# 'Warhorses' and their popularity - past and present. . .



## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Years back in 2009, I was listening to the ABC Classic 100 Symphony Countdown and one of the presenters said that most of these 'warhorse' type works became popular either at the time of their first performance or quickly after. This is certainly in line with what I've read in various sources on classical music over the years.

So this list covers the period of about 1750 to 1950, which is where the core repertoire most symphony orchestras play today is situated. But I will not limit my discussions to symphonies only, that is merely a starting point for this discussion.

I see this as connected to the role of composers in society across that time period. In the late 18th century, you had people like Haydn and Mozart making a big impact in public concerts and opera with their music. Haydn's first set of 6 London symphonies specifically written for and premiered in that city where so popular, he was called back to do another 6. So too with Mozart, his late operas where well received in Prague for example (but less well in the more conservative Vienna, there where regional differences like this of course). In the case of Haydn's_ Creation_, premiered in Vienna, the crowd was so huge that a bunch of military men on horseback had to be used for crowd control.

By the next generation, you had Beethoven who was freelance for the whole of his career. Even though his early period _Septet_ was his most popular work in his lifetime, the 9th symphony was a huge success at its premiere, and has remained in the repertoire ever since. This is despite it being radical and revolutionary for the time.

I think people here are educated enough to fill the gaps, given that list. Even in exceptions like Schubert's symphonies, which where on the whole not known until after his death, they did become known before the end of the 19th century (eg. Schumann discovered Schubert's 9th symphony, and Mendelssohn premiered it with his Liepzig orchestra).

Even more radical composers like Berlioz got some recognition and a good deal of acclaim, esp. outside of France. Even though largely spurned by the French establishment, he was awarded the Legion d'Honneur at the end of his life. Its a similar thing with Debussy, same thing happened to him.

There was Bruckner and Wagner, but even they had some huge successes during their lifetimes. Bruckner with his 7th symphony, and Wagner esp. with_ Tannhauser._ Similar thing can be said of other innovators of their time, like Chopin, and to some extent Liszt. Of course, Mendelssohn was very popular during his own time, and although not as innovative as some, he was pushing the boundaries in some ways. Verdi's operas that are in the repertoire today where hugely successful back in his day, so too guys like PUccini and R. Strauss (both these composers being the only two of the 20th century to have three operas in the core repertoire today).

There is of course a list of works that did not go down well at their premieres, but weeks or months later, they became sensations. This list includes, but is certainly not limited to:

Rossini's_ Barber of Seville_
Bizet's _Carmen_
Stravinsky's _Rite of Spring_
Tchaikovsky's _Symphony #6, 'Pathetique'_

Often, the reason behind these initial 'flops' was more due to things like lack of rehearsal time or inadequate staging or choreography, rather than the music itself.

I think the trend of 'serious' composers connecting with the wider public continued until about the middle of the 20th century. After that, what I see is a kind of splitting of many ways of composers. You have composers who do things for a more limited audience, who have stuck mainly to 'serious' genres like writing for the concert hall, ballet, opera and so on. You have composers specialising in the more 'popular' realms of film music and musicals. & you have some who can do both - one example was Leonard Bernstein, a musical polymath if there ever was one. One could say Philip Glass is similar, having composed for the concert hall and also film music.

So since the middle of the 20th century you have this splitting up of composers serving various purposes and audiences. Not that it did not happen before, its just that the composers of the past doing this where more widely known. Eg. Beethoven was famous in his time, as was Rossini. Music lovers knew both to whatever degree. But today, most people would know Bernstein, Lloyd Webber and maybe Glass, but not not guys like composers who stick to 'serious' genres only. There's this kind of split, a major rift. That's what I think explains what the guy presenting the program was saying.

Like the radio presenter, I have no 'agenda,' only to write the baseline or consensus conclusion based on facts. Its as I see it, plain and simple. & its also to inform and counter what I see as distortion of musical history on this forum sometimes. Especially that music that is popular today was not popular during or close to the composer's lifetime.

& this is what I think. Today its a rock concert that would require crowd control. Not a performance of a classical piece, old or new. & that kind of sums up how classical is now a kind of slice of the musical pie only, and not a big a slice as it used to be.

So just seeking discussion on all this (sans the extreme ideology, if possible, thank you!).


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## HarpsichordConcerto (Jan 1, 2010)

I quickly read your lengthy post. I am a little unsure what you really meant for discussion. But if it is to do "warhorse" repertoire and their initial recpetion versus today, then I can add that it was indeed very diverse. I am particularly interested with the ones that became the "warhorses" that they are today without any initial popularity or even any performance.

Bach, _B minor Mass_ - never got performed in its entirety in one single setting when he finished "collating" it over the years. The idea of a concert-mass did not exist in 1750, and the entire piece was completely impractical for any church service of its day, although parts of it was almost certainly performed for church services. Today, it is a "warhorse" concert-mass. So, here is a "warhorse" that became one over time, from a zero reception.

