Composition Quiz

[Bonn1827]

Roehre, I have just received in the mail from Amazon a double CD set of "The Complete (solo) Organ music of Olivier Messiaen". However, the box says Vol. 6. Can you tell me how much he wrote for solo organ and whether I've missed out on 5 previous "volumes"; or whether there are, in fact, more? This was the only one available from Amazon at the time. I love the organ music of Messiaen, and I started with "Apparitition d'Eglise...". It actually says on the CD "Livre du Saint Sacrement", and I don't know what this means. Something to do with the Catholic mass, I presume. Can you tell me please how much other organ music he wrote? This is glorious music, btw.

[Roehre]

Roehre, I have just received in the mail from Amazon a double CD set of "The Complete (solo) Organ music of Olivier Messiaen". However, the box says Vol. 6. Can you tell me how much he wrote for solo organ and whether I've missed out on 5 previous "volumes"; or whether there are, in fact, more? This was the only one available from Amazon at the time. I love the organ music of Messiaen, and I started with "Apparitition d'Eglise...". It actually says on the CD "Livre du Saint Sacrement", and I don't know what this means. Something to do with the Catholic mass, I presume. Can you tell me please how much other organ music he wrote? This is glorious music, btw.

Hi Bonnie, Messiaen's organ music fits on six or seven CDs, so I think you missed volumes 1-5 and have got now the final instalment of that series.
"Livre du Saint Sacrement" = Book of Holy Sacrements: Baptism, Marriage, Confirmation, during Illness, absolution, at the Final Hour.

[Peter]

Mendelssohn has not rejected the work (as follows from his correspondence, despite the long time of its gestation), nor any of his other projects or the 80% of his works [conservative estimaion by Robert Schumann] which he withheld from publication during his lifetime, including the Italian and Reformation symphonies e.g.

And Mendelssohn did not have the general habit of revising and revising scores over and over again.

The one movement from this "3rd" piano concerto which to a high extant is conjectural, is the finale.

Therefore I only agree with you as far as the 3rd movement is concerned, as the other may be considered to be near the music Mendelssohn had in mind at the time of its being penned down.

=================================

Well we'll have to agree to differ, but I do think it is generally accepted that Mendelssohn was very much in the habit of revising works. Here is an interesting article from 'La Scena Musicale' http://blog.scena.org/search/label/Larry%20Todd

[Peter]

After some tricky questions now 2 pieces where the composers should be easier to find. But which works do we have here?

www.gerdprengel.de/piece10.mp3

www.gerdprengel.de/piece11.mp3

Gerd

I agree with Roehre, Schubert and Verdi.

[Peter]

My version is the one from Larry Todd. Mendelssohn's sketches are much more worked out than those from Beethoven or even Schubert, he even made remarks where to use the pedal of the piano with detailed, beautiful and clean handwriting which is just remarkable. Unfortuneateley there were only, I think, 2 faksimile pages in the edition from Todd which I lent from a library.
Whether the CD from Larry Todd has a portion of 90% or 80% of Mendelssohn I do not know but fact is that this concerto is much more impressive than the first two original concertos from Mendelssohn (the 2nd concerto I also love very much)!!! I love this concerto more than any other Romantic piano concerto, including the one from Tschaikowsky, (ok, maybe apart from the first concerto from Brahms). The only reason why Mendelssohn put off the concerto is the fact, that it was too similiar to the Violin Concerto with the same key and similiar expression and passion (the violin concerto was written in the same time as this piano concerto).

Are there any significant differences Gerd between the Todd and Bufalini versions of the first two movements? Incidentally I also like this work despite my comments which have more to do with authenticity. Thanks for sharing all these wonderful extracts!

[Roehre]

Are there any significant differences Gerd between the Todd and Bufalini versions of the first two movements? Incidentally I also like this work despite my comments which have more to do with authenticity. Thanks for sharing all these wonderful extracts!

These differences are limited to some doublings and phrasing, and some different scoring for the winds (oboe vs flute mainly). That's it.

[Roehre]

Well we'll have to agree to differ, but I do think it is generally accepted that Mendelssohn was very much in the habit of revising works. Here is an interesting article from 'La Scena Musicale' http://blog.scena.org/search/label/Larry%20Todd

Peter: revising is changing (from only changing tempo indications and phrasing to completely rewriting or re-composing a work) AFTER a first version has been completed, e.g. the Bruckner symphonies, Beethoven's Leonore/Fidelio, Brahms' opus 8.

