# Who are the 5 greatest - forgotten, underrated or maligned - composers of all time?



## Ludwig Schon (10 mo ago)

Greetings and salutations

I am new to this forum, but have a deep appreciation of composers, who for a variety of reasons plough a lonely furrow, outside the mainstream canon. 

So who do you consider to be the 5 greatest - forgotten, underrated or maligned - composers of all time?

Let these titans light hide under a bushel no more…

My 5 nominees for the 20th Century would be:

1. Matthijs Vermeulen. Magnum Opus: Symphony 5

2. Ib Norholm. Magnum Opus: Symphony 5

3. Bernd Alois Zimmerman. Magnum Opus: Ich wandte mich und…

4. Karl Amadeus Hartmann. Magnum Opus: Symphony 6

5. Per Norgaard. Magnum Opus: Symphony 3


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## Prodromides (Mar 18, 2012)

Lars Johan Werle (Nautical Preludes)
Pierre Jansen (Processionnal en Sept Tableaux)
Serge Nigg (Poeme Symphonique, String Quartet)
Tolia Nikiprowetzky (Hommage à Antonio Gaudi)
Don Banks (Trilogy, Horn Trio)

There are more than 5, as one could expect, but I narrowed my selections down to those cited above based upon the paucity of recordings/albums. I've 2 or less works on each.


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## Ludwig Schon (10 mo ago)

Prodromides said:


> Lars Johan Werle (Nautical Preludes)
> Pierre Jansen (Processionnal en Sept Tableaux)
> Serge Nigg (Poeme Symphonique, String Quartet)
> Tolia Nikiprowetzky (Hommage Ã Antonio Gaudi)
> ...


Great selection, Prodromides. Nigg wrote some beautiful works and is almost completely forgotten. I only knew Jansen for his work with Chabrol on those wonderful 1960/70s Hitchcock/Herrmann.

Werle I knew nothing about, but what Iâ€™ve managed to download on iTunes is fascinating; ranging from Prog (Stonehorse), complex choral (Canzone) to opera (Tintomara).

Chapeau! í ¼í¾©


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

Wu Jie Shan
Raj Maharanashan
John Bailey Robinson
Antonio Luigi Finarini
Friedrich Helmholz Vogelfaenger


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## VoiceFromTheEther (Aug 6, 2021)

I can give you three:

J.S. Bach
W. Mozart
L. van Beethoven

get to the streets of Lagos, Kinshasa, or Kuala Lumpur, or visit the countryside of Uttar Pradesh, and ask around how many have heard of the above


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## Ludwig Schon (10 mo ago)

VoiceFromTheEther said:


> I can give you three:
> 
> J.S. Bach
> W. Mozart
> ...


The people in those locales are far too busy trying to eke out a living, stitching cheap clothing to clothe your lower middle-class family, methinks!?


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## VoiceFromTheEther (Aug 6, 2021)

Ludwig Schon said:


> The people in those locales are far too busy trying to eke out a living, stitching cheap clothing to clothe your lower middle-class family, methinks!?


Live long and prosper.


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## Bruce (Jan 2, 2013)

I'm not sure these 5 composers are the greatest, but forgotten and underrated, I would certainly say. 

Polish composer *Franciszek Lessel* - I've heard his piano concerto and really love it. But all the recordings I can find are on period instruments; I prefer a modern piano. 
French Canadian composer *Jacques Hétu
Antal Dorati* - his symphonies are very nice, as are some of his chamber works. 
*Wallingford Riegger* - his works can be a bit thorny, but I have learned to enjoy quite a few of them. 
*Camillo Schumann* - no doubt strongly overshadowed by Robert (no relation). He wrote a tremendous number of works, all in the late Romantic idiom, many of them should be better known.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

Don't remember. .


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## Knorf (Jan 16, 2020)

Not forgotten, but my top 5 unfairly maligned:

5. Milton Babbitt
4. Karlheinz Stockhausen
3. Pierre Boulez
2. John Cage
1. Arnold Schönberg


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## Orfeo (Nov 14, 2013)

*Glazunov* for me, given his fame, the breadth of his accomplishments, and his importance in the continued development of Russian music. The sheer quality of his music and its influence on succeeding composers, whether of Great Britain (Bax, Clifford, Elgar), Scandinavia (Atterberg, Alfven, Sibelius), or the Baltics (Vitols, Lemba) or of Russia itself, suggests how much of force he was during the remaining decades of the Nineteenth Century and the first two decades of the Twentieth.

*Myaskovsky *also comes to mind. His music was very well performed and promoted by leading conductors of the day during the 1920s through the early 1940s. He achieved a good level of popularity even in the United States.

*Others*:
Franz Schmidt
Alexander Zemlinsky
Franz Schreker


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## Coach G (Apr 22, 2020)

I remember that back in the 1980s, Philip Glass was somewhat dismissed by snobs, critics and the classical music establishment as gimmick or a flash-in-the-pan. I remember back in the 1980s an article on Gunther Schuller from _Opus_ magazine (or was it _Ovation_?) where Schuller was quoted and he really slammed Glass as a "rock-fringed" imitator of George Antheil who "did it much better." And now, while Schuller is practically forgotten, Glass has practically become the Grand Old Man of American Music. There are many works by Glass that I routinely enjoy such as _The Photographer_ and _Akhnaten_. The _Symphony #11_ is a real barn-burner. 

I also have a lot of empathy for John Cage. Cage takes a hit on these forums and is often the but of ridicule regarding the infamous _4'33_, but I think that Cage has taught us all how to listen in new ways. I remember seeing an interview with Cage that he liked to listen to the sound of traffic. When I see people today constantly plugged into their ear-buds and the cell phones, I wonder if the world could use a bit of John Cage just asking us to sit back and "listen"?


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## Bruce (Jan 2, 2013)

Coach G said:


> I also have a lot of empathy for John Cage. Cage takes a hit on these forums and is often the but of ridicule regarding the infamous _4'33_, but I think that Cage has taught us all how to listen in new ways. I remember seeing an interview with Cage that he liked to listen to the sound of traffic. When I see people today constantly plugged into their ear-buds and the cell phones, I wonder if the world could use a bit of John Cage just asking us to sit back and "listen"?


I think you're right, especially about Cage. People tend to take the most outrageous work of a composer as representative, when in fact, their output is far more varied. 

Interesting to hear about Schuller's reaction to Glass. Glass certainly didn't fit the academic norm at the time. It's always dangerous to predict artistic trends. Pity that Schuller is more or less neglected now, though. I like quite a lot of his music, especially his Triplum, Piano Concerto, and his 7 Studies on Themes of Paul Klee.


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