Unkown/Neglected Composers : What are we missing out on ?

[m19834]

Recently my attention has been brought to a couple of different people whose music was not discovered until later in life; Havergal Brian, his first performed work being actually very late in his life, after a lifetime of composing.  And a student of mine has recently told me about somebody that he knew of who was a writer, left his estate to his daughter upon his passing, she left the estate to somebody else, and finally somebody ventured into the attic.  In the attic was found manuscripts of Operas, symphonies, quartets, many musical works.  Apparently, this man who was a writer had a "hidden" musical talent and was also a composer.  Of course, we could ask if the writing is "any good ?" -- but that is kind of besides the point, I think (and I don't really know).

What I realize though is that these stories are somehow a little sad to me, and I kind of question that response in myself.  Why is it sad ?  I suspect that there are many, many people who have something musical to say, and for whatever reason they either don't, or they do but nobody notices or nobody cares.  I can't help but wonder what we are missing out on ?  How would the world be different should we know more art ?  More music ?

I suppose I am partly wondering what the true value of music is.  I know that cannot be truly discussed in full here, but my life wonders about it still.  What makes neglected works and neglected artists a sad thing ?

[Kassaa]

I like you.

This is not useful at all, but please keep posting, they make me think about things .

[ahinton]

Recently my attention has been brought to a couple of different people whose music was not discovered until later in life; Havergal Brian, his first performed work being actually very late in his life, after a lifetime of composing.  And a student of mine has recently told me about somebody that he knew of who was a writer, left his estate to his daughter upon his passing, she left the estate to somebody else, and finally somebody ventured into the attic.  In the attic was found manuscripts of Operas, symphonies, quartets, many musical works.  Apparently, this man who was a writer had a "hidden" musical talent and was also a composer.  Of course, we could ask if the writing is "any good ?" -- but that is kind of besides the point, I think (and I don't really know).

What I realize though is that these stories are somehow a little sad to me, and I kind of question that response in myself.  Why is it sad ?  I suspect that there are many, many people who have something musical to say, and for whatever reason they either don't, or they do but nobody notices or nobody cares.  I can't help but wonder what we are missing out on ?  How would the world be different should we know more art ?  More music ?

I suppose I am partly wondering what the true value of music is.  I know that cannot be truly discussed in full here, but my life wonders about it still.  What makes neglected works and neglected artists a sad thing ?

There must be as many answers to your final question here as there are cases of such neglect. I should, however, point out that, whilst Brian did indeed have a long fallow period where public performance of his work was concerned, he was considerably more widely played, at least in England, in the early years of the last century; his admirers included his compatriot Elgar and even (I believe) Richard Strauss. The sad thing about Brian, it seems to me, was that by the time he reached his peak with the Gothic Symphony (completed in 1927 when he was around 50) - surely one of the most remarkable symphonies ever composed by an Englishman - that fallow period had already begun and it affected his output for almost a further 30 years, not only in terms of lack of performances but (eventually) a considerable falling-off in the level of his inspiration, his best period being the years between the two world wars. The fact that his creative impetus remained with him until his early 90s is indeed remarkable, but the quality of what he produced in later life is, I think, generally much less so.

Best,

Alistair

[m19834]

There must be as many answers to your final question here as there are cases of such neglect.

Oh, well then perhaps it's a good question .  I hope people will give their answers . 

I should, however, point out that,

Why ? 

whilst Brian did indeed have a long fallow period where public performance of hiswork was concerned, he was considerably more widely played, at least in England, in the early years of the last century; his admirers included his compatriot Elgar and even (I believe) Richard Strauss. The sad thing about Brian, it seems to me, was that by the time he reached his peak with the Gothic Symphony (completed in 1927 when he was around 50) - surely one of the most remarkable symphonies ever composed by an Englishman - that fallow period had already begun and it affected his output for almost a further 30 years, not only in terms of lack of performances but (eventually) a considerable falling-off in the level of his inspiration, his best period being the years between the two world wars. The fact that his creative impetus remained with him until his early 90s is indeed remarkable, but the quality of what he produced in later life is, I think, generally much less so.

Best,

Alistair

Yes, this is interesting to me.  See, for me, after I read something like what you wrote, I wonder what made his quality die off ?

