Hacker News Reader

Comment by JasonFruit | Hacker News Reader

I was a classical violist, and we don't have a lot of repertoire, so we often rob minor works from other instruments to enrich our stockpiles. I'm amazed at how little of that material is any good. The taste of generations of musicians and audiences has done an amazing job of gathering the wheat and releasing the chaff; there's not much among the productions of minor composers that can stand with Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, and the like. Every time I find a new work by Draeseke, Zelter, Sirmen, Juon, or some other mediocrity, I hope this will finally be the one jewel — but it never is.

View on HN

There is definitely a lot of forgettable fluff in the history of music. On the other hand, there are many great composers that deserve to be better known -- not particularly obscure, but at the same time without the kind of name recognition of the top tier, except to serious fans of classical music. C. F. Abel, Biber, Albicastro, Molter, Sances, Marais, Blavet, Leclair, Heinichen, Forqueray, Carbonelli, Carissimi, Cavalli, Bonporti, Busoni, Zelenka, Agricola, the Caccinis, Couperin, Gesualdo... Very hard to find concert programs featuring many of these!

I’ve performed Jean-Marie Leclair in recital — the violin sonata, op. 9 no. 3 in D major (see https://imslp.org/wiki/12_Violin_Sonatas%2C_Op.9_(Leclair%2C... ). There are beautiful recordings of this piece by Szeryng and Oistrakh.

All this is true, even though I'd still hold that they don't have works that stand with the best of the recognized greats' works.

But again, some of these composers have works that are firmly in the general repertoire — Biber's Mystery Sonatas, Marais' amazing suites, the Leclair 2-violin sonatas — and others are real mainstays of early-music performances. I'd say they have the approval of that long-term taste filter that we were talking about. (I'd quibble about the long-term staying power of Busoni, but the point still stands.)

Gesualdo has a pretty solid reputation as a composer. His lack of recognition is probably due to madrigals going out of fashion.

Then again, part of the reputation of composers like Bach or Mozart lies in that they were able to create music of any kind their era had imagined.

I think Couperin stands out on your list. He’s better known and more popular than the rest.

That may depend on your experience; some of his list are very well known to vocalists, others to violinists, others to keyboard players, and so on.

I was speaking from the point of view of non-musician/non-specialist. In my subjective opinion, Couperin would definitely make the top 100 of best classical composers, while I'm not so sure about the rest. Sure, he's no Bach, but he's still one of the top composers of baroque period: https://www.baroque.org/baroque/composers

IIRC both Mozart and Schubert have fallen in and out of the repertoire and had to be "rediscovered" by musicologists in the 20th century as people didn't "get" their music - at one point people thought Mozart was only good for writing light music.

(no source to hand...)

Fair enough, guess the original patrons knew best. How does Salieri compare to either tier?

After reading a biography of Salieri, and hearing some of his opinions on the "right way" to write opera, I was interested to hear some of his music, and so bought a couple of albums, mostly of his overtures. I really enjoyed them -- definitely worth looking in to, particularly if you enjoy the Classical period.

Upper-middle of the lower tier, in my opinion. But it's just an opinion.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com