as a way to establishing an individual voice. Concentration on avoiding rhythmic and harmonic resolution may seem exclusionary, and exclusionary in turn limiting and therefore making for lack of distinction, but for the early free improvisers here in the 1960s and '70s it offered an important means to circumventing automatism as well as the surfeit of clichés that are still everywhere largely unchallenged in commercial music unless one goes to radical Techno, which may not be considered commercial!

Ferney has made mention of Rimsky-Korsakov's deployment of the scale of alternating tones and semitones (the octatonic). In his case, and those of a few who more selectively followed in his footsteps in enriching their vocabularies, the scale fulfils the duty accorded to other types of scale in Indian classical music, mode=mood, but its ubiquity of usage in so much of today's contemporary music, apart from some improvising jazz players who find it a useful launching pad into chromatic freedoms, suggests it can become a sort of trap, in the same way as diatonic dependency, or that of any other kind, can. Messiaen for instance clearly isolated certain of Debussy's harmonic practices - his use and invention of modes - to build up his own form-giving vocabulary, resulting in previously unforseen harmonic colours arising from modal juxtaposition*. It probably would depend on the kind of furmulaicism employed, and, nothing being gained in terms of advance, for how long.

(*Few E Europeans (have) used serial techniques - so we won't mention them here! - but looking at the range of musics produced therefrom also dispenses with the label of necessary formulaicism, I would have thought).

Yes.

Perhaps "formulaic" isn't quite the right word then.

I accept that individual voices were found by moving from the Austro-German traditions long before, say, serialism and that serialism seeing that it has briefly been mentioned is a formula or set of formulae in which many have found an individual voice. Then, spectralism is as much of an attitude as a technique if not more so. Has Radulescu been mentioned yet? Much earlier, the same could be said of Russians establishing a national music identity, ie it was attitudinal. But if there were battalions of people abandoning formula in similar ways to each other to create an unmistakable Russian sound then it almost becomes a formula in itself or has a consistency that goes beyond any formula. So is it that a lot of the solid enough Russian composers - 19th Century onwards - were/are just not distinct enough from each other to have very long-lasting, let alone broad modern commercial appeal?

[Serial_Apologist]

Yes.

Perhaps "formulaic" isn't quite the right word then.

I accept that individual voices were found by moving from the Austro-German traditions long before, say, serialism and that serialism seeing that it has briefly been mentioned is a formula or set of formulae in which many have found an individual voice. Then, spectralism is as much of an attitude as a technique if not more so. Has Radulescu been mentioned yet? Much earlier, the same could be said of Russians establishing a national music identity, ie it was attitudinal. But if there were battalions of people abandoning formula in similar ways to each other to create an unmistakable Russian sound then it almost becomes a formula in itself or has a consistency that goes beyond any formula. So is it that a lot of the solid enough Russian composers - 19th Century onwards - were/are just not distinct enough from each other to have very long-lasting, let alone broad modern commercial appeal?

They had certain traits in common, but I wouldn't hear them as lacking in distinction from one-another.



Over to someone else!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Highly recommended is Stephen Walsh's Musorgsky & his Circle, which goes into great detail about how a specifically Russian-centred soundworld was created in the mid-Nineteenth Century. Balakirev insisting on a complete break from Western influences to create a "pure", authentically Russian Musical language. His own attempts to live up to his own ideals (which included administrating and conducting concerts of works which attempted to live up to those ideals) caused him severe emotional & psychological difficulties, which sound like severe depression, and his abandoning composition for many decades - difficulties he could only overcome by abandoning most of the ideals he had insisted upon when he returned to composition in the 1880s.

Rimsky at first embraced these ideals but quickly abandoned them to concentrate on traditional Western Musical ideals of harmony and counterpoint - his later adoption of folk-Music-derived Musical elements (such as the octotonic scale) representing a synthesis of the two ideals. Borodin took notice of Balakirev's ideals, but could also put them out of his mind when necessary - his compositions were adversely affected by his "day job" (he was both an important scientist, making important advances in resaerch in Chemistry, and an active professor of Chemistry, who took his commitments to his science students very seriously) and by looking after his chronically ill wife. (One of the many flaws in Walsh's writing is his dismissing without a shred of medical evidence her health issues as malingering.)

Only Musorgsky successfully forged (from very slender precedents) an authentically new, permanently astonishing, and valid Musical style based on Balakirev's ideals - and the effort it cost him is poignantly chronicled in Walsh's book.

Against this group and their adherents was the Moscow-based group for whom Anton Rubinstein was the equivalent of Balakirev, and whose most important composer was Tchaikovsky. Seeking to embrace and meet Western (and specifically Austro-German) Musical traditions on their own terms, their work was fiercely opposed by the Balakirev supporters.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Musorgsky-His-Circle-Russian-Adventure/dp/0571245625

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

One composer already mentioned is Medtner. We were asked (well - told) to orchestrate part of a piece of his at university, and I remember thinking what a delightful piece it was. Later, I couldn't remember the name of the piece and it was only many years afterwards that I finally caught up with it - identified by the orchestration which I'd kept.

