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guest54
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« on: February 03, 2012, 12:34:22 am »

On another Forum we are asked, which composers deserve to be unsung? Actually at first I took this to mean, which of those who are already unsung deserve so to be? But every one else seems to understand it to be asking simply, which composers (known or unknown) are bad? So let us take it thus for present purposes. I would not dare respond there, but in the purer atmosphere of the present Forum the truth need not be hidden. They are, for a beginning, these:

Haydn, Slopstercowitch, Stock-hausen, all Northern Americans except Carter, Mendelssohn, Vivaldi, Telemann, Verdi, Monteverdi, Tippett, Britten, Barrett, Bliss, Rubbra, Maxwell D., Berio, Nono, Schnittke, Smyth, Weill; - and actually I could go on all day . . .

The true history of elevated Art-Music would be entirely unaffected had none of this legion of the half-inspired ever written a note. Let them fall by the wayside without further fuss!
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Neil McGowan
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« Reply #1 on: February 03, 2012, 08:33:46 am »

A neatly waspish topic for a Friday, Mr G  :)  My felicitations!

Of course, it's much more fun proscribing the deserving than begging for the pardon of personal favourites among those already carted off to Nieblelheim - so I shall not be making any such representations, despite the temptation to do so.  :)

  • Nothing Boulez has written is of any worth, and can be forgotten immediately. In fact it has already been forgotten. Perhaps the French tax-payer might like to investigate exactly why so many sous have been fruitlessly expended on an utterly talentless charlatan?
  • Xenakis falls into the same category as Boulez - a composer of no talent at all, promoted by a country blackmailed into wishing to appear cultured (whilst not actually giving a damn)
  • Yawn Williams. Enough said!
  • Herbert Howells. And all others lurking in vestries drinking tea and eating Dundee Cake.
  • Reger. Karg-Elert. And organ music in general.
  • All Panufniks. Enoughnik!
  • Bruckner. All of it. Immediately.
  • Quilter. Help people in E Europe during the blizzards - burn every wretched note of this dross, and let it finally bring happiness to someone who needs it.
  • Parry. Stanford. Ireland. Stainer. All of them.

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« Reply #2 on: February 03, 2012, 03:45:25 pm »

On another Forum we are asked, which composers deserve to be unsung? Actually at first I took this to mean, which of those who are already unsung deserve so to be? But every one else seems to understand it to be asking simply, which composers (known or unknown) are bad? So let us take it thus for present purposes. I would not dare respond there, but in the purer atmosphere of the present Forum the truth need not be hidden. They are, for a beginning, these:

Haydn, Slopstercowitch, Stock-hausen, all Northern Americans except Carter, Mendelssohn, Vivaldi, Telemann, Verdi, Monteverdi, Tippett, Britten, Barrett, Bliss, Rubbra, Maxwell D., Berio, Nono, Schnittke, Smyth, Weill; - and actually I could go on all day . . .

The true history of elevated Art-Music would be entirely unaffected had none of this legion of the half-inspired ever written a note. Let them fall by the wayside without further fuss!
If you did "go on all day" (which mercifully you have desisted from doing), there'd likely be little if any music left to discuss in any atmosphere of any kind full of anything or nothing! Nothing from the composer often referred to as the father of the symphony - no quartets or piano sonatas or trios from him either! I won't "go on all day" because there's nothing here to be taken at all, let alone seriously, although I am still trying to imagine what the climate of American music would have been like in the utterly improbable circumsances that the admittedly excellent Elliott Carter been that country's only composer and I don;t recognise one of the names on this "list" and another has one of those time-dishonoured redundant Grewish hyphens (and you can read that either way, as you wish).
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« Reply #3 on: February 03, 2012, 04:02:36 pm »

Nieblelheim
Niebelheim, surely?

