Two more publishers, Faber Music and Universal Edition, have just submitted their most performed works of the century’s first decade, and you won’t believe what they are.

UE, the benchmark label of modernism, has lost many of its big names – Boulez, Berio, Birtwistle, Stockhausen – to silence, mortality or other labels. The company is, as they say, under reconstruction. Only four names appear in its top ten below.

Its biggest performer over the decade was Arvo Pärt’s Lamentate (2002), a homage for piano and orchestra to Anish Kapoor and his sculpture ‘Marsyas’. The work has achieved 44 performances, which is highly respectable but would not get it into the top ten of other major publishers. UE needs to find some big-hitters.

Here’s the list from Vienna:

1. Pärt, Arvo (*1935): Lamentate (2002) – 44 performances

 

2. Haas, Georg Friedrich (*1953): tria ex uno (2001) – 40 performances

for flute, clarinet, percussion, piano, violin and violoncello

 

3. Pärt, Arvo (*1935): Which Was the Son of … (2000) – 32 performances

for mixed choir a cappella

 

4. Pärt, Arvo (*1935): Cecilia, vergine romana (2000) – 30 performances

for mixed choir and orchestra

 

5. Haas, Georg Friedrich (*1953): in vain (2000) – 29 performances

for 24 instruments

 

6. Pärt, Arvo (*1935): Symphony No. 4 ‘Los Angeles’ (2008) – 28 performances

for string orchestra, harp, timpani and percussion

 

7. Rihm, Wolfgang (*1952): Das Lesen der Schrift (2001) – 28 performances

for orchestra

 

8. Rihm, Wolfgang (*1952): Das Gehege (2004) – 28 performances

for soprano and orchestra

 

9. Rihm, Wolfgang (*1952): Grave (2005) – 27 performances

in memoriam Thomas Kakuska for string quartet

 

10. Staud, Johannes Maria (*1974): Configurations/Reflet (2002) – 27 performances

for 8 instrumentalists

Now for Faber Music, based in London, the brainchild of Benjamin Britten when he walked out on Boosey & Hawkes (take that, Boosey! – and biff to you, Hawkes!) Faber have waxed healthy on late Britten, The Snowman by Howard Blake, various audacious Young Brits and the odd Aussie for good measure. Here’s what’s cooking at Faber:
 
At number 10, The Adventurer by Carl Davis (2000) – 46 performances of an orchestral score for a silent Chaplin film.
 
At 9 Julian Anderson’s ballet, The Comedy of Change. Premiered only six months ago by a 12-player ensemble, it has been danced 48 times – rising to 81 by May this year. 
 
In at number eight is Thomas Adès with a piano quintet (2000) – 49 performances.
 
It’s Adès again at 7 with Court Studies (2005) for clarinet, violin, cello and piano – 51 plays.
 
At 6 it’s Australian Carl Vine with Smith’s Alchemy for string orchestra – 53 hearings.
 
Into the top half of the draw with George Benjamin Three Miniatures for solo violin (2001) – 60.
 
At number 4, Oliver Knussen’s violin concerto (2002) – 79.
 
George Benjamin leapfrogs Ollie at 3 with Dance Figures for Orchestra (2004) – 82.
 
The runner-up at Faber is the vastly accomplished Colin Matthews who, in the year 2000, added a Pluto movement to Gustav Holst’s eternal Planets. It has been played 87 times and came out on record.
 
But the winner, the number one performer at Faber, is a composer one would not have linked to the Britten tradition. He’s a television performer, a populist, a resident at Classic FM – the most played Faber score is Howard Goodall’s Requiem (2008), with 102 performances.
 
Now, I’m going off to digest these figures with a sandwich before collating them with the ones already received. A trend is starting to emerge and the order of precedence in contemporary music is not what we’d imagined it to be. 
 

A friend who is writing a play about a parent who resents his child’s musical talent wonders if there is any known instance of an adult actually destroying an instrument because he or she cannot bear the child moving in an uncontrollable direction.

I’ve racked my brain and can’t think of one. There are instances of self-harm among musicians who feel technically inadequate – Schumann, the most famous – but can anyone call to mind an enraged parent smashing a violin against a wall, or taking a sledgehammer to the piano?

I got pretty close to the edge when one of my daughters transcribed her repertory and played it on the penny-whistle, but both she and the instrument survive in good nick and I am quietly coaching her two year-old tot to exact an appropriate revenge. All in good time…

Can anyone come up with a personal or historical incicent of an older person – doesn’t have to be a parent, could be teacher or priest – who took out their frustration on the object that emitted the music? All contributions gratefully received. There’s plenty of space below.

It’s George Washington in reverse: kiddie, I cannot tell a lie. It was me who snapped your oboe in half and stamped the trumpet into a doormat.