Curious Dislikes
Thu, Jan 24 2013, 12:19AM
#2
RE: Curious Dislikes
Of course, 50m, you are right in claiming that we don't need any single tiny piece of any "great" composer. I'm not advocating that. I'm just against dismissing any work of an established great composer as..."rubbish", "stinkers", "dross" and some other "wonderful" words expressed in this thread, let alone the childish behaviour of labeling -directly or indirectly- any work(s) we don't "like" (even Beethoven's Violin Concerto or Mozart's Clarinet works) as a "minor or lesser" work(s), even in the odd name of "curious dislikes".
Parla
Mon, Jan 28 2013, 10:57PM
#3
RE: Curious Dislikes
When I read responses containing words, sometimes extracted from previous contributions, sometimes not, in quotes I tend to hear these words in a sneering, superior tone which if I had been subjected to such treatment I would be inclined to feel insulted. According to contribution #4 on this thread page6 this is felt to be undesirable. Oh, hang on, I have indeed been treated in this way same thread page 5 #7#8. Woe is me.
Tue, Jan 29 2013, 9:15AM
#4
RE: Curious Dislikes
When I read responses containing words, sometimes extracted from previous contributions, sometimes not, in quotes I tend to hear these words in a sneering, superior tone which if I had been subjected to such treatment I would be inclined to feel insulted. Woe is me.
Stop feeling sorry for yourself and pull yourself together.
You small minded little person.
Tue, Jan 29 2013, 4:16PM
#5
RE: Curious Dislikes
To quote the name escapes me, but definitely not Oscar Wilde, Parla sometimes you can start a fight in a empty room!
But random dismissal of minor works just doesn't happen in the case of major composers, at least not in the way it happens to the lesser great. Take the true giants: Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms: every single note they ever wrote (or rather: survived the ages) has been recorded and included in complete cd editions. Owning a composer's complete oeuvre has become possible at a low price when the Brilliant editions came out for Bach, Beethoven and Mozart. I own all three of those - and while even the smallest, most obscure piece of Bach always displys some of his trademark richness and complexity of style, one cannot say that everything by Mozart or Beethoven is worth listening to. For instance, knowing that Beethoven once accepted a well-payed commission to arrange british folk-tunes is one thing, listening to all of those on 3 or 4 cd's is another story. In Mozart's case you have a vast array of works written before he was 18, and opposite to the popular belief, there aren't THAT many masterpieces among those.
The oeuvres of these composers offer no great secrets anymore, and their "minor" works have been satisfyingly explored as well by their biographers. The situation is different for composers from the "B"-category. In their cases, even major works for less popular occasions (like secular or church cantatas) are completely unknown. I've been digging in the University of Rochester digital archives for music to be put on IMSLP, and I was surprised to see how much music by familiar names like Rimsky-Korsakov, Grieg and Dvorak is still completely unknown, unperformed and unloved. Who, for instance, has ever heard of Dvorak's "American Flag" cantata, written during his stay in the USA?
And still we have a sense that we "know" these composers' oeuvres as well as we know Bach's or Beethoven's. At least: we have the feeling that these unknown pieces won't change our perception of the composer's main output. That's why I don't believe in the importance of this mythical "integral opus." Apparently, we can do without it, and we accept the fact that big portions of a composer's output will be only of interest to biographers and scholars, not regular music lovers.