  • Nothing Boulez has written is of any worth, and can be forgotten immediately.
On what grounds and in whose opinion?
In fact it has already been forgotten.
By whom? Boulez's public performance and discography history does not appear to corroborate such a statement.
Perhaps the French tax-payer might like to investigate exactly why so many sous have been fruitlessly expended on an utterly talentless charlatan?[/li][/list]
I rather doubt it although, if any of them did, they'd be well advised to look at the amount of tax revenue generated by Boulez himself and the musicians who have performed for him over the years.
  • Xenakis falls into the same category as Boulez - a composer of no talent at all, promoted by a country blackmailed into wishing to appear cultured (whilst not actually giving a damn)
On the contrary, he's an entirely different composer! - and since when did Greece "promote" his work?!
  • Yawn Williams. Enough said!
Leave him alone; he's written quite a lot of much admired film music!
  • Herbert Howells. And all others lurking in vestries drinking tea and eating Dundee Cake.
Where is your evidence that Howells or any other composer actually did this and what grounds does it alone provide for ignoring their work?
  • Reger. Karg-Elert. And organ music in general.
Reger and Karg-Elert wrote plenty of music other than for organ, as I'm sure you are well aware - but organ music in general? So - no symphonies by Dupré, Vierne, Widor or Sorabji, no Liszt, no J S Bach?...
  • All Panufniks. Enoughnik!
Enough of this stuff, undoubtedly!
  • Bruckner. All of it. Immediately.
Why? - and, given his influence, wouldn't you then be obliged to throw out the babies Wagner, Mahler and Schönberg with the Brucknerian bathwater? (and you'd better go around shooting the various people who over the past couple of decads and more have been turning the completion of his Ninth Symphony into a veritable musicological industry all its own)...
  • Quilter. Help people in E Europe during the blizzards - burn every wretched note of this dross, and let it finally bring happiness to someone who needs it.
Why Quilter in particular and none of the other English song composers?
  • Parry. Stanford. Ireland. Stainer. All of them.
What possible place could Ireland have in this arbitrarily chosen "group"? And why not Ireland's almost exact contemporary Bridge as well? And their pupils including Britten, Searle et al? - and perhaps the work of their pupils should also be expunged (which neatly lets me out)...

The above doesn't quite descend to the extreme depths of the Grewish barrel, but it comes close enough. Who'd be left?
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« Reply #4 on: February 03, 2012, 07:50:37 pm »


  • Nothing Boulez has written is of any worth, and can be forgotten immediately.
On what grounds and in whose opinion?

In my opinion. Who else did you believe I might represent? :)


In fact it has already been forgotten.
By whom? Boulez's public performance and discography history does not appear to corroborate such a statement.

I was at a Music Festival in Estonia a couple of years ago, at the Press Conference (we were there participating, but our bit of the Press Conference was already over). The French group were talking (in English) about the music they were going play, and they mentioned Boulez.

"Who?" said one of the music journalists.
"Boulez. E's vair famous in France!  Ze great French composeur and dirigeur"
"Oh, Berlioz! Hector Berlioz, right?"
"Non-non, Boulez, Pierre BOU-lez."
"Poulenc?"
(One player hands some sheet music to the journalists. Shrugs all round.)
"Who is it?"

And that is Petit Pierre's fame outside France, and certain postal districts of Darmstadt.

Have you ever seen a "Best Of Pierre Boulez" cd?  Clue - it's a blank disc.
[/list]
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Neil McGowan
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« Reply #5 on: February 03, 2012, 07:54:22 pm »

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Why? - and, given his influence, wouldn't you then be obliged to throw out the babies Wagner

If there was any influence at all, I believe it was in the opposite direction?
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« Reply #6 on: February 03, 2012, 09:13:55 pm »


  • Nothing Boulez has written is of any worth, and can be forgotten immediately.
On what grounds and in whose opinion?
In my opinion. Who else did you believe I might represent? :)
Thank you for confirming what I had suspected! I admit to having no patience eitgher with the earaly piano sonatas of Boulez, upon which (along with Stockhausen, Nono et al) I was raised in my early 'teens before I knew a note of Schönberg, let alone Bach, Mozart and Beethoven - but Pli selon Pli is, I think, on quit another level altogether and some of his later work is certainly well worth of attention. I'm no Boulez fanatic, but to dismiss all of his work as though it counted for nothing strikes me as absurd in any context onther than that of one individual's very personal opinion.

