[natechols]

My experience with Reicha is mostly through his wind quintets, which are all competent, but not especially memorable IMHO. Which is very close to how I feel about Haydn. Reicha is actually more famous among woodwind players for popularizing (maybe originating?) the ensemble than for any of his individual works. Even a lesser work of Beethoven like his wind octet seems like a much higher standard to me. (To be fair, I've made the same criticism in the past of the following 50 years of Romantic-era music.)

There are sadly many composers who might've been more obscure if they hadn't had someone like Bernstein to popularize their works. Nielsen, Martinu, and William Grant Still are three of my favorites whose symphonies deserve to be much more widely played.

[jancsika]

> Which is very close to how I feel about Haydn.

Well, the melody from one of his string quartets was used as a national anthem.

In terms of inventiveness, he did things like writing a menuet where the first half is a mirror of the second half. Also, his "The Joke" string quartet screws around with the audience with multiple false endings, then a final ending that makes it sounds like the music will continue.

Also, listen to the last movement of the "Lark" quartet. It's a extremely fast rondo that chugs along, unexpectedly turns into a 4-part fugue for about 45 seconds then switches back into the rondo themes as quickly as it began.

[pervycreeper]

> Which is very close to how I feel about Haydn.

Glossed over that part when I first read the comment! It was Haydn who essentially created "The Classical Style", which is perhaps the most perfect mode of musical discourse that humanity has yet encountered. His importance is under-stated in the statement that he is "the Shakespeare of Music". That is all quite apart from the innumerable volumes of individual masterpieces that he created!

[jancsika]

Don't forget that an AI codenamed "Mozart" output some string quartets trained on Haydn's Opus 33, and Haydn then wrote his Op. 76 string quartets which equaled/exceeded the quality of the AI's output.

A real John Henry, that one. :)

[ivancdg]

“I tell you before God, and as an honest man, your son is the greatest composer known to me by person and repute, he has taste and what is more the greatest skill in composition." (said to Leopold Mozart, Mozart's father) ― Joseph Haydn

Also: ". . . scarcely any man can brook comparison with the great Mozart. . . If I could only impress on the soul of every friend of music, and on high personages in particular, how inimitable are Mozart's works, how profound, how musically intelligent, how extraordinarily sensitive! (for this is how I understand them, how I feel them) - why then the nations would vie with each other to possess such a jewel within their frontiers." ― Joseph Haydn

Also, a letter from Mozart to Haydn: "A father, having resolved to send his sons into the great world, finds it advisable to entrust them to the protection and guidance of a highly celebrated man, the more so since this man, by a stroke of luck, is his best friend. - Here, then, celebrated man and my dearest friend, are my six sons. - Truly, they are the fruit of a long and laborious effort, but the hope, strengthened by several of my friends, that this effort would, at least in some small measure, be rewarded, encourages and comforts me that one day, these children may be a source of consolation to me. - You yourself, dearest friend, during your last sojourn in this capital, expressed to me your satisfaction with these works. - This, your approval, encourages me more than anything else, and thus I entrust them to your care, and hope that they are not wholly unworthy of your favor. - Do but receive them kindly, and be their father, guide, and friend! From this moment on I cede to you all my rights over them: I pray you to be indulgent to their mistakes, which a father's partial eye may have overlooked, and despite this, to cloak them in the mantle of your generosity which they value so highly. From the bottom of my heart I am, dearest friend, Your most sincere friend, W. A. Mozart

[ivancdg]

Many of the things we take for granted as Beethovenian inventions (obsessive motivic development, sonata form in symphonies and quartets, abrupt harmonic disruption, fugues in final movmeents) were pioneered by Haydn. I remember being well-versed in Beethoven and being astonished when I played through Haydn's piano works for the first time, how many things Louis had ripped off.

[ivancdg]

The wind quintets are extraordinarily well-written for their instruments, something easy to take for granted today as so many composers followed Reicha's lead.

He was not the very first to write for that ensemble, but the instant popularity of the 24 (actually 25) wind quintets led a lot more people to write for that instrumentation (flute, oboe, clarinet, French or English horn, bassoon).

The blanket statement that Beethoven's octet is a higher standard than anything Reicha wrote for quintet is a little dicey. There's a reason all wind players play Reicha. The works are sophisticated, comfortable and formally pretty quirky, with plenty of memorable moments. That said, if you don't find Haydn memorable then there's not much I can do to argue in his favor, except urge you to listen more of it.

The important point here is that the wind quintets make up a tiny proportion of Reicha's music, and that dozens of hours of music have never been recorded. Much of the music is only available in (messy) original manuscripts in France's National Library in Paris (BnF). Implication: it is hard to make generalizations about Reicha's music because we just don't know it well enough yet. Keep in mind that he composed just as much experimental music as conventional music, drawing conclusions and extrapolating from one opus to the whole output isn't a good idea.

[natechols]

Obviously my statement was extremely subjective - although I am far from the only person holding this opinion. However in my experience the reason all wind players play Reicha is that there's very little competition in the Romantic era. A handful of Danzi quintets (they're okay), a few gems from Klughardt, Foerster, and Taffanel (all of which I think are superior to the Reicha quintets, but they're also at least 50 years newer), and I haven't found much else worth playing so far. If you're a student or amateur, or playing for a relatively unsophisticated audience, of course you're going to end up playing Reicha at some point.

[ternaryoperator]

> which are all competent, but not especially memorable IMHO. Which is very close to how I feel about Haydn.

Interesting, I was just reading Sviatoslav Richter's "notebooks and conversations" in which he says of the classical composers, he liked Haydn the best.

As to memorability, clearly the great string quartets are memorable as well as some of the London symphonies. His sonatas for solo piano (see Richter comment) and his luminous trios for cello, piano, and flute are all greatly memorable pieces too in my opinion. That's a fairly large body of works to have labled as "competent but not especially memorable" IMHO.

p.s. Richter's book is an easy and worthy read--mostly biographical with lots of opinions on many topics, especially modern composers and musicians he played with.

[ivancdg]

I second the recommendation for Richter's book, which is a fascinating look into the mind of a pianist who musicians pretty much unanimously consider to be the greatest of the 20th century:

https://www.amazon.com/Sviatoslav-Richter-Conversations-Brun...

(not an affiliate link)

Haydn's output is huge and varied. It can take time to find the right recordings and pieces to convince you, as sometimes interpretations can be a bit pedestrian. French pianist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet is in the process of recording all of Haydn's Piano Sonatas for British label Chandos Records, and the latest Volume (no. 7) is superb.

https://www.chandos.net/products/reviews/CHAN_10998

[pervycreeper]

The wind quintets were written on commission, for public consumption, rather than being "written for the drawer", as many of the works in this recording series were. Nonetheless, they are still first rate compositions and full to the brim with truly unusual features.

The fact that those innovations are able to go by without being perceived while listening to or even performing them is a testament to Reicha's skill in making unusual ideas "work" musically, despite their strangeness.

Mr. Ilić is, in my view, 100% correct in his assessments regarding the undeservedness of Reicha's relative obscurity.

[ivancdg]

The 2nd paragraph is really the crux of the matter. Whereas Beethoven's music draws attention to its unusual features, Reicha in his memoirs states unequivocally that Haydn and Mozart are the pinnacles of instrumental music, and that it is because of their grace and good taste. So we have opposite positions on what is beautiful, hard to reconcile with our view of music history which is seen through our "Beethoven filter".