Mozart, _Requiem in D minor_ - first performance was apparently a benefit concert for his widow. From what I have read, it was not _that_ big a hit. It took decades, well into the first half of the 19th century to gain a foothold.

Haydn, _L'anima del filosofo_ (1791) - his final opera, composed for London but never got performed because of intrigue. First performance was in 1951, over 150 years later. Not quite a "warhorse" but I mentioned it because it was first staged right here in Australia last year.

These re just a few examples from the greats that had their respective and interesting history. "Warhorses" today are certainly not necessarily so when the composers finished the last notes. It can certainly decades or even over a century or two to become one, and perhaps contemporary tastes have more to do with it than anything else.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Just a couple of random thoughts... 

Roughly speaking, in the eighteenth century and earlier the composers' audience was the church and the aristocracy. In the nineteenth century it was the bourgeois. In the twentieth century it is the university community.

Another difference is the rise of film. In the late nineteenth century an opera was about the supreme artistic endeavor, in terms of the number of people and amount of time needed to produce one. Today a film is, and that is where the big audiences are too. And one of the most important elements of any film is its music. The composer is almost as important as s/he ever was. So today we don't have warhorses in the same way, we have blockbuster movies.


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## Andreas (Apr 27, 2012)

Sid James said:


> So since the middle of the 20th century you have this splitting up of composers serving various purposes and audiences. Not that it did not happen before, its just that the composers of the past doing this where more widely known. Eg. Beethoven was famous in his time, as was Rossini. Music lovers knew both to whatever degree. But today, most people would know Bernstein, Lloyd Webber and maybe Glass, but not not guys like composers who stick to 'serious' genres only. There's this kind of split, a major rift. That's what I think explains what the guy presenting the program was saying.


This made me think. I don't know, but perhaps our idea of audience might be a different one compared to Beethoven's time. I think today, the audience, or potential audience, is pretty much everybody. Back in the 19th century, the audience was probably a much smaller circle of people.

Thanks to industrialized mass media and pop culture, as well as a generally higher lever of formal education, much more people actually participate in cultural events, whereas in former centuries, there was something like a cultural elite that lived in a sphere of their own. So when a composer like Beethoven was what we would call famous, he was so among a relatively small portion of the general population.

It is also only within such small circles that fame could pass on by word of mouth. To spread further, you would need newspapers or the like, which, around Beethoven's time, already would have excluded much of the population due to poor standards of literacy.

All of this is quite speculative, as I don't have any numbers to back it up. But that's how I would guess things were.


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

One strange warhorse story I can think of is Vivaldi's The Four Seasons. I don't know anything about the initial performance history of that piece, but it was locked away, forgotten until the 1950s(verification need) when it was "rediscovered." These things are more likely to happen with earlier music.


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## Guest (Oct 26, 2012)

Sid James said:


> I think the trend of 'serious' composers connecting with the wider public continued until about the middle of the 20th century.
> -----------------------------------------------------------
> I have no 'agenda,' only to write the baseline or consensus conclusion based on facts.


Fact: Before 1850, composers were finding it more and more difficult to place their music with orchestras or opera companies, so they wrote chamber music and organized chamber concerts to play them.

Fact: The percentage of dead composers in concerts in Leipzig, London, and Paris went from a low of 11 in 1782 (Leipzig) to a high of 94 in 1865 (Paris). In Vienna, the Philharmonic went from 78 in 1842 to a high of 100 in 1850, dropping back to 79 by 1865. The Concert Spirituel went from 51 in 1818 to 83 in 1842, dropping back to 65 by 1847. The Society Concerts went from 30 percent dead composers in 1815 to 10 percent in 1818, climbing to 51 in 1832, dropping to 33 in 1842, and rising as far as 83 in 1860 before dropping to 74 in 1865.

These numbers show that late nineteenth century composers had fewer and fewer opportunities to have their works played. Walter Frisch, the Brahms scholar, saw that canonic symphonies (like, for instance, the Beethoven 9th) were causing a crisis for that genre. That while some new works got played, the more prestigious symphony concerts were almost completely closed to new works.

Fact: A critic in Vienna in 1843 questioned why Handel's Judas Maccabaeus was being given, again, rather than a new work by Spohr. "The public has got to stay in touch with music of its time, ...otherwise people will gradually come to distrust music claimed to be the best."

Fact: The status of new music would be disputed in Europe all through the last half of the 1800s.

After 1850, conservative thinkers worried that the new classical music repertories might not survive a resurgence of the traditional miscellany concert, that a growing audience for popular songs might marginalize classical concerts, and that the New German School (the 19th century equivalent of the Second Viennese School) would shove classical music off programs in favor of avant garde music by Liszt and Wagner and their followers. The efforts of Liszt and Wagner seem to have paid off a bit, as the percentage of dead composers in almost all the major concert venues dropped from their highs of the early to mid-sixties to almost mid-century levels (which were still pretty high--in the mid to high 70s).

