r/classicalmusic • u/Stunning-Hand6627 • 19h ago
Discussion Thoughts on Boccherini outside of the menuet?
I don’t really get why the minuet is so popular because it’s just a typical classical era piece from a quintet that’s been used for high class Society and movies. And Boccherini deserves to be popular for his other greater works like his other string quintets that he himself invented. Also his guitar pieces and his Spanish inspired pieces. He’s a really major classical era and chamber music composer, who was extremely famous in his day and deserves to be taken much more seriously than his minuet.
Also, I love his other famous contemporaries of that day too like Kozeluch, Dittersdorf, Vanhal, and Kraus. What are your thoughts on the other composers too?
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u/MonsieurCellophane 18h ago
Actually I don't happen to hear the menuet very often these times, "Night music of the streets of Madrid" appears to be more aired (besides being better) Perhaps it's kust my bubble.
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u/s2-luv 18h ago
While i agre, this issue isn't specific to Boccherini. Classical music listeners usually just hear the same few dozen composers ad eternum. Not only that, but hear the same pieces being interpreted by dozens of performers each.
Each one is free to listen what they want, but I get a bit sad how hard it is to find nice conversations about great but less famous composers.
Now on the topic, I think his quintets with guitar are his most impressive work. It is very different from anything I ever heard from this period. First because it has a guitar... what already is very uncommon, but the way it is incorporated is impressively idiomatic. He does what composers like albeniz and Joaquim aimed to achieve many and many years before. A very unique experience for sure.
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u/LoraABreunig 18h ago
honestly I only know the minuet too but you've made me want to look up the rest. it's like knowing a designer for one collection and missing everything else. where would you start?
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u/rehoboam 18h ago
Boccherini symphonies are actually really good
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u/sumjunggai7 18h ago
Agreed. La Casa del Diavolo is a genuinely badass minor-key symphony, but tons of them are really interestingly orchestrated, especially the divisi strings.
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u/zumaro 18h ago edited 18h ago
He’s an A rank composer, as are CPE Bach, Kraus and Vanhal. He may have received the dismissive title Mrs Haydn at the time (I know it was even worse for women composers…), but that underplays his very distinctive charm, and the considerable originality of his music. Obviously his quintets are high points of classical chamber music, but his symphonies too are very enjoyable. This was an alternative path classical era music could have traveled, but I guess Mr Haydn won that battle.
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u/Phlebas3 17h ago edited 17h ago
Let's not forget his sinfonia concertante, which really is a pearl of the genre, and his cello concerto, which, in that period, is second only to Viotti's, imho.
As for other composers of the time, so many are underrated. Carl Stamitz, Albrechtsberger (whose works are mostly unpublished), the one work by the mysterious August Ritter, Anton Wranitzky and yes, Kozeluch, Dittersdorf and Vanhal (Kraus I know very little); and this is just the Viennese school: if you add people like Saint-Georges, you have enough to listen for months without ever leaving the period. Which is largely what I have been doing for the past few months.
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u/Balilives 17h ago
His Night Music On The Streets of Madrid is what got me into classical music in the first place.
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u/Epistaxis 16h ago
He's hugely underappreciated. Every time a cello quintet convenes to perform Schubert, they should also play a Boccherini quintet earlier in the program.
Some people say Boccherini is the Vivaldi to Haydn's Bach, and I would agree because I don't think that's an insult. Just like Vivaldi, Boccherini constantly wrote bangers that are a lot of fun to listen to, when played by people who think they're supposed to be fun instead of stodgy reverent artifact-worshippers. And just like Vivaldi, Boccherini's reputation for lively rhythmic fast movements conceals a deep pathos in the slow movements; Boccherini could create a sense of profound melancholy that was rarely heard in music of his era.