[m19834]

I like you.

This is not useful at all, but please keep posting, they make me think about things .

Well, your post was actually helpful to me  .

[ahinton]

Oh, well then perhaps it's a good question .  I hope people will give their answers . 
 
(Quote)
I should, however, point out that,

Why ? 

See what I wrote following that...

Yes, this is interesting to me.  See, for me, after I read something like what you wrote, I wonder what made his quality die off ?

It's hard to say for certain, but I don't think that absence of performance helped; having said that, it didn't affect Sorabji adversely, so I really don't know why this happened.

Best,

Alistair

[m19834]

See what I wrote following that...

I did .  I was just feeling a little frisky and thought I could, perhaps, undo your straight laces ... just a little bit ... you know, just ever so slightly  .

It's hard to say for certain, but I don't think that absence of performance helped; having said that, it didn't affect Sorabji adversely, so I really don't know why this happened.

Best,

Alistair

Yes, I kind of wonder if every composer has in the back of his/her mind a brimming desire to have their pieces performed.  I am sometimes scared to write just because I am afraid it will make me crazy to write my guts out and have them (my guts, I mean) never be heard...

[pies]

a

[ahinton]

I did .  I was just feeling a little frisky and thought I could, perhaps, undo your straight laces ... just a little bit ... you know, just ever so slightly  .

Leaving aside the fact that I don't actually have any laces, straight or otherwise, perhaps it would be sensible and discreet if we both go offline so that you can do that in private...

Yes, I kind of wonder if every composer has in the back of his/her mind a brimming desire to have their pieces performed.  I am sometimes scared to write just because I am afraid it will make me crazy to write my guts out and have them (my guts, I mean) never be heard...

Well, there's little if any point in composing other than to have the composed works performed (except when one might write something specifically for a personal techincal problem-solving purpose only); Copland, for example, didn't even consider any of his pieces were anything like "finished" until they'd had at least several performances.

I'm not usually one to dispense advice, but I'll do so on this occasion, if i may; never be afraid to compose if you feel that you want and/or need to!

Best,

Alistair

[m19834]

Leaving aside the fact that I don't actually have any laces, straight or otherwise, perhaps it would be sensible and discreet if we both go offline so that you can do that in private...

 

Well, there's little if any point in composing other than to have the composed works performed (except when one might write something specifically for a personal techincal problem-solving purpose only); Copland, for example, didn't even consider any of his pieces were anything like "finished" until they'd had at least several performances.

Yeah, I guess people have different thoughts about this.  I think there are some people who compose without a "requisite" desire to have their works performed, at least performed by others.

Right now, I am finding composition to be odd in general, for some reason.  There is, in the world, infinite sound.  It has gone on since the beginning of "time" and will continue until the end.  Then "we" come along and take some "organized" portion of the infinity, and first of all call it creation, and second of all call it "done."  It's somehow similar in my mind to rolling out a big sugar cookie dough, taking our little cookie cutters and stamping them into the dough to "create" a cookie.  Except, in the case of sound, we didn't even make the dough, and I don't think we even made the cookie cutter.  So, I guess I am questioning what truly makes a musical work so special that a person should even be praised or recognized for it in the first place ?  And, I ask this as I am sitting here, ready to launch into a session with my music writing software.

I'm not usually one to dispense advice, but I'll do so on this occasion, if i may; never be afraid to compose if you feel that you want and/or need to!

Best,

Alistair

Yes, okay, Alistair .

[ahinton]

Right now, I am finding composition to be odd in general, for some reason.  There is, in the world, infinite sound.  It has gone on since the beginning of "time" and will continue until the end.  Then "we" come along and take some "organized" portion of the infinity, and first of all call it creation, and second of all call it "done."  It's somehow similar in my mind to rolling out a big sugar cookie dough, taking our little cookie cutters and stamping them into the dough to "create" a cookie.  Except, in the case of sound, we didn't even make the dough, and I don't think we even made the cookie cutter.  So, I guess I am questioning what truly makes a musical work so special that a person should even be praised or recognized for it in the first place ?  And, I ask this as I am sitting here, ready to launch into a session with my music writing software.