Fact: The rejection of new music in the sixties and seventies rose again in 1900. It was much worse then and included both conservative and avant garde music. (Note that this is still pre-Schoenberg, or at least pre-pantonal/dodecaphonic Schoenberg.)

Fact: Up to around 1830, performers routinely played their own works in concerts. By the end of the century, they mostly played music by dead composers. And even then, Charles Halle was advised by John Ella in London in mid-century not to play any Beethoven sonatas at the Music Union because they were considered to be too "abstruse."

Fact: Classical repertory (dominated by dead composers) didn't have it all its own way, either. In the 1860s, when the percentage of dead composers in concerts reached its apex, critics in Paris and Vienna were criticizing the repertory and wondering about the fate of living composers.

Fact: When the board of the Conservatoire in Paris, which had in 1849 shut down the system of trying out new pieces, was gently prodded by the Empress, they finally, reluctantly, came up with a way to get a few works from musicians who were already famous--though they felt they had to go about it very gingerly because there were subscribers who would "get upset when they see the name of a single contemporary composer on the programs, and say loudly that we should only perform pieces by dead composers."

Sound familiar? And that was in 1861.

Fact: There was no single audience in the 19th century. No "wider public" for any composer to connect with. There were audiences for the traditional miscellany concerts throughout the century. There were audiences for "new music." There were audiences for what would become known as popular music (songs and opera arias). Audiences for opera. Audiences for string quartets (concerts of only string quartets was one of the earliest and most radical departures from tradition in the early 1800s). Audiences for symphonies. There were, of course, some people who went to different types of concerts, but the divisions were as clear then as they are now. The biggest difference was that because they were new, they were actively and heatedly discussed. Now they're just taken for granted.

The splintering of audiences did not happen in mid-twentieth but in mid-nineteenth century.


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## HarpsichordConcerto (Jan 1, 2010)

Attempting to draw parrallels between the apparent "splintering of audiences" in mid-nineteenth century with today is a misleading endeavour, though I am not at all surprised this came from _some guy_. Classical music continued to be the dominant source of music and even entertainment for that matter during the entire nineteenth century. Despite the development of genres, leading composers still continued to write music within established genres albeit many were pushing the boundaries; Wagner with opera, Liszt with piano music, Berlioz with orchestral etc. Today, and from the mid-twentieth, you have Cage with his _4'33"_ (1952) to Stockhausen with his helicopters (1992-3), while during the same decades, popular music began to outstrip the increasingly bizzare takes of these experimenting clowns. Notice the difference? The "modernist" from the nineteenth whom I mentioned continued and became the "warhorse" repertoire they are now. They didn't attempt to sell their music with gimmicks and needed to compete with Handel or Mozart or Beethoven. Now they are indeed taken for granted.

As for _Judas Maccabaeus_ and Louis Spohr, Spohr was a successful composer in his own times. The performance of a Handel oratorio written a century or so earlier as suggesting that it was a hinderance to Spohr is misleading. No need to obscure history.


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## quack (Oct 13, 2011)

The first use of war-horse in the figurative sense of a popular piece of music is from Einstein in 1947 "There is a whole series of operatic transcriptions..all pieces that are great technical war-horses." It is interesting that opera transcriptions aren't really what we would call war-horses these days, not least because they seem to have fallen out of fashion a little. Such works are more likely to be called virtuoso showpieces or similar.

I suppose LPs and CDs created the war-horses we have today, the same few pieces recorded again and again as those sell. The fact that there are an ever-growing collection of obscure works recorded, forgotten piano concertos and symphonies from musical also-rans of previous eras, actually promote the war-horses. Why go see a Gossec good-but-not-Mozart symphony in concert when there is a fine version on CD, while you could be listening to Jupiter, perceived as the high water mark of classical symphony.

The war-horse is a nostalgic idea. It is first used in a technical sense, of a horse suited and bred for battle, but it soon becomes a creature that evokes memories of glorious past wars and then transferring to old soldiers. That is what these musical war-horses become, nostalgic memories of when music was civilised and glorious, evoking an era more than presenting music. The fact that some of these works lost their initial battle and weren't that popular is forgotten, they are the be-medaled veterans who simply survived their time and are therefore accorded due deference.


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## Guest (Oct 26, 2012)

HarpsichordConcerto said:


> Classical music continued to be the dominant source of music and even entertainment for that matter during the entire nineteenth century.


The record shows something quite other.

One, the term "classical music" was first used in 1810, in Germany. It got to England some time in the mid-twenties.

Two, the nineteenth century was a constant struggle between the traditional miscellany and the various new concert formats that arose. Classical music concerts were criticized for most of the century for favoring dead composers, for creating an exclusive audience, for requiring a lot of prior knowledge before one could appreciate the music, for creating bland, uniform programs (this was especially true for string quartet and solo piano recitals).

Classical music did not achieve hegemony until the 1870s.

