# Dominance in classical music composition



## Roger Knox (Jul 19, 2017)

For a long time I've been preoccupied with the problem of _dominance_ in classical music composition, that is, how a relatively small number of composers receive the most attention, support, study, and status. In particular, advocacy for reviving music of neglected composers has forced these questions on me: who and how many are deserving of revival, why has their music been neglected (are there practical problems, were they undermined in some way, what abilities or traits did they have or lack, and so on). I understand there is in psychology the Pareto Principle which claims the dominance of a few to be a natural phenomenon, against which we have an equity principle where sharing rewards is the focus. Do we have a tendency to root for the underdog factoring in? do we applaud those at the top to keep things simple for us? Why do some composers try to bar or control others?

For me, the feasible way addressing these issues is simply to put the _quality of composers' music_ first, keeping other factors under consideration without the expectation that they will yield answers convincing to me. In other words, I can make substantive judgements of musical quality that _will_ hold for me. Putting any other consideration higher, no matter how much pressure there is on me to do so, _will not_ hold for me and I'll rebel against doing that. In fact, over a long musical life I have found all the other considerations drive me nuts eventually!

How do you feel?


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

It may well be that there are some really fabulous composers waiting to be discovered who were active between 1750 and 1950 say. But I suspect that there are many more fabulous composers waiting to be discovered again who were active between 1200 and 1750. 

The reasons for this are manifold. The musical establishment has focused on funding symphony orchestras and opera houses, both status symbols of metropolises in the west. They are beside the point for these composers. And the stars of the piano, solo voice and violin created by the music industry are similarly irrelevant. So the commercial infrastructure, which is what determines people's experiences and expectations, has really conspired against music pre 1750.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

There are a few exceptions but in general I think history has done a good job is sorting music. My attempts to explore outside of the well-known and well thought of did not yield that much reward. These days, when so much is available on record, those who want to explore the less well-known can do. Many, in fact, do seem to enjoy doing this and vibrant discussions between them are not so rare of forums like this one.

I think it interesting to watch music that was popular in say the first two or three decades of the 20th Century. Some of it vanished and, when I have taken the opportunity to listen to such music, I can hear why. It is almost embarrassing to listen to some of it and yet we have to accept that when it was new many people found it inspiring.

And when it comes to the contemporary we are dealing with music that history has not had a chance to sort. I do enjoy exploring the music of the very many active composers, I enjoy listening to music that is written _now _for people _now _.... and it doesn't bother me too much that some of it will not be judged too well by posterity.

When questions like this are asked I often think of art (painting, sculpture, ceramics). Most of us can't afford the big names even if we wanted to buy their work. But beneath them are other artists who are not valued so highly but do have a strong reputation and do command a decent price (maybe tens of thousands) and then there are others who are also known but are even cheaper. Most of us can find a work we love for our wall or shelf at a price that we might find affordable. I'm not sure what the musical equivalent.


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## Roger Knox (Jul 19, 2017)

Mandryka said:


> ... But I suspect that there are many more fabulous composers waiting to be discovered again who were active between 1200 and 1750. ...


I appreciate the spirit of your post and you make some good points. Not so sure about composers waiting to be discovered -- the early music and period performance movements have accomplished tremendous things, and nowadays for both the 1200-1750 and 1750-1950 areas it's more a matter of supporting platforms for ongoing recognition of excellent music that falls outside the standard rep. With current troubles in classical music it becomes harder but we don't have to give up.


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## Roger Knox (Jul 19, 2017)

Enthusiast said:


> But beneath them are other artists who are not valued so highly but do have a strong reputation and do command a decent price (maybe tens of thousands) and then there are others who are also known but are even cheaper. Most of us can find a work we love for our wall or shelf at a price that we might find affordable. I'm not sure what the musical equivalent.


Yes, I agree about recordings, and about exploring contemporary composers in the spirit you describe. I think, in the analogy of music with art works, that in certain areas our interest goes further than the great masters. Obviously with recordings and the internet we can "afford" any music including the great works to some degree, but we develop "allegiances" that are sort of like the art "we love for our wall or shelf" -- allegiences to composers from our own region or country, or of a particular era, a particular style, a particular type. Here we might go further, getting to concerts, specialized collecting, learning opportunities, sharing interest with others, even meeting a composer or performer.