The composer's rôle is to work with those sounds and structures, mould them into shapes, consider harmonic, rhythmic, melodic, instrumentational / vocal matters and make pieces out of them. You may as well say that all the raw materials for making cars already exist in some form; there are (or rather were) Trabants and there are Aston Martins - likewise, there are symphonies by Philip Glass and symphonies by Mahler.

Anyway, I look forward to your next new piece; will it be called Four Cookies? (after all, Satie wrote plenty more bizarre titles than that!). Remembering that you are a soprano, however, may I hastily express the wish that they won't be your Four Last Cookies?!...

Good luck!

Best,

Alistair

[dnephi]

I think that there are reasons why many neglected composers are.  I honestly don't think that Scelsi, Bowen, Szymanowski, Sorabji, Reger, et al. deserve all the credit they seem to be getting.

Surely, they should be played, but don't try to force them into the standard rep.  Let it be your personal thing.

[retrouvailles]

Szymanowski deserves to be in standard rep way moreso than the others. Szymanowski was perhaps the most significant pre WWII Polish composer.

[dnephi]

Szymanowski deserves to be in standard rep way moreso than the others. Szymanowski was perhaps the most significant pre WWII Polish composer.

You're right in that respect.  I might argue that he is as important to polish music as Scriabin is to Russian.

[indutrial]

I think that there are reasons why many neglected composers are.  I honestly don't think that Scelsi, Bowen, Szymanowski, Sorabji, Reger, et al. deserve all the credit they seem to be getting.

Surely, they should be played, but don't try to force them into the standard rep.  Let it be your personal thing.

I don't think that there is or should be a "standard rep" after 1900, since more than ever before, musicians have had to heavily individualize their repertoires to avoid outright obscurity. As far as your list, I don't really see any of those composers getting that much credit in the overall musical scene. Scelsi definitely carries a heavy avant-garde aura around which puts him in the same marketing territory as Feldman and Cage, but it's not causing people to buy out all of his scores and I'm dead sure that the complete edition of his works on Mode are not flying off of the shelves. I would say that there are plenty of things I'd rather see people working on than Scelsi's work, but I don't really have a problem with it.


I would argue that Szymanowski, Reger, and Bowen are getting just the attention they deserve - certainly not too much or too little. It would be nice if lots of other composers could get similar levels of attention, especially in the recording world. I'm hoping that the next decade brings an increase in focus on composers from the giant amorphous period immediately following the times of these composers, especially those of whom lived in Eastern Europe and other smaller, less-recognized countries. As I've stated elsewhere, the whole palette of this era seems to get heavily written off or deemphasized if the composer's name isn't Stravinsky, Prokofiev, or Shostakovich. Those guys are great, but I'd like to hear more about Grazyna Bacewicz, or her barely discussed post-Scriabinist brother Vytaulas Bacevicius (spelling probably wrong). I'm happy with the recorded output of works by Martinu and Tansman, but it would nice to hear some more stuff by lesser-known guys like Marcel Mihalovici or Jean Absil. These are composers who wrote 100s of opus numbers worth of good music and have 1-3 total pieces available on CD. The work of CD companies like BIS (Holmboe, Skalkottas, Aho, Russian and Soviet composers), Acte Prealable (Polish composers), Kontrapunkt, Dacapo (Danish composers), and even Naxos (all kinds of composers) has definitely done a damned good job of pushing a more diverse agenda in their release schedules, but it would even nicer to see people on the ground-level talking about this stuff a little more seriously without resorting to their jaded and useless "i'm oversaturated with music so I'll be smug and curt about modern works" approach, which I would argue does plenty to deny these composers any semblance of legacy.

[dnephi]

I argue that there is a standard repertoire after 1900.

There is the 2nd viennese school, Ives, Scriabin, Bartok, Prokofiev, Stravinsky Barber, Messiaen, etc.  Perhaps there isn't one after 1950, but you can't say that these have not as of yet been labeled.

[indutrial]

You're right in that respect.  I might argue that he is as important to polish music as Scriabin is to Russian.