It was Danza Sinfonica, Op. 40, no. 2

http://imslp.nl/imglnks/usimg/1/13/IMSLP09040-Medtner_forgotten_melodies_III_op40_2_danza_sinfonica_muzgiz.pdf

Without wishing to upset Ferney, I do wonder whether it might be a good idea to complete the orchestration.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Without wishing to upset Ferney, I do wonder whether it might be a good idea to complete the orchestration.

[Serial_Apologist]

Highly recommended is Stephen Walsh's Musorgsky & his Circle, which goes into great detail about how a specifically Russian-centred soundworld was created in the mid-Nineteenth Century. Balakirev insisting on a complete break from Western influences to create a "pure", authentically Russian Musical language. His own attempts to live up to his own ideals (which included administrating and conducting concerts of works which attempted to live up to those ideals) caused him severe emotional & psychological difficulties, which sound like severe depression, and his abandoning composition for many decades - difficulties he could only overcome by abandoning most of the ideals he had insisted upon when he returned to composition in the 1880s.

Rimsky at first embraced these ideals but quickly abandoned them to concentrate on traditional Western Musical ideals of harmony and counterpoint - his later adoption of folk-Music-derived Musical elements (such as the octotonic scale) representing a synthesis of the two ideals. Borodin took notice of Balakirev's ideals, but could also put them out of his mind when necessary - his compositions were adversely affected by his "day job" (he was both an important scientist, making important advances in resaerch in Chemistry, and an active professor of Chemistry, who took his commitments to his science students very seriously) and by looking after his chronically ill wife. (One of the many flaws in Walsh's writing is his dismissing without a shred of medical evidence her health issues as malingering.)

Only Musorgsky successfully forged (from very slender precedents) an authentically new, permanently astonishing, and valid Musical style based on Balakirev's ideals - and the effort it cost him is poignantly chronicled in Walsh's book.

Against this group and their adherents was the Moscow-based group for whom Anton Rubinstein was the equivalent of Balakirev, and whose most important composer was Tchaikovsky. Seeking to embrace and meet Western (and specifically Austro-German) Musical traditions on their own terms, their work was fiercely opposed by the Balakirev supporters.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Musorgsky-H.../dp/0571245625

Yes ferney, the existence of those two national schools in C19th Russia is most interesting, not to mention how they devolved onto C20th developments in that land!

Leaving aside Mussorgsky, the one true Independent, I've always felt the two schools to be less mutually uninfluential than is portrayed (in my admittedly very limited reading), and am unconvinced about the total success of the "Big Five" is dissassociating themselves from traits of Germanicism. Liszt had a detectable influence on approaches to orchestration and harmony - the former in particular on Balakirev and Borodin, the latter on Rimsky and Tchaik, and on their delectation in a broad singable melodicism that is as much to do with the appeal of memorability deriving by way of Liszt - and Chopin, to a lesser extent - from italian opera; and one has to add the Wagnerian influence on Rimsky, not just in the operatic field, but in applying the Leitmotiv concept in the "symphonic" works. I remember being strongly struck by the Tchaikovskyian character of Rimsky's melodies in "Sheherezade". There seem to my ears to have also been two-way influences between France and Russia: the "light" attractive melodicism of Tchaikovsky's ballet themes has much in common with those to be found in Gounod and Delibes, while Saint-Saens's harmonies and orchestration often sound remarkably "Russian" - Liszt returning by a different route in "Danse Macabre", whose peaceful conclusion has striking parallels with Mussorgsky's "Night on the Bare Mountain" even before RK got his mitts on the score! And of course the influence then went the other way - from Saint-Saens into Faure's and Satie's adaptation of modalism, explicity in cf the latter's early "Ogives" with their block harmonies à la "Great Gate", not often talked about, and of course Ravel, Debussy, Koechlin, Falla, Holst/RVW, Malipiero/Casella - another story, forgive me. I'll shut up now about Scriabin!!! What is also interesting (and for me disturbing) is to find the undisguised Schumanneque and Wagnerian influences in Stravinsky's early 1906 Symphony, given the St Petersburg rearing and the composer's rude comments on German music apart from Mozart ("I'd get rid of all his development sections, they'd be fine then!") and Bach; there are even Wagnerian touches as late as "The Firebird".

[Lat-Literal]

The latest set of posts are very helpful indeed, principally in conveying the architecture of much of the upper tier to the previously uninitiated (me). It also appears very likely that Medtner, Goldmark and Rubinstein would qualify for the second tier. But are the many composers who were alive at the time of the main people mentioned mere shadows of them?

(Also, given their significance, Balakirev and Cui don't get good air play - I think they must be in the second tier too in 2017 - as for Dzarghomiszky???)

