Klarinet Archive - Posting 000206.txt from 1996/11

From: R Tennenbaum <rtenn@-----.COM>
Subj: Re: Spohr and his concerti
Date: Sat, 9 Nov 1996 16:08:48 -0500

Another nice post, Dan.

> whenever this happens to any composer (Meyerbeer
>is another example as is Salieri), the later public as well as the
>professional players simply assume that s/he was a flash in the pan
>and that, if s/he had anything of substance then s/he would not have
>lost it, so why bother to resurrect the dead.

I have heard it said that if it were not for Wagner, Meyerbeer woul d
have been considered *the* great opera composer of the nineteenth
century.

When I got curious about Spohr recently, I checked a nice old
Encyclopedia Britannica (c. 1943) that I keep around. I enjoyed the
last line of his biographical essay (unfortunately there is no
indication who wrote it, although I know Tovey did some of the
musical entries for this edition):

"He was, indeed, keenly interested in experiments, notwithstanding
his attachment to classical form; and the care with which he produced
Wagner's Fliegender Hollander and Tannhauser at Cassel in 1842 and
1853, in spite of the elector's opposition, shows that his failure to
understand Beethoven lay deeper than pedantry."

His dates are 1784-1859 (!)

Rafe T.