The struggle to decide why or why not a composer is important is one of the quickest ways that a composer who's simply GOOD gets left in the dust these days. Disregarding Szymanowski's national importance completely, he would certainly appear to be far less "important" and milestone-ish than someone like Ravel, Wagner or Scriabin, but his work can certainly stand up alongside it with no problem. I've noticed that people generally appreciate the work of someone like Szymanowski before they've heard anything about his biography (or even his name simply). That way, the rusty gears of dumb idealism and the hero worship surrounding guys who music history profs. yack about can't screw up the experience of something that, while not entirely earth-shattering, is simply excellent work.

[dnephi]

I disagree.  I said important because I don't think his output is as good as Scriabin's but he still was important.   

On the other hand, I am shocked you find Szymanowski the equal of Wagner and Ravel.  How can people so prolific and successful in larger forms compare to Szymanowski?

[indutrial]

I argue that there is a standard repertoire after 1900.

There is the 2nd viennese school, Ives, Scriabin, Bartok, Prokofiev, Stravinsky Barber, Messiaen, etc.  Perhaps there isn't one after 1950, but you can't say that these have not as of yet been labeled.

I would say that all of this should be required music/historical material for a musician to understand and appreciate, but the repertoire of a solo performer can and usually does very quickly shoot into a very individualized direction when it gets involved with music from this era, if only because of how much complexity is involved. The music itself is generally demanding to the point where it's probably not a good idea to try tackling all of this simultaneously. Another thing is that these are simply composers' names. It'd be tricky to get pianists to all agree on what Scriabin pieces are necessary and the list would just end up being huge. Similarly, I wouldn't expect a unified opinion of what is standard and what isn't in Prokofiev's oeuvre.

[indutrial]

I disagree.  I said important because I don't think his output is as good as Scriabin's but he still was important.   

On the other hand, I am shocked you find Szymanowski the equal of Wagner and Ravel.  How can people so prolific and successful in larger forms compare to Szymanowski?

I would say that Szymanowski wrote better small-form music (piano music, violin/piano music, string quartet) than Wagner, so I guess they would kind of even out them out for me. Szymanowski's symphonies are also excellent. I've never heard his opera, King Roger

[ahinton]

Szymanowski deserves to be in standard rep way moreso than the others. Szymanowski was perhaps the most significant pre WWII Polish composer.

Well, not QUITE sure about that, but he certainly deserves all the attention that he's been getting in recent years - and more - and one of the other composers, Sorabji, would have agreed so much it might almost have been painful to witness his agreement - he was utterly devoted to Szymanowski's work and was one of the first writers in English to promote it - and he did so with immense fervency. With your statement that he was "the most significant pre WWII Polish composer" it is almost impossible to argue!

Best,

Alistair

[ahinton]

I'd like to hear more about Grazyna Bacewicz, or her barely discussed post-Scriabinist brother Vytaulas Bacevicius (spelling probably wrong).

You're referring, surely, to Vytautas Bacevičius (1905–70); he was Lithuanian, so I had no idea that he was Grazyna Becewicz's brother! I know little of Bacevičius, but Bacewicz's work is of an importance that has most certainly not yet been fully recognised and appreciaed, even in her native Poland. A fine pianist as well as a violinist (she wrote many works for violin including no less than seven concerti), she was also a short story writer and novelist. A major ornament in 20th century Polish music whose works deserves far more exposure than it currently gets.

Best,

Alistair

[ahinton]

I would say that Szymanowski wrote better small-form music (piano music, violin/piano music, string quartet) than Wagner, so I guess they would kind of even out them out for me. Szymanowski's symphonies are also excellent. I've never heard his opera, King Roger

Then for God's sakes DO!

Best,

Alistair

[mephisto]

Szymanowsky is a first class composer. Fact

[ahinton]

Szymanowsky is a first class composer. Fact

"i" rather than "y" at the end (even Sorabji misspelt it this way!) but you are absolutely right about that; this fact is certainly far better appreciated these days than it was in most places outside Poland 30+ years ago (other than by a few people who knew his work as I did then)...

Best,

Alistair

[thalbergmad]

What makes neglected works and neglected artists a sad thing ?

There exisits considerable beauty outside of standard (if such a word exists) repetoire and perhaps some people miss out on it, due to misconeptions and inability to look away from the most popular composers.