(Lest there be any confusion, a lot of the music we _now_ call classical was not referred to as such in the nineteenth century. Before 1810, of course, no music was called "classical music." After 1810, Schubert's symphonies, for example, where called "classical music." His songs? No. Not at first, that is. I have a vague recollection that even in 1870 there were things that we call classical that they did not. I know that for a long time in the nineteenth century, opera was not called classical music. I have even heard people in the late twentieth century put forth that notion.)


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

clavichorder said:


> One strange warhorse story I can think of is Vivaldi's The Four Seasons. I don't know anything about the initial performance history of that piece, but it was locked away, forgotten until the 1950s(verification need) when it was "rediscovered." These things are more likely to happen with earlier music.


I'd like to hear more about that! But it seems the "rediscovery" date must be earlier, since the first known recording dates from 1939.


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## HarpsichordConcerto (Jan 1, 2010)

The terms "classical music" were referring to music that we now consider as such, referring to the nineteenth century for the purpose of discussion; Schubert's songs, Schubert's symphonies, Schubert's quartets, Schubert's mass setting, Schubert's operas and Schubert's piano sonatas. He wrote quite a few, and far from being the "bland, uniform programmes" to which these genres belonged. The point I was suggesting is that it is misleading to draw parallels with say, Schubert's endeavours during his day versus what Helmut Lachenmann and "splintering of audiences" today. I agree that competition, as elsewhere in presenting almost _any_ artistic endeavours, is no easy feat. I even pointed out in post #2 that great "warhorses" might even have begun its artistic-audience relationship with literally zero reception. The difference is I am prepared to suggest that great composers' works; some successful during its premieres, some not, and some never even saw its original audiences, for whatever reasons of posterity, and especially the latter group, do become "warhorses". Musical competition of new works in _any period_ with dead composers' were part of any living composer's artistic endeavour.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Thanks to all for contributing. I'm on the run now so I will address things as best as I can.

Re *HarpsichordConcerto* - I do take your point that not all warhorses where popular or known at or close to the time they where written. One example is Mahler, whose music came to be more widely known after 1945, esp. with Bernstein performing & promoting him. However, there where 'keepers of the flame' in between Mahler's death and Bernstein's performances of his music. Eg. Mahler's protege Bruno Walter, also Otto Klemperer and Hermann Scherchen (who also possibly worked under Mahler - it is not known for sure, but he was young and worked in German orchestras Mahler conducted at the time). So Mahler (like J.s.Bach) did not completely dissappear off the radar.

Re *Clavichorder *- yes, much of Vivaldi's stuff was discovered or rediscovered in the 20th century, from the 1930's onwards. _The Four Seasons_ came out again after 1945. An Italian professor discovered an old box full of Vivaldi manuscripts, which led him on a hunt for another box, and he found it. My memory is hazy when this was exactly, but it was around the 1930's or '40's.

Re* science* - I was thinking exactly what you say. All this is connected to those who commissioned music, the various audiences of music, and how it's changing.

Re *some guy *- I think despite you using the word 'fact' a lot, your post comes across as a mixture of fact and your own conclusions on those facts. That's fine, I just wouldn't be as sure as you, stating those things as facts. Eg. Handel's_ Messiah _has been in the repertoire ever since it was first performed. It went down a dream on its premiere in Dublin, but took on a bit longer to catch on in the more conservative England. This was partly due to religious reasons, some of the clergy did not like laypeople (non church musicians) performing this music that was not meant for religious or church service, but as concert hall music (I think Handel invented the oratorio genre, did he not?). In any case, Messiah became accepted in England not long after it was received with adulation by the Irish. He wrote many versions of this work, to make it adaptable to performances of different scale.

Another thing is that yes, composers always wrote for different purposes. Clearly, Beethoven and Schubert where out of touch with their times in the 1820's, their late string quartets and piano sonatas where really looking far ahead. However, as I said with Beethoven, he was making his mark in other ways (his 9th symphony). Some commentators say that this process of splitting up of audiences did occur around the 1820's. However, it is apparent to me (as I stated) that audiences then knew of some of Beethoven's works, and also more 'lowbrow' things like Rossini. After Rossini came the craze for all things Italian - you got Bellini and Donizetti joing the fray with huge successes. Later in the century, in Paris, you had both Offenbach and Saint-Saens making an impact. Also Gounod, Bizet and then Massenet, all those guys. Saint-Saens even references/quotes Offenbach's music in his own music. They all had huge successes, and their music remains in the repertoire today.

So maybe audiences did start to diverge and split earlier than 1950, or even 1900. But what I'm saying is that if you knew of classical composers in the 19th century, you would know both the 'highbrow' and 'lowbrow' composers, in your city or locale at least. Today, that's not the case. As I said most people would know composers of musicals and films, but do they know of composers like Carter or Xenakis, for example? This is not a reflection on the worth of the music, more on the broad appeal and how the audience is different for all these things now.

