Fave B-tier composers

he’s definitely a household name and A tier in britain by that standard but aside from a couple of tunes he’s better known for his moustache than his music

Great thread!

Assuming, for convenience sake, that A Tier is just the conventionally-agreed Immortals Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Orff and Domenico Zipoli, some of my B-tier faves would be:

Monteverdi, Gesualdo, W Byrd, Janacek, Othmar Schoek, Pavel Haas, Poulenc, Mahler, Scriabin, Shosty, Berlioz, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Berg, Schoenberg, Telemann, Handel, oh god so many

Re: Elgar, I had the pleasure of watching a 70s BBC TV movie a couple of weeks ago called "Penda's Fen", and Elgar's music features prominently, and the composer himself appears to the protagonist in a dream. The TV movie was wildly good, I had medium expectations but it's one of the best things I've seen recently

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penda%27s_Fen

After the fact, I read a bunch of Enigma theories and found all of them extremely unsatisfying

Oh, of course Penda's Fen has its fans around here :)

Penda's Fen

kodaly

Oh I’ve got one: Malcolm Arnold

Buxtehude recommendations:

Membra Jesu Nostri, a gorgeous vocal work. René Jacobs’ recording is great.

Capricciosa variations for harpsichord

He’s best known for his organ works and there is much good stuff to be discovered there.

Koechlin

Les Heures Persanes for piano. There’s also an orchestrated version

Les chants du nectaire. A three-hour work for solo flute.

He’s a composer worth exploring… an eccentric of diverse interests and influences.

can someone explain to a dummy (not me, of course) what the "s" in s-tier stands for?

I'm not sure except that I remember when I played Devil May Cry on the PS2 some 20 years ago, the highest ranking you could get was S (A was second to S), and I started noticing that S-tier (and SS-tier, SSS-tier) was a specific way of suggesting super-superlativity on usually Japanese-developed shooting and dancing games

it's apparently derived from some japanese academic grading systems and made its way into english via video games

some of my favorite Buxtehude:

Sonata in G Minor, BuxWV 261
Toccata in G Major, BuxWV 165
Prelude in E Minor, BuxWV 143
Chaconne in C Minor, BuxWV 159

My favorite B-tier composers, choral edition

Howells (Requiem)
Harris (Faire is the Heaven)
Martin (Mass for double choir)
Tavener (Song for Athene, The Lamb)
Thompson (Alleluia, The Best of Rooms)
Durufle (Ubi caritas)
Josquin (Deploration sur la mort d’Ockeghem)
Milhaud (Psalm 121)
Ockeghem (Missa “Mi-Mi”, particularly the Agnus Dei)

milhaud is great and so his les six compadre francis poulenc

ah shit I meant to include Poulenc

btw, my Spotify Release Radar playlist threw this movement from a symphony by Louise Ferranc; I had never heard of her but I like this a lot

https://open.spotify.com/track/70WG7tXKMQGcyLLG8PVVJ3?si=b39342cfb99b48ff

Awesome DJP I can’t wait to listen to all this tonight

Koechlin

Les Heures Persanes for piano. There’s also an orchestrated version

Les chants du nectaire. A three-hour work for solo flute.

He’s a composer worth exploring… an eccentric of diverse interests and influences.

Co-sign both versions of Les Heures Persanes

Also unmissable: Offrandre Musicale sur le Nom de BACH; the Law of the Jungle and Spring Running movements of The Jungle Book, Paysages et Marines (solo piano or chamber versions) and the Seven Stars Symphony (each movement dedicated to a different silent film star)

some of my favorite Buxtehude:

Sonata in G Minor, BuxWV 261
Toccata in G Major, BuxWV 165
Prelude in E Minor, BuxWV 143
Chaconne in C Minor, BuxWV 159

Thanks for this, was listening to different versions of each this orning. It's amazing how differently organists interpret the keyboard works. 143 was subdued and almost melancholy in the Bryndorf version, but brassy and assertive when played by Koopman. Koopman's liner notes specifically state there is little information how Buxtehude would have played his own works "so do what feels right for you."

I'm a little on the fence about Koopman's playing/interpretation anyway, but my feelings for him are complicated by him complaining in an interview about electric power windmills.