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## Dimace (Oct 19, 2018)

This is a difficult question... Underrated, neglected etc. composers VS well known or dominant composers.

What I can briefly say is that Vaughan Williams rebirth happend because of Andre Previn, 20 or 30 years ago. A well known French conductor revived the great English composer. It is mostly a matter of time. I was waiting toooooo long to have a decent recording of William Wallace. One day it happened. And don't forget:  We are just the 3% of the worldwide listeners population which listen classical music! Why a firm must invest serious money for an unknown composer? It must have a good budget (from other, every day music) to give some money to him. Thanks for this thread. It is very useful.


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## PlaySalieri (Jun 3, 2012)

I dont go with the conspiracy theory keeping music just the way big money interest wants it.

There is an abundance of top class music from the established canon of repertoire - too much for several lifetimes let alone one. I have spent too much time looking here and there to see if posterity has missed something. It really hasn't. Why should people be expected to listen to inferior music just to revive names justifiably long forgotten.

let the mediocrities rest, fully absolved.


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

Well, a large part of my life is now dedicated to the preserving of such individuals who have so-called "slipped through the cracks of time" for complex reasons. I plan to _singlehandedly _bring Glazunov to the front and center stage of classical music culture in the next decades, and you all will be powerless to stop me. :tiphat:

I speak facetiously only because it's somewhat true. There were a handful of musicians in the 20th century that "championed" Glazunov, such as Heifetz, Milstein and Richter, but consequently very few _conductors _or others. The Violin Concerto has survived to this day because of those early heroes, but this was his downfall in the end. Conductors have an enormous effect on the exposure of audiences to a composer, and if a conductor doesn't feel like performing someone's music, it never will. But then Svetlanov and Jarvi came along...  :kiss:

I also speak facetiously because in our globalized culture, it's easy to connect with other advocates from around the world and make efforts to expose people to unheard music, both the contemporary and the old. I got connections in and outside the US with the same goals as me, and together we're doing our little parts. Who knows, one day I might do something with a major impact to academia. But I don't have to go at it alone anymore.


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## Roger Knox (Jul 19, 2017)

I'm really happy to hear from others! Going back to my concern about _dominance_: since writing the OP (work in progress at best) it occurred to me that in the area of late romantic German/Austrian orchestral music, the dominance aspect was huge! The top composers -- Wagner, Strauss and Mahler -- were also great conductors or, in the case of Brahms (piano) and Bruckner (organ) performers; sheer talent and education explains much of their rise to and establishment at the top. Same holds for others whose music hasn't held up as well, and I hold that robust critical activity by those performers, reviewers, audiences, administrators, etc. who _put the quality of composers' music first_ has made the difference. This necessarily _subjective_ work builds _inter-subjectively_ to consensus which is never total and is always open to revision. But the idea of _totalitarianism_ took hold and enlisted some especially in the 20th century, not only in the German world that has been my personal focus. Totalitarianism is one ideology that brings more and more extra-musical forces to bear because its first concern is power, while judgement of musical quality withers.


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

I have been listening to and collecting classical music for a long time. I combed through stacks of vinyl records in well-stocked classical music stores regularly looking for something new. However, due to companies such as Hyperion, it is only in the last decade or so that I have learned of, at least, 15-20 composers who wrote some wonderful music during the latter 2/3 of the 19th century. We look at them and talk about them as ‘unknown’, but a number of them were well known, even famous, during their lifetime.

Rather than this being a case of those with limited talent and output rightfully being weeded out and forgotten, I believe this had more to do with the fact that there were no recordings and, as a result, only those composers whose influence was especially pervasive remained in memories over generations to come. And what is interesting to me is that when we look at the number of composers that were recorded and known about by classical music listeners in the 1950s and 1960s, it was relatively small.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

Quality is pretty much the only thing that separates what lasts from what doesn't -- in the arts but also in any endeavor. Championship rings, ability to hit a major league fastball, inventing the mousetrap, deriving the priciples of relatiivity, developing and marketing the iPhone. The cream rises to the top. Humperidnck was a one-hit wonder, but that doesn't make Hansel und Gretel any less a masterpiece, and its genius doesn't make any of his other works any more likely to achieve immortality. We already know ten of thousands of Baroque works and there is little likelihood of there being many (or any) undiscovered masterpieces out there.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

Huilunsoittaja said:


> I plan to _singlehandedly _bring Glazunov to the front and center stage of classical music culture in the next decades, and you all will be powerless to stop me.