I have an acquaintance who was around in Australia when the local premiere here of Shostakovich's final symphony, his 15th, came out in the 1970's. He said it was awaited by classical fans with anticipation. He's in his seventies now and has been going to concerts for decades. He says that since then, he cannot see any thing of the sort of Shostakovich's 15th that has generated such a 'buzz.' I think this feeds into this issue too in some ways. Shostakovich and composers of his generation did do both things (like Bernstein). Shostakovich composed an operetta, Moscow Cheryomushki, his most popular work in the USSR in his lifetime. He also did many film scores, more out of necessity than anything else (to earn money), but a number of these are considered fine works still (eg. _The Gadfly, _and_ Hamlet_). In past times, the symphonies, concertos and works in general of Brahms where anticipated as those of Shostakovich, same with guys like Sibelius.

Some 'serious' Australian composers have also done film scores, like Carl Vine, Peter Sculthorpe and Nigel Westlake. Its still happening today, but the issue is that you would not find the likes of 'high' modernists doing this (eg. Elliott Carter, or Xenakis, and in terms of Stravinsky, he actually refused to do films, even though he lived in the USA and they wanted him to do it, he feared being tainted as a 'lowbrow' or 'sellout' as Korngold was). Ironically, Schoenberg wanted to do film, even approached Hollywood, but nothing came of it.

Anyway, what I'm saying is that some Modernist ideologies, some of them despise a composers connecting with a wider audience. Also despises things like unbroken melody. This is more extreme Modernsit ideology, more like dogma. I think that's all related. But I'll leave it there for now.


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## Guest (Oct 27, 2012)

Sid James said:


> Re *some guy *- I think despite you using the word 'fact' a lot, your post comes across as a mixture of fact and your own conclusions on those facts.


There's very little of my conclusions in there. There may be some facts that seem so different from what it usually said or thought that it's easy to reject them, as HC has done. But there's really only two rather minor conclusions of mine and one of Frisch's and one of the anonymous Viennese critic. That's pretty much it.

And many of the facts are about people's opinions. That's certainly true.



Sid James said:


> I just wouldn't be as sure as you, stating those things as facts. Eg. Handel's_ Messiah _has been in the repertoire ever since it was first performed.


There were a couple of things like this. They were exceptions. Canonisation did not happen consistently until the 19th century. Beethoven's symphonies were the first, and their canonic stature made it difficult for anyone else, before or after, to get a look in.

Difficult, not impossible. Of course, there were many 19th century symphonies that were very well-known in the 19th century. Some of those are still well-known today. But that observation conceals a point that almost never gets made in discussions of this sort, and that is that the view from 1848 is not the same as the view from 2012. We see from our perspective some works that "made it." What we forget about is all the works that didn't make it, for whatever reason. What we ignore is how what we now think of as inevitable was anything but to the people of the time. Even works that were popular at their premieres (which were often quite small events and packed with well-wishers) could go through phases where no one was performing them or talking about them.



Sid James said:


> So maybe audiences did start to diverge and split earlier than 1950, or even 1900. But what I'm saying is that if you knew of classical composers in the 19th century, you would know both the 'highbrow' and 'lowbrow' composers, in your city or locale at least. Today, that's not the case.


Not sure this is quite true, not as stated anyway. Highbrow and lowbrow were not terms used in the nineteenth century. (Not until quite late, anyway, the first use of "highbrow" being 1884.) The sense of separation between elite and common, between serious art and popular, between good taste and bad, was something that grew up and developed in the 19th century. It was a new idea, and it took hold slowly and sporatically.

In any case, I doubt that there's much documentation on what "ordinary" people might have known or not known in the 19th century. That's not the kind of thing that gets written down much. We know a little better about our own time because it is ours; we're in it. Not much, but a little. I was in Chicago in 1975 for a symphony concert. It was my first time there, and I got as lost as can be. I stopped at a service station two blocks from symphony hall to ask directions. The attendant, a man I'd guess in his fifties, had no idea what the Chicago symphony was. Not ignorant of Carter or Xenakis, ignorant of an famous institution mere blocks from his business.

My oldest son was in Paris a couple of years ago and had the same kind of experience.

Are either of these a result of some post-1950 shift in knowledge owing to the workings of the avant garde? Probably not.



Sid James said:


> the issue is that you would not find the likes of 'high' modernists doing [film music] (eg. Elliott Carter, or Xenakis).


Did anyone ever ask them? Xenakis was asked to compose music for the gigantic celebrations of the 2500th anniversary of Iran. And the result was _Persepolis_ after the ruins where it was first performed.



Sid James said:


> Anyway, what I'm saying is that some Modernist ideologies, some of them despise a composers connecting with a wider audience.


I'm skeptical. On the one hand, from Beethoven on, "classical" composers have been pitching their art at a pretty narrow audience, some of them even for generations in the future. (Beethoven again.) On the other hand, none of the composers I know has any desire other than to have as many people as possible hear their music. One of them even recently said to me that she wanted to be popular. (She's an electroacoustic composer.)



Sid James said:


> Also despises things like unbroken melody.