There is a weird statement in this Scena Musicale page: Bufalini states there are only some bars of full score for the 1st mvt, and even less for the 3rd.
AFAIK the "full" score for the first mvt consists of eleven pages for the 1st mvt and a handful bars for the second.
There are none at all for the third, which is logical, as Mendelssohn hardly began a full score before even sketching a continuity draft.
(Beethoven sometimes "sinned" against that general "rule", e.g. the Symphony [no.0] in C, The 6th piano concerto, the Triple concerto in D, Vestas Feuer, but these generally speaking are the examples confirming the rule).

[gprengel]

Are there any significant differences Gerd between the Todd and Bufalini versions of the first two movements? Incidentally I also like this work despite my comments which have more to do with authenticity. Thanks for sharing all these wonderful extracts!

I don't know, for I know only the version from Larry Todd. I downloaded it from

http://www.amazon.de/s/ref=nb_sb_nos...todd&x=10&y=18

as I had posted it already last year in a thread.

Thanks for sharing all these wonderful extracts!

It's my pleasure to distribute gems like these as long there are people who appreciate these like you, Peter

Gerd

[Peter]

Peter: revising is changing (from only changing tempo indications and phrasing to completely rewriting or re-composing a work) AFTER a first version has been completed, e.g. the Bruckner symphonies, Beethoven's Leonore/Fidelio, Brahms' opus 8.

Precisely so it is extremely unlikely that Mendelssohn's 3rd piano concerto would have been what we now have which is based on sketches prior even to a completed first version. His sister Fanny cautioned him against 'these frequent revisions' thinking his first ideas often the best. The Italian Symphony is a good example of this self doubt and the general concensus seems to be that the revised version performed by Gardiner is inferior to the one we know.

There is a weird statement in this Scena Musicale page: Bufalini states there are only some bars of full score for the 1st mvt, and even less for the 3rd.
AFAIK the "full" score for the first mvt consists of eleven pages for the 1st mvt and a handful bars for the second.
There are none at all for the third, which is logical, as Mendelssohn hardly began a full score before even sketching a continuity draft.
(Beethoven sometimes "sinned" against that general "rule", e.g. the Symphony [no.0] in C, The 6th piano concerto, the Triple concerto in D, Vestas Feuer, but these generally speaking are the examples confirming the rule).

How do we know that the sketches for those Beethoven works weren't lost or discarded by Beethoven himself?

[Roehre]

How do we know that the sketches for those Beethoven works weren't lost or discarded by Beethoven himself?

Because exactly in these cases the sketches have survived too, most likely without any been lost even.
And it was Beethoven's usual habit to start an orchestral score by writing the continuity draft (nearly always in pencil, with the score itself in ink) at the bottom of the pages which eventually would be the full score.
As (with exception of the 6th piano concerto) the score fragments are immediately followed by ink-written sketches for other works on the same pages or neighbouring ones (here the ink dots give a clue), and there isn't a trace of such a continuity draft at the bottom of those pages, we safely may assume such a draft hadn't been written by Beethoven.

Btw: the Vestas Feuer fragment was set up as a vocal score, and eventually ended up (in a hardly changed form) in (the first version of) Leonore.

If you've got a photo(copy) or facsimile of the violin concerto, you will discover at the bottom of the score the remnants (sometimes hardly legible, sometime quite clear) of the continuity draft Beethoven wrote out before scoring the work.

[Roehre]

Precisely so it is extremely unlikely that Mendelssohn's 3rd piano concerto would have been what we now have which is based on sketches prior even to a completed first version. His sister Fanny cautioned him against 'these frequent revisions' thinking his first ideas often the best. The Italian Symphony is a good example of this self doubt and the general concensus seems to be that the revised version performed by Gardiner is inferior to the one we know.

If we would respect the composer's wishes, we have to discard all Mendelssohnian music without an opus number or with an opus number over 72 (i.e. 73-114), as all this wasn't published by the composer himself, being not really happy with any of these pieces.

The revised version of the Italian in Gardiner's performance has a peculiar background, dissimilar to almost all other revisons of Mendelssohn's.
It wasn't meant to be a revision, but follows a score which Mendelssohn wrote as he hadn't the original score (or parts) at hand and he wished to perform the piece: he wrote this score from the top of his head, and it is very surprising how few differences there are between those two versions.
Under similar circumstances Mozart composed simply a new symphony (e.g. the Haffner Symphony KV385 thanks its existence due to a similar incident: the composer hasn't got a score and he needs one).