Good luck with that. I hope I'm around to witness the Glazunov revolution. I've been preaching about Glazunov for 30 years with a few successes. Got The Seasons, the violin and saxophone concertos performed. Finally after waiting forever I heard the 4th symphony performed live in 2017. I've conducted Concert Waltz No. 1. Now I'm working on getting The Sea played - what a barnstormer that work is! It's always struck me as odd that given the huge popularity of the other Russian composers of his era that poor Alexander has been so neglected. Well, thankfully we have almost everything the man wrote on CD, and so many cycles of symphonies its embarrassing.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Roger Knox said:


> I appreciate the spirit of your post and you make some good points. Not so sure about composers waiting to be discovered -- the early music and period performance movements have accomplished tremendous things, and nowadays for both the 1200-1750 and 1750-1950 areas it's more a matter of supporting platforms for ongoing recognition of excellent music that falls outside the standard rep. With current troubles in classical music it becomes harder but we don't have to give up.


No, I think this is not true, there a many scores in libraries waiting to be created again. Let me give you two examples.

The keyboard suites in a manuscript held at Gotweig are only just being explored, the composer of the keyboard music there is probably Franz Matthias Techelmann, and I would say the few of them I have heard shows that they are tip top.

And a second example. Very recently Paul van Nevel found some extraordinary English music in the Bodlean, and he's already given at least one concert with it. On his website he wrote this



> Thanks to key manuscripts, such as the Chantilly Codex, continental music of the 14th century has already been rediscovered and become relatively well known. The same, however, cannot be said of the "crazy" 14th century in England, that is very much overdue the attention it deserves. With this programme the Huelgas Ensemble unlocks a completely unknown, yet highly impressive repertoire found in manuscripts from the libraries of Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, Worcester, York and London. It is clear, from the selection of isorhythmic motets, mass movements, conducti, gymel and secular songs, that here we are dealing with a highly idiosyncratic art form. The source of this music is often rooted in local traditions, which might go some way to explaining why this culture was, and indeed is, so little known in the rest of Europe.


Of course music may be known in score but not in performance -- think of the recently released recording of the medieval mass from a manuscript in the library at Göttingen, a recording by Göttinger Choralschola and Ensemble Aeolos.

Even well known composers, very well known composers, can have undiscovered major works. Think of Telemann's solo viol partitas.

And great composers may rest in obscurity -- I would say this happened with Jean Hanelle until his music was championed by Bjorn Schmelzer.


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

MarkW said:


> Quality is pretty much the only thing that separates what lasts from what doesn't -- in the arts but also in any endeavor...


When it comes to classical music, I don't think so. Books were an accessible hard copy of literature. Paintings were an accessible hard copy of artists. Classical music had no such accessible hard copy. Yes, there was sheet music, but it was not an accessible record for listeners. The highest quality music likely separated those composers who survived as household names over the centuries from those whose music did not survive as public performances long after they passed away, but I believe their music would have survived as quality music, albeit not quite at the quality level of the usual suspects, if there had been recordings.


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## PlaySalieri (Jun 3, 2012)

DaveM said:


> When it comes to classical music, I don't think so. Books were an accessible hard copy of literature. Paintings were an accessible hard copy of artists. Classical music had no such accessible hard copy. Yes, there was sheet music, but it was not an accessible record for listeners. The highest quality music likely separated those composers who survived as household names over the centuries from those whose music did not survive as public performances long after they passed away, but I believe their music would have survived as quality music, albeit not quite at the quality level of the usual suspects, if there had been recordings.


what about all that obscure stuff issued by nonesuch 45 years ago? How much of that has survived?


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

stomanek said:


> what about all that obscure stuff issued by nonesuch 45 years ago? How much of that has survived?