Melody has been at the core of debates about new music ever since there were debates about new music. Not sure what you mean by "unbroken," but composers have been tinkering with the regularity and continuity of line since Beethoven's time, at least. This is not anything new. And people have been hearing a lack of melody in all sorts of things, including, surprisingly enough Bizet's tuneful opera _Carmen._ (One critic said that there was only one, insignificant, tune in the whole opera.)

Nor do I think that working with "broken" melodies, whatever that would be, necessarily translates into distain for unbroken ones. Ideology seems to be a thing that troubles you a lot. Not sure it's quite as universally prevalent or troublesome as you think. In any event, liking one thing does not necessarily or even ordinarily lead to disliking an other thing. Several times recently in TC threads someone has floated the notion that I do not like the standard classical repertory.

Malarkey! Liking Karkowski does not lead to disliking Saint-Saens. Hasn't for me, anyway.

Nor does promoting one thing necessarily translate into disdain for everything that you're not promoting. Certainly if a composition student in 2012 wants to write baroque (sounding) music, any self-respecting composition teacher would gently suggest other possibilities. At the very least. I spent many decades in academia. I know how things teachers say get twisted by the preoccupations and preconceptions of students into something quite other than the teachers intended. You would want a teacher in 2012 to present the compositional trends of the past 50 years or so, wouldn't you? And maybe even have some opinions about them, some preferences.

I strongly suspect that if you heard of someone encouraging a student to do something you approve of, you wouldn't notice the strong ideological component of that encouragement. That's just natural. Neither would I probably. Only if what's being promoted is something you disfavor do you notice the ideological component.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Sid James said:


> So maybe audiences did start to diverge and split earlier than 1950, or even 1900.


Re a "split" in the audience: Even Mozart spoke of his listeners as split between the untutored and "connoisseurs." He claimed he could satisfy both, the former appreciating his music though they might not know why.

By the 1820s, the split was more pronounced. There were enough "connoisseurs" to create quite a demand for scores of his quartets; this demand (and the resulting attractive offers from publishers) was responsible for his writing nothing else for 2 1/2 years. At the same time, Rossini seems to have remained more to the taste of the other side. I'm not sure the split grew much after that, although another split (traditionalists versus modernists) later drove a more vicious struggle that had its effects on people's careers and livelihoods.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

some guy said:


> ...Of course, there were many 19th century symphonies that were very well-known in the 19th century. Some of those are still well-known today. But that observation conceals a point that almost never gets made in discussions of this sort, and that is that the view from 1848 is not the same as the view from 2012. We see from our perspective some works that "made it." What we forget about is all the works that didn't make it, for whatever reason. What we ignore is how what we now think of as inevitable was anything but to the people of the time. Even works that were popular at their premieres (which were often quite small events and packed with well-wishers) could go through phases where no one was performing them or talking about them...


Yes, the canon changes. Always has, always does. However, my basic point was same as that ABC presenter's - many (a majority, he said) of works the we call 'warhorses' where popular near to their first performance. & yes, things do go through phases, the Mahler example I gave earlier is a good one of that. Sibelius' reputation also dipped a bit - he was less popular on the European continent than in the UK and USA. But his music was still performed, its just that we had some ideological positions that have since been discredited (eg. Adorno comparing him unfavourably with Schoenberg, all that stuff).



> ...
> The sense of separation between elite and common, between serious art and popular, between good taste and bad, was something that grew up and developed in the 19th century.


I would dispute that. I mean Brahms admired J. Strauss II. Strauss went to premieres of new 'serious' music in Vienna, incl. that of Brahms (they where good friends) and also of Bruckner's music. But relating this to today, I think that there is more segmentation of audiences. There are different audiences. I mean look at how Andre Rieu is polarising, many listeners of 'highbrow' stuff see him as trash. There's this conflict between fans and groupies of various cliques and niches of the classical universe. But not necessarily always between musicians. People like Riccardo Chailly have positive opinions on what Rieu has done with light classical in some respects.

I think, as I said, Gershwin is an example of how high and low art mixed. & that was early to mid 20th century. But when I did a thread on him ages ago, some people even debated how he's got a right to be named a classical composer. Before I came onto this forum, I had no problem with calling Gershwin both. Even my parents did, he was both popular and classical. Now I feel a good deal of people separate these things, they have a need to put composers (and listeners) in boxes. I don't see that as useful, not generally anyway.

http://www.talkclassical.com/4777-george-gershwin.html



> ...
> In any case, I doubt that there's much documentation on what "ordinary" people might have known or not known in the 19th century. That's not the kind of thing that gets written down much. We know a little better about our own time because it is ours; we're in it. Not much, but a little. I was in Chicago in 1975 for a symphony concert. It was my first time there, and I got as lost as can be. I stopped at a service station two blocks from symphony hall to ask directions. The attendant, a man I'd guess in his fifties, had no idea what the Chicago symphony was. Not ignorant of Carter or Xenakis, ignorant of an famous institution mere blocks from his business.
> 
> My oldest son was in Paris a couple of years ago and had the same kind of experience.
> ...