In fact it has already been forgotten.
By whom? Boulez's public performance and discography history does not appear to corroborate such a statement.

I was at a Music Festival in Estonia a couple of years ago, at the Press Conference (we were there participating, but our bit of the Press Conference was already over). The French group were talking (in English) about the music they were going play, and they mentioned Boulez.

"Who?" said one of the music journalists.
"Boulez. E's vair famous in France!  Ze great French composeur and dirigeur"
"Oh, Berlioz! Hector Berlioz, right?"
"Non-non, Boulez, Pierre BOU-lez."
"Poulenc?"
(One player hands some sheet music to the journalists. Shrugs all round.)
"Who is it?"

And that is Petit Pierre's fame outside France, and certain postal districts of Darmstadt.

Have you ever seen a "Best Of Pierre Boulez" cd?  Clue - it's a blank disc.
[/list]
Very funny - not. Is Estonia the world's centre for opinions on such matters in any case? No need to answer that! Boulez is who he is - a composer of few works, many under almost constant revision and recasting. One of the 20th century's greatest composers? No. A composer to be ignored and utterly vilified as you suggest? Also, no.
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« Reply #7 on: February 03, 2012, 09:16:51 pm »

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Why? - and, given his influence, wouldn't you then be obliged to throw out the babies Wagner

If there was any influence at all, I believe it was in the opposite direction?
I would say that it was, quite markedly, in both directions; Wagner, it is said, was contemplating the composition of a symphony following Parsifal; it's a great shame that he never got around to this, as it might have told us a great deal about his attitude to the symphony as a concert work as distinct from a stage work at a point in his maturity (approaching 70) that could have enabvled him to come forward with something truly astonishing - but in his admiraton for Bruckner he was not unduly backward in coming forward...
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« Reply #8 on: February 04, 2012, 12:05:36 am »

. . . Ze great French composeur and chef d'orchestre . . .

Any composer - and they are legion among the modernists - who produces acres upon acres of screeching soprano must be deeply suspect. The rot began with Pierrot Lunaire and Erwartung did it not? Schönberg tired of it after a while but his little pupil Anton carried on with the screeching. And then of course in the '-fifties of the last century the French and Italians, who due to their warmer climate are famous for that sort of thing - think of the thousands of nineteenth-century operas - went right over the unimaginative top at Darmstadt and for them screeching became de rigueur. There one could not NOT screech - that was the way Boulez came to see it by the time of the Marteau sans jolly old Maître. A nightmare what for ordinary respectable people and homo-sexualists - of whom latter there are naturally a great many among the musically gifted.

But where does Bussotti fit into all that we wonder?
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« Reply #9 on: February 04, 2012, 04:58:20 am »

Is Estonia the world's centre for opinions on such matters in any case? No need to answer that! Boulez is who he is - a composer of few works, many under almost constant revision and recasting. One of the 20th century's greatest composers? No. A composer to be ignored and utterly vilified as you suggest? Also, no.

I'm not suggesting doing anything actively. His self-important Empire-building at IRCAM is already well-known, and needs no further comment. Although the self-perpetuating Aren't-We-Marvellous-School of Darmstadt practitioners and annalists would have you believe Petit Pierre has almost godly status, the rest of the world really can't be bothered with his tantrums or his dull music.  In fifty years from now he'll have joined the also-rans of French music, of whom there are very many - Auber, Mehul, et cie.  Whilst he has simultaneously identified and trodden underfoot those decent composers who might have given him a run for his money.  What a nasty little man he is.  And a second-rate conductor into the bargain - his lacklustre Janacek recordings never get out of second gear.  It's astounding they've been given big-label releases - but that's Boulez all over, yelling for huge fees for his feeble efforts.

Quote
but Pli selon Pli is, I think, on quit another level altogether

Yes, it's one of the best pastiches of Pierrot Lunaire I can think of.  Written a mere half-century later.

