# Buy the Corn and get the Gold free.... Time limited offer.



## John Lenin (Feb 4, 2021)

Korngold.... Why isn"t he more popular. He can do the earlier 20th century Austrian weird stuff.... He can do film music... And even a little jazz ... Everything American's like and hold dear. He should be the god of America. He wasn't too ugly early in life and even came with a catchy phrase "Korngold, more corn than gold"... It's the kind of music made for crossover conductors to jump around like mini marketing chimps to, I can see Bernstein and Previn selling little black vinyl discs by the millions to little sit on their sofa chimps looking to buy some quick culture... An American marketing dream.... WHAT AM I MISSING HERE...?


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## Fabulin (Jun 10, 2019)

Other than restraint in the choice of words? - the broader economic perspective, the scope of the competition Korngold was up against, and the fact that his music gets stale very quickly compared to that of Richard Strauss or Puccini or Mahler.

Not to mention that serious "crossovers" (read: end of ghettification of Hollywood) in the concert world only became possible after John Williams's tenure, tours, and broadcasts with the reformed Boston Pops in the 1980s (especially post-1984). Leonard Slatkin spoke about it yesterday:
the discussion on this topic starts ca. 1:21:19


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

Korngold isn't popular? You should have been around 50 years ago when there was only one - and cut - recording of the symphony. A couple of the violin concerto (which is where the phrase "more corn than gold" came from) and one opera: Die Tote Stadt. A few soundtracks. But nowadays? There are a dozen recordings of the symphony, just as many (or more) of the violin concerto. Every opera has been recorded. Every soundtrack has been recorded. There's a vast number of recordings of his other music, too. Two biographies. The violin concerto shows up all over the world in concert each year. The symphony should be, but it's frighteningly difficult to play. 

Korngold's problem is the same as that of many other composers of his time: it was written for a certain type of audience and at a certain period of time. Schrecker, Zemlinsky, Schmidt, Marx and company wrote great music, but after two world wars it just didn't seem to fit into the world anymore. I love Korngold's music. It has a yearning and world-weariness to it that is so comforting. What needs to happen is the publication of suites from the films. It's beginning to happen - there's a new publication of The Seahawk...hope for more!


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## John Lenin (Feb 4, 2021)

Playing his symphony today..... I thought 'I wonder how many film scores this is a combination of....?'........ but you get that feeling with Arnold Bax symphonies.... however if you read EM Forsters description of Beethoven's 5th in... I forget which novel it's in...... he describes Beethoven's 5th as FILM MUSIC.


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## Highwayman (Jul 16, 2018)

John Lenin said:


> ... however if you read EM Forsters description of Beethoven's 5th in... I forget which novel it's in......


Might be _Howards End_ because I recall a whole chapter dedicated to it.


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