Well I think that at least some aspects of avant garde thinking did not help. Had little to do with the music, more with ideology. I think people are tired of me mentioning names like Adorno and the young Boulez, but they are good examples of what I'm saying. They further distanced the wide audience from the music. There was this feeling that if people expressed an opinion on certain types of experimental music, they where seen as hostile to it, or against it, automatically.

There was this aura of the critic and composers being more important (and against) the broad audience that was developed, after about 1945. Carter actually said this was going on, the thinking of modernists then was that they where kind of fighting a war. Hence the term avant-garde. But now its like there is no war. That attitude seems to now be obsolete. You read more recent interveiws with Boulez and he's no longer being aggressive as he was. Its a sign that it wasn't working, this 'us against them' type attitude.

& I'd trace it back to Hanslick in late 19th century Vienna. But even Hanslick could be objective if he wanted to be. Maybe he caved in, but he did give credit when Bruckner's or Tchaikovsky's music bought the house down. Maybe it was less credit than he'd give to his idol Brahms, but he still gave some small praise.

That kind of even surface accepting attitude was missing in the more militant segments of the avant-garde of the immediate decades following 1945. Even Australian composers got it in the 1980's who returned to more unbroken melody and aspects of tradition (eg. Richard Meale) and those like Richard Mills who openly hated the elements of the extreme avant garde (critics who pulled him down for putting emotion in his music) and never where avant garde. Even John Adams got heaps of flack in the 1980's.

But now this is much less. & guess which works from that period are being performed again (or more widely now) from the 1980's. Its those composers, who the avant garde said where behind their time. Made them feel guilty for connecting with a wider audience. All that stuff.



> ...
> Melody has been at the core of debates about new music ever since there were debates about new music. Not sure what you mean by "unbroken," but composers have been tinkering with the regularity and continuity of line since Beethoven's time, at least. This is not anything new. And people have been hearing a lack of melody in all sorts of things, including, surprisingly enough Bizet's tuneful opera _Carmen._ (One critic said that there was only one, insignificant, tune in the whole opera.)...


I accept that concepts of melody change. So too of things like thematic development.



> ....
> Nor do I think that working with "broken" melodies, whatever that would be, necessarily translates into distain for unbroken ones. Ideology seems to be a thing that troubles you a lot. Not sure it's quite as universally prevalent or troublesome as you think. ...


Ideology does concern me. Especially when I say something on this forum that in real life would not be debated half as much. I mean I try not to say extreme things. I try to relate my experience, which I appreciate you are doing and also others on this thread. But if I read it in a book, and its corroborated by other sources (like other books, online, or that radio presenter I talked of) I am bemused how it can be so controversial on this forum for some people.



> ...
> In any event, liking one thing does not necessarily or even ordinarily lead to disliking an other thing. Several times recently in TC threads someone has floated the notion that I do not like the standard classical repertory. ..


I do also have eclectic taste and I think many people on this forum have it, judging from their posts.



> ...
> Nor does promoting one thing necessarily translate into disdain for everything that you're not promoting. Certainly if a composition student in 2012 wants to write baroque (sounding) music, any self-respecting composition teacher would gently suggest other possibilities. At the very least. I spent many decades in academia. I know how things teachers say get twisted by the preoccupations and preconceptions of students into something quite other than the teachers intended. You would want a teacher in 2012 to present the compositional trends of the past 50 years or so, wouldn't you? And maybe even have some opinions about them, some preferences.


I am not a fan of rehash (of music of any era). & I agree that new methods of compostion need to be taught. I would not argue with that. I'm just against cliques, but I guess that universities are places where they maybe happen by default. I learnt this from experience (not in the musical field though). We had a situation going on in the courts recently. A former head of one of our major music conservatoriums is claiming that unprofessional conduct was done against her by a clique. Its not strictly relevant to this thread but I'm saying that many people have had enough of this. So yeah we do need to get them in the business of teaching, not cliques and conspiracies based on that, numbers games like politicians.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

KenOC said:


> Re a "split" in the audience: Even Mozart spoke of his listeners as split between the untutored and "connoisseurs." He claimed he could satisfy both, the former appreciating his music though they might not know why.
> 
> ....


I know that. Re Mozart's piano quartets - the first works in this genre - he was writing above the ability of the average pianist of the day. Its that famous criticism he got 'too many notes.' Composers in the 1930's where already complaining of inablity to sell their music scores to virtually anybody. Fast forward to today, I think that the music score market is largely selling old music, not new music.


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

In the 20s records surpassed sheet music, and in the depression radio wiped out records for a time. Hard to compete with free music.


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## HarpsichordConcerto (Jan 1, 2010)

bigshot said:


> In the 20s records surpassed sheet music, and in the depression radio wiped out records for a time. Hard to compete with free music.


