More than 30 years separate d'Indy's Second String Quartet (1897) from his Third, composed over 1928-1929 as he passed his 78th birthday. Between the Violin Sonata (1903-1904) and the Piano Quintet (1924), apart from a few small pieces and arrangements, d'Indy composed no chamber music, being preoccupied with administrative duties at his music school, the Schola Cantorum -- funded with his fortune and for which he wrote the course -- and composition of his musical testament, La Légende de Saint Christophe (1908-1915), into which he crammed his medievalism, his Catholicism, his enormous erudition, his bigotry and anti-Semitism, and his loathing for the rising tide of Modernism. The preceding quartets, challenged by the prestige the form commanded owing to Beethoven's spate of masterpieces, evinced a preoccupation with form, compensating for a habitual absence of melodic afflatus, constricting the unusual lyricism of the First and generating a curious aridity in the monothematic Second. With the death of his wife in 1905, d'Indy's already highly organized approach to composition took on a systematic rigidity and chef d'école self-consciousness as his general outlook soured. The attendant heaviness began to dissipate only toward the end of the Great War when a chance encounter with a sympathetic young woman, Caroline Janson, took a romantic turn leading to marriage in 1920 and that amazing series of late masterpieces attesting a puissant rejuvenation -- the scintillant Poème des ravages, its companion Diptyque méditerranéen for orchestra, and a half-dozen chamber works rife with joy, the Third Quartet among them. It is not that d'Indy has become a fetching melodist in his old age -- his themes are serviceable rather than memorable -- but supreme technique is animated by potent feeling, the return of his considerable charm, and a generally relaxed geniality. It was no longer necessary for every new work to be an audacious coup de maître, though the Third Quartet qualifies. From the opening bars there is lift, cordiality -- ecstasy, even -- managed by a master hand. The welcoming mien is confirmed by a two-page notice explicative prefacing the score in which the work's formal design is spelled out -- after a brief introduction a compact sonata first movement, passionate yet smiling; a candid Intermède set off by a trio of ravishing tendresse; a slender theme becoming ever more persuasive through seven brief but elaborate variations; and a rondo finale with five refrains leading through nostalgia-laced joy to a triumphant peroration. The Quatuor Calvet gave the premiere at a Société Nationale concert on April 12, 1930.  ~ Adrian Corleonis, allmusic.com


I could not find any dialogue on this work, outside of a brief (but nondescript) mention in a letter from Jean Roger-Ducasse to Nadia Boulanger that coincided with the work's premiere at the Strasbourg Festival on June 10, 1948. Elsewhere, Schmitt's quartet is mentioned in the same breath as Roger-Ducasse's second quartet, which was completed at around the same time as Schmitt's.

I don't speak French, otherwise I'd attempt translation of the radio introduction.

Like Roger-Ducasse's work, the Schmitt quartet is simply massive to behold. It's a shame that this work is so unknown. Based on the biographical information I've found, it would seem that, by the 1940s, Schmitt had managed to piss off almost everybody with thorny critical writings and bad behavior at performances. As none of that stuff matters anymore, I'm certainly going to spend some time examining this work, as its appeal to me is both immediate and delightfully mysterious (very much akin to the way I react to Faure's music). The 130-odd page score is unfortunately still under copyright restrictions at IMSLP.org, but it's probably not a very hard one to find.

Don't get me wrong. I spend the majority of my time poring through scores and recordings of music I like :D

Part of what disheartened me about the Applebaum thing was that the video came to me through a person who knows next to nothing about classical music and was curious to know if all recent work was as ridiculously dadaist as the pieces Applebaum displayed. I reassured him that not everybody was nearly that much of a quack and linked him a few recent pieces to check out (including Norgard's 10th quartet, which I think I linked in here as well).

What bothered me most about that video was how it reminded me of the recent polarization of the classical market, at least in the States. I feel like, back about 50-70 years ago, it was actually more possible for people to be exposed to music that combined tradition and innovation. Whenever I go to the used record store, I see countless LPs that promoted works by Bartok, Stravinsky, Hindemith, Prokofiev, etc... These days, I feel like musicians and listeners are being ferried into much tighter market categories and that the tendencies are more polarized towards either arch-conservatism or nihilistic avant-gardism. This wouldn't be as big a deal, but I feel like both territories are completely subordinating the genre to market forces and will ultimately kill it off. What irritates me most is how a monstrous pile of composers, pieces, and entire countries worth of artists seem to get lost in the middle of those two poles. In a way, maybe that's part of the reason we're in this new forum, trying to salvage the greater part of the last century's musical output.

My goodness, this music......

While this sort of broad-stroked and brain-deadening dystopian capitalist realism is certainly awful and demoralizing, I still think I became more agitated and venomous after being sent another video, wherein composer Mark Applebaum treats a bourgeois audience to a whole stinking heap of irritating psuedo-avant-garde grandstanding:

http://www.ted.com/talks/mark_applebaum_the_mad_scientist_of_music.html

Everything about this guy screams "attention-starved brat" as he struts around in his contemporary Erik Satie outfit, making ironic quips about his abject narcissism while claiming credit on the same sort of ephemeral and nihilistic ideas that Cage executed over 50 years ago.

To keep the thread relevant, I nominate that the worst piece of music is Applebaum's work for three conductors (see the video), but almost any of the ones he displays could apply.

As regards this section of the board, are the topics listed alphabetically? If this is the case, could a moderator rename the existent topics to reflect the following format:

Last Name, First Name (dates) - Worklist, etc....

...and require that further lists follow this guideline. The only alternative might be to segregate the names by nationality. I just feel like things are going to get chaotic once a lot more names start showing up.

