# Over-looked composers



## Michael122 (Sep 16, 2021)

There are several composers who tend to be overlooked in the wake of people like the 3-B's, Mozart, and other big names.
They don't seem to be performed by major orchestras as much nor do they appear often enough on classical radio stations.
While there may be a reason for that, the lesser well knowns have produced some wonderful work that well deserves to be more in the lime light.
For me a couple of them are Wilhelm Stenhammar and Karl Goldmark. 
Particularly enjoy each of their 2nd symphonies.
Who would you put in this category and what are your favorite pieces by them?


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

No poll, no game, off to the main forum.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

Composers in my top 30 that you will not find in many other lists like that:

Bax (Tintagel, November Woods, Violin concerto)
Moeran (Cello concerto, Violin concerto, Symphony)
Takemitsu (From me flows what you call time, November Steps, A flock descends into the pentagonal garden)
Gubaidulina (Jetzt immer Schnee, De Profundis, Fachwerk)
Respighi (Pini di Roma, Fontane di Roma, Il Tramonto)
Schmidt (Symphony 4, Piano concerto, Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln)


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

I'm bending the question, but I feel Gould is an under-_appreciated_ performer by classical enthusiasts, not by mainstream audiences though.


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

Weinberg - all his symphonies and string quartet no. 5
Myaskovsky - Cello Concerto, Violin Concerto, a few symphonies
Froberger - solo harpsichord and organ works
Pettersson - Syms. 7 and 8


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## Dorsetmike (Sep 26, 2018)

My preferences go back quite a few years and mostly English
John Stanley, John Blow, Maurice Greene, William Croft, William Boyce, William Byrd, Thomas Wibye, Orlando Gibbons, to name but a few!


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## ORigel (May 7, 2020)

I listen mostly to the big names, so my list is fairly short.

Nielsen (he is the great symphonist everyone forgets)
M Haydn (sacred works, mostly)
CPE Bach
Carissimi (sacred works)
Potter (composed really good symphonies)
Hummel
Coincy (rewrote popular medieval songs to be about the Virgin Mary and her miracles-- the songs are catchy and that collection could well become a warhorse if people had heard of it)


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## Jay (Jul 21, 2014)

To start...

Dane Rudhyar
Leo Ornstein
Carl Ruggles
Lou Harrison
Morton Feldman


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

Some quite extensive existing threads on the topic...

The Most Overrated and Underrated Composers in History - According to You (has almost 2000 posts)
Underrated Composers
Underrated Composers of the Classical Era


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## 59540 (May 16, 2021)

François Couperin


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## haziz (Sep 15, 2017)

Kalinnikov
Vieuxtemps
Berwald
Magnard
Atterberg
Glazunov
Raff
Ippolitov-Ivanov
Goldmark
Balakirev


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## Eva Yojimbo (Jan 30, 2016)

dissident said:


> François Couperin


A favorite of mine as well, and one I rarely hear mentioned here.


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## Rogerx (Apr 27, 2018)

Berwald 
Scharwenka
Medtner 
Wagenseil
Ries. 
Just five from the back of my head


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

Louis Moreau Gottschalk (1829-1869)
Alphons Diepenbrock (1862-1921)
Franz Schreker (1878-1934)
Walter Braunfels (1882-1954)
Othmar Schoeck (1886-1957)
Federico Mompou (1893-1987)
Henry Cowell (1897–1965)
Harry Partch (1901–1974)
Ross Lee Finney (1906–1997)
Lou Harrison (1917–2003)
James Tenney (1934–2006)
Krzysztof Meyer (1943)


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

ORigel said:


> M Haydn (sacred works, mostly)











the harmonies @2:28









@3:44


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## 59540 (May 16, 2021)

I think another one might be S. L. Weiss. I sometimes think it's a shame that he concentrated so much on lute music, but that's great stuff regardless.


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

The following are either forgotten, unfairly underrated or unappreciated, but actually have written some incredible music, particularly piano concertos from the 19th century. Most have had these works recorded by Hyperion.

