Why a composer is loved over there, and not over here
OrchestrasI find it rather uplifting that, in a global market, a great composer can be revered in one section of the world and totally ignored in the rest.
It is entirely to the credit of Wolfgang Rihm, who died this weekend, that he remains virtually unknown in the English-speaking world.
In his native Germany, and in neighbouring Austria and Switzerland, Rihm ranked as the most performed living composer and the most prolific. He was resident composer at the Berlin Philharmonic, the Salzburg and Lucerne festivals and other summits of classical activity.
In Britain and the US, he had name recognition in the diminishing puddle of contemporary music, and nothing beyond. The BBC put on a weekend of his music at the Barbican some 15 years ago but the uptake was so poor the experiment was never repeated.
This, to my mind, redounds enormously to Rihm’s credit. He wrote copiously for the audience that he knew. He neither compromised nor sought to ingratiate himself with others. He went to his death with unsulled integrity, a composer with an original voice that appealed only to a specific geographic area.
Like, for instance, the exquisite French symphonist Albert Roussel, the troubled Dane Ruud Langgard, the Norwegian Fartein Valen and, to a considerable extent, our own Michael Tippett and the American Henry Cowell. Each of them worthy in a particular way, just not beyond national borders.
Perhaps the most extreme case is Bohuslav Martinu, whom Czechs consider right up there with Dvorak and Smetana,, but the rest of the world stubbornly refuses to know. I have spent many of the happiest listening hours of my life with Martinu (pictured), but I understand that he’s an acquired taste and I would never dream of forcing him on anyone. I cherish him all the more because he is not a universal brand. I love him for his quirks as much as for his genius.
And now that Rihm is gone I don’t have to feel guilty any more about never having been thrilled by his music as much as I am by, say, Birtwistle, Turnage, Muhly, Reich, Zehavi, Barbara, Michel Legrand and many more with whom I share a non-musical language, culture, society, cuisine or general palette of taste.
This does not make Rihm less of a great composer. On the contrary, I esteem him more for not having liked him much. I might even listen to him again, once the lifetime adulation dies down. I am sorry he’s gone and I am happy to accept that, for Germans, he was (as a Leipzig newspaper said) the last great composer.
Let’s face it, the composers we love are often the ones they don’t.
Norman, you are spot on – both regarding Rihm and Martinu. I find both challenging for different reasons, but the rewards to be enjoyed upon persevering through the challenges are well worth the effort.
And the 16 symphonies of Langgaard should be played much more (than not at all).
“Let’s face it, the composers we love are often the ones they don’t.”
This has a lot to do with how we define “they.” The siloed niches of nationalistic new music worlds qualify only as a very special form of “they.” “They” as rarified, ethnocentric group-think.
Rihm was also on the program of the first concert of Abbado gave as music director of the Berliner in 1989 (if I remember correctly)
I have always loved Martinu’s music, particularly the chamber music of which there is a delicious variety. I also adore his oboe concerto. The use of the piano in the orchestra is such a unique touch.
Love his quartet for clarinet, horn, cello and snare drum!
That piece cannot be found on youtube, but here is something possibly comparable:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwRPdUzfY1I
Nonsense ‘music’, very easy to write.
Here is some more ‘chamber music’:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ay7MCA4mhaw
It sounds like four players having parts of four different string quartets and putting them upside-down, and still try to make sense of it.
More chamber music? No I’m fed-up with it.
John, I believe Doug and Drummerman were talking of Martinu’s works, not Rihm’s!
Here’s is the above-mentioned quartet:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UV8FVQBOUWQ
Yes, me too – I saw a Supraphon record of Martinu’s Second Cello Concerto at W H Smith, in the reduced price browser for next to nothing in the 1970s; he had been only a name to me at the time and I was curious to sample his music. I bought it and, as you say, it was an acquired taste – it took about 30 seconds after I lowered the needle into the groove to acquire it and make me a lifelong fan – lovely broad, swinging melodies, piquant harmonies and quirky rhythms, like the Dvorak concerto on steroids. Then Anthony Hopkins devoted one of his ‘Talking About Music’ slots to Martinu’s 4th Symphony – another scintillating work. Roussel’s music appealed to me too – starting with his 3rd and 4th symphonies – life affirming explosions of orchestral colour. Langgaard was a great Dane dogged by obscurity, partly caused, I believe, by his abrasive personality.
