# Stars of Yesteryear



## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

What about those shining lights of yesteryear that have faded and dimmed. Were they really that good? Was their fall from grace really deserved?

Couple of examples:

Cimarosa wrote more than 80 operas. People could not enough of his work. Hadyn conducted at least twelve of his operas for the Esterházys. Where is he now?






Martín y Soler was compared favorably with his contemporary, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, as a composer of opera buffa. He worked with Lorenzo Da Ponte as librettist, who was simultaneously collaborating with Mozart and Antonio Salieri. Why the fall from grace?






Who are your stars of yesteryear? Were they really that good? Did they deserve their fall from favour? Be as specific as you can.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

One that springs to mind is *Jean Marie Le Clair *- according to Wiki,*'Leclair was renowned as a violinist and as a composer'. *
He is still played today, but barely features in anthologies of baroque music, and despite being interested in baroque and listening to 'the main men' for three years, I'd never heard of him till I came across his 'musette' in a Grade 4 exam book.

I love his music, now I've listened to it, and think it's just unfortunate that baroque music has so many good composers not too far below the first rank. And also, that when he is remembered, it's often for the manner of his passing - murdered outside his own front door, probably by a jealous nephew.

- short YT video, sonata 2 (from op 3) for two violins.


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## dgee (Sep 26, 2013)

Franz Schreker's my boy here - a Viennese composer of feted operas (totally luscious they are) in the teens and twenties of last century. Seemed to go a little downhill after that and then certain political developments overtook him and his career. He's coming back strongly though - and it was nice to see his Chamber Symphony appear in current listening recently

Here's two excerpts from his greatest hits


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## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

Taggart said:


> What about those shining lights of yesteryear that have faded and dimmed. Were they really that good? Was their fall from grace really deserved?


My guess is that this happens more often, the further back one goes. I imagine that it is just an abundance of riches that is to blame.

I recently discovered a composer that had been the major one in Dresden and his influence and fame spread wide (I don't recall the details from the liner notes). His name is Johann David Heinichen, one of the major figures of the Baroque. I had never heard of him, until I discovered an album that I took a chance on.

Was not Johann Sebastian Bach also a victim of historical amnesia, only rediscovered in the 19th Century?


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

The 1980 _Grove_ describes *Andreas Hammerschmidt* as "the most representative composer of mid-17th-century German church music, of which he was a prolific and extremely popular exponent... the 'world-celebrated Herr Hammerschmied', Johann Rist called him in 1655".

I came across him a couple of years ago via this CPO release:








(Of course, mid-17th-century music generally is not so well-known these days either!)


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

In reverse, funny how Bach was neglected for so many years as some of these now obscure composers were played up.

Perhaps these atonalists on TC are right and we the populists are wrong?


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## GreenMamba (Oct 14, 2012)

*Daniel Steibelt *is most remembered (if at all) as Beethoven's piano playing rival, but he was also a composer of some note. He wrote a piano concerto with a choral finale a few years before Beethoven's 9th symphony.

Alas, the music of his I've heard online doesn't seem very interesting.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Johann Adolph Hasse also wrote a lot of operas, over 60 operas. Many other Baroque composers did too. I think it's more a matter of waiting to be rediscovered today than being neglected. Vivaldi operas are quite popular today.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

What's remarkable is not that music of past times is forgotten but that some of it is not. By 1850 Cimarosa, a fine composer, was just a powdered wig, but Mozart had some extra ingredient that made people continue to play his music. Was it superiority of craft or a quality of expression that could reach across time and changes in sensibility? I think both.

I love living at a time when we can rediscover the forgotten second-rate music of the past and enjoy it with a mixture of appreciation for its genuine qualities and understanding of its limitations and why it "dated" or just got overlooked or crowded out. Of course now we have to sift through a lot of third-rate stuff to find the second-rate! But if we enjoy it, it may still be first-rate for us.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Cimarosa -- I have some of his works and often listen to his oboe concerto! I think some early 20th century Italian composer based a well-known work on the opening theme, can't remember just who...






Help, anybody?


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

James Oswald - court composer to George III.

Perhaps it's his insistence on composing only miniatures that's led him to be taken less seriously than he would have been, had he completed an opera or written concertos: certainly it's rare to find a piece by him that covers more than one page of music. Another problem is that since Oswald used various pen names, not all of his works have been identified.

Anybody who could write Flowers of Edinburgh or East Neuk or Fife - both standard reel tunes - deserves better recognition. Both his Airs for the Four Seasons and his divertimenti for English guitar are fine classical pieces.


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