Quote
the symphony as a concert work as distinct from a stage work at a point in his maturity

Who knows?  The symphony as a concert work was extremely out of fashion at the time.  Perhaps RW might have produced a theatrically-conceived symphony instead, and done us all a favour?  You have to admit that large orchestral non-cantata works with texts were gaining popularity from the time of Beethoven's CHORAL FANTASIA onwards, not to mention Symphony No 9, of course.  Mahler inherited the tradition (peculiarly neither he nor Liszt composed operas, despite conducting them extensively) and we can only surmise that Wagner might have produced something in his own place on the continuum.  Once again Bruckner drifts off into his own undisciplined, poorly-orchestrated and longwinded rambles known only for trying the bladder-endurance of orchestral musicians and audiences alike.

Quote
who produces acres upon acres of screeching soprano must be deeply suspect

Ah yes, we have already mentioned Plink Salon Plunk above.  Although Petit Pierre has written little else for the soprano voice.  And no opera, despite raking in the dosh for conducting it.

Quote
the time of the Marteau sans jolly old Maître. A nightmare what for ordinary respectable people and homo-sexualists

I'm not sure whether those two groupings are mutually exclusive... but Monsieur B certainly adheres by inclination to one of the groups mentioned - if not indeed both.










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« Reply #10 on: February 04, 2012, 09:17:16 am »

. . . Ze great French composeur and chef d'orchestre . . .

Any composer - and they are legion among the modernists - who produces acres upon acres of screeching soprano must be deeply suspect. The rot began with Pierrot Lunaire and Erwartung did it not?
It did not. The problem with Erwartung is that some sopranos - all too many over the years, I fear - have tended to treat the work as some kind of hysterical, histrionic scream-fest that thereby misses completely many of the work's intricacies and subtleties. One remarkable exception to this that I encountered live almost 16 years ago was when it was sung by Jessye Norman with Boulez conducting - a partnership that seemed fraught with difficulties yet Ms Norman's take on the work emphasised the multiple layers of thought and characterisation rather than treating it as some kind of expressionistic virtuous showpiece and Boulez drew from LSO just about everthying that there is in that elaborate score, pointing up elements of it that often get submerged in other performances.

Schönberg tired of it after a while but his little pupil Anton carried on with the screeching. And then of course in the '-fifties of the last century the French and Italians, who due to their warmer climate are famous for that sort of thing - think of the thousands of nineteenth-century operas - went right over the unimaginative top at Darmstadt and for them screeching became de rigueur. There one could not NOT screech - that was the way Boulez came to see it by the time of the Marteau sans jolly old Maître.
Not true. Darmstadt has come and (not quite) gone and, it has to be said, Boulez the young firebrand made some pretty abrasive and trenchant observations, especially during the 50s, that he would hardly repeat these days. The Darmstadt/Donaueschingen/Köln axis of something-or-other has arguably gone down in musical history as - well, a piece of musical history and its place in musical composition today is no more dominant than the 12-note serial approach "ensured the supremacy of German music for the next hundred years", as Schönberg put it (and I remember the pianist and composer Ronald Stevenson, in his Books & Bookmen review of Malcolm MacDonald's book on the composer years ago commenting on Schönberg's assertion that it was a strange idea for an Austrian Jew to have, neatly missing Schönberg's humour in  phrase that was nevertheless well worth writing). Xenakis and Carter have at various times been branded "modermists", as was Varèse before either, yet for all that, none of these fitted the Darmstadt ethic at all conmortably.

A nightmare what for ordinary respectable people and homo-sexualists - of whom latter there are naturally a great many among the musically gifted.
The question as to where these two are mutually exclusive gives way to one as to why you would imply that there are less musically gifted people among heterosexuals (though why you should describe such people as "ordinary" and "respectable" as though any kind of sexual orientation could possibly guarantee either is quite another question altogether and one that is both too large and off topic to be addressed here).