Well, to start with, obscure music often remains in obscurity because, well, it's obscure. In the early years of Nonesuch, it emphasized music composed before 1800. Other than Bach, Haydn, Mozart, early Beethoven and maybe CPE Bach, that has not exactly been the most popular era for classical composers (it is rumored that deprofundis almost single-handedly has kept that and the pre-1700 period alive ).

Nonesuch never focused much on the 19th century golden era of classical music. However, it was one of the first labels to record the contemporary/modern music of Steve Reich, John Adams and Philip Glass in the 1980s, but, of course that's not of interest to anybody.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

Dimace said:


> This is a difficult question... Underrated, neglected etc. composers VS well known or dominant composers.
> 
> What I can briefly say is that Vaughan Williams rebirth happend because of Andre Previn, 20 or 30 years ago. A well known French conductor revived the great English composer. It is mostly a matter of time. I was waiting toooooo long to have a decent recording of William Wallace. One day it happened. And don't forget:  We are just the 3% of the worldwide listeners population which listen classical music! Why a firm must invest serious money for an unknown composer? It must have a good budget (from other, every day music) to give some money to him. Thanks for this thread. It is very useful.


Just a quick note: Previn was/is German-American and was best known as a film composer and jazz pianist before turning fulltime to classical music in the mid-1960s. And, although I like his Vaughan Williams recordings, that composer was never unpopular or underplayed in England, and his major exponent throughout our lifetimes was Adrian Boult. Cheers.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

DaveM said:


> When it comes to classical music, I don't think so. Books were an accessible hard copy of literature. Paintings were an accessible hard copy of artists. Classical music had no such accessible hard copy. Yes, there was sheet music, but it was not an accessible record for listeners. The highest quality music likely separated those composers who survived as household names over the centuries from those whose music did not survive as public performances long after they passed away, but I believe their music would have survived as quality music, albeit not quite at the quality level of the usual suspects, if there had been recordings.


Well, we can cordially disagree. Admittedly, with music the filtering process has to pass through performers -- whose judgment we just have to hope has merit. Yes, sometimes there are marketing considerations -- "Okay it's the Bicentennial so we have to dig up and program some obscure and gawdawful American work. But then we can fill out the program with good stuff." - But mostly we should respect their musical acumen. After all, they keep programming Schoenberg, presumably not bacause it's good for us, but because they think it has musical merit and is worthwhile playing.


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

I'd say for most of your questions, if not all of them, just let them die b/c there is no way to really come to a satisfying solution to the questions.

Just enjoy what you like, and try to discuss what you like/dislike about the works.


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

Captainnumber36 said:


> I'd say for most of your questions, if not all of them, just let them die b/c there is no way to really come to a satisfying solution to the questions.
> 
> Just enjoy what you like, and try to discuss what you like/dislike about the works.


Well, that kind of thinking would, pretty much, kill the fourm.


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## PlaySalieri (Jun 3, 2012)

MarkW said:


> Just a quick note: Previn was/is German-American and was best known as a film composer and jazz pianist before turning fulltime to classical music in the mid-1960s. And, although I like his Vaughan Williams recordings, that composer was never unpopular or underplayed in England, and his major exponent throughout our lifetimes was Adrian Boult. Cheers.


I always thought Previn's fame was courtesy of Morecambe and wise.


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## Dima (Oct 3, 2016)

One of rediscovered composers in XX (I mean Vivaldi) is now one of the most popular composers. 
In my view the next big composer who will be popular when will be rediscovered is Anton Rubinstein.
Only 60% of his compositions are recorded now, and the last work that was recorded this year is his opera Moses.
You can listen suite of best moments from this opus (press "Скачать" to download zip archive with mp3):
https://cloud.mail.ru/public/GGY4/EmT2bGPmV

I think classical music won't die until such composers like Anton Rubinstein remain unknown.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

MarkW said:


> Well, we can cordially disagree. Admittedly, with music the filtering process has to pass through performers -- whose judgment we just have to hope has merit. Yes, sometimes there are marketing considerations -- "Okay it's the Bicentennial so we have to dig up and program some obscure and gawdawful American work. But then we can fill out the program with good stuff." - But mostly we should respect their musical acumen. After all, they keep programming Schoenberg, presumably not bacause it's good for us, but because they think it has musical merit and is worthwhile playing.