Thal

[rachfan]

I believe that another neglected composer is the Late Romantic Sergei Bortkiewicz (1877-1952) of Ukraine.  Following his death in 1952, his music all but disappeared from concerts and recitals.  Worse yet, some of his manuscripts and printed sheet music inventories had been reduced to ashes during the bombings of Germany in WWII.  Thankfully, however, a great deal of his music survived.  Pianists in particular are slowly rediscovering this incredible legacy, and he is currently enjoying a bit of a renaissance, including CDs.  Some of the members here on PianoStreet have also posted their own recordings of Bortkiewicz's works, which have also raised awareness and interest.

[retrouvailles]

Bortkiewicz was a great composer, but he was nowhere near as pivotal, or deserves to be, as Szymanowski. He will only be appreciated by pianists because of his wonderful skill in writing for the piano, not writing in general, as is the case with people like Szymanowski, who genuinely deserve to be heard by all, pianists and other instrumentalists alike.

[rachfan]

Well, if I recall correctly, Chopin wrote mostly for the piano also.  His orchestral accompaniments for his concertos are notoriously weak, as compared to the orchestrations of Brahms, Schumann, Mendelssohn, or Liszt.  But I'm not sure that relegates Chopin to minor status among composers.  I'm not, of course, suggesting that Bortkiewicz is on par with Chopin, only that they principally wrote for the same instrument.

[indutrial]

Then for God's sakes DO!

Best,

Alistair

I shall. Opera's never been my favorite sub-genre of classical music, but I'm very intrigued by works like King Roger and Martinu's The Greek Passion (great book, by the way). In time...

[ahinton]

Well, if I recall correctly, Chopin wrote mostly for the piano also.  His orchestral accompaniments for his concertos are notoriously weak, as compared to the orchestrations of Brahms, Schumann, Mendelssohn, or Liszt.  But I'm not sure that relegates Chopin to minor status among composers.  I'm not, of course, suggesting that Bortkiewicz is on par with Chopin, only that they principally wrote for the same instrument.

One might say similar things about Medtner's orchestrations in his three piano concertos - something that he himself found to be a chore which he otherwise avoided.

Best,

Alistair

[ahinton]

I shall. Opera's never been my favorite sub-genre of classical music, but I'm very intrigued by works like King Roger and Martinu's The Greek Passion (great book, by the way). In time...

There's now a new recording of his earlier opera Hagith as well; it's intriguing but nowhere near as powerful a work as Król Roger...

Best,

Alistair

[dnephi]

Speaking of obscure Operas:

How is Liszt's Don Sancho?  How is Busoni's Doctor Faust?  Rachmaninoff's Aleko?

[popdog]

This is a great thread, which I am following with much interest.  I am always excited about discovering composers for the first time. 

But I have found that these types of discussions tend to focus on 20th century music, with little concentration on minor/lesser known composers from earlier times.  Yet I think there is so much music that has survived until today of composers whose music is largely unknown - anyone have any thoughts?  Someone get the ball rolling.

By the way, I don't have any problems with 20th century music, just think there's heaps of other stuff out there which is also relevant to the original question.

[thalbergmad]

But I have found that these types of discussions tend to focus on 20th century music, with little concentration on minor/lesser known composers from earlier times.  Yet I think there is so much music that has survived until today of composers whose music is largely unknown - anyone have any thoughts?  Someone get the ball rolling.

Indeed, these threads do tend to miss the neglected composers of 18th/19th centuries, but let us put that right.

Jan Dussek - the Sonatas Op77 and especially the moving grand sonata Op44 are works that (IMO) should stand happily next to those of Beethoven.

Joseph Woelfl - Exact contemporay of Beethoven, but much of his music seems to be closer to Mozart. The Sonatas Op33 & Op15 ard great works. To my knowledge, the Concerto's appear to be completely neglected.

Daniel Steibelt - only remembered as a charlatan destroyed by Beethoven in competition. Undoubtedly capable of some dross, but the Concerto Op33 with its Storm Rondo and a few of the Sonatas are worth a visit.

Czerny - Immense output, 100's of exercises, but do a little searching and you can find some gems. The Op178 sonata for 4 hands is a favourite of mine.

Henri Herz - The recent release by Hyperion gives some nice examples of his solo works. The nocturnes are delightful. Also check the Concerto's issued by the same label.