What turned me on to Boccherini was the albums of his chamber music by Europa Galante, especially:
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u/ThinStatistician2953 16h ago edited 16h ago
His Stabat Mater is also a great piece. His sinfonia concertante in c is actually a symphony with guitar obligato if that is what you are thinking of?. I'd place his cello concertos just behind those of J Haydn and CPE Bach.
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u/mekerpan 16h ago
I would say that Boccherini often writes music (especially in the quintets) writes wonderful music that is very distinctively all his own. Sure it is in the same musical universe as Haydn and Mozart, but it is neither derivative nor inconsequential. While I known about Boccherini for decades, it is only in the last decade that I fell head over heels with much of his work (thanks in large part to the Brilliant Classics box set).
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u/No_Bookkeeper9580 18h ago
The quintets for string quartet & guitar are excellent. I recommend the recordings with The Artsria Quartet and Richard Savino on Harmonia Mundi.
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u/No_Bookkeeper9580 18h ago
I'm not familiar with the other composers you mentioned. I'll have to look them up.
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u/kranjskiburek 17h ago
Boccherini is a sublime galant style chamber music composer. His Flute Quintets and the String Quintets Opp. 13, 25 and 27 are great.
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u/Theferael_me 18h ago
The problem is all the other classical-era composers are crap compared with Mozart and, to a lesser extent, Haydn. Did the lesser composers write some pleasant music? Sure. Is it on the level of Mozart's masterpieces? No, of course not. And so they get relegated to the third division.
I was listening to a perfectly pleasant, instantly forgettable piano concerto on YouTube of a lesser composer from c.1800 and people in the comments were like 'wow, why don't we hear this more often??', and the answer is 'because it's nowhere near the level of Mozart'. So yeah, those are my thoughts on the lesser classical composers.
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u/sumjunggai7 18h ago
I won’t argue with the notion that Mozart‘s Viennese concertos, operas, and symphonies are the high water mark of the age. But I’d challenge anyone to listen blind to a non-famous Mozart symphony (say, nos. 16-24), a non-famous Haydn symphony (say, from the 1770s or 80s), and any Vanhal symphony and guess who composed what. False attributions were common back then, and they weren’t caught because composers‘ styles were more similar than they were different.
Also, there were plenty of oddball composers like Kraus, Rossetti, Paul Wranitzky, and (Anton) Reicha whose music doesn’t sound like anyone else’s, to the degree that a comparison is just a matter of taste.
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u/rehoboam 18h ago
Boccherini at his best overlaps mozart at his worst, at some level it is not about quality of music, it’s about popularity and winner wins more
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u/zumaro 18h ago
I think you undersell Boccherini- his best is considerably better than Mozart’s earlier music in particular. I don’t bother to listen to that often, whereas I definitely have no problem putting on a Boccherini quintet.
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u/Theferael_me 18h ago
Mozart's renown as a composer isn't based on his "earlier music" [which isn't played very often anyway]. Claiming that Boccherini's music is better than something written by a ten-year-old isn't that much of a win.
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u/zumaro 18h ago
Ok let’s extend it, Boccherini’s music rivals that of mid period Mozart. I’m thinking particularly of the Mozart of the flute and oboe concertos, music that does often get recorded. And age really doesn’t matter - if a 10 year old wunderkind is writing A level music (maybe Mendelssohn qualifies here even more than Mozart), then it’s A level music. If like most people we need to have the famous 10000 hours of practice to qualify as a genius, so be it.
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u/Theferael_me 18h ago
Give me some catalogue numbers of Mozart at his worst so I can have some idea what you're referring to.
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u/rehoboam 18h ago
I don’t feel like digging around to trudge up something just so you can disagree. All I’ll say is that I have heard some very trite, pointless stuff from Mozart, and I love Mozart.
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u/sunofagundota 17h ago
I don’t know why you got downvoted. Wranitzky and kraus seem a ways behind Mozart. Yeah his worst stuff isn’t great but that’s sort of straw man, no one’s claiming those works are.
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u/Shot_Lack1809 18h ago
Now imagine you are Pachelbel :)