Internet doesn't (or maybe it does) help, too.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

some guy said:


> Fact: Before 1850, composers were finding it more and more difficult to place their music with orchestras or opera companies, so they wrote chamber music and organized chamber concerts to play them.
> 
> Fact: The percentage of dead composers in concerts in Leipzig, London, and Paris went from a low of 11 in 1782 (Leipzig) to a high of 94 in 1865 (Paris). In Vienna, the Philharmonic went from 78 in 1842 to a high of 100 in 1850, dropping back to 79 by 1865. The Concert Spirituel went from 51 in 1818 to 83 in 1842, dropping back to 65 by 1847. The Society Concerts went from 30 percent dead composers in 1815 to 10 percent in 1818, climbing to 51 in 1832, dropping to 33 in 1842, and rising as far as 83 in 1860 before dropping to 74 in 1865.
> 
> ...


Exactly, when the audience became 'the general bourgeois citizen' rather than a smaller circle of select patrons and cognoscenti. The common denominator as per the common man began to predominate as 'taste maker'... as it does to this day.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Interesting current article about warhorses. "There's a longstanding charge against classical-music institutions in particular of being little more than dusty museums of outdated repertoire. There's truth in that, but, its having been hurled for so long, one starts to wonder if the accusation is missing the point. What if classical-music institutions, and the warhorses they tend, are symptoms, not causes?"

http://bostonglobe.com/arts/music/2...r-all-times/UjG7gHBTD5z5qB843gYZZO/story.html


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

science said:


> Just a couple of random thoughts...
> 
> Roughly speaking, in the eighteenth century and earlier the composers' audience was the church and the aristocracy. In the nineteenth century it was the bourgeois. In the twentieth century it is the university community.


That's brilliantly terse. I would like to make what is already perhaps obvious that much more plain. Part of the reason for doing so is I get irritated with the 'composer writing for the masses' theory, and think it is no more than a theory.

The Mozart D minor K466 piano concerto was premiered in front of a small and exclusive subscription concert audience, primarily made up of 'cognoscenti.' The piece was immediately recognized as highly radical, not just for Mozart, but as a dramatic turning point of music in general. (This is the same concerto which Beethoven was rather obsessed with, which he performed and wrote cadenzas for...)

Beethoven, in his slot as first independent composer, not beholding to patronage of the cognoscenti, church or nobility (though he kept some patrons throughout) was neither writing for nor caring much about 'the average concert goer.' This is the composer who told the violinist premiering his violin concerto that he "Didn't give a damn" for the player's fiddle, who said he could wait fifty years if the public did not catch on to one or another of his works, and who mid-career -- as he was becoming more free-lance independent -- was also losing chunks of 'the general public' as audience because he had 'gone too far' for that audience to be able to follow.

Follows the Romantic era, and a fine example of a composer hoisted to popularity on an audience made up primarily of the petite bourgeois, Wagner - known and admired by the cognoscenti, but 'made' by the general public. There were others who rose to prominence also with that audience as the majority, Tchaikovsky, Rimsky Korsakov, and many others throughout Europe.

Brahms had it somewhat touch and go, because he was 'retro conservative' and the general public was expecting something newer than the retro-conservative fare Brahms delivered.

It took the cognoscenti to resurrect Mahler, after the fact of an only modest career and not a lot of performances in his lifetime.

As Science points out, music, earnestly forward-looking contemporary classical music, is now centered in and around the institutions of advanced learning, institutions not very concerned with what the average joe or jane is wanting to consume. Music has returned to the bailiwick of the cognoscenti.

One point not made, and I think hugely important, is that cognoscenti or bourgeois, those audiences went out, heard pieces live, if they were decent amateurs, they had learned enough to play music in their homes. They did not have recordings: going out, hearing something live, was a very big and extra exciting event. If they had recordings available, I wonder how popular the now established popular pieces would now be, as anything can be heard so many times it is no longer fresh to the listener. i.e. Might that audience, and critics, found a little less to lionize about Beethoven or any of the other 'big' composers if they had heard their works more times than they had been played in their lifetime?

What I think almost all earnest composers do: Write what they can, not thinking at all about 'connecting with the audience.' They are part of their own time, some with more forward-looking ideas and language, others, simply because of who they are, composing music which will turn out to be much more accessible to many more listeners. Neither, I believe, is for one moment worrying about what to compose in order to keep in touch with the common man.
There were brief exceptions, and they amount to only a few composers: Carl Orff, Paul Hindemith, Aaron Copland, and lately, less stringent about 'that mission' - John Adams, Steve Reich.

Here I have a sincere question - it seems each time I read mention on TC of the 'role of the composer in society' or any tinge of a statement that composers are / aren't writing 'for the general audience' - the latter clearly as a complaint - the sources, the subject itself, seem to stem mainly from the British contingent; Britain, Australia, Canada. I hear little of this from 'the Europeans,' where it seems 'art music' is much more part of the general culture, and little or none from U.S. America.

What's up with that?


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