7/24/2023 0 Comments Fanny tunesmith![]() Imagine if we were to find out now about a composer who had died 25 years ago who left a string of later masterpieces like the G Major Quartet, C Major Quintet and the late Schubert Piano Sonatas and song cycles. ![]() So many of his late masterpieces weren’t heard for decades after his death. Schubert is a perfect example of a “rated” composer who died profoundly underrated. (Klaus was country when country wasn’t cool) Nonetheless, calling Mahler underrated (other than by jaded critics who think there must be something suspicious about anything as beautiful and exciting as the 8 th Symphony) is obviously absurd. No matter how overplayed his music becomes, I’ll always write and talk about Mahler as though I’ve just stumbled on something really cool and obscure that I really, really think the world ought to know about. Gus is primte time and mainstream, but when I write about Mahler, it’s probably the ghost of young Ken, hunting libraries around his hometown for copies of a score to the 6 th or trying to find a decent book about his music who guides the pen. My writing and thinking about Gustav Mahler is largely informed by the fact that when I discovered him, he was considered something of a cult composer where I lived- almost Havergal Brian-ian in the way that his pieces were considered notable first and foremost for their scale and obscurity, but not for their importance or quality. Scholars, musicians and listeners all seem to agree on their “greatness.” Their music is played everywhere, and nearly universally admired. ![]() They are rightly recognized as some of the greatest creative personalities in human history. On the one hand, Bach, Brahms, Beethoven, Mahler and Mozart, just to start with, could never go on an “underrated” list. ![]() I think what might surprise readers is that quite a few people on the “most underreated” list would be very well-known and, frankly, highly-rated composers who just aren’t rated nearly as highly as they should be. I can scarcely remember a criticism of a significant piece by Frank Bridge (some of the salon music is not all that substantial) from anyone who has played it in a good band or heard it in a good performance- everyone who gets to know the music seems to realize it is special, but very few people yet know it. Then there are funny situations in which music that pretty much everyone who knows it is known to be great, but it is not known by many people. I think if more people knew more Satie, the popular Gymnopedie would be taken far less seriously. Somehow, the few well-known Satie pieces have been considered far more significant than they really are because we assume that somehow, there is music of genuine depth and importance behind them, when there probably isn’t. For instance, Eric Satie’s music is generally vastly overrated, mostly because little of it is actually known. Not all “neglected” composers are “underrated,” and neglect doesn’t necessarily always lead to music being underrated. First, it’s worth clarifying that we’re talking specifically about “underrated” composers and not necessarily “neglected” composers or even “unjustly neglected” composers. No such list is yet forthcoming, but maybe a discussion is. So far, I’ve shied away from producing anything as straightforward as a Top 10 or Top 20 most-underrated composers list, but not for lack of semi-absent minded contemplation of what such a list might look like. Neglected and underrated music is a recurring, if not always an explicit theme here, to be sure, in many posts. I’ve been thinking for a long time about writing a series on the most underrated composers in music history.
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