Recommendation required for a high quality chamber work.

[richardfinegold]

Finland no good, eh!

I think some of Korngold's early chamber works at least fit into the parameters. The Doric Quartet have made recordings of the quartets.
His piano quintet dates from around 1920, while his Op 10 String quintet was performed in 1917. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_Wolfgang_Korngold Although he later went on to write film music, which he admitted probably saved his life, he started off as a classical composer, and in his final years he was still writing music in classical genres for concert performances.

Dave, do you think that being a "classical composer" and writing "film music" are mutually exclusive activities?

[kea]

KA Hartmann (German) wrote a couple of string quartets in the 1930s, along with a shorter single-movement Concerto for String Quartet and Percussion. The first six of Krenek's (Austrian) 8 string quartets date from the period under consideration as well, and the 7th was written during WWII after he'd fled to America.

[Sydney Grew]

How about Eugen Suchoň's Pianoforte Quintette of 1933? It is a truly wonderful work, the style and sound of which are very like those of Webern's Quintette (which latter was written in 1907 but - at least according to Grove's - not performed until 1953 ! ) Suchoň was active in Bratislava you know.

[Dave2002]

Dave, do you think that being a "classical composer" and writing "film music" are mutually exclusive activities?

Walton, Vaughan Williams, Malcolm Arnold and Britten wrote film music.

Korngold was hailed as a musical genius in his youth by Mahler, and also by Richard Strauss. His violin concerto is the piece which is performed and heard most often.

I suspected that Samuel Barber might have written film music, but I couldn't find any.

Some composers who are associated with film have also written "classical" music - Ennio Morricone, Miklós Rózsa. Bernard Herrmann who wrote a lot of film music, also wrote

Symphony (1941)
Wuthering Heights (opera)
Moby Dick (1938) (cantata)
For the Fallen, a tribute to the soldiers who died in battle in World War II,

I think other more obviously "classical" composers may include

Shostakovich

Op. 18: Music to the silent film The New Babylon for small orchestra (1929)
Op. 26: Music to the film Alone (1930–1931)
Op. 30: Music to the film Golden Mountains (1931)
Op. 33: Music to the film Counterplan (1932)
Op. 36: Music to the animated film The Tale of the Priest and of His Workman Balda for chamber orchestra (1933–1934)
Op. 38: Music to the film Love and Hate (1934)
Op. 41: Music to the film The Youth of Maxim (1934–1935)
Op. 41a: Music to the film Girl Friends (1934–1935)
Op. 45: Music to the film The Return of Maxim (1936–1937)
Op. 48: Music to the film Volochayev Days (1936–1937)
Op. 50: Music to the film The Vyborg Side (1938)
Op. 51: Music to the film Friends (1938)
Op. 52: Music to the film The Great Citizen, first part (1938)
Op. 53: Music to the film The Man with the Gun (1938)
Op. 55: Music to the film The Great Citizen, second part (1939)
Op. 56: Music to the animated film The Silly Little Mouse (1939)
Op. 59: Music to the film The Adventures of Korzinkina (1940)
Op. 64: Music to the film Zoya (1944)
Op. 71: Music to the film Simple People (1945)
Op. 75: Music to the film The Young Guard (1947–1948)
Op. 76: Music to the film Pirogov (1947)
Op. 78: Music to the film Michurin (1948)
Op. 80: Music to the film Meeting on the Elbe for voices and piano (1948)
Op. 82: Music to the film The Fall of Berlin (1949)
Op. 85: Music to the film Belinsky for orchestra and chorus (1950)
Op. 89: Music to the film The Unforgettable Year 1919 (1951)
Op. 95: Music to the film Song of the Great Rivers (1954)
Op. 97: Music to the film The Gadfly (1955)
Op. 99: Music to the film The First Echelon (1955–1956)
Op. 105a: Music to the film Moscow, Cheryomushki (1962)
Op. 111: Music to the film Five Days, Five Nights (1960)
Op. 114b: Music to the film Katerina Izmailova (1966)
Op. 116: Music to the film Hamlet after Shakespeare for orchestra (1963–1964)
Op. 120: Music to the film A Year Is Like a Lifetime for orchestra (1965)
Op. 132: Music to the film Sofiya Perovskaya (1967)
Op. 137: Music to the film King Lear after Shakespeare (1970)