[Quijote]

The 'work' is still not Mendelssohn's 3rd piano concerto, but a realisation by others. This applies to all these completions in my opinion including Beethoven, Mahler and Schubert's 10th symphonies and especially Elgar's 3rd as the composer's dying wishes were ignored in that case. We know for a fact that Beethoven and Mendelssohn both reworked their sketches ad infinitum and the mere fact they abandoned work on many of the now reconstructed works shows their own dissatisfaction with the material. Composing a piece of music in the style of a composer based on his sketches is no more the real thing than taking a selection of Leonardo sketches, painting them in the same style, filling in the gaps and claiming a new Leonardo masterpiece as a result - a thing that no one would dare attempt!

Having said all that I admire the work done on the Mendelssohn but would appreciate a little more honesty from these constructions - the work should simply be entitled 'a realisation based on Mendelssohn's sketches' rather than palmed off as THE 3rd concerto and part of Mendelssohn's own canon.

About these reconstructions and so on : I think nobody here on this forum imagines for one moment we are getting the full kosher product, Peter. I would agree wholeheartedly with you that if CDs are marketed as "Beethoven's 10th" then it is (commercially) dishonest. For me, the interest in these reconstructions from sketches is simply that I have the chance to hear where Beethoven (and others) may have been at that stage in the compositional process. I did rather like Roehre's expression : "an artist's impression" in that regard.

To develop the ideas on this thread a bit further, we have very clear instructions from a composer who left us in no doubt : Charles Ives and his "Universe" Symphony.

Very well, we can only say that such reconstructions are nothing more than speculative composing out or an arrangement of posthumous sketch material. We can be sure that Ives wanted to complete his Universe Symphony, but when he realized he couldn't, what did he do? He suggested in an explanatory memo that some posthumous collaborator might like to finish the job for him. Here is Ives himself on the matter:

"I am just referring to the above because, in case I don't get to finishing this, somebody might like to try to work out the idea, and the sketch that I've already done would make more sense to anybody looking at it with this explanation."

[Peter]

If we would respect the composer's wishes, we have to discard all Mendelssohnian music without an opus number or with an opus number over 72 (i.e. 73-114), as all this wasn't published by the composer himself, being not really happy with any of these pieces.

The revised version of the Italian in Gardiner's performance has a peculiar background, dissimilar to almost all other revisons of Mendelssohn's.
It wasn't meant to be a revision, but follows a score which Mendelssohn wrote as he hadn't the original score (or parts) at hand and he wished to perform the piece: he wrote this score from the top of his head, and it is very surprising how few differences there are between those two versions.
Under similar circumstances Mozart composed simply a new symphony (e.g. the Haffner Symphony KV385 thanks its existence due to a similar incident: the composer hasn't got a score and he needs one).

Well there are separate issues here and indeed how far we should go in respecting a composer's wishes is an interesting question. No one would advocate playing forte where Beethoven marks piano but if Elgar decrees his 3rd symphony sketches should be burnt it is a different matter!

I was under the impression that the Italian symphony underwent much revision over a number of years and that Mendelssohn intended further revisions?

[Roehre]

I was under the impression that the Italian symphony underwent much revision over a number of years and that Mendelssohn intended further revisions?

Yes, he did, and the same applies to the (at his death still unpublished) Reformation-symphony, and even to the Scottish Symphony and the Hebrides-overture(though both having been published already!).
It is only because of this peculiar history of this "new" score of the Italian symphony that we actually do possess two different version in their entirety. There are hardly any other examples (if any!) within Mendelssohn's output (from the top of my head)

[Peter]

About these reconstructions and so on : I think nobody here on this forum imagines for one moment we are getting the full kosher product, Peter. I would agree wholeheartedly with you that if CDs are marketed as "Beethoven's 10th" then it is (commercially) dishonest. For me, the interest in these reconstructions from sketches is simply that I have the chance to hear where Beethoven (and others) may have been at that stage in the compositional process. I did rather like Roehre's expression : "an artist's impression" in that regard.

To develop the ideas on this thread a bit further, we have very clear instructions from a composer who left us in no doubt : Charles Ives and his "Universe" Symphony.

Very well, we can only say that such reconstructions are nothing more than speculative composing out or an arrangement of posthumous sketch material. We can be sure that Ives wanted to complete his Universe Symphony, but when he realized he couldn't, what did he do? He suggested in an explanatory memo that some posthumous collaborator might like to finish the job for him. Here is Ives himself on the matter:

"I am just referring to the above because, in case I don't get to finishing this, somebody might like to try to work out the idea, and the sketch that I've already done would make more sense to anybody looking at it with this explanation."

That's fine for Ives, but can you imagine Beethoven saying to Schindler 'in that draw over there are some sketches for the 10th symphony, have someone finish it for me!' or perhaps he said it to Anna Holtz?