I\u2019ve been thinking for a long time about writing a series on the most underrated composers in music history. Neglected and underrated music is a recurring, if not always an explicit theme here, to be sure, in many posts.<\/p>\n
So far, I\u2019ve 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.<\/p>\n
No such list is yet forthcoming, but maybe a discussion is. First, it\u2019s worth clarifying that we\u2019re talking specifically about \u201cunderrated\u201d composers and not necessarily \u201cneglected\u201d composers or even \u201cunjustly neglected\u201d composers. Not all \u201cneglected\u201d composers are \u201cunderrated,\u201d and neglect doesn\u2019t necessarily always lead to music being underrated. For instance, Eric Satie\u2019s music is generally vastly overrated,<\/em><\/strong> mostly because little of it is actually known. 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\u2019t. I think if more people knew more Satie, the popular Gymnopedie would be taken far less seriously. 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 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.<\/p>\n I think what might surprise readers is that quite a few people on the \u201cmost underreated\u201d list would be very well-known and, frankly, highly-rated composers who just aren\u2019t rated nearly as highly as they should be<\/em><\/strong>. \u00a0On the one hand, Bach, Brahms, Beethoven, Mahler and Mozart, just to start with, could never go on an \u201cunderrated\u201d list. They are rightly recognized as some of the greatest creative personalities in human history.\u00a0 Their music is played everywhere, and nearly universally admired. Scholars, musicians and listeners all seem to agree on their \u201cgreatness.\u201d<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t always so, of course. 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. Now Gus is King, long live King Gus. Gus is box office. Gus is primte time and mainstream, \u00a0but when I write about Mahler, it\u2019s probably the ghost of young Ken, hunting libraries around his hometown for copies of a score to the 6th<\/sup> or trying to find a decent book about his music who guides the pen. No matter how overplayed his music becomes, I\u2019ll always write and talk about Mahler as though I\u2019ve just stumbled on something really cool and obscure that I really, really think the world ought to know about. Nonetheless, calling Mahler underrated (other than by jaded critics who think there must be something suspicious about anything as beautiful and exciting\u00a0 as the 8th<\/sup> Symphony) is obviously absurd.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n http:\/\/youtu.be\/lfWkGzIsZIY<\/p>\n (Klaus was country when country wasn’t cool)<\/em><\/p>\n Schubert is a perfect example of a \u201crated\u201d composer who died profoundly underrated. So many of his late masterpieces weren\u2019t heard for decades after his death. 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. If it seems more unlikely in the internet age, it\u2019s certainly not impossible. Sometime in the 1850\u2019s, Schubert would have gone from pretty well unknown (although certainly admired by Schumann and Mendelssohn), to high up on the \u201crated\u201d list.<\/p>\n