Hello Forum!
Is there any unknown composers that you enjoy to play and listen to?
Im not so familiar with unknown composers , because i don't really know if Orlando Gibbons is unknown nor William Byrd?
Well, of course i know about some..
-Agathe Backer-Grøndahl
-Johan Helmich Roman
-Louis Couperin
-Karl Von Dittersdorf
-Jeanne Louise Dumont Farrenc
-Carl Nielsen
-Thomas D.A. Tellefsen

By those mentioned i prefeer Johan Helmich Roman and Louis Couperin!

Regards,

None of the composers I know are unknown.

For me either. And I'm not sure we need another of these threads this soon after the previous one on the same subject, and in which the OP of this one participated.

Rzewski and Thalberg although i'm not sure if they're unknown. :P

Jean Sibelius is unknown to me. I heard part of his Violin Concerto on the car radio one day and was completely stumped as to who the composer might be; except that he must be a violin virtuoso to compose like that. So-- the "unknownness" of a composer can vary widely!

On my Pandora "Bach channel" I recently heard excerpts by Locatelli and Geminiani, neither of whom I'd heard of before.

Also on the car radio, another day, another unknown composer-- a flute concerto-- at first I guessed Mozart, then downgraded immediately to Haydn (sorry Haydn) then realized, Nothing of the sort-- this is an unknown composer who deserves to remain unknown. Something about the melodic intervals just annoyed me; such awkward steps. I actually got angrier and angrier while listening to it. Then I mellowed out, thinking that not every composer has a gift for melody; and the orchestration was nice enough. I began to feel sorry for him. Then I learned that his name was-- oh this is the great part, I can't remember. I did look him up online. He was German. His contribution to music was something or other, and his son did something something, or maybe it was his father. Well, there's my sieve-like memory at work, except it's the big essential lumps of information that get strained out.

Burt Stamperfield

Jay Greenberg

Ludwig van Beethoven

Tromlitz the 18th c. flautist and composer

Sorry, Herr Tromlitz, for dissing you in my earlier post. Now I know who you are. And now I understand why those melodic intervals I complained about sounded awkward. You were *showing off* your flute skills!! You win my unknown composer award.

Mosolov

Well, I posted a thread yesterday with links to Bela Varkonyi's piano trio. Not one person replied with their impressions so he's still unknown!

My favorite unknown composer is George Antheil. I've posted a video of me playing one of his pieces on YouTube to spread the word of his music.

Can Eric Satie be considered as lesser famous"
He's Gymnopedie is very popular , many have heard it.. But there's not many who know the composer of it?

Regards,

I wouldn't consider him "lesser famous." His music has been used in several movies and I would think anyone that listens to classical music with regularity knows who he is. In my opinion he's a very important figure in music history.

There are those "second tier" composers though. Of course it's different for everybody, but I would think composers like Poulenc, Janacek, and Medtner fall into this category. This has nothing to do with their ability but more so with "name recognition."

I'm going to go with "if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all" on that piece.

Heh, yeah, it's not exactly a masterpiece. However, there are certain moments that I absolutely love, especially the outer movements.

Canadian composer André Mathieu, hailed by Einstein as a genius, and declared by Rachmaninoff as even greater than himself.

Anonymous.

Well, if they're unknown, then how would I know about them?

Stores , Sorry for the grammar.. It wasn't ment that way. But im sure you understood what i ment and you don't need to make a point out of that.

Regards,

I think his point was that "unknown" is a relative term. To a lot of people, Shostakovich is unknown. Then there are composers who don't have a particularly wide sphere of influence. There are, quite literally, dozens of composers who live and work here in Iowa. They even have their own association and attend a conference each year where new works are performed. But outside the midwest, relatively few of these composers are "known."

In that sense, there are thousands of composers whose names might be considered unknown, and cataloguing them seems a herculean task, the point of which is difficult to see.

Thanks for helping me with the term "Unknown"!

Perhaps a good way of phrasing it would be "lesser known composers."

A while back I took a liking to the music of Andrej Panufnik (whose name strikes me as funny, for some reason):

Here's probably his most well known piece, the Symphonia Sacra:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blmAg6hYzHE

There are composers who are relatively unknown, even though their music is very well known, like Harry Warren and Mike Stoller.