[Serial_Apologist]

The latest set of posts are very helpful indeed, principally in conveying the architecture of much of the upper tier to the previously uninitiated (me). It also appears very likely that Medtner, Goldmark and Rubinstein would qualify for the second tier. But are the many composers who were alive at the time of the main people mentioned mere shadows of them?

(Also, given their significance, Balakirev and Cui don't get good air play - I think they must be in the second tier too in 2017 - as for Dzarghomiszky???)

My apologies Lat - I was writing without havinf first checked the spelling. Dargomyzhsky (for it is he) is described as having composed the most influential Russian opera since Glinka's "Russlan at Ludmilla" some 30 years earlier. Mussorgsky was keen on it. Here are its Wiki details:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stone_Guest_(Dargomyzhsky)

[Lat-Literal]

My apologies Lat - I was writing without havinf first checked the spelling. Dargomyzhsky (for it is he) is described as having composed the most influential Russian opera since Glinka's "Russlan at Ludmilla" some 30 years earlier. Mussorgsky was keen on it. Here are its Wiki details:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_St...(Dargomyzhsky)

That's quite alright.

Post 71

It's an odd thing, this.

I thought when stepping off the main thoroughfare, the buildings would be externally austere.

Then I assumed I would be advised that there was remarkable colour in some but not all of their interiors.

Instead, they are much as I feared albeit circled by elusive butterflies.

And I am not sure that I have an adequate net for them.

[Suffolkcoastal]

Well here are my thoughts:

Division 1: Mussorgsky, Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Stravinsky, M Weinberg, Martinu, Bartok, Dvorak, Chopin
Division 2: Borodin, Rimsky-Korsakov, Scriabin, Glinka, Glazunov, Myaskovsky, Tischenko, Lutoslawski, Tansman, Janacek, Liszt, Kalliwoda, Lajtha, Kodaly, Smetana, Suk, Enescu, Vanhal, A Panufnik, G Popov, Szymanowski.

There are several others such as Krommer, Reicha & Shebalin, that could almost get into the 2nd Division.

I tend to count Baltic state composers as more Scandinavian, Tubin is IMO the greatest of them.

[EdgeleyRob]

Well here are my thoughts:

Division 1: Mussorgsky, Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Stravinsky, M Weinberg, Martinu, Bartok, Dvorak, Chopin
Division 2: Borodin, Rimsky-Korsakov, Scriabin, Glinka, Glazunov, Myaskovsky, Tischenko, Lutoslawski, Tansman, Janacek, Liszt, Kalliwoda, Lajtha, Kodaly, Smetana, Suk, Enescu, Vanhal, A Panufnik, G Popov, Szymanowski.

There are several others such as Krommer, Reicha & Shebalin, that could almost get into the 2nd Division.

I tend to count Baltic state composers as more Scandinavian, Tubin is IMO the greatest of them.

I'd put Myaskovsky in the top tier and would maybe include Taneyev and Ivanovs also.

Some that I enjoy,with suggested works (plenty to sample on you tube and in the Naxos Library)

Mieczysław Weinberg - 8th Symphony,16th String Quartet,Piano Quintet
Nikolai Myaskovsky - 6th Symphony,Violin Concerto,11th String Quartet
Sergei Taneyev - 2nd Symphony,6th String Quartet,Piano Quintet
Janis Ivanovs - 20th Symphony,Cello and Violin Concertos
Krzysztof Meyer - String Quartets,Piano Sonatas
Vissarion Shebalin - String Quartets 5 (won a Stalin prize ) & 6
Evgeny Golubev - 5th Symphony,10th String Quartet,Harp Quintet
Boris Tishchenko - 7th Symphony,8th Piano Sonata,4th String Quartet
Dora Pejačević - Symphony in F Sharp Minor,Cello Sonata
Alexander Gretchaninov - Piano Trios,String Quartets,Cello Sonata
Witold Maliszewski - Symphonies 1 & 3,Violin Sonata

[BBMmk2]

Well here are my thoughts:

Division 1: Mussorgsky, Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Stravinsky, M Weinberg, Martinu, Bartok, Dvorak, Chopin
Division 2: Borodin, Rimsky-Korsakov, Scriabin, Glinka, Glazunov, Myaskovsky, Tischenko, Lutoslawski, Tansman, Janacek, Liszt, Kalliwoda, Lajtha, Kodaly, Smetana, Suk, Enescu, Vanhal, A Panufnik, G Popov, Szymanowski.

There are several others such as Krommer, Reicha & Shebalin, that could almost get into the 2nd Division.

I tend to count Baltic state composers as more Scandinavian, Tubin is IMO the greatest of them.

Syzmanowski, Scriabin & Lutoslawski 2nd Division?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Syzmanowski, Scriabin & Lutoslawski 2nd Division?

I was taken aback by that - and then rendered incandescent at the inclusion of JANACEK as a "Second Divisioner". JANACEK!!!!!! - No better Czech composer EVER!!!!!