There’s no shortage of debate on who are the most underrated and overrated composers of classical music. Here’s the Frederick Symphony Orchestra’s countdown of composers who deserve more recognition:

• Antonio Salieri: Because of Milos Forman’s film Amadeus, most people associate Salieri as the man who killed Mozart. However, this Italian composer was responsible for more than a fictional murder. He was a staple in the opera scene of Vienna, Italy, composing Armida, La fiera di Venezia, La scuola de’ gelosi, Der Rauchfangkehrer, and Les Danaïdes.

• Arthur Sullivan: One half of Gilbert & Sullivan, Sullivan was the composer to W.S. Gilbert’s librettist. Their partnership was wildly successful, but Sullivan’s solo career hardly dented the world classical music. His serious hymn tunes should’ve put him on the map, but the pair’s operas, including Thespis, Trial By Jury, and The Pirates Of Penzance, made the mark.

• Erich Korngold: As one of movie music’s pioneers, Korngold won an Academy Award in the 1930s for Best Original Score for Anthony Adverse. He also composed the scores for A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Captain Blood, The Adventures of Robin Hood, Juarez, The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, and The Sea Hawk.

  Thankfully, Scottish violinist Nicola Benedetti and André Previn, composer for My Fair Lady and Gigi, have been champions of this neglected trailblazer.

• Gerald Finzi: According to Classic FM, Finzi was “far more than just the composer of that eternal clarinet exam stalwart the Five Bagatelles.” Hailed as “ a spectacular vocal writer, his epic Dies Natalis for soprano or tenor and string orchestra is a superb example of what he was truly capable of.”

• Giacomo Meyerbeer: Today, Meyerbeer seems to be in competition with 19th Century opera giants like Giuseppe Verdi and Richard Wagner, but he was the most successful stage composer of this time. With his 1831 opera Robert le diable and its successors, he gave the genre of grand opera “decisive character” by merging German orchestra style with Italian vocal tradition.

  However, his post-partum popularity halted due to Wagner’s anti-Semitic essay Jewishness in Opera. The essay included scathing accounts of Meyerbeer’s work and revealed Wagner’s vitriolic campaign to steamroller his beliefs into popular culture.

• Jan Dismas Zelenka: Unlike other composers who fell out of fashion, this Baroque-era Czech lost his modern audience to warfare. It’s said that a stack of his work was lost when Dresden, Germany, was bombed during World War II.

  Thankfully, other works were unearthed, leaving a clear picture that Zelenka “was a remarkably adventurous composer for his day, experimenting with progressive harmonies and earning plaudits from the likes of J.S. Bach,” according to Classic FM.

• Jean Philippe Rameau: According to CMUSE, “the 18th Century French composer is best known as a music theoretician who played a significant role in developing some crucial modern concepts, and as a composer at the court of Louis XV [of France].”

  Although he wrote few works prior to 50 years old, his career took a successful turn around 1733. He continued writing until his death in 1764; however, many of his works were rediscovered during the 20th Century.

• Karlheinz Stockhausen: The first performance of Gesang der Jünglinge in 1956 marked the first time loudspeakers were in a classical music concert hall. Because Stockhausen produced sounds purely electronically and spent time studying the impact of space on sound production, his willingness to experiment made him “one of the few, true musical pioneers,” according to Robert Worby, a London-based composer and broadcaster.

• Malcolm Arnold: Only a handful of Arnold works are left in regular performance repertoire, despite the fact that this genius wrote hundreds of works across various genres, including more than 100 film scores. His work is known as eccentric and idiosyncratic, due in part to suicide attempts, alcoholism, and failed marriages.

• Ottorino Respighi: Respighi used gramophone technology in his orchestral piece The Pines of Rome, which you can hear in one of next season’s concerts. However, many called him “that composer who put bird sounds in his pieces.”

  This one-hit wonder was adventurous in many of his works after Brazilian travels and a passion for early Italian music gave him a completely unique sound.

And there you have it. The FSO’s given you a few of our most underrated classical musicians. Stay tuned for more fun facts and concert information by subscribing to our blog: