I purchased this box before I even discovered your videos, and just came across this particular review today. I think you summed the recordings up to a tee. Honest, objective, insightful. All told I liked the set because I like obscure and adventurous stuff, but I don’t think you got anything wrong in your essay on it.
Many years ago, a dear friend who ran a used bookshop lent me a thick book put together in about 1940 by a woman whose name I can't recall. In it, she listed all the composers then active in the US, with brief bios and representative worklists -- operas, oratorios, symphonic and chamber works, reams and reams of music. Now, I know my American composers. But I still didn't recognize most names. And then I had a tragic epiphany: For the vast majority of the composers listed in the book, nary a note of their music will every be heard again. That's when I realized that composers who compose for the future, or who declare (as a local Pulitzer-winner once did) that their works require repeated hearings when most people are unlikely to hear it once, much less several times, are destined for oblivion. They're much better off composing for their time, their place, themselves. And the ones who enjoy some acclaim during their lifetimes, even if immediately forgotten thereafter, are the lucky ones.
Dear Sir, I myself was a used book dealer for a dozen years, and a book I’ve kept in my personal collection is COMPOSERS SINCE 1900, edited by David Ewen, published by H.W. Wilson in 1960. It sounds very much like the one you described. I wonder if you have an earlier edition, or the same basic book under a different title? It’s quite comprehensive, and a brilliant snapshot into (largely) Modernism before Post-Modernism replaced academic serialism etc
Fascinating. If you ever recover the title, I would love to know. I have a very battered Pelican paperback of Volume Four of The Music Masters from 1957. It lists (spellings theirs): Barber, Bartok, Bax, Berg, Bloch, Britten, Busoni, Casella(!), Coleridge-Taylor(!), Copland, Dohnanyi(!), Dukas, Falla, Glazunov(!), Granados, Grechaninov(!!), Harris, Hindemith, Honegger, Holst, Ireland, Jarnefelt(!), Khachaturian, Kodaly, Lekeu(!), Malipiero, Martinu, Milhaud, Nielsen, Palmgren(!), Pfitzner, Pijper(!) Pizzetti, Poulenc, Prokofiev, Rahkmaninov, Ravel, Reger, Respighi, Roussel, Schonberg, Schuman, Shaporin(!), Shostakovich, Sibelius, Skryabin, Richard Strauss, Stravinsky, Suk, Szymanowski, Turina, Vaughan Williams, Villa-Lobos, and Walton. A fun glimpse into the 1957 world of accepted greats, which I'm hard put to disagree with any of those. Shaporin and Jarnefelt are the only two who I've never seen/heard discussed. The introductions mentions Medtner but doesn't have a chapter on him.
Thank you for happening to mention that the Sony box contained the Harrison Mass! I discovered that many years ago by checking it out at the public library, and remember playing it while stringing tinsel on the Christmas tree in our first apartment. After a few years I checked it out again, and noticed that no one else had done so since the last time I did, so I told them I couldn't find it and paid the fine in order to keep it. It's wonderful to find that same performance again after all this time.
I find most of these composers' music the essence of high entertainment, but I am funny that way. The Weber selections in the box may be ugly but his Dolmen is hauntingly lovely. It is immensely stimulating for me, though, to consider the music you dislike to refine my own taste. A presentation on the Counterculture California composers of the roughly the same time would be very interesting: Cowell, Partch, Riley, Harrison, that eventually led to (student of Kirchner), John Adams.
I love this review. I studied composition at UCLA in the late 60's Leon Kirshner was a guest in Roy Harris's class. We were all pumped up for his visit. I'm not sure why. It was a long time ago. It seemed to me at the time that we studying a secret knowledge. The rationale was that while this music while may be incomprehensible now in 100 0r 200 years it willl be tasty as pop music is in our time. Well that's a stretch
Just ran across this. Don't know all those guys, but I know MOST of them, and I've been a fan of Leon Kirchner since hearing his 3rd String Quartet in a Vox Box I borrowed from the library (same Vox Box that introduced me to Crumb's fine BLACK ANGELS). Not much of his stuff on recordings, but the BMOP did a fine disc of some of his orchestral pieces not too long ago, and it definitely sees plenty of spins around here. Krenek is another favorite, and I don't have the LAMENTATIONS. I'll go hunt those works on this thing up too. I've tried that Carter piece a million times and absolutely canNOT penetrate it. Even so, that box sounds like a MUCH better set than the 20th century box horror Deutsche Grammophon dropped a while back, which no power on Earth could persuade me to buy.
I think the Carter Double Concerto is duplicated in the Charles Rosen box. In fact, aren’t both (?!) Rosen performances of that piece in the Rosen box? Of much Carter I’ve listened to or conducted, this concerto is fascinating and enjoyable, I think. The first symphony ditto in a kind of scuola di Boulanger fashion. The two ballet suites also. Most of the rest is much gratuitously thorny. (Your reaction to Ben Weber was spot on!)
11:16 on Ben Weber's 'Concertino': "...and, wow, is this ugly" I really don't get the supposed split between the Schoenberg School and Stravinsky / neoclassical music. Stravinsky was inspired by Schoenbergs 'Pierrot lunaire' and wrote 'Pribaoutki' and the 'Cat's Cradles Songs', which where actually premiered in there supposed instrumentation at Schoenberg's 'Verein für musikalische Privataufführungen'. Also Stravinsky's 'Three Japanese Lyrics' were inspired by Pierrot. Perhaps the reason Boulez recorded this rather then Stravinsky's dodecaphonial stuff. Later there were the Octet and the Septet, when Stravinsky turned to 12-tone music - in quite a similar vein like Schoenberg's Serenade op. 24 or Septet op. 29. I think, Ben Weber's concertino belongs in that tradition. When Adorno wrote about this split, it was bullshit. And when Bernstein took it up to turn it around and side with Stravinsky (in his Harvard lectures), it was bullshit, too.
This reminds me on a conversation I had with an musicologist and fervent admirer of the avantgarde. I pleaded for Britten, he for Nono. He: Britten is kitsch, worse than Puccini. I: Does Nono give pleasure to you? He: Nono‘s music is far more structured than Britten‘s. I: Yes, but does she give pleasure to you? He: What Nono composes just in „Canto sospeso“ is of greater validity for the society than the whole Britten. I: Maybe, but does „Canto sospeso“ reach your heart? Are you excited? Are you touched? He: I don’t listen to Nono to be touched... And this was the moment I understood the whole misery of the avantgarde.
I have the same basic argument over visual art (painting, drawing) all the time. I’m a traditionalist for whom classically-derived drawing is paramount, and once you’ve got that down go in other directions if you want. However in music I happen to also really appreciate modernism and the far out avante-garde (classical, jazz, and rock). I pondered this dichotomy for YEARS, and finally came to a conclusion that as crazy as progressive music gets, those composing and performing it really do have incredible skills and training to do it, whether an audience likes it or not. In the visual arts, “training” is actually looked down upon. Not that they don’t all go to art schools, but the teaching has been wretched for most of the 20th Century, mostly of the “paint what you feel” variety. Ultimately though Modern and Post-Modern visual and aural art come to the same place, largely with a disregard for the audience or tradition, and funded by the Establishment and academia organized to support only “the new” and “concept” oriented works.
P S. Do you remember the half-dozen or so LPs put out c. 1970 by DG and Acoustic Research? Babbitt's Philomel, Crumb's Madrigals, a Sessions Sonata, something by one of my UConn profs, Charles Whittenberg (who once told our counterpoint class that any composer who didn't do 12-tone was irrelevant) -- lots of cool stuff. I think I sent away for them by cutting out an order form from Stereo Review. Cheap too, if I recall. Ah, the days of officially certified contemporary music!
10:14 "And Krenek of course is a major 20th century music character, who nobody wants to listen to." Glenn Gould played one of his piano sonatas, which is in a way a mix of Schoenberg and Hindemith. I like it, so I'm interested in his music.
@@DavesClassicalGuide The string trios with Trio Recherche did not stick with me yet, i must admit. The symphonies no. 2 & 4 are interesting. No.4 seems to be written in a post-Mahlerian style. The recording by cpo couples it with a neoclassisist concerto grosso, which reminds me of Hindemith and perhaps Weill. And then there's a box with short operas (Der Diktator, Schwergewicht oder Die Ehre der Nation op. 55, Das geheime Königreich), I still heard only once. But they seem stylistically quite divers. So you could also ask: which Krenek have you heard?
@@Sulsfort A lot. Much more than you have.I didn't say it was good or bad. I said he's a composer no one wants to listen to, and as a general statement, that's a fact. I'm glad you're an exception.
Excellent talk. Most of us can agree that music is 90% forgettable junk no matter what the genre or period it was composed. Time will always decide the true lasting value. It also comes down to a matter of taste. Most or almost all of that music on that 20th Century box will probably disappear because it is useless, boring and forgettable. I have yet to experience a music composition that was composed in the last 70 years written in a tonal "audience friendly" that wasn't thumpingly banal. But this is, again, personal taste. I consider 90% of Shostakovich pure garbage, I consider 60% of Elliot Carter important masterpieces. Most likely time will prove my judgment just the opposite. You are very correct, we don't have an obligation to listen to music we don't like, but I think it is very good to have an open mind and like what you like and defend it if you must and let time be the judge. Will Boulez, Stockhausen, Berio be listened to 50 to a 100 years from now. Absolutely not. That does not mean I can't like some of their works. I do have one question, can someone name a composer born since 1950 and will be heard a 100 years from now? There is no wrong answer.
The way I defend music of this type to a lot of people is to say to them if you limited your like of movies to the same extent that you do for music then the only movies that would be available is Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals and romantic comedies.
Agreed, David. Composers are ultimately entertainers, at least we’re supposed to be. There are a lot of composers today who are trying to utilize that. Some are great, some are terrible, and the majority are......ok. It’s an age old story.
@@dharmabum2775 Quite much. Now I enjoy Ben Weber's Concertino for Flute, Oboe, Clarinet & String Quartet op. 45 (1956), which is maybe in a similar line as Schoenberg's op. 24 & op. 29 or Stravinsky's Octet & Septet.
I’ve rolled these ideas around in my head for so many years. Up until about 1945 a composer operated within the style of his time and place. So much was determined for him, where today you’re taught a collection of historical styles and techniques and then you have to figure out what your idiom is going to be. Some people write neo-Schubert and some write this sort of stuff. I think that the reason some are drawn to the kind of music in this box is that they’re worried that if it’s not as relevant as Bach or Mahler, it might mean that Western music is a thing of the past by now. And that’s not an encouraging thought.
I like Elliott Carter's music, but God, I wouldn't ever look down of someone who doesn't. And I hope the people who like Berlioz don't look down on me because I don't like his music. I admit freely that Berlioz is a good composer. But I don't like it. Big deal.
Ah, a box of music from the absolute nadir of the 20th century, in terms of composers writing from a sense of intellectual obligation, and listeners listening for the same reason! The titles given to current classical music pieces all reek of bad poetry, don't they? Composers of the past were wise to use pre-existing phrases written by people who could actually write. ... Okay, that's enough snarking for one post.
Oy vey, dreck indeed. There’s an awful lot of 20th-century composers, including Americans, I’d rather listen to than these. Some of this was during the deeply depressing dominance of the dodecaphonic dictatorship (say that five times fast). Still, as an intellectual exercise, I respect the Fromm Foundation and Sony for putting this box out. The Harrison Mass does intrigue me. I’m blasting Klemperer’s Bruckner 4th with the Philharmonia on vinyl loud enough to wake the neighbors this morning. Better fit for me.
"the dodecaphonic dictatorship" Well, I think much of the chamber ensemble stuff, that was dodecaphonic, owes much to pre-dodecaphonic works like 'Pierrot lunaire' by Schoenberg or the Cat's Cradle Songs & Pribaoutki by Stravinsky. I think today the breach between dodecaphonic avantgarde & neoclassism can be seen as less deep than in those days.
I purchased this box before I even discovered your videos, and just came across this particular review today. I think you summed the recordings up to a tee. Honest, objective, insightful. All told I liked the set because I like obscure and adventurous stuff, but I don’t think you got anything wrong in your essay on it.
Many years ago, a dear friend who ran a used bookshop lent me a thick book put together in about 1940 by a woman whose name I can't recall. In it, she listed all the composers then active in the US, with brief bios and representative worklists -- operas, oratorios, symphonic and chamber works, reams and reams of music. Now, I know my American composers. But I still didn't recognize most names. And then I had a tragic epiphany: For the vast majority of the composers listed in the book, nary a note of their music will every be heard again. That's when I realized that composers who compose for the future, or who declare (as a local Pulitzer-winner once did) that their works require repeated hearings when most people are unlikely to hear it once, much less several times, are destined for oblivion. They're much better off composing for their time, their place, themselves. And the ones who enjoy some acclaim during their lifetimes, even if immediately forgotten thereafter, are the lucky ones.
Dear Sir, I myself was a used book dealer for a dozen years, and a book I’ve kept in my personal collection is COMPOSERS SINCE 1900, edited by David Ewen, published by H.W. Wilson in 1960. It sounds very much like the one you described. I wonder if you have an earlier edition, or the same basic book under a different title? It’s quite comprehensive, and a brilliant snapshot into (largely) Modernism before Post-Modernism replaced academic serialism etc
Fascinating. If you ever recover the title, I would love to know. I have a very battered Pelican paperback of Volume Four of The Music Masters from 1957. It lists (spellings theirs): Barber, Bartok, Bax, Berg, Bloch, Britten, Busoni, Casella(!), Coleridge-Taylor(!), Copland, Dohnanyi(!), Dukas, Falla, Glazunov(!), Granados, Grechaninov(!!), Harris, Hindemith, Honegger, Holst, Ireland, Jarnefelt(!), Khachaturian, Kodaly, Lekeu(!), Malipiero, Martinu, Milhaud, Nielsen, Palmgren(!), Pfitzner, Pijper(!) Pizzetti, Poulenc, Prokofiev, Rahkmaninov, Ravel, Reger, Respighi, Roussel, Schonberg, Schuman, Shaporin(!), Shostakovich, Sibelius, Skryabin, Richard Strauss, Stravinsky, Suk, Szymanowski, Turina, Vaughan Williams, Villa-Lobos, and Walton. A fun glimpse into the 1957 world of accepted greats, which I'm hard put to disagree with any of those. Shaporin and Jarnefelt are the only two who I've never seen/heard discussed. The introductions mentions Medtner but doesn't have a chapter on him.
@@samuelstephens6163 Claire R. Reis, "Composers in America." It turned out that my wife had a copy of the 1947 edition on her music shelf.
@@johnmontanari6857 Thank you!
Thank you for happening to mention that the Sony box contained the Harrison Mass! I discovered that many years ago by checking it out at the public library, and remember playing it while stringing tinsel on the Christmas tree in our first apartment. After a few years I checked it out again, and noticed that no one else had done so since the last time I did, so I told them I couldn't find it and paid the fine in order to keep it. It's wonderful to find that same performance again after all this time.
What a lovely story. Glad to have helped.
I find most of these composers' music the essence of high entertainment, but I am funny that way. The Weber selections in the box may be ugly but his Dolmen is hauntingly lovely. It is immensely stimulating for me, though, to consider the music you dislike to refine my own taste. A presentation on the Counterculture California composers of the roughly the same time would be very interesting: Cowell, Partch, Riley, Harrison, that eventually led to (student of Kirchner), John Adams.
I love this review. I studied composition at UCLA in the late 60's Leon Kirshner was a guest in Roy Harris's class. We were all pumped up for his visit. I'm not sure why. It was a long time ago. It seemed to me at the time that we studying a secret knowledge. The rationale was that while this music while may be incomprehensible now in 100 0r 200 years it willl be tasty as pop music is in our time. Well that's a stretch
Just ran across this. Don't know all those guys, but I know MOST of them, and I've been a fan of Leon Kirchner since hearing his 3rd String Quartet in a Vox Box I borrowed from the library (same Vox Box that introduced me to Crumb's fine BLACK ANGELS). Not much of his stuff on recordings, but the BMOP did a fine disc of some of his orchestral pieces not too long ago, and it definitely sees plenty of spins around here. Krenek is another favorite, and I don't have the LAMENTATIONS. I'll go hunt those works on this thing up too. I've tried that Carter piece a million times and absolutely canNOT penetrate it. Even so, that box sounds like a MUCH better set than the 20th century box horror Deutsche Grammophon dropped a while back, which no power on Earth could persuade me to buy.
I think the Carter Double Concerto is duplicated in the Charles Rosen box. In fact, aren’t both (?!) Rosen performances of that piece in the Rosen box? Of much Carter I’ve listened to or conducted, this concerto is fascinating and enjoyable, I think. The first symphony ditto in a kind of scuola di Boulanger fashion. The two ballet suites also. Most of the rest is much gratuitously thorny. (Your reaction to Ben Weber was spot on!)
11:16 on Ben Weber's 'Concertino': "...and, wow, is this ugly"
I really don't get the supposed split between the Schoenberg School and Stravinsky / neoclassical music. Stravinsky was inspired by Schoenbergs 'Pierrot lunaire' and wrote 'Pribaoutki' and the 'Cat's Cradles Songs', which where actually premiered in there supposed instrumentation at Schoenberg's 'Verein für musikalische Privataufführungen'. Also Stravinsky's 'Three Japanese Lyrics' were inspired by Pierrot. Perhaps the reason Boulez recorded this rather then Stravinsky's dodecaphonial stuff.
Later there were the Octet and the Septet, when Stravinsky turned to 12-tone music - in quite a similar vein like Schoenberg's Serenade op. 24 or Septet op. 29.
I think, Ben Weber's concertino belongs in that tradition.
When Adorno wrote about this split, it was bullshit. And when Bernstein took it up to turn it around and side with Stravinsky (in his Harvard lectures), it was bullshit, too.
This reminds me on a conversation I had with an musicologist and fervent admirer of the avantgarde. I pleaded for Britten, he for Nono.
He: Britten is kitsch, worse than Puccini.
I: Does Nono give pleasure to you?
He: Nono‘s music is far more structured than Britten‘s.
I: Yes, but does she give pleasure to you?
He: What Nono composes just in „Canto sospeso“ is of greater validity for the society than the whole Britten.
I: Maybe, but does „Canto sospeso“ reach your heart? Are you excited? Are you touched?
He: I don’t listen to Nono to be touched...
And this was the moment I understood the whole misery of the avantgarde.
@@ProfessorPille Wow, you're the guy who whistles the Nono-tunes all the time!
@@edwinbaumgartner5045 Have you heard the piece he wrote for nine players? You know the piece I'm talking about - the Nono Nonet!
I have the same basic argument over visual art (painting, drawing) all the time. I’m a traditionalist for whom classically-derived drawing is paramount, and once you’ve got that down go in other directions if you want. However in music I happen to also really appreciate modernism and the far out avante-garde (classical, jazz, and rock). I pondered this dichotomy for YEARS, and finally came to a conclusion that as crazy as progressive music gets, those composing and performing it really do have incredible skills and training to do it, whether an audience likes it or not. In the visual arts, “training” is actually looked down upon. Not that they don’t all go to art schools, but the teaching has been wretched for most of the 20th Century, mostly of the “paint what you feel” variety. Ultimately though Modern and Post-Modern visual and aural art come to the same place, largely with a disregard for the audience or tradition, and funded by the Establishment and academia organized to support only “the new” and “concept” oriented works.
P S. Do you remember the half-dozen or so LPs put out c. 1970 by DG and Acoustic Research? Babbitt's Philomel, Crumb's Madrigals, a Sessions Sonata, something by one of my UConn profs, Charles Whittenberg (who once told our counterpoint class that any composer who didn't do 12-tone was irrelevant) -- lots of cool stuff. I think I sent away for them by cutting out an order form from Stereo Review. Cheap too, if I recall. Ah, the days of officially certified contemporary music!
Any chance you’ll do some kind of review/presentation of 21st century (aka living) composers? I have some suggestions. ☺️
I want to hear "Aphrodisiac Monumentus"
Wouldn't we all?
10:14 "And Krenek of course is a major 20th century music character, who nobody wants to listen to."
Glenn Gould played one of his piano sonatas, which is in a way a mix of Schoenberg and Hindemith. I like it, so I'm interested in his music.
And how much else have you heard?
@@DavesClassicalGuide The string trios with Trio Recherche did not stick with me yet, i must admit. The symphonies no. 2 & 4 are interesting. No.4 seems to be written in a post-Mahlerian style. The recording by cpo couples it with a neoclassisist concerto grosso, which reminds me of Hindemith and perhaps Weill. And then there's a box with short operas (Der Diktator, Schwergewicht oder Die Ehre der Nation op. 55, Das geheime Königreich), I still heard only once. But they seem stylistically quite divers. So you could also ask: which Krenek have you heard?