Yes, the modern concert repertoire is too narrow to encompass works by the composers you mention, though Tippett did enjoy some success in that respect. Radio 3 used to be more adventurous until being dumbed down almost to oblivion – but most of these composers have enjoyed the attention of the recording companies so that we can at least explore their works in the comfort of our homes. This is especially true of Martinu, thanks principally to Supraphon; he was fabulously prolific but a huge number of his works have, at one time or another, been available on record.
I’d love to give a hundred thumbs up to your comment, especially the “30 seconds after lowering the needle….!” Me too! And Supraphon in WH Smiths; it was also the quality of many Supraphon sleeve design and artwork (many Czech artists), which whetted the appetite for more.
‘ 30 seconds after lowering the needle ‘
The film maker Ken Russel makes something of the aura of this. I was watching his somewhat sketchy film on Bax ( KR plays the womanising composer) and the effect of lowering needle is explored when Bax plays the development section of the 2nd Piano Sonata to an awe struck young lady.
The same technique is deployed in his classic film on Delius as well. It served him well .
Seconded Paul Carlisle’s comments about Supraphon’s inspiring sleeve art work .
Yes, Martinu’s 2nd cello concerto is marvellous. And what about the Frecoes of Piero della Francesca, although I think the much-lauded Greek Passion is musically rather poor, more a classical case of emotional blackmail.
Good music needs to be repeatedly performed in order to become popular. It takes a combination of luck and personal preference by the mighty few who controle programing (as was the case with Mahler). It also needs to be in tune with conventional tastes for long enough. Perhaps most importantly, it must be kept in the public eye by an important national establishment that keeps promoting it. Martinu (whos music I love), was an exile. He became a favourite of the Czech establishment only after death. Korngold was rejected by America as Austrisn, by Austria as a Jew, and by Modernists for being too orthodox.
Correction: Korngold was not ‘too orthodox’ but too musically-gifted to be able to surrender to the ideologies of modernism which were thought of the ‘great thing’ at the time.
(My PA who has to type this – me being otherwise beschäftigt – rolls with her eyes but I decided to ignore that.)
Yeah… if only Stravinsky, Bartok, and Janacek were more musically gifted, then they wouldn’t have surrendered.
??
It was only Stravinsky who, in his last years, surrendered, and wrote his ‘atonal period works’ which have never become part of the repertoire, unlike his other works, for obvious reasons. Bartok and Janacek always wrote real music and of great originality.
A most informative & enjoyable comment. Thank you.
You have not let the truth get in the way of a good posting on SD. Let’s take a look at poor, rejected and neglected Korngold.
At the age of 13, his pantomime Der Schneemann had its premiere performance in Vienna (capital of Austria) and was then performed elsewhere in Europe. By the age of 23, he had written three operas, all of them successful, especially the third one, Die Tote Stadt, which was a phenomenal success both in Austria and elsewhere in Europe and in the USA. His incidental music for ‘Much Ado about Nothing’ had its premiere in Schoenbrunn Palace. That’s a royal palace in, yes, Vienna, capital of Austria. So much for his being ‘ignored in Austria’. In fact, he was a phenomenal wunderkind, admired and encouraged by Mahler and Richard Strauss.
From then onwards, he enjoyed fame and success. As for the USA, this led him to be invited there, initially to adapt Mendelssohn’s music for A Midsummer Night’s Dream for a film version of Shakespeare’s play. This led to repeated invitations to the USA, where he was snapped up by Hollywood’s film industry. Between 1934 and 1956 he wrote music for 22 films, many of them outstanding successes like The Sea Hawk, Deception, Robin Hood, Juarez, Another Dawn and The Sea Wolf. He became arguably the finest and most popular composer of film music in his lifetime. So much for his being ‘ignored in the USA’.
Yes, his Jewish origin did lead to his music being banned within the domain of the odious Third Reich and it did rather go out of fashion after WWII, as did that of many neo-Romantic composers, but has undergone a massive rehabilitation since the 1970s, with both his concert works and his film music having received many excellent recordings. Take a look on Amazon – the list of them covers about 16 pages!