Prokofiev

Lieutenant Kijé (1934), also arranged as an orchestral suite
Queen of Spades / Pique dame, Op. 70 (1936), after Pushkin
Alexander Nevsky (1938), film directed by Sergei Eisenstein (also exists in the form of a cantata)
Lermontov (1941)
Kotovsky (1942)
Tonya (1942)
The Partisans in the Ukrainian Steppes (1942)
Ivan the Terrible, Op. 116 (1942-5), film directed by Sergei Eisenstein

Schnittke

Adventures of a Dentist, film directed by Elem Klimov (1965, material reused in Suite in the Old Style)
Commissar, film directed by Aleksandr Askoldov (1967, released 1988), based on one of Vasily Grossman's first short stories, "In the Town of Berdichev"
The Glass Harmonica, animated film directed by Andrei Khrzhanovsky (1968, much material reused in Second Violin Sonata)
Sport, Sport, Sport, film directed by Elem Klimov (1971)
You and I, film directed by Larisa Shepitko (1971)
Butterfly, animated film directed by Andrei Khrzhanovsky (1973)
The Agony, two-part film directed by Elem Klimov (1974, main theme reused in the finale of the Second Cello Concerto)
Little Tragedies, three-part TV film directed by Mikhail Schweitzer (1979)
Ekipazh (Air Crew), film directed by Alexander Mitta (1979)
Skazka Stranstviy (The Fairytale of the Voyages), film directed by Alexander Mitta (1982)
Dead Souls, five-part TV miniseries directed by Mikhail Shveytser (1984)
The Last Days of St. Petersburg (1992, new score for 1927 film, co-written with the composer's son Andrey)
The Master and Margarita, film directed by Yuri Kara (1994)
La mouette (fr), film directed by Youli Karassik (fr) (1972)

Moisei Vainberg / Weinberg
"Letyat zhuravli (The Cranes Are Flying)" (1957)
"Shofyor ponevole" (1958)
"Posledniy dyuym (The Last Inch)" (1958)
"Posledniye zalpy (The Last Salvo)" (1960)
"Po tonkomu l'du" (1960)
"Baryer neizvestnosti" (1961)
"Molodo-zeleno (Young-Green)" (1962)
"Ulitsa Nyutona, dom 1 (Newton Street, 1)" (1963)
"Giperboloid inzhenera Garina (The Hyperboloid of Engineer Garin)" (1965)
"Seraia bolezn´ (Grey Sickness)" (1966)
"Krepkiy oreshek" (1967)
"Proshschay, Gyulsary!" (1968)
"Vinni Pukh" (1969)
"Vinni Pukh idyot v gosti" (1971)
"Za vsyo v otvete (Responsible for Everything)" (1972)
"Vinni Pukh i den zabot" (1972)
"Neylon 100% (100% Nylon)" (1973)
"Fokusiek (Conjurer)" (1973)
"Tsarevich Prosha (Czarevich Prosha)" (1974)
"Moy dom, teatr (The Theater Is My House)" (1975)
"Afonya" (1975)
"Kak Ivanushka-durachok za chudom khodil" (1976)
"Solovey (The Nightingale)" (1979)
"Tegeran-43 (Teheran 43)" (1981)
"Oslinaya shkura (Donkey's Hide)" (1982)
"O strannostyakh lyubvi (About Oddities of Love)" (1983)
"I vot prishyol Bumbo... (And Then Came Bumbo...)" (1984)
"Skazka pro vlyublyonnogo malyara" (1987)

Copland
(Mice and Men (1939))
The North Star (1943) was nominated for an Academy Award
The Heiress (1949) won the award.
Several themes from his scores are incorporated in the suite "Music for Movies".
The Red Pony
Something Wild (1961) was released in 1964 as "Music For a Great City".
Documentaries
The City (1939)
The Cummington Story (1945)

Bernstein.
On the Town, 1949 (only part of his music was used)
On the Waterfront, 1954
West Side Story, 1961

That's all I can find in a short time - there are doubtless quite a few more.

[Don Petter]

Given that only a handful of all those have survived to be known and played outside the film environment, it seems a depressing catalogue of wasted talent in terms of the musical world as a whole?

[Dave2002]

Given that only a handful of all those have survived to be known and played outside the film environment, it seems a depressing catalogue of wasted talent in terms of the musical world as a whole?

Don

I'm not quite sure what you are saying here. Are you suggesting that "good" composers shouldn't waste their time and effort on film music, or rather that we should make more efforts to appreciate film music? In any case, if we consider the totality of music written, much of it does get condemned to obscurity. Does that mean that composers who aren't going to have a long lasting impact shouldn't bother to write at all?

