hey all,

i'm wanting to discover some unknown composers, preferably in the romantic period, but others are fine. I'm going to be creating scres of these unknown composers so that there are at least some good pdf's of them, hopefully i can increase the exposure to these composers by doing this.

so, who would you suggest, the only unknown composer i know of is bortkiewicz any others would be fantastic!

thanks for your help

Zac

I'm not sure I understand your intent (creating scores?), but there are numerous lesser-known Romantic era composers on Wikipedia's list:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Romantic-era_composers

The Henselt Library of Nineteenth Century Piano Music is a fascinating trove of relatively obscure scores from the period:

http://www.henseltlibrary.org/

Steven

If they are unknown, how would we know about them?

what i mean is that most unknown composers scores are terrible quality, so i thought that if i wrote them up on sibelius i could increase the exposure to these composers.

thanks for that steven, is there anyone specific you would suggest?

not specifically unknown, but i thought that it would be the best way to explain what i ment, i can change it if there is too much comfusion


Zac

I'll put in a vote for Theodore Kirchner. He's never played today, but he was highly regarded by Schumann and Brahms.

I'm also a fan of Hugo Reinhold. There are only two works of his that are readily available, a set of miniatures that often show up in teaching anthologies, and an impromptu in C# minor.

Try some Henselt -- I'm rather fond of his concerto, although sadly, many aren't.

Try playing some of his Etudes -- he has a unique style, and they're pretty fun. I was reading through the first etude from Op 5 just the other day. Great stuff, although there are some nasty reaches in a few of his pieces[I'm looking at one now that goes A-E-G#-D].

Then of course there's Alkan. Not entirely obscure, but not well-known either. Recommended works to start with are his Etudes op. 39 [Especially the Concerto and the Symphony, both for solo piano] and his op.33 sonata[in particular the 2nd movement].

Felix Blumenfeld, Sergei Liapunov, Anatol Liadov, Pancho Vladigerov, Henryk Pachulski, Georgy Catoire, Vladimir Rebikov, Eugene D'Albert, Benjamin Godard, Ignaz Friedman, Carl Preyer, Alexander Krein.

I second Blumenfeld! Not all of his works are masterpieces, but there are some real gems in his oeuvre.

Anton Eberl (sometimes published as Mozart).

Carl Filtsch

Dohnanyi has amaziingg Concert Etudes

Charles V. Alkan

Ernst Toch

Felix Blumenfield

Carl Tausig

Anton Rubenstein

Adolf Henselt

Emil von Sauer

.... the list goes on and on for years!

XAVER SCHARWENKA!!!

But besides him I would recommend Alkan's etudes and esquisses, Chaminade's etudes and valses, Dobrzynski's nocturnes, Ginastera's Danzas Argentinas, Moscheles' etudes, Clara Schumann's pièces fugitives, and pretty much all Thalberg.

I'd recommend the Moses Fantasy to start. It's a good introduction to Thalberg's style. It even contains some of his so-called "3-hand-effect."

I think the Ginastera is still under copyright. And in a legible edition, to boot. If the point of the OP is to improve on the legibility of some old editions, some of the suggestions in this thread so far miss the mark, because there are already editions that are fine.

He said he wants to increase the exposure of these composers. The OP mentioned Bortkiewicz whose music is certainly in print.

But his way of increasing their exposure is by transcribing and editing their music. This is only possible if the music is out of copyright, and only useful if the editions that exist are of poor quality/legibility. So I think he only mentioned Bortkiewicz as an example of a lesser-known composer, not as one he was thinking of transcribing. Perhaps he should be a bit clearer.

Are you sure you aren't just hoping to post these scores on Sibelius to try and profit?

This piece by Carl Tausig is worth a listen.

cirtain, i dispise the sibeliusmusic website just for that reason

He also said that the reason that he thought he could increase exposure was that the existing scores were in poor quality and he could improve them by redoing them in Sibelius software. I understood the logic there. But I haven't seen any Bortkiewicz scores, so don't have that example from which to triangulate what he's talking about. If they aren't of poor quality, then more explanation from the OP is in order.

Solomon Rosowsky, Lazare Saminsky, Moses Milner, Joel Engel, Joseph Achron, Jacob Weinberg, Mikhail Gnessin, Alexander Krein, Grigory Krein, Ephraim Schkljar, Michael Lewin, Haim Kopit, Joachim Stutschewsky, Lazare Weiner, Julius Chajes...

scores here...

and biographies/pictures...