Of course, it isn't just music that relies on performers for the exposure it gets (or doesn't get) - there is also drama - but I think a large part of what they choose to play is what they can fill their halls with. They do, I know, occasionally add a more obscure piece out of enthusiasm for it or because they feel they have a duty to the new. But programming these so that the audience can relate to them properly is not easy and is rarely given much attention in orchestral concerts. Some chamber performers do better.


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

DaveM said:


> Well, that kind of thinking would, pretty much, kill the fourm.


no, we could still compare/contrast other elements of composers/works.


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

mbhaub said:


> Good luck with that. I hope I'm around to witness the Glazunov revolution. I've been preaching about Glazunov for 30 years with a few successes. Got The Seasons, the violin and saxophone concertos performed. Finally after waiting forever I heard the 4th symphony performed live in 2017. I've conducted Concert Waltz No. 1. Now I'm working on getting The Sea played - what a barnstormer that work is! It's always struck me as odd that given the huge popularity of the other Russian composers of his era that poor Alexander has been so neglected. Well, thankfully we have almost everything the man wrote on CD, and so many cycles of symphonies its embarrassing.


Holy cow!! Who are you?? I guess I haven't gotten properly acquainted with you on the forum cuz I just don't talk that much these days. Have you seen my blog here on TalkClassical? I strongly recommend to check it out! And also check out his Guestbook, I mean, that's my baby. 

Hearing Glazunov 4 live is a bucket list work for me too, that symphony in particular just means the world to me. One off my list is I got to see Raymonda in 2016, one of the best nights I've ever had. <3 But honestly I hope to see Raymonda again in my life, another production elsewhere. That one doesn't get old for me.

See? This is what I meant! The internet allows us to connect and unite together! Pleased to meet you mbhaub! You can call me Huilu


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## PlaySalieri (Jun 3, 2012)

Dima said:


> One of rediscovered composers in XX *(I mean Vivaldi) *is now one of the most popular composers.
> In my view the next big composer who will be popular when will be rediscovered is Anton Rubinstein.
> Only 60% of his compositions are recorded now, and the last work that was recorded this year is his opera Moses.
> You can listen suite of best moments from this opus (press "Скачать" to download zip archive with mp3):
> ...


I wouldnt say so. Vivaldi is still and probably always will be a 1 hit wonder. Some of his works besides 4 seasons are performed more but he remains relatively obscure. How many Vivaldi pieces do you know well besides the Gloria, Stabat Mater and maybe one or two concertos.

Classical music has no chance of dying whether or not Rubinstein is worth listening to.


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## Roger Knox (Jul 19, 2017)

Huilunsoittaja said:


> Well, a large part of my life is now dedicated to the preserving of such individuals who have so-called "slipped through the cracks of time" for complex reasons. I plan to _singlehandedly_bring Glazunov to the front and center stage of classical music culture in the next decades, and you all will be powerless to stop me.


Well, this is the spirit I like! I don't know exactly who's trying to stop you or why you need to approach this single-handedly. Anyway, Glazunov faced extraordinary competition from others in his gifted and hardworking generation, which may have led to his partial eclipse.


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## Roger Knox (Jul 19, 2017)

Roger Knox said:


> Going back to my concern about _dominance_: since writing the OP (work in progress at best) it occurred to me that in the area of late romantic German/Austrian orchestral music, the dominance aspect was huge! The top composers -- Wagner, Strauss and Mahler -- were also great conductors or, in the case of Brahms (piano) and Bruckner (organ) performers; sheer talent and education explains much of their rise to and establishment at the top.


Just picking up the issue dominance in relation to the composers, consider Richard Strauss again for a moment, who held his status at the top in the area of classical composition for a long time. One of his colleagues and rivals, Emil von Reznicek, actually wrote two orchestral compositions -- _Der Schlemihl_ (himself) and _Der Sieger_ (the victor = R. Strauss) -- that are excellent, but what is this inferiority complex that drove him to satirize Strauss (specifically _Ein Heldenleben_) in this way, which basically ended their friendship? And how about Hans Pfitzner, who complained bitterly about Strauss getting more performances and receiving more royalties than he did, and annoyed just about everyone. It seems that dominance had become a pathology, perhaps falling into the Wagner tradition. And it's not only in Germany that such things happened. I hope that classical music does not inherently foster dominant-submissive behaviour patterns!