Reinecke
Wolfl
Widor
Ries
Benoit
Tellefsen
Bennett
Dobrzynski
Winding
Urspruch
Thuille
Herz 
Gernsheim
Litolff
Rontgen
Mielck
Jadassohn
Brull
Mayer 
Pixis 
Stenhammar
Fuchs
Hartmann
Krogulski
Kiel
Dubois
LeBeau
Sauer
Draeseke
Goetz
Massenet 
Stanford 
Langgard
Schmidt
Moszkowski
Kalliwoda


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

For many ears Janacek -- but he seems to have risen into the standard repertoire in recent decades.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

Bela Bartok. Hear me out: other than the ubiquitous Concerto for Orchestra, a couple of concertos...what else do people really know? Even among classical listeners he's often ignored and I cannot figure out why. The Wooden Prince is just a terrific, beautiful score. Bluebeard's Castle a great, and mercifully short, opera. The early tone poem Kossuth as good as anything Liszt or R Strauss came up with. There's a lot more. He's a great composer and there's a lot more to him than the big, famous, popular works.


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

For me there is a difference between composers with a few or more overlooked works and overlooked composers. In no way Bartok or Janacek belong to the latter category. One might as well claim Schubert or Brahms as "overlooked" because there are large amounts of theire respective oeuvres not that frequently played or well known (like Schubert's operas or many of Brahms acappella choral works and lieder).


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## Josquin13 (Nov 7, 2017)

I could claim almost any of the Burgundian & Franco-Flemish composers to be underestimated--such as Binchois, Busnois, Lescurel, Faugues, Caron, Vitry, Ciconia, Mouton, Pipelare, Manchicourt, De Orto, Isaac, Brumel, etc.. Even the major ones, such as Dufay, Ockeghem, Josquin & Lassus aren't held in the kind of esteem that the sublime, ingenious quality of their music suggests they should be, universally. To my mind, those four giants are top ten or at the very least top twenty composers in music history. Though admittedly, they're not exactly 'overlooked', either.

--Ciconia: 



--Vitry, Motets: 



--Binchois, Chansons: 



--Mouton, his Motet: "Nesciens mater virgo virum": 



--Josquin, Motets: 




Furthermore, looking towards Britain in the Middle Ages & Renaissance, the high quality of the music of John Dunstable, Lionel Power & other composers included in The Old Hall Manuscript, Walter Frye, William Cornysh the Younger, Nicholas Ludford, William Mundy, Robert Fayrfax, John Sheppard, John Taverner, John Browne, Robert Carver, Christopher Tye, Robert White, Thomas Tallis, William Byrd, & Orlando Gibbons gets underrated, too. & again, a good case can be made for Byrd, Tallis, & Dunstable being top twenty or thirty composers in music history, IMO. Especially Byrd, who composed remarkable keyboard works, as well as beautiful Consort Songs--such as "Ye Sacred Muses", an elegy written upon the death of his teacher, Thomas Tallis--along with his many choral masterpieces. While Dunstable (or Dunstaple), whose "contenance angloise" style was hugely influential on Dufay & other continental composers & therefore played a crucial role in the history of music, would be much better known today if the majority of his manuscripts in England hadn't disappeared during the English Reformation and the Dissolution of the Monasteries under Henry VIII. Fortunately, Dunstable's fame was already widespread at the time, so a portion of his music survived in European monasteries. Today, only about fifty works survive (including fragmented movements from what were once masses), though some of his works have likely survived under 'anonymous'.














--Dunstable, Motet: Veni Sancte Spiritus/Veni creator spiritus: 



--The Old Hall Manuscript (tracks 1-25 on the following link): 



--Sheppard, Motet: Media vita: 



--Power, Gloria: 



--Ludford, Missa 'Christe Virgo Dilectissima' For 5 Voices: 




From the French Renaissance, the composer Eustache du Caurroy gets overlooked. Last I checked, his influential instrumental Fantasies for 3 & 6 instruments had still not been entirely recorded. To date, only Jordi Savall has recorded 23 of the 42 Fantasies, & the rest (shamefully) remain mostly, if not entirely unrecorded:






Yet Du Caurroy was a prominent composer in his time. I'd consider what I've heard of his 42 instrumental pieces, 53 motets, 7 Psalm settings--"Les Meslanges", & Requiem for Henry IV of France to be among the finest music of the late Renaissance,






From the German Renaissance, the music of Michael Praetorius gets underestimated. Again, Praetorius is a major composer in my view, not a minor one: 




I'm sure there are many Baroque composers that get overlooked or underestimated, as well--such as perhaps even Archangelo Corelli?, but also Fresocobaldi, Froberger, A. Scarlatti, Biber, Charpentier, & J.S. Bach's favorite, Buxtehude, etc.