Freidrich Kalkbrenner - I have not really delved into his opii too much, but the 4th Concerto and the Effusio Musica are effective pieces.

Ignaz Mocheles - Concerto No7 and Sonata Melancolique deserve a listen.

J B Cramer - My fingers are working on the lovely Op36 Sonata.

J P Pixis - check out the recording made by Ronde de Sylphes ( a member here). A great concerto and some interesting little operatic transcriptions, not requiring immense mechanical facility.

There are dozens more.

Thal

[indutrial]

This is a great thread, which I am following with much interest.  I am always excited about discovering composers for the first time. 

But I have found that these types of discussions tend to focus on 20th century music, with little concentration on minor/lesser known composers from earlier times.  Yet I think there is so much music that has survived until today of composers whose music is largely unknown - anyone have any thoughts?  Someone get the ball rolling.

By the way, I don't have any problems with 20th century music, just think there's heaps of other stuff out there which is also relevant to the original question.

Most of the 20th century stuff that has gone obscure (which is why I focus so much on it) are the varieties of music that bear the most relevance to past forms. This can sometimes be broken into categories like neo-classicism or neo-romanticism and it sometimes has a lot to do with certain countries that were simply on a different historical time frame then the big Western nations that often lead the race in artistic change, etc... I notice this a lot when I think of composers from places like Ukraine and Armenia, whose "19th century styles" didn't crop up until well into the 1900s.  A lot of these guys also went obscure because twentieth-century criticism became unspeakably bitchy and wouldn't promote composers who were not overturning every last thing that we knew about music from the past (that more-modern-than-thou thing). The idea of "twentieth century" music being its own entity is also a sketchy one at best, especially when you compare a composer like Poulenc to someone like Ligeti. The problem shouldn't be when as much as what and why.

The fact also remains that the twentieth century's overall output is just bloody massive and that a thread like this will inevitably cause a lot of post-1900 names to crop up. When somebody asked after lesser-known post-Scriabinist Russian composers at Pianophilia, I couldn't believe how many unknown names popped up.

I'm not saying that works from the 17th-19th centuries somehow lack importance. I just think that a thread like this should go where it's going to go. Regarding those centuries, I would highly recommend that everyone check out the contents of the Sibley Music Library's electronic catalogue, which features a crapton of public domain works by lesser-knowns like Dussek.

[ronde_des_sylphes]

I think that unfortunately the classical music seems to evolve towards a state where there is a received wisdom that composers x and y are extremely important and composer z may as well be ignored; this, I suspect, applies to both 20th century and pre-20th century composers with the caveat that with some of 20th century music the process of arriving at received wisdom has not yet fully evolved, so who is "important" is not yet set in stone.

The annoying consequence of this is that it is far more likely that you will see one of Beethoven's rather poorer sonatas on a programme than you would be to see a sonata by Weber or Dussek (for example). For anyone who wishes to see recital programming that even contemplates stepping out of the mainstream, this is a truly depressing state of affairs. I can't speak fairly for the 20th century as it is not my area of primary interest, but there is a vast amount of worthwhile Romantic era piano music out there which is simply not performed - it is just banished to obscurity without a further word.  As far as I'm concerned, this is simply musicological and intellectual laziness.

If I had to name two composers from that era whose music is in urgent need of proponents, I would say Liapunov (how many people can say they have heard even one of his Transcendental Etudes in concert, let alone any of his even more obscure pieces?) and Tausig, who only seems to surface, and very rarely at that, as a transcriber of Bach.

[indutrial]

it is just banished to obscurity without a further word.  As far as I'm concerned, this is simply musicological and intellectual laziness.

