I don't know the tuba concerto...Frislander wrote: ↑Mon Mar 11, 2019 7:42 pm Cantiga de Santa Maria 193: Sobelos fondos do mar
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I will admit I'm not too familiar with most of RVW's work beyond the classics, with one exception - the Tuba Concerto, now that's a delightful little gem.
I think also one might be tempted to put Britten into that same category, although he appears to have been more consistently aligned with the avant-garde throughout his life, whereas RVW and DSCH only seem to have drifted there in their later years.
There's a certain...charming campiness to a lot of his more obscure works. They're extremely well-done, beautiful pieces, of course. But, as you say, he composes to evoke emotions, and it's done very strongly and entirely and earnest.Salmoneus wrote: ↑Mon Mar 11, 2019 2:02 pm Well, all classical composers are heavily underrated these days. But yes, RVW particularly. He's known in this country for a couple of major crowd-pleasers - mostly The lark ascending and Fantasia on a theme by Thomas Tallis; if you're lucky, maybe also English folk song suite and/or Fantasia on Greensleeves - but most of his work is relatively little known or played, relative to his brilliance.
I think he falls into a similar trap as Shostakovich. "The masses" don't know them well, because they're classical composers but scarily recent in time, not to be taken seriously compared to the great masters of the past. And they're also too serious to be loved by the public - yes, both composers wrote some eye-catching money-spinning pieces, but behind them there's this mass of very long symphonies and operas and whatnot. But the "elite" don't respect them either, because they're "populists" and, worst of all, "sentimentalists" - they wrote music with tunes, that provoke emotions - the two cardinal sins of music in the minds of Serious People. They're too obviously (multi-)talented to simply scrub from history like most sentimentalists of the 20th century, so they're paid lip-service, but I agree that they're not given sufficient attention.
Also, of course, it's easily to emulate the modernist composers, as that requires no actual talent, just study; it's much hard to try to emulate a RVW or a DSCH, so fewer people do.
]I wouldn't say "camp" - as you say, he's very sincere, which to me is the opposite of camp.dhok wrote: ↑Fri Mar 15, 2019 2:13 pmThere's a certain...charming campiness to a lot of his more obscure works. They're extremely well-done, beautiful pieces, of course. But, as you say, he composes to evoke emotions, and it's done very strongly and entirely and earnest.Salmoneus wrote: ↑Mon Mar 11, 2019 2:02 pm Well, all classical composers are heavily underrated these days. But yes, RVW particularly. He's known in this country for a couple of major crowd-pleasers - mostly The lark ascending and Fantasia on a theme by Thomas Tallis; if you're lucky, maybe also English folk song suite and/or Fantasia on Greensleeves - but most of his work is relatively little known or played, relative to his brilliance.
I think he falls into a similar trap as Shostakovich. "The masses" don't know them well, because they're classical composers but scarily recent in time, not to be taken seriously compared to the great masters of the past. And they're also too serious to be loved by the public - yes, both composers wrote some eye-catching money-spinning pieces, but behind them there's this mass of very long symphonies and operas and whatnot. But the "elite" don't respect them either, because they're "populists" and, worst of all, "sentimentalists" - they wrote music with tunes, that provoke emotions - the two cardinal sins of music in the minds of Serious People. They're too obviously (multi-)talented to simply scrub from history like most sentimentalists of the 20th century, so they're paid lip-service, but I agree that they're not given sufficient attention.
Also, of course, it's easily to emulate the modernist composers, as that requires no actual talent, just study; it's much hard to try to emulate a RVW or a DSCH, so fewer people do.
As an example of what I mean, one of my favorite obscure RVW works is A Cotswold Romance. And then there's Heroic Elegy and Triumphal Epilogue, which is very obscure, as far as I can tell, and deserves to be better known.