There was a whole Jewish nationalism movement in Russia during the early 1900s that's been almost entirely forgotten since the 1930's or so, although some of the music is really quite good. Some of the music is very much related to other music of the time -- some of their music sounds somewhat modernist, neo-classical, romantic, impressionist, even some baroque moments (like a 6-part fugue in Achron's Sonata)... Rosowsky's Poem (no. 100 in the Juwal section on that website) is based on pentatonics and quartal harmonies à la Scriabin and Debussy (though for different reasons, because Rosowsky and others though the Jewish biblical cantillations had that same harmonic basis, and this piece is trying to "recreate" the ancient Jewish temple through music). His song "Ich bin a balagole" (no. 49, petersburg) has a walking base line à la Broadway. Milner's "Beim rebn zu mlave malke" and "Agada" have some Chopinesque / Lisztian figures. Achron's Children's Suite and some of his songs (not on that website yet) are full of text painting and programmatic content (Milner's song "El Hatsipor" has some neat tone painting in it, too -- some of his other songs are very similar to Mussorgsky's style of realistically setting the text). Many of them were students at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, and some were classmates of Prokofiev (who wrote some rather entertaining insults about some of them in his diaries...)

This happens to be my main research area of late, so I'd be happy to chat about these guys and their music if you're interested...

there are some that are not of great quality, but mainly i was just using bortkiewicz as an example of an unknown composer - even though he is now becoming quite popular

Zac

I really like the concerto too. There's a lot of rather tricky left hand writing in his work (it was to my considerable surprise that I read he had fairly small hands).

Also: Tausig, Liapunov, some Thalberg, Martucci, Pabst, and the Hough Hyperion concertos disc of Sauer and Scharwenka is well worth hearing. Many others too, even if the quality probably tails off as you get to Herz, Kalkbrenner and Dreyschock..

Otto Nicolai (1810-1849) is remembered, if at all, for writing the opera The Merry Wives of Windsor, for founding the Vienna Philharmonic, and for having the same dates as Chopin.

His 3 Etudes for the Piano, Op.40, dedicated to Liszt are very beautiful, especially No.3, "Gruss an Liszt", in D flat. The British Library is the only source.

For Henri Herz, I would recommend starting with his 3 Characteristique Nocturnes, (La Dolcezza, La Melinconia, and La Simplicita) at IMSLP. Very charming music.

Also, Herz' 18 Grandes Etudes Op.153 are worth checking out, especially the lovely No.2 in A flat. It's more like a Nocturne-Etude, with more than a touch of Chopin. Part 1 is at IMSLP and Part 2 at the Henselt Library.

Henri's brother Jacques wrote a Grande Valse Brillante Op.37 that's great fun. IMSLP

Julio Ituarte's Ecos de Mexico - Capricho de Concierto is also tremendous fun.

For pure loveliness, there's Tomas Leon's Dolor Profundo:

http://www.mediafire.com/?2mwxjtdbrot

Manuel Maria Ponce's Bersagliera has a Baroque feel to it, but Ponce's Romantic genius shines through.

I assume you already know Ponce's Gavota, and Intermezzo No.1.

Mel

Ciurlionis.

I had never heard of him, and was perplexed that most of the references when I googled his name seemed to be for a painter.

But what a painter!

Scott, now I see that you started a thread about Ciurlionis here last August—which I overlooked completely, to my great loss.

So thanks for mentioning him again! If his music is half as interesting as his canvasses, I will be very interested to explore listening to it.

Steven

Perhaps I contributed to that thread -too lazy to look it up- but Ciurlionis (whilst not 'required' listening) is definitely worth a spin. Via a spiffy Koch International disc I was able to hear two wonderful tone poems: In the Forest and The Sea.

Have fun!

Glad to see another fan of the Henselt.

Considering that Dreyschock's main trick was to play Chopin's 10/12 with left hand octaves at full tempo, I must say that I'm slightly worried about the musical value of his compositions.

Anyways, that Tausig piece was insane. Awesome would be a good word to describe it. I was following along with the score -- Tausig definitely had a frightful technique.
Explosively programmatic and strikingly modern sounding, especially considering that he died in 1871.