Of course, many Jewish composers suffered during the German genocide, some having been murdered. But Korngold was not among them.
As for ‘Good music needs to be repeatedly performed in order to become popular’, you remind me of the man and his wife who went to a restaurant that was packed and rather noisy. The wife said to the husband, ‘This place would be far more popular if there weren’t so many people in it’! Likewise, you say that ‘Good music won’t be popular unless it is performed repeatedly! But music won’t be performed repeatedly unless it is popular! This argument therefore vanishes up its own fundament.
Finally, what do you mean by ‘Good music’? Is it music that is popular? Is the 1812 Overture better than Schubert’s String Quintet? It is certainly more popular.
Relauctant as I am to indulge in the floccinaucinihilipilification of your posting, I think that the points you make are gross terminological inexactitudes.
I like how you spell floccinaucinihilipilification perfectly and yet misspell reluctant. Brought a smile.
That’s easy for you to say…
An outstanding corrective to what was (as you say ) a good posting.
I attended the US premiere of Rihm’s “Trio Concerto” for violin, cello, piano, and orchestra performed by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra in 2015. Jaap vZ conducted.
It was typical of most new music… tediously long and completely forgettable. The audible result was not worth the substantial effort the musicians must have had to put into it.
I’m doubtful it will ever be revived here, even though the Dallas Symphony was one of the commissioners of the piece.
A fair test of new music is “Would you want to hear that again? Would you want to hear more by that same composer?”
It failed on both counts.
If music stays ‘on the outside’, i.e. only conveys sound patterns and nothing more, it does not resonate emotionally deeper than that, and listeners forget the experience.
But this is typical of a majority of new music, be it modernist atonal or ‘new hip/trendy’, and the result of modern society with its focus on material things and rationality.
But in former times there also were such superficial composers. At best they offered a pleasant experience but the music does not specifically invite repeated listening. The great talents though, got under the surface and hence, still ‘speak’ to us.
With sonic art (atonal modernism), you can be sure there’s nothing to convey that goes deeper than the sound patterns.
Yes, there have been uninteresting composers in all eras.
No, the high proportion of such composers we endure today is not business-as-usual for music.
Something has been lost.
I recall a comment by Ricardo Muti saying that he had conducted a world premiere almost every year in his career.
(I think we can presume that composers getting commissions from the Chicago Symphony are among most promising talents available)
And, yet, Muti noted that none… NONE… of those works has managed to gain traction in the music world, even after the very visible CSO premiere.
If we were to look at the set of new works that a similarly-positioned conductor of the 19th Century premiered in his career… I’m doubtful the batting average would still be .000
I suspect a number of those works would have had additional success in their time and many might still be in repertoire today.
The problem is not that there has always been bad music. The problem is that it is just about all that is created today.
Something has been lost.
I think that is true – the understanding of what music is, and that it is more than rationally fixing things together.
But another problem of today is that there is no longer any filter in music life. Anything goes, dependent upon parameters that are not at all musical. There is no longer something of a consensus of what is worth the effort of putting-on an unknown piece.
Rihm was (and stil is) greatly appreciated in the German lands because he expressed two distinct, very Germanic emotions:
1) gruelling, pulverizing, meaningless angst and the horror of meaningless existence of the individual in the modern world
2) nostalgic, lyrical, emotionally vulnerable dreaminess, looking back to a past of musical greatness and a rich trove of humanistic meaning
Just listen to his works, and this becomes evident.
The 2nd category is much more musical. And he had a very sophisticated craft – a rarity today.
It goes without saying that all of this is related to Germany’s past and the concerns of modernity which have a particular tinge in Germany.
The case of Martinu is different: he was both personally and artistically kind of ‘homeless’, partly romantic, partly neoclassical, partly folky, partly impressionistic, but without a wholehearted ‘jump into the fray’. This has nothing to do with artistic quality or talent, but some people prefer to be able to get their goods labelled and with Martinu that is quite difficult. This ‘homelessness’ fits the collective experience of the Czechs perfectly of course, considering their history.
Martinu loved cats so he must have been a lovable guy.
I’m curious! Is your PA still typing for you?
Possibly wives typing has gone out of fashion?
