{"id":49249,"date":"2024-11-07T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-11-07T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/290de2ac-fe97-4a47-90a8-d9df3a1fbf26"},"modified":"2024-11-07T10:07:16","modified_gmt":"2024-11-07T09:07:16","slug":"trivial-noisy-and-blatant-sometimes-even-great-composers-write-terrible-music","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/rss_feed\/trivial-noisy-and-blatant-sometimes-even-great-composers-write-terrible-music\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Trivial, noisy and blatant’: sometimes even great composers write terrible music"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By <\/p>

Published: Thursday, 07 November 2024 at 09:00 AM<\/p>

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Read on to discover why even the best composers sometimes produce terrible music…<\/strong><\/p>

There are many similarities between football and classical music \u2013 as Shostakovich<\/a><\/strong>, that fanatical footie fan, might have observed. In both fields, not everything goes according to form. If Arsenal were drawn in the FA Cup against, say, Enfield Town, you would bet your house on an Arsenal win. But every year some Premier League club plays awfully and gets knocked out by lowly opposition.<\/p>

Shostakovich and football: how the beautiful game shaped the composer’s life and music<\/a><\/strong><\/li> <\/ul>
Terrible music… even great composers have off days<\/h2>
It\u2019s the same with composers. Buy a ticket to a Beethoven<\/a><\/strong> concert and you expect (and nearly always get) a certain quality. It\u2019s called genius. But even Beethoven had off-days. Years ago, someone decided it would be fun to perform his Wellington\u2019s Victory<\/a><\/strong> <\/em>beside the Wellington Arch in the middle of Hyde Park Corner in central London. What a disaster! Around the performers the traffic roared, but that wasn\u2019t the main trouble. The problem was that you could still hear the music. It was terrible: trivial, noisy and blatant. How could the colossal mind that created the \u2018Eroica<\/a><\/strong>\u2019 and the late string quartets also have churned out this noisy dross?<\/p>

