The Great Composer Quiz – September 9, 2020
This time, it’s a Quiz about revival. This Great Composer’s music was largely forgotten or dismissed for many decades until the 1930s, when a small number of artists helped to revive it. Among those artists were Arturo Toscanini, Alfredo Casella and Ezra Pound. In fact, Pound was the first serious writer to bring attention to our Great Composer’s music. Pound was a fan of early music in general, but he found this Great Composer’s work especially compelling. He helped a scholar in Turin obtain microfilm of old manuscripts from Dresden. And in a letter to The Musical Times, Ezra Pound wrote this: [M]y minimum claim is that one can’t be certain that [he] is merely another composer like 60 others until one has at least heard or read through the 309 [u]nedited concerti lying in Turin.” So who was this man being pounded back into view, this Great Composer?