--Corelli: 12 Concerti Grossi Op.6: 




--Biber: Missa Salisburgensis: 




There are also a number of 19th & early 20th Century French & Belgian composers that tend to get overlooked, IMO--such as Charles Koechlin, whose four symphonies have still not been entirely recorded, Charles Tournemire, Albert Roussel, & Joseph Jongen, to name just a few,

--Koechlin: 
--Paysages et Marines (chamber version):
1-5: 



6-12: 



--String Quartet No. 1: 



--Violin Sonata: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=koechlin+violin+sonata+grmol
--Le Buisson Ardent: 




--Roussel, Sérénade for Flute, String Trio and Harp, Op.30: 




--Tournemire, 12 Préludes-poèmes, Op.58: 




--Jongen, Concert à cinq for flute, harp, violin, alto and cello, Op. 71: 




Otherwise, I'd say the rest of the 'overlooked' candidates are mostly later 20th & 21st century composers. The Finnish composer, Joonas Kokkonen is good example, along with a number of other Scandinavian composers, such as Anders Hillborg, Ib Nørholm, Alan Pettersson, & to an extent, even Vagn Holmboe (whose music was certainly neglected before the pioneering Orwin Arwel Hughes series on BIS, & today many of his works are still unrecorded, as Holmboe was a very prolific composer), etc..

--Kokkonen:

















--Hillborg:

















--Nørholm (a student of Holmboe): IMO, Nørholm's Symphony No. 9 is one of the most overlooked symphonies of the 20th century. & I've not heard all of his 13 Symphonies yet, so there may be even better ones...:






--Symphony No. 3: 



--Symphony No. 5: 



--Symphony No. 7: 




--Holmboe: 





























Speaking of Holmboe, here in the U.S., hardly any of the music by his student, the late composer Alan Stout has been recorded. Yet Stout wrote over a hundred works. Sir Georg Solti conducted Stout's symphonies (& George Lieder) in Chicago, Seiji Ozawa premiered his 2nd Symphony at Ravinia, Shostakovich admired his 4th Symphony--which was dedicated to Solti, yet not a single commercial recording exists of any of Stout's four symphonies. He is the only one of Holmboe's notable students whose symphonies remain unrecorded. Here is what Thomas Willis wrote for the Chicago Tribune after hearing Stout's 2nd Symphony premiered by the CSO:

The Symphony was "vivid [and] multi-dimensional... a collection of musical rituals. The work is a marvelous tapestry of textures, combining a superior craftsmanship, a remarkable ear, and encyclopedic knowledge of the inventions of his colleagues, Messiaen, Penderecki, Elliott Carter, and Pierre Boulez..."

Stout is also the only composer to win the Lydian Quartet's SQ prize whose recording by the Lydians, as it is their custom to record each winning composer's quartets, has not been commercially released. If Stout's String Quartets aren't worthy to be heard, then why did the Lydians choose them to win their prize? These are world class musicians, so surely their musical judgement is to be more valued than some marketing or record executive's ad hoc commercial agenda. Besides, how can a composer's importance be properly assessed if his or her music is seldom, if ever, recorded or performed? During his lifetime, Stout was never someone to actively promote his own music. It wasn't in his nature to do so.

http://www.bruceduffie.com/stout.html
--This is a very good choir, but I can imagine an even better, more 'other worldly' performance of this masterful choral piece from Stout's early days (such as by the Monteverdi Choir perhaps?): 




By the way, I saw a student production of Euripedes' play, Hippolytus, at Northwestern University many years ago, for which Stout composed the incidental music & worked with an all female chorus, and I've never heard a chorus in a Greek play work more powerfully or effectively on stage. It put to shame what Sirs Peter Hall and Harrison Birtwistle did for Aeschylus's Oresteia trilogy at the National Theatre in London a couple of years later, where the chorus didn't work nearly as well, in my opinion.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)




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## Ethereality (Apr 6, 2019)

Whenceever the queued partisan retorts "I don't see how X is underrated" while duly doing one's duty to explain to them the fallaciousness of their statement, invite them to frolic hereto in confusion between the two terms.


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