#lesserknowncomposers

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Many think of Frank Zappa as a rocker. Zappa’s true passion was composition of 20th century classical music. Here is a special tribute performance with full orchestra in its entirety to his mentor, the great Edgard Varese.

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4. Charles Villiers Stanford (1852-1924)

Stanford was born in Dublin and became Professor of Composition at thethen newly formed Royal College Of Music in London. He is pretty well known in the UK, I'm not sure if this is the case elsewhere in the world. Anyway, I'm just showing that there are gradations of well-knownedness, and that also, even with the more famous composer, not all of their compositions get recorded.

Stanford wrote eight string quartets. The first two were recorded some years back, the other six only recently by the Dante Quartet for SOMM Recordings. They are real good. I like them because they have such a full sound - there is so much going on. Here is the sixth string quartet in A minor and it really is the biz.

David Pulsford, guest editor, @lesser-known-composers 

[rafiknyclassical]

The questioning sound.

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3. Alexander Zemlinsky (1871-1942)

Zemlinsky has become much more well known over recent years. He was well known as a conductor and was friends with a lot of famous composers, including Korngold, Mahler and Schoenberg and he conducted many of their works. In 1938, to escape Nazi persecution he fled to the US, only to die four years later in relative obscurity.

Alexander Zemlinsky composed in all styles including, as in the following example, choral music. It's an early piece and so sweet sounding. I thought the folks at Musica In Extenso (I think they may be fans of choral stuff), might like this. Frühlingsglaube for choir and string orchestra.

David Pulsford, guest editor, @lesser-known-composers

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5. Phocasm (Me)

I told you I would post some really obscure work, so I took the liberty of featuring myself, or rather a song by me. I made it specificly for all the people at Musica In Extenso as a thank you for making my blog part of their Tumblr. Whether they like the song or not is a matter of personal taste - there's just no accounting for what people like, which is partly the point of my blog. 

Heyho, I also took the liberty of calling my track, MusicInEx. I hope that's OK. It's a totally home made, slightly mysterious sounding tune - written, played, produced and mastered by me. :)

David Pulsford, guest editor, @lesser-known-composers

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Next week on Musica in Extenso! @lesser-known-composers

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2. Eugen D'Albert (1864-1932)

Maybe slightly more well known than Hans Sommer, D'Albert - a vituoso pianist and composer - was born in Glasgow but moved to Europe to be taught by Liszt. He was famous as a concert pianist, but he also wrote a lot of operas, some orchestral pieces,songs and piano works. Also, he was married six times.

A few years back, I was just getting into string quartets and I wanted to hear music from composers born around the 1860's - I like that romantic period. I came across a recording of two string quartets by D'Albert (I'd never heard of him at the time), performed by the Sarastro Quartet. I loved them. It turns out that they were the only chamber music he composed, written when he was in his 20's.Here is the first movement of his first string quartet in A minor. I love thispiece and the way it's put together. It makes me think of windy, wet weather and the performance .....well it just works for me. I hope it works for you.

David Pulsford, guest editor, @lesser-known-composers

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Hey! This week I'm going to feature five composers from, not very well known, to well known-ish and back to totally obscure. I'm not going to drone on about their various backgrounds too much, and the works I'm going to post are not going be too long, because I don't want to put people off listening to them.

1. Hans Sommer (1837-1922)

This German composer gave up his job as a mathematician to be a free lance composer at the age of 47. I only found out about him recently and he's great. Like a cross between Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss (one of his best buds). He was taught by, among others, Franz Liszt. His output is mainly vocal - operas and songs and he has completely seduced me with his gorgeous harmonies and lyrical melodies.

This three minute lied is just heavenly ! (Well it is to me) :)

David Pulsford, guest editor, @lesser-known-composers