Banishment would suggest a state of intellectual activity, albeit an activity of a baneful and vicious nature. I'm pretty sure it simply comes down to the influences of popularity on the one hand and the idiotic notion of standard repertoire on the other. Students of piano and other instruments simply aren't encouraged to actually dig deeper into the library to find new and unconventional pieces to add to their repertoires. The professors they work with are mostly jobbers and they assign them ("suggest" might be too strong a word) the same pieces every year, to ease in the process of grading the recitals with little effort and what-have-you. I've had about 40 chamber/solo scores out of the college library for almost a year now and not once has one been recalled, yet there's a frigging waiting list to get a hold of things like Bach's cello suites and Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies. I was talking to a couple of viola students recently and neither of them knew a god-damned thing about Hindemith (what country he was from? when he composed? what instruments he played, etc...), even though one of them was supposed to be preparing one of his solo sonatas for a senior recital! Even composition students are incredibly lazy these days, as they are more than willing to jump into throwing together self-indulgent "modern"-ish works after the examples of John Cage and Philip Glass yet they rarely crack open older (and I'm talking the past 40 years) texts on modern counterpoint and advanced harmony. I've met a few kids who claim to be serialist/electro-acoustic/spectral/whateverish composers even though they couldn't come close to writing a half-decent four-part chorale.

I've discussed this with people several times and I certainly agree that it simply comes down a sordid combination of laziness and brattiness. The laziness comes from the fact that the regimented schedule of a musician usually overwhelms the person with stupid-assed busywork (half-hearted orchestra performances, etc..), too many non-important required classes whose sole purpose is to suck money and time out of people (music majors should not need to take bullshit classes like intro to sociology), and a crapton of distractions and hedonistic outlets that are definitely a product of us living in a wealthy and more decadent society (musicians definitely party, play video games, and smoke weed more than they used to). Related to this is the brattiness in which musicians these days tend to have trouble growing out of the childish states they seem to reinforce while they grow through high school. Most of them are fairly good students, but they are completely helpless if teacher doesn't tell them what to do. Or they get addicted to substantiating their existence as entertainers and care only for doing things that the audience will like. The worst (again) are the ones who fall into the role as the self-absorbed composer-type. I feel like I've met dozens of "composers" who never seem to write anything for anybody and seem to float through the world on a mysterious cloud (likely fueled by their parents' bank account).

I'm not claiming to be better than this in anyway, but I'm not really a full-blown player in that music scene. Working with students in music libraries, playing in groups with lots of music school students, trying to get music students to successfully perform my music, and having a friend become one of the aforementioned "composers" has given me lots of first-hand evidence that there's a lot less of an intellectual edge in the world of music students than there would initially appear to be. It's no different than any portion of the collegiate world these days. Nowadays, almost anybody can get into college - decent colleges even, so the schools are filled to the brim with more god-damned mindless idiots, meatheads, and grade-grubbing whiners than ever before. There were literally "history students" in my senior seminar who didn't know what terms like "apartheid" or "manifest destiny" meant, couldn't tell you what year the Russian Revolution occurred and who wrote papers with the grammatical sensibility of average tenth-graders. I'm not kidding. Music programs are likely not too different. Being a guitar and bass teacher who's far from fully-versed in classical guitar technique, I've met a few guitar "majors" from the local conservatory who are absolute dunces and I have trouble believing that they actually passed an audition at some point. I should realize that the audition that got them in was probably a fluke or the one thing that they actually worked hard on during that calendar year, an oasis of real musicianship amidst a sea of bong-rips, bar crawls, Warcraft games, and half-hearted rehearsals.

[thalbergmad]

I've had about 40 chamber/solo scores out of the college library for almost a year now and not once has one been recalled, yet there's a frigging waiting list to get a hold of things like Bach's cello suites and Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies.

Both amusing and sad.

Thal

[jpowell]

musicians definitely party, play video games, and smoke weed more than they used to

I know what you mean, but hey we never used to play video games.

[visitor]

well deserved bump.
let me add:
Soghomon Soghomonian - ie "Komitas"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Komitas
https://imslp.org/wiki/Dances_(Vardapet,_Komitas)
(^score)
audio, these are super freakin awesome, one of the most pleasing/unique and exotic sounding sets I've come across in a really long time

btw the pianist composes and has a super pleasing style worth listening to 

[pencilart3]

Kevon, stop resurrecting old threads!!!


Oh wait.... visitor?

[visitor]

Kevon, stop resurrecting old threads!!!


Oh wait.... visitor?

i'm old school and I actually  attempt to use the search function prior to creating a new thread, and when it bump it's an attempt to add something useful and new to the existing information, not necc. to reply to the old op that may no longer be around.

also the info already in the thread is golden w regard to some of the existing mentions.