My wife does not want to have anything to do with music, so I’m stuck with my PA whom I have to dictate and then to correct all the typoos and sometimes they stil slip into the commend
As far as I can tell ‘Jagd und Formen’ is the high watermark in what is a huge output .
I wrote a grad school paper on Martinu’s Epic of Gilgamesh. A fascinating work.
The paper or the oratorio?
There is SO MUCH great music that is rarely or never heard- even of masters like Mendelssohn and Dvorak etc. Instead, in the US, we get Florence Price…..
That’s DEI metastasizing, coming to a symphony hall near you.
After more than 70 years of exploring the byways of the repertoire, I can only firmly agree with you! To mention only one work, what about the Symphony in F major by Hermann Goetz? Bernard Shaw praised him to the skies (above Schubert and, expectedly, above Brahms. Whatever the merits of such comparisons, it’s a magnificent work; anyone who likes Schumann would surely warm to this. Yet there have, to my knowledge, been only two recordings of the work – one on the American Genesis label, the other on cpo. Anyone else come across it?
Nothing wrong with Florence Price.
Nothing particularly distinctive about her work either.
Of course musical appreciation is not just a matter of place but also of time. Composers fade from memory but may enjoy unexpected posthumous fame in ways that cannot be predicted. Even those we now regard as the baked in core of the repertoire often had to be revived long after their initial fame. I doubt, however, if there has ever been a period when musical performance has been so backward looking and living composers so under appreciated. At least in the past people came to hear them before rioting
But in those times ‘old music’ hardly existed in terms of performance. Like, Mozart clearly did not expect that 100 years after his death his works would still be played and his discovery of JS Bach was something of a find of a marginal music, which only was revived by Baron von Swieten in his privately-organised ‘Akademies’ at home, as a curious hobby.
Martinu lived in France for 17 years (1923-1940). But I believe he isn’t popular there, either. Happy to be corrected. . .
Indeed, but the same could be said, to a far greater extent, of Delius, who, despite living so many years in France, left no mark at all on the Parisian milieu. Not so much with Martinu, who had many works premiered in France and belonged to the so-called “Ecole de Paris” (along with Harsanyi, Mihalovici, Tansman). Like the latter two, his wife was french. While some of his operas have occasionally enjoyed good revivals here, it’s true he remains underperformed. In my young years, the most references to Martinu I heard were from my piano teacher Lucette Descaves (she had premiered the “Tre Ricercari”), who used to recall us what a nice and shy person he was.
Today, the Chicago Symphony — last I heard, they were based in the US — published a tribute to him and their work with him.
I have to confess I don’t know (and have never knowingly heard a note of) Rihm’s music. A sad admission. Nobody, after all, intentionally writes words or notes that nobody will read or hear. YouTube will no doubt allow me to put that right.
I have to say, too, that I don’t regard “modern” as a commendation. Except perhaps in medicine or dentistry! As was Gerald Finzi (a better composer than his received reputation would have it), I am not convinced that there is “progress” in art and music, and that what is
written in 2024 is/must be better than what was written in 1924 or 1824.
I shall give Rihm a go.
The absurd idea that there is progress in the arts has destroyed many a talent.
Rihm was done by some American orchestra (e.g. Chicago, Cleveland) in the 1990s but generally, major ensembles here stay away from heavily modernist composers these days. You might find some of his music played by new music groups but those groups often tend to be chasing the latest thing.
It also comes down to whether a publisher sees a composer as an international priority. Boosey & Hawkes has put its muscle behind the Brit Anna Clyne and her music is widely played in the U.S., for instance. But I wonder whether some of our most “American”-sounding composers are played in Europe – people like Jennifer Higden, Mason Bates, John Luther Adams, etc.
The three US composers you mention are pretty well represented in UK orchestral programming.
“I would never dream of forcing him on anyone” – Good!
However, do composers exist…. you “force on others!?
Anyway, Martinu wrote wonderful music.
I don’t see Martinu as especially neglected in the UK. He wrote a lot, some of it very good, some of it rather ordinary. But Wolfgang Richmond simply churned it out. One cannot in a normal lifetime hope to listen and/or digest more than a tiny fraction of his music. I’d start with the excellent Chiffre series, perhaps his Fremde Szeged for piano trio, and his opera Jakob Lenze. Nice man too.