Lesser-known?

It's all good and well to program lesser-known works and/or lesser-known composers, but the phrase "lesser-known" does a lot of heavy lifting.  It's important to put context around WHY something or someone are lesser-known.  Next time you come across that phrase, which of the following things does it mean?

1) someone who didn't have the means/connections of their peers

2) someone who wasn't white/male

3) someone who was awesome but existed at the same time as someone else who was more shiny

4) a work that was cool but not quite as cool as something else

5) a work by someone in groups 1-3

6) a work that kinda sucked and the composer probably wished it wasn't out in the wild

7) a work that had "tricky" instrumentation

8) a work for a particular occasion

9) a work that was too technically demanding to be worth the effort

10) a work that only the composer could love

11) something/someone outside of the western classical music tradition

Mozart Requiem

So let's talk about Mozart's Requiem!  At the time of his death, the Lacrymosa was unfinished and there was no Sanctus, Benedictus, Agnus Dei, or Communion.  Curious about how it was finished (and how many people have attempted to complete it)?  Wikipedia has a great synopsis, and IMSLP has versions of Mozart's fragments without any editorial additions.

Performance Practice is modern too!

Performance Practice isn’t just about Early Music! While watching Disney’s original “Fantasia” this weekend, the narration before the Nutcracker Suite mentioned that “hardly anyone plays this these days”. Some quick research revealed that the holiday tradition of ballet companies putting on a production of Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker only dates back to the 1960s (and “Fantasia” was released in 1940). How many other things that have “always been done this way” have a surprisingly short definitions of “always”?