<\/div> <figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"> The Netherlands Chamber Orchestra performs Beethoven’s <em>Wellington’s Victory<\/em> <\/figcaption> <\/figure> <h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Terrible music… popularity is no guarantee of quality<\/h2> <p>Yet we know that the work\u2019s first performance was the biggest commercial success of Beethoven\u2019s life. His fellow composers fell over themselves to take part. Spohr played in the <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/instruments\/violin-history\">violin<\/a><\/strong>s. <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/composers\/salieri-7\">Salieri<\/a><\/strong>, Hummel and <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/composers\/meyerbeer-giacomo\">Meyerbeer<\/a><\/strong> boosted the vast percussion section. The audience loved it. Beethoven pocketed a small fortune.<\/p> <ul class=\"wp-block-list\"> <li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/articles\/is-genius-overrated-why-genius-composers-need-ordinary-minds\">Is genius overrated? Why genius composers need ordinary ‘second-rankers’ in order to thrive<\/a><\/strong><\/li> <\/ul> <p>All of which proves two things. First, popularity is no guarantee of quality. Even the composers themselves recognised that. To the end of his life <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/composers\/tchaikovsky\">Tchaikovsky<\/a><\/strong> was bemused, indeed dismayed, by the public\u2019s ecstatic acclaim of his<em> <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/recordings\/tchaikovskys-1812-overture-best-recordings\">1812 Overture<\/a><\/strong>,<\/em> which he considered (correctly) to be one of his worst works. And secondly, even the greatest composers are capable of producing duds. In other words, genius doesn\u2019t guarantee you will create a winner every time.<\/p> <figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube\"> <div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\"> <iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"1812 OVERTURE, P. I. Tchaikovsky (Canons i campanar) - Banda Simf\u00f2nica d'Algemes\u00ed\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/QUpuAvQQrC0?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\"\/> <\/div> <figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"> Tchaikovsky’s <em>1812 Overture<\/em>, complete with canons and fireworks <\/figcaption> <\/figure> <h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Terrible music… the pressure of deadlines<\/h2> <p>Can I suggest four reasons why that\u2019s the case? The first is pressure: the pressure of time, of expectation, of relentless deadlines. Composers such as <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/composers\/johann-sebastian-bach\">Bach<\/a><\/strong> and <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/composers\/joseph-haydn\">Haydn<\/a><\/strong> faced the 18th-century musical equivalent of an essay crisis every week of their working lives. No wonder some of Bach\u2019s obscure cantatas and Haydn\u2019s lesser symphonies seem to have been composed on autopilot. Or, in <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/composers\/george-frideric-handel\">Handel<\/a><\/strong>\u2019s case, that he raided the back-catalogue \u2013 his own or someone else\u2019s \u2013 so frequently to get an opera finished before the curtain went up.<\/p> <ul class=\"wp-block-list\"> <li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/works\/worst-musicals\">‘Two hours of leaden dross’: the biggest stage musical flops of all time<\/a><\/strong><\/li> <\/ul> <h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Terrible music… writing for the pay cheque<\/h2> <p>Secondly, you can sometimes almost feel a composer\u2019s contempt for the commission, or the person commissioning, in the music they churn out. In other words, they are writing\u00a0purely for the money, and it shows. I\u2019m not sure how true that was of Beethoven\u2019s <em>Wellington\u2019s Victory<\/em>. By 1813 he was thoroughly disillusioned with Napoleon. But it was certainly true of all those dreadful sycophantic cantatas and incidental pieces that Shostakovich and <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/composers\/sergey-prokofiev\">Prokofiev<\/a><\/strong> had to compose to appease Stalin. They did it because, if they didn\u2019t, they would have been sent off to the gulags. But they certainly weren\u2019t going to waste any real inspiration on the task.<\/p> <ul class=\"wp-block-list\"> <li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/articles\/15-compositions-which-their-composers-perhaps-want-to-forget\">The work that wrecked Rachmaninov’s confidence – and 14 other composer regrets<\/a><\/strong><\/li> <\/ul> <h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Terrible music… sometimes inspiration just fails<\/h2> <p>Thirdly, you can blame posterity \u2013 us. We turn composers into gods who can do no wrong. Performers, record companies and radio stations obsess about presenting their \u2018complete works\u2019, irrespective of quality. Then we are confronted by, say, Mozart\u2019s first 20 symphonies, or the try-out cantatas <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/composers\/edward-elgar\">Elgar<\/a><\/strong> wrote in the 1890s, and wonder why they don\u2019t inspire us. We feel cheated. We forget that even geniuses need time to find their own voice.\u00a0<\/p> <ul class=\"wp-block-list\"> <li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/composers\/composer-rivalries\">‘His music is meaningless noise’: classical music’s 15 juiciest rivalries<\/a><\/strong><\/li> <\/ul> <p>And fourthly? Well, tragically, that\u2019s when none of the above applies. Inspiration simply fails. It affects the best of us from time to time. Does anyone think that <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/composers\/leonard-bernstein\">Leonard Bernstein<\/a><\/strong>, who wrote some of the most scintillating music of the 20th century, was happy with those hopelessly dull and pretentious symphonies he felt he had to write? Or that Stravinsky, who thrilled and shocked the world with<em> <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/works\/stravinskys-rite-spring-guide-and-best-recordings\">The Rite of Spring<\/a><\/strong>,<\/em> really felt fulfilled by the grim <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/works\/five-best-twelve-tone-works\">12-tone<\/a><\/strong> pieces he turned out late in life? And although some distinguished musicians have made the case for <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/composers\/gustav-mahler\">Mahler<\/a><\/strong>\u2019s Seventh Symphony, the piece always strikes me as something he might have composed after waking up with a migraine, burning the toast, missing the train to work and spilling ink over\u00a0his\u00a0trousers.<\/p> <h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">But the true greats climb to the highest highs<\/h2> <p>As Oscar Wilde said, \u2018Only the mediocre are always at their best.\u2019 The definition of genius is not that you never have bad days. It\u2019s that, on your good ones, you climb to heights nobody\u00a0else\u00a0can imagine.\u00a0<\/p> <p\/> <\/body><\/html>\n<hr class=\"no-tts wp-block-separator\"\/>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Published: Thursday, 07 November 2024 at 09:00 AM Read on to discover why even the best composers sometimes produce terrible music… There are many similarities between football and classical music \u2013 as Shostakovich, that fanatical footie fan, might have observed. In both fields, not everything goes according to form. 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