The field of music isn't the only one in which people "waste their talents" - and in many areas of life people are doing very boring mundane things, which hardly get recognised, nor have a very significant impact to them or to others - other than that whatever they do perhaps enables them to survive and in some cases have a reasonable life.

We don't always have to be evaluating whether people are doing "worthwhile" things or not.

We are drifting off topic somewhat (sorry - I'm rather to blame), but we were asked to suggest works not in the mainstream by (presumably) minor composers from a restricted geographical area and a constrained time frame. This indicates some level of interest in the work of some talented people whose work didn't make it regarding long term wide scale acceptance. Should they not have bothered? What about creative workers who didn't achieve even this modest level of "success"?

[Don Petter]

I think my reaction to that list was that although there were presumably good and worthy reasons (maybe artistic, maybe to make a living) why all these composers wrote so much for films, it is a pity that so much creative effort was used, either to produce music which hasn't received the lasting exposure it may have deserved, or effort which could have been used to create more lasting works in the wider conventional musical world.

Could we now have had another acclaimed work from Shostakovich if he hadn't been beavering away on such subjects as The Silly Little Mouse? We shall never know, and it's all history, anyway.

I was not intending to make any value judgement on film music or the composers (famous or not) who have written it.

[Dave2002]

I think you are trying, retrospectively, to suggest that some composers should have organised their lives differently, perhaps for our benefit. They did what they felt they needed, for personal or other reasons.

Most of the composers I listed produced a substantial output, and the work for films was only a small part of it. In the case of RVW we did get the Sinfonia Antartica.

[Don Petter]

Hiya Don,

Yes, I know the name Franz Schmidt but I have checked my collection and have none of his works but will investigate. Thanks very much for the heads-up.

This was the sort of thing I was thinking of:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfFxDVRWcmE

(From the G major Piano Quintet)

[Don Petter]

I think you are trying, retrospectively, to suggest that some composers should have organised their lives differently, perhaps for our benefit. They did what they felt they needed, for personal or other reasons.

Not 'should' - Just musing what might have been.

[Hornspieler]

I would recommend the Nonet by Louis Spohr as a fine example of the blending of string and wind instruments.
Although the Octet is better known, the Nonet is seldom played.

There is a good example played by the New York Fine Arts Ensemble which was on the Saga label.

Hs

[kea]

Could we now have had another acclaimed work from Shostakovich if he hadn't been beavering away on such subjects as The Silly Little Mouse? We shall never know, and it's all history, anyway.

Writing a "serious" composition into which one has put a great deal of personal expression can be psychologically and physically exhausting—composers need breaks, with varying degrees of frequency. Writing lighter or less effortful music to pay the bills in the meantime is the best we can hope for; that way there is still a legacy of additional works that may not be "great" but merit occasional revival, where the most likely alternative would be none at all.

Also I'm not sure the conventional musical world is "wider" than the film world in any sense. In Shostakovich's case, it's quite likely that more people saw The Gadfly than heard the Tenth Symphony for instance. And while Shostakovich's concert music may have outlasted the films he contributed to, films that become "canonical" (or even "cult classics") eclipse all classical music for audience numbers & cultural influence.

[Tevot]

Hello there Stanfordian,

How about Othmar Schoeck?

1st String Quartet http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9iNQd_kG_U

2nd String Quartet http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pfu3v6wvp_8

Violin Sonata http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRQJ5JwHUNk

Best Wishes,

Tevot

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Could we now have had another acclaimed work from Shostakovich if he hadn't been beavering away on such subjects as The Silly Little Mouse? We shall never know, and it's all history, anyway.

As I don't know the Music for The Silly Little Mouse, I can't comment on whether DSCH's "beaverings" were in wasted or not. Perhaps if he had written more film Music, he might not have had time for the Twelfth Symphony?


Beethoven: Incidental Music to Coriolan, The Ruins of Athens, Egmont - or the Tenth Symphony?

[richardfinegold]

I would recommend the Nonet by Louis Spohr as a fine example of the blending of string and wind instruments.
Although the Octet is better known, the Nonet is seldom played.

There is a good example played by the New York Fine Arts Ensemble which was on the Saga label.

Hs

I think the OP wanted a work from a later time period.
I have a couple of recordings of both of the Spohr works that you reference. In both cases they were fillers and I was buying the disc for the other works. I've never developed any affection for the Spohr pieces, but perhaps they appeal more to Musicians than to a general listener.