I believe this would make the overall board more organized. Just an idea.

EDIT: Either that or we could place some kind of sticky on the top that contains links to all of the composers individual threads.

I have the following disc:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Music-Of-Germaine-Tailleferre/dp/B000005BIA/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top

I've not listened to every work enough to have an intimate familiarity with them all, but I really enjoy both of the disc's early works, Image and the string quartet.

Tailleferre is likely not the least-known member of 'Les Six' (I would say that Louis Durey is more obscured), but her work is definitely worthy of examination. Stylistically, her work is even more conservative than Poulenc's most clear, tonal works.

I like her quote:
"I write music because it amuses me. It's not great music, I know, but it's gay, light-hearted music which is sometimes compared with that of the 'petits maitres' of the 18th century. And that makes me very proud."

For me, her work is of generally pleasant and belongs on the same tier as the music by composers like Henri Sauguet and Jean Francaix. It lacks some of the curiosity, brashness, and forward-thinking disposition one can find in the works of Milhaud or Auric, but it's still very nice.

I like how far this work goes before introducing an accidental:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Wm6-kcMAVk

I believe Norgard also completed Holmboe's final piece for string quartet after the composer passed away. I've not yet managed to listen to Holmboe's entire cycle, seeing as it's longer than Shostakovich's or Milhaud's!

Thanks for the great Tansman post, Jowcol. He was the first L'ecole de Paris composer I got interested in, after finding a used copy of his string quartet cycle at the Princeton Record Exchange some years ago. His polytonal harmonic language and brisk style just swept me off my feet and I've been an enthusiast ever since. At this point, I have almost all of his available music on CD or MP3 and have been slowly accumulating his scores for further study. In my most recent foray into the library system, I found scores for his first piano concerto (not recorded), a ballet based on Tolstoy's Resurrection, and his opera Sabbatai Zevi. Having completed lists for his comrades Mihalovici and Harsanyi, I've been meaning to assemble a works list for him for years, but haven't yet gotten around to it. Maybe I'll do that next. His catalogue is a little spotty, since (a.) he didn't use opus numbers and (b.) a number of early works are lost, including his first string quartet and his first piano trio.

As much as I like Norgard and always rank him high amongst living composers I admire (with Wuorinen, Carter, Dusapin, Ruders, Kox, etc...), I'm probably more ecstatic on guys with one foot off the ground and the other seated in tonality like N.V. Bentzon, Holmboe, Weinberg, Absil, Quinet, Mihalovici, Tansman, Norholm, Koppel, etc...

At his best, Norgard is still pure magic. Works like 'Spell' for piano trio, the second piano sonata, and the string quartets are incredibly well-realized.

You might want to look into some of his earlier works, such as the early trio for clarinet, cello, and piano or either of the first two quartets (No. 1 'Breve' or No. 2 'Brioso'). Early on, Norgard was inspired by Sibelius and his teacher, Vagn Holmboe (an incredible composer in his own right).

His later works became much more personal in terms of their style, but to me, unlike a lot of other contemporary composers, the development feels very organic and unpretentious in execution (I always think of Bartok for some reason). His music bears none of the nihilistic gimmicky, extramusical deconstructionism, or market-friendly spirituality (or political bullcrap) that plagues the work of so many other contemporary composers. His most recent quartet, no. 10, is about as timeless as a piece can get:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfAfcLeyWT0

Thanks very much for the Schmitt quartet.

It's interesting that, like his teacher Gabriel Fauré, Schmitt waited until considerably late in his career to compose an only string quartet. Looking over his works list, I'm very interested in checking out his earlier quartets for flutes, low brass, and saxophones.

In a way, seeing as how popular music becomes more and more insulting to civilization with each passing moment, it brings me no small pleasure to see the artists making little payback for their extroverted (i.e. self-loathing) and populist utterances. This kind of leveling effect is just what that type of music deserves. If these 'artists' want to have blind faith in the global capitalist ideal, than they have no right to bitch and moan when the system grinds them into dust.

It's certainly a shame when truly-talented musicians and performers inadvertently let themselves get caught up in that mess though...

It's uplifting to see familiar names showing up here. I had only been an active member at UC for a few months and, unfortunately, my primary interests are almost all composers who fall under the umbrella of 'dry-as-dust modernism' that the moderators decreed 'justifiably unsung.'

Here's hoping that this forum provides a comfortable home for all of that great music.

Though I may respectfully disagree with the stylistic tastes of the people at 'Unsung Composers', I did like the way they partitioned discussion and download links. In the spirit of that arrangement...

Thank you Holger for the Rakov pieces. I don't know much of his work aside from several piano sonatinas that he composed. The only work of his that I've heard is a short piano concerto (no. 2) that Fyrexianoff has posted on Youtube. That work is pretty much the definition of lightness, clarity and is well-described by the comment that suggests a 'Russian Poulenc.'

After reading his bio on Wikipedia and noting the strict conservatism of his style, I find it rather interesting that Edison Denisov was one of his students, as he's one of the more boldly avant-garde composers to work in Russia during that time.

http://youtu.be/nkffZGyGStk

Bio at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Rakov

His music (including LPs) has also been cataloged at the following site:
http://home.wanadoo.nl/ovar/rakov.htm

I admire and adore quite a bit of American composer Charles Wuorinen's work, which is not 'serial' (Wuorinen actually takes exception to that term) but is definitely dodecaphonic. I'm especially drawn to his remarkable chamber works, including the saxophone quartet, his two piano quintets, the string sextet, his numerous trio pieces for different instrumental arrangements, etc...