But where does Bussotti fit into all that we wonder?
Do "we" indeed? Where does Busoni fit into all that?
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« Reply #11 on: February 04, 2012, 09:26:01 am »

I'm not suggesting doing anything actively. His self-important Empire-building at IRCAM is already well-known, and needs no further comment. Although the self-perpetuating Aren't-We-Marvellous-School of Darmstadt practitioners and annalists would have you believe Petit Pierre has almost godly status, the rest of the world really can't be bothered with his tantrums or his dull music.  In fifty years from now he'll have joined the also-rans of French music, of whom there are very many - Auber, Mehul, et cie.  Whilst he has simultaneously identified and trodden underfoot those decent composers who might have given him a run for his money.  What a nasty little man he is.  And a second-rate conductor into the bargain - his lacklustre Janacek recordings never get out of second gear.  It's astounding they've been given big-label releases - but that's Boulez all over, yelling for huge fees for his feeble efforts.
That Boulez has done some of what you say cannot be denied; no less a figure in French music than the now 96-year-old Dutilleux has in the past complained about his undue dominance over the French music scene (though I understand that the two men now enjoy much more cordial relations) but he has always been careful to separate out his thoughts about Boulez's autocratic behaviour and about his music. If Boulez - now almost 87 - wasn't taken so seriously today, he wouldn't get so much attention now, let alone in half a century's time. I wonder how we would view Boulez now had he pursued his career as a pianist...

By "annalists" do you instead - or perhaps even additionally(!) - mean "analists"? Either way, however, I don't need the views of such people in order to make up by own mind about Boulez the composer - nor do you and nor does anyone else; I prefer to use my own ears. As it happens, I find some of Boulez's works considerably more engaging than others (and for someone who was evidently a pianist of considerable accomplishments in his early days, his piano writing is, to me, especially disappointing and depressing - so much so, in fact, that I've never understood the cult status that has accreted around his Deuxième Sonate to the point that one might be forgiven for assuming that it was his Op. 111)...

Quote
but Pli selon Pli is, I think, on quit another level altogether
Yes, it's one of the best pastiches of Pierrot Lunaire I can think of.  Written a mere half-century later.
I beg to differ to such an extent that I'd say that your remark would be an insult to both works if it could be taken seriously but, since it can't, I've no need to do so.

Quote
the symphony as a concert work as distinct from a stage work at a point in his maturity
Who knows?  The symphony as a concert work was extremely out of fashion at the time.  Perhaps RW might have produced a theatrically-conceived symphony instead, and done us all a favour?  You have to admit that large orchestral non-cantata works with texts were gaining popularity from the time of Beethoven's CHORAL FANTASIA onwards, not to mention Symphony No 9, of course.  Mahler inherited the tradition (peculiarly neither he nor Liszt composed operas, despite conducting them extensively) and we can only surmise that Wagner might have produced something in his own place on the continuum.  Once again Bruckner drifts off into his own undisciplined, poorly-orchestrated and longwinded rambles known only for trying the bladder-endurance of orchestral musicians and audiences alike.
Then one might wonder why Wagner admired him as much as he did...
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« Reply #12 on: February 04, 2012, 11:17:46 am »

Then one might wonder why Wagner admired him as much as he did...

Probably because he flattered Der Meister's ego with the appearance of a disciple, whilst being conspicuously unsuccessful (never once professionally performed in his own lifetime) and posing no rivalry whatsoever. He also drew Hanslick's fire, for which RW must have been very grateful indeed :)

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« Reply #13 on: February 04, 2012, 11:38:11 am »

Then one might wonder why Wagner admired him as much as he did...

Probably because he flattered Der Meister's ego with the appearance of a disciple, whilst being conspicuously unsuccessful (never once professionally performed in his own lifetime) and posing no rivalry whatsoever. He also drew Hanslick's fire, for which RW must have been very grateful indeed :)
I doubt that this would have been sufficient for Wagner - but then let's not forget that the apparent accuser of Bruckner as a composer of symphonic boa-constrictors nevertheless found much to praise in his seventh symphony...
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« Reply #14 on: February 04, 2012, 03:04:33 pm »

Shouldn't this thread be renamed? What about "Shamelessly down the shameful plughole"?
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