Kevin Sutton wrote:

>Great music like Bach will survive.  It may fall into occasional
>disuse, but it is of sufficient artistic merit to come back and hold
>its own.  I don't think that you can say this of Salieri, Thalberg,
>MacDowell, Kuhlau and many others of the second string ilk.  (Now
>I await the tirades from fans of the above mentioned.)

No tirades from me.  Although there are a mess load of second string
composers I like very much (Kuhlau included), I do not consider them great
composers.  I like to think I know the difference.  Even though I don't
appreciate Liszt and Tchaikovsky, I'm well aware that they were no second
stringers.  The loss of a great composer's music would have so much more
impact on me than the second stringer's.

Since I have the time, here's my current list of favorite second stringers;
some of them might be third string:

Zelenka - Buxtehude - Planicky - Krommer - Kuhlau - Spohr - JPE Hartmann -
Reicha - Lortzing - Hamerik - Marek - Pfitzner - Schmidt -Schillings -
Zemlinsky - Sauget - Gade - Onslow - Borresen - Hill - Hummel - Dotzauer.

There's often a lack of consistency of excellence with these composers, but
when they're "on", they are well worth the time and money.

Don Satz
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