@@Sulsfort A lot. Much more than you have.I didn't say it was good or bad. I said he's a composer no one wants to listen to, and as a general statement, that's a fact. I'm glad you're an exception.
Dreck, Eggheads, Doom. What's not to like?!? 😂
Exactly!
Excellent talk. Most of us can agree that music is 90% forgettable junk no matter what the genre or period it was composed. Time will always decide the true lasting value. It also comes down to a matter of taste. Most or almost all of that music on that 20th Century box will probably disappear because it is useless, boring and forgettable. I have yet to experience a music composition that was composed in the last 70 years written in a tonal "audience friendly" that wasn't thumpingly banal. But this is, again, personal taste. I consider 90% of Shostakovich pure garbage, I consider 60% of Elliot Carter important masterpieces. Most likely time will prove my judgment just the opposite. You are very correct, we don't have an obligation to listen to music we don't like, but I think it is very good to have an open mind and like what you like and defend it if you must and let time be the judge. Will Boulez, Stockhausen, Berio be listened to 50 to a 100 years from now. Absolutely not. That does not mean I can't like some of their works. I do have one question, can someone name a composer born since 1950 and will be heard a 100 years from now? There is no wrong answer.
The way I defend music of this type to a lot of people is to say to them if you limited your like of movies to the same extent that you do for music then the only movies that would be available is Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals and romantic comedies.
Who is the David Hurwitz of Jazz?
I'll love to know the answer to that one. Last night i was lisening to Ahmad Jamal Live At The Penhouse an wondering about contemporary jazz critics.
Agreed, David. Composers are ultimately entertainers, at least we’re supposed to be. There are a lot of composers today who are trying to utilize that. Some are great, some are terrible, and the majority are......ok. It’s an age old story.
Well, bought it today.
just got mine..up to cd 4.. i like it..you?
@@dharmabum2775 Quite much. Now I enjoy Ben Weber's Concertino for Flute, Oboe, Clarinet & String Quartet op. 45 (1956), which is maybe in a similar line as Schoenberg's op. 24 & op. 29 or Stravinsky's Octet & Septet.
The best atonal music always seems to be pieces that attempt to sound tonal. Nobody does chores around the house and whistles atonal music.
If the explication of a piece of music lasts longer than the time taken to perform it, I usually give it a miss!
I’ve rolled these ideas around in my head for so many years. Up until about 1945 a composer operated within the style of his time and place. So much was determined for him, where today you’re taught a collection of historical styles and techniques and then you have to figure out what your idiom is going to be. Some people write neo-Schubert and some write this sort of stuff. I think that the reason some are drawn to the kind of music in this box is that they’re worried that if it’s not as relevant as Bach or Mahler, it might mean that Western music is a thing of the past by now. And that’s not an encouraging thought.
I like Elliott Carter's music, but God, I wouldn't ever look down of someone who doesn't. And I hope the people who like Berlioz don't look down on me because I don't like his music. I admit freely that Berlioz is a good composer. But I don't like it. Big deal.
Ah, a box of music from the absolute nadir of the 20th century, in terms of composers writing from a sense of intellectual obligation, and listeners listening for the same reason!
The titles given to current classical music pieces all reek of bad poetry, don't they? Composers of the past were wise to use pre-existing phrases written by people who could actually write. ... Okay, that's enough snarking for one post.
Oy vey, dreck indeed. There’s an awful lot of 20th-century composers, including Americans, I’d rather listen to than these. Some of this was during the deeply depressing dominance of the dodecaphonic dictatorship (say that five times fast). Still, as an intellectual exercise, I respect the Fromm Foundation and Sony for putting this box out. The Harrison Mass does intrigue me. I’m blasting Klemperer’s Bruckner 4th with the Philharmonia on vinyl loud enough to wake the neighbors this morning. Better fit for me.
An excellent choice!
"the dodecaphonic dictatorship"
Well, I think much of the chamber ensemble stuff, that was dodecaphonic, owes much to pre-dodecaphonic works like 'Pierrot lunaire' by Schoenberg or the Cat's Cradle Songs & Pribaoutki by Stravinsky. I think today the breach between dodecaphonic avantgarde & neoclassism can be seen as less deep than in those days.