Things they somehow managed to avoid......

[Suffolkcoastal]

Someone should have stopped Sibelius putting his 8th Symphony in the fire, his wife should have distracted him, and weren't parts of it sent off to a copyist at one point? The copyist should have had a 6th sense and copied it out for himself. A Bruckner opera, that would have been fascinating and how about Stalin having some musical taste and liking Lady Macbeth, could we have had Shostakovich the opera composer rather than the symphonist?

As for Mahler 11-17, no thanks he wrote too many as it is, the First World War was to be depressing enough, goodness only knows what effect it would have had on Mahler. But more chamber music or a full scale opera would have been interesting though it might have been rather long!

[Black Swan]

Someone should have stopped Sibelius putting his 8th Symphony in the fire, his wife should have distracted him, and weren't parts of it sent off to a copyist at one point? The copyist should have had a 6th sense and copied it out for himself.

As for Mahler 11-17, no thanks he wrote too many as it is, the First World War was to be depressing enough, goodness only knows what effect it would have had on Mahler. But more chamber music or a full scale opera would have been interesting though it might have been rather long!

I agree and disagree with Suffolkcoastal. I to often ask why didn't someone stop Sibelius from burning the 8th Symphony. I always hope that they will do some repairs at Aianola and find the score inside a wall or something. But I would have liked to have seen Mahler complete the 10th symphony and see where he went from there. But am happy with what we have as well.

[Stan Drews]

My original encounter (Early Music Shop catalogue, c. 1973)

Massenet
Never wrote a Mass in A.
If he had,
It would've been bad!

[Don Petter]

My original encounter (Early Music Shop catalogue, c. 1973)

Massenet
Never wrote a Mass in A.
If he had,
It would've been bad!

Yours seems to reverse the sense of ah's version in #13.

Perhaps you'd better go behind the bike sheds and sort out who's right?

[Serial_Apologist]

Wasn't that Symphonic Variations? - or was there an actual symphony as well?

There was a programme on it a few years ago entitled "Boulez's Lost Symphony". Pierre recalled it as such, all right!

Edit: Ferney (#25) remembers it better than I.

[Ferretfancy]

- a setting of Werther, perhaps? (Although Mahler would possibly re-write much of Goethe's plot. A "Werther Original", perhaps?) Hearing the Seventh Symphony, I reckon Gus would've made a damn fine opera of A Midsummer Night's Dream.


(Incidentally, your scenario would make a change from the devastated audiences pouring into St Martin's Lane looking for a convenient place to commit murder after many a modern producer's take on Mozart!

Quite right ferney ! i still haven't recovered from that ghastly Don Giovanni a few years back with Donna Elvira as a bag lady and all the participants taking turns to kill Giovanni at the end!

[Nick Armstrong]

(Incidentally, your scenario would make a change from the devastated audiences pouring into St Martin's Lane looking for a convenient place to commit murder after many a modern producer's take on Mozart!)

Same applies to Bow Street and the mean streets of Lewes, as far as I'm concerned

[Stan Drews]

Yours seems to reverse the sense of ah's version in #13.

Perhaps you'd better go behind the bike sheds and sort out who's right?

I think that ah's version is probably the original. The EMS at the time (good-naturedly) disparaged anything that couldn't be played on a rebec and a couple of crumhorns, hence:

Praetorius
Is glorious,
But Brahms
Harms.

[Sir Velo]

Alkan actually wrote a symphony, it's just been lost.

Alkan did, in fact, compose a symphony which survived; it's just not for orchestra.

For never-existed works I'd like to hear a Medtner violin concerto

Or, indeed, a symphony.

[Richard Barrett]

Xenakis opera ?

In fact a production by David Freeman of Euripides' Bacchae in London in 1993 was billed as such, although Xenakis had actually only set the choruses and a few other moments to music. (I don't think he was up to doing anything more extensive by that time, it's one of his last works.) His incidental music for the Oresteia from 1967 is much more impressive I thought, and rather convincing when performed on its own (lasting about an hour).

Quite a lot of anti-Mahler sentiment on this thread! I think it's clear that (like Xenakis) had he wanted to write an opera he would have done, but more importantly IMO people who find Mahler or his music depressing aren't really listening...

[Bryn]

In fact a production by David Freeman of Euripides' Bacchae in London in 1993 was billed as such, although Xenakis had actually only set the choruses and a few other moments to music. (I don't think he was up to doing anything more extensive by that time, it's one of his last works.) His incidental music for the Oresteia from 1967 is much more impressive I thought, and rather convincing when performed on its own (lasting about an hour).

Quite a lot of anti-Mahler sentiment on this thread! I think it's clear that (like Xenakis) had he wanted to write an opera he would have done, but more importantly IMO people who find Mahler or his music depressing aren't really listening...

And while he did not compose an opera of his own, he did complete Weber's Die drei Pintos at the request of the composer's grandson, also named Carl.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Quite a lot of anti-Mahler sentiment on this thread! I think it's clear that (like Xenakis) had he wanted to write an opera he would have done, but more importantly IMO people who find Mahler or his music depressing aren't really listening...

Really? The only reference to "depressing" came from Ferret in #29, and I took that to refer chiefly to "modern" opera directors, rather than Mahler (and his Music) himself. The poor bloke (Mahler, not Ferret) was only fifty-one when he died - he probably had lots of ideas about works he might write "when he had the time". Piano Sonatas and String Quartets, for example - especially the fourth Quartet of 1932, in which he finally adopted the Twelve-note serial methods of his young friend Arnie (whilst negotiating with his former colleagues in Vienna for the commissioning and premier performances of the Three-Act Moses und Aron).


There's a universe where all this has happened, you know!

[Serial_Apologist]

Really? The only reference to "depressing" came from Ferret in #29, and I took that to refer chiefly to "modern" opera directors, rather than Mahler (and his Music) himself. The poor bloke (Mahler, not Ferret) was only fifty-one when he died - he probably had lots of ideas about works he might write "when he had the time". Piano Sonatas and String Quartets, for example - especially the fourth Quartet of 1932, in which he finally adopted the Twelve-note serial methods of his young friend Arnie (whilst negotiating with his former colleagues in Vienna for the commissioning and premier performances of the Three-Act Moses und Aron).


There's a universe where all this has happened, you know!

If only....



I think the direction would have been that taken by Zemlinsky, whose music, following Mahler's death, took on many more Mahlerian fingerprints than previously. The signals are in the neo-classsical foreshadowings of the two inner movements of the tenth symphony, I reckon.

[Stanfordian]

Alkan did, in fact, compose a symphony which survived; it's just not for orchestra.



Or, indeed, a symphony.

Or a Brahms cello concerto.

[Richard Barrett]

There's a universe where all this has happened, you know!

Supposedly... but by that token there's a universe in which Brian Ferneyhough wrote an opera based on "The Magic Roundabout".

Re Mahler, to add to Ferretfancy's talk of depression, there was also suffolkcoastal's remark that he wrote too many symphonies. That for me counts as a veritable avalanche of anti-Mahler sentiment!