The reference to Andrej Panufnik by Brad Hoehne reminded me of something I heard about a year ago, so I did some research. It was a 20th c. Polish composer Henryk Gorecki. The local station played his "Symphony of Sorrowful Songs," to commemorate his death. I had never heard it before, but apparently it was a big seller when it was released on CD in the 1990s.

I did find the recording sorrowful and at some point it became so exhausting to listen to, especially on a bright sunny day when I wanted to be in a good mood, that I finally switched stations, and will never forget the next lyrics I heard, "joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea, joy to you and me." So I was driving along wondering, Should I listen to meaningful, sorrowful music, or superficial upbeat music?

I think Medtner is a severely overlooked composer. I'm playing Reminiscenza right now and I love it. His structure was a bit confusing at first but once I learned the piece, it makes sense.

In that case, all composers are unknown, since there will always be someone, somewhere who doesn't know any particular one.

We shouldn't discuss that title anymore after my opinion, it's sad that many people on forums have an tendency to argue.. It's always something that is wrong.

Alkan... Alkan...

The concerto for solo piano is up there with all the other great romantic master pieces. Cello sonata is also fantastic, too. B major Nocturne is so delightful.

I would like to add that Reinhold Gliere's piano works are severely overlooked.

-Will

Should that name be Henryk Górecki?

Here are some composers that I REALLY like, and these are all quite famous composers, if one listen to "their kind of music".
I hope some of you may discover their greatness too!
Unfortunately, many aren't interested in "modern" classical music, and I believe all of the below mentioned have lived in the 20th century

Olivier Messiaen
György Ligeti
György Kurtág
Iannis Xenakis
Arvo Pärt
Alberto Ginastera
Wolfgang Rihm
Brian Ferneyhough
Salvatore Sciarrino

Well, some of my favorite composers aren't unknown, but lesser known than they should be:

Howard Hanson (Symphonies 1 - first movement blew me away, Symphonies # 2 and 3 are more famous and great as well.)
David Diamond (Symphony #4)
Peter Mennin (Symphony #5 - hope to listen to more of him)
William Walton {Symphony #1 (first movement amazes) Symphony #2 (once again, first movement is intriguing), Viola concerto (seeing this w/ Philadelphia Orchestra soon) Spitfire prelude and fugue.....his marches are always quite good)}

These are some of my absolute favorites!

It should! Good catch! I googled "Gorelick" to see where in the world I got that idea (other than having a flu-addled brain this week)-- and it turns out to be Kenny G's last name.

Maybe Henryk Gorecki would have better known if he had gone by Henry G?

Kimmo Hakola is my favorite 'unknown composer' whom I discovered a few years ago (after buying a CD of his amazing Piano Concerto on the strength of a rave review). He is a pupil of Rautavaara, but his music is totally unique and quite unlike his teacher's.....

It's always hard to answer such a question meaningfully without knowing which composer can be considered "obscure" and which can't. Various criteria can be used: CD sales, numbers of recordings, uploads on YouTube, "fans" on Facebook, mentions in newspapers, etc., and the results obtained will be different in each case.

Some of the composers I enjoy and believe deserve a much wider audience than the one they currently have are: Alkan, Barraqué, Boulez, Dillon, Dutilleux, Finnissy, Alexander Goehr, Hába, Kabeláč, Nancarrow, Nørgård, Rădulescu, Rihm, Roslavets, Scelsi, Skalkottas, Sorabji, Vivier, Wuorinen, and Zelenka.

I did not mention the better-known "obscures" (such as Ligeti and Stockhausen), simply because there is something of a wide gap between the popularity they and the guys I listed have.

Yes... back when I was a member of Naxos Music Library (awesome collection, but ultimately too steep at $20/month), I got to know some Hakola, including that piano concerto. Great stuff!!

I'll also second two of Sequentia's selections: Nancarrow, because I think he did something truly unique and wonderful in his 50 Rhythmic Studies, and Sorabji, who's known a little in this forum (though mostly as a joke), but not at all in the real world. And whose 100 Transcendental Etudes I love.

-J