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## Dimace (Oct 19, 2018)

MarkW said:


> Just a quick note: Previn was/is German-American and was best known as a film composer and jazz pianist before turning fulltime to classical music in the mid-1960s. And, although I like his Vaughan Williams recordings, that composer was never unpopular or underplayed in England, and his major exponent throughout our lifetimes was Adrian Boult. Cheers.


Thanks for the useful comments and corrections! I was believing that Previn's brother was in the movies. I'm nor sure that Previn was German... (I accept the American) Many years before he had rejected his German nationality, or something. (he hadn't had one, I believe it was a sentimental declaration. I'm not sure) I think, that his grand father was a French Jew. His father married a German Lady. The Nazis found about their routs and they had a lot of problems (danger of deportation) They went all together to USA, they saved their lives and the brothers made a good carrier there.


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## Roger Knox (Jul 19, 2017)

Having considered the above posts I realize that the OP issue of dominance has more to do with the music-related professions -- not excluding business, publicity, teaching -- than with listeners. Also in this thread there are some people who sympathize with the "underdogs" more, while others admire more the "masters." To be honest I think I -- and others -- have something of both attitudes.


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## regenmusic (Oct 23, 2014)

Roger Knox said:


> For a long time I've been preoccupied with the problem of _dominance_ in classical music composition, that is, how a relatively small number of composers receive the most attention, support, study, and status. In particular, advocacy for reviving music of neglected composers has forced these questions on me: who and how many are deserving of revival, why has their music been neglected (are there practical problems, were they undermined in some way, what abilities or traits did they have or lack, and so on). I understand there is in psychology the Pareto Principle which claims the dominance of a few to be a natural phenomenon, against which we have an equity principle where sharing rewards is the focus. Do we have a tendency to root for the underdog factoring in? do we applaud those at the top to keep things simple for us? Why do some composers try to bar or control others?
> 
> For me, the feasible way addressing these issues is simply to put the _quality of composers' music_ first, keeping other factors under consideration without the expectation that they will yield answers convincing to me. In other words, I can make substantive judgements of musical quality that _will_ hold for me. Putting any other consideration higher, no matter how much pressure there is on me to do so, _will not_ hold for me and I'll rebel against doing that. In fact, over a long musical life I have found all the other considerations drive me nuts eventually!
> 
> How do you feel?


I completely agree with you.

I often find obscure composers to be my favorite. With pop music, probably 80% of what I listen to is EXTREMELY rare. These were artists that pressed 200 copies of an lp, and then it was forgotten until some hipster found it in a thrift shop 40 years later and uploaded it to youtube. About 70% or more of my non-classical diet is made up of such.

Luigi Dallapiccola's Piccolo Concerto per Muriel Couvreux has a Finale movement that is one of my top classical pieces. As is Finck's Wer ich eyn falck / Invicto regi jubilo.

A piece like William Schuman's Symphony #3 is one of my favorite works. You might even say it's popular because both Bernstein and Previn did it (probably other important conductors did as well). But I've sensed that this is a pretty obscure work to a lot of people who deeply love classical music.

Life is an ongoing exposure of the necessity for a heroic struggle to educate others.


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## Roger Knox (Jul 19, 2017)

regenmusic said:


> I completely agree with you. ... I often find obscure composers to be my favorite ... Luigi Dallapiccola's Piccolo Concerto per Muriel Couvreux has a Finale movement that is one of my top classical pieces. As is Finck's Wer ich eyn falck / Invicto regi jubilo. ... A piece like William Schuman's Symphony #3 is one of my favorite works. You might even say it's popular because both Bernstein and Previn did it (probably other important conductors did as well). But I've sensed that this is a pretty obscure work to a lot of people who deeply love classical music. ... Life is an ongoing exposure of the necessity for a heroic struggle to educate others.


Thanks for your encouraging message. I shall certainly keep at this work of bringing attention to unheralded works! And thanks for letting us know about the Dallapiccola and Finck. Your example of William Schuman is a little different -- his symphony was well-known and played, but now is perhaps obscure (same with Roy Harris's Third). Here it is partly a problem of the more difficult situation of classical music now, but also of perceptions and decisions made.


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