Another Elgar 'discovery' - it will never end ...

Back in December I wrote - Another Elgar 'discovery' - will it never end?

Fellow blogger Jessica Duchen writing in yesterday's Independent would have us believe not.

Nobody seems to have answered my question - Why is classical music so obsessed by 'realisations', 'elaborations' and 'reconstructions' when they are derided elsewhere?

Image credit - Soundandvision.com. Image owners - if you do not want your picture used in this article please contact me and it will be removed. Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
If you enjoyed this post take An Overgrown Path to Elgar's other enigma

Comments

Anonymous said…
Why is classical music so obsessed by 'realisations', 'elaborations' and 'reconstructions' when they are derided elsewhere?

Hmmm...no answer to that question, but I do know that there's a few that I consider invaluable:

Lulu: Berg completed the opera in short score and Cehra just had to do some orchestrating and fill in some obvious harmonies. The 3 act opera is a blazing masterpiece, one of the greatest operas ever written. If Cehra (or someone else) hadn't done the work, Berg's amazing opera would be a torso.

Doktor Faust: the two endings composed by Jarnach and Beaumont (I like the Jarnach better though Beaumont's is closer to what Busoni wanted) allow this fascinating opera to be performed. "I, Faust! Eternal will!"

On the other hand, that guy taking a jumble of that nutter Scriabin's sketches and cranking out 3 CD's of an alleged Mysterium, well, that's harder to defend. :-)
6:38 pm
Pliable said…
I'm totally with you Henry, and would add Franz Xaver Sussmayr's completion of the Mozart Requiem, KV 626, to your list.

And imho your description in the last paragraph is pretty close to describing some of the Elgar 'reconstructions'.
6:45 pm
Anonymous said…
What I found sad about the Elgar reconstructions and the various attempts at a "Mahler 10th" is that the beg more questions than provide answers. Isn't the first movement of the Mahler complete in Mahler's hand? It's amazing music, a total way forward for extended tonality. But the rest....*sigh*
3:57 am
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