> if Beethoven's music had been lost or misplaced, would we immediately recognize it as "genius" if someone made a first recording in 2018
I'm not qualified to comment on the genius of any composer, but knowing my background, I would say he would have become immensely popular. Growing up, people around me knew nothing about western classical music, not even enough to name a few famous composers. I found cassette tapes in Bangalore's music shops and tried them out randomly. Beethoven quickly became one of my favorites and the factors could not have been either that I was over-exposed to his music through general culture while growing up or that his name was famous around here, biasing me in his favour.
I like to think of good composers as one of two kinds: (1) those who impress novices to the tradition of this kind of music (western classical, in this case) and (2) those who impress long-term aficionados. Based on my own tastes, examples of the first kind would be Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Chopin, Mozart, etc. and examples of the second kind would be Bach, Mahler, Schoenberg, etc. Of course, these categories are fuzzy, and I'm sure there are composers who would qualify for both categories. However, I think a valid approach to answering your question would be to survey what sort of an impression a composer makes on novices to the genre.
Thank you for making recordings of Reicha's works! I'm not a novice to the genre anymore, but it's nice to have new compositions from the classical period to listen to.
This is an interesting comment, on multiple levels.
If there is one factor on which Beethoven's reputation rests, it is his claim to being the "universal" composer, whose music speaks to all men and women. Your story seems to confirm this assertion.
From reading music history we know that different music from the past makes an impact depending on current taste and fashions. As an example, the whole paradigm of "historically informed performance practice" was, as musicologist Richard Taruskin devastatingly argued [1], not a return to "authenticity" at all but a completely modern(ist) phenomenon, based on contemporary tastes and opinions.
As I live in France, I can tell you that Beethoven is nowhere near as popular or appreciated here as, say, Mozart or Chopin. Not even close. I'm speaking about both seasoned concert attendees and novices. His music's frequent accents, forcefulness, and occasional brutality is looked poorly upon. So maybe extrapolating your experience to others is dangerous. After all, it's a small sample size :)
I agree that there seem to be composers (or, more accurately, certain works) that appeal to novices, and others which appeal to more experienced listeners or practitioners. Reicha's works seem to often fit into the second category, as his works are generally "learned" and sophisticated. Therefore the subtlety is not always picked up upon by listeners who don't have the experience and/or knowledge to realize what expectations he is thwarting. To put it more bluntly, they don't really hear what's going on, and therefore underestimate the music's complexity. It's like a musical Dunning-Kruger Effect.
The larger point, perhaps, is that your idea of a typical "novice" who would serve as a litmus test for universal music is in fact an intellectual construct which has no corresponding reality in the real world. Because we are all born into a world, and a culture, and therefore our preferences are immediately influenced.
Caveat: I don't want to make the specious claim that if we all grew up listening to Schönberg we would hum his music on the way to school, that's BS. But with experience I've come to believe that assuming Beethoven's place is in our culture is immutable is probably unrealistic. In 100 years it might be someone else...
I'm not qualified to comment on the genius of any composer, but knowing my background, I would say he would have become immensely popular. Growing up, people around me knew nothing about western classical music, not even enough to name a few famous composers. I found cassette tapes in Bangalore's music shops and tried them out randomly. Beethoven quickly became one of my favorites and the factors could not have been either that I was over-exposed to his music through general culture while growing up or that his name was famous around here, biasing me in his favour.
I like to think of good composers as one of two kinds: (1) those who impress novices to the tradition of this kind of music (western classical, in this case) and (2) those who impress long-term aficionados. Based on my own tastes, examples of the first kind would be Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Chopin, Mozart, etc. and examples of the second kind would be Bach, Mahler, Schoenberg, etc. Of course, these categories are fuzzy, and I'm sure there are composers who would qualify for both categories. However, I think a valid approach to answering your question would be to survey what sort of an impression a composer makes on novices to the genre.
Thank you for making recordings of Reicha's works! I'm not a novice to the genre anymore, but it's nice to have new compositions from the classical period to listen to.