Composer Rivalries?

[monafam]

This topic (came to my mind after reading the Rott thread) may work on the unsung level, particularly if we have composers who were unsung due to rivalries....

I am always fascinated by the interrelationships between composers.  In particular, rivalries or other issues are especially interesting to me.   I read a book about Beethoven and there was some discussion about his relationship with Haydn -- possibly the most compelling section from my standpoint.   

Are there good stories about rival composers?  I'd love to hear about them, or any other stories about the interrelationships with composers.

[Alan Howe]

Didn't Tchaikovsky call Brahms 'that giftless bastard'? Oops, sorry - they're hardly unsung!

[Peter1953]

Why do music historians always speak of composers who were allowed to be part of Brahms's circle of friends in Vienna? Why not say that Brahms was a member of Rufinatscha's circle of friends? 

What an enormous influence The Master must have had on fellow composers. He could make them or break them.

Nevertheless, I love every note of the very sung Brahms.

[Alan Howe]

I too love Brahms.

The problem is that everything composed in the German-speaking world (and beyond) in the final four decades of the 19th century is compared with Brahms' music. In the case of some composers, this is downright silly - e.g. Raff and Draeseke. Neither breathes remotely the same air as Brahms.

In the case of others, e.g. Gernsheim, the comparison, whilst more apt, has the effect of totally obscuring their real qualities. Try Gernsheim's two Piano Quintets, for example, and ask yourself whether they are in any way inferior to that of Brahms...

Sorry, this is rather off-topic!

[Mark Thomas]

"Didn't Tchaikovsky call Brahms 'that giftless bastard'?"

Alan, you should have completed the quotation, which goes: "Why, compared to him, Raff is a genius!"

[Alan Howe]

Oops - thanks for that, Mark.

If I didn't love Brahms so much I'd almost risk a 'hear, hear!!'

[Mark Thomas]

Oh, I love Brahms too. Tchaikovsky was wrong, needless to say. Well, at least on one count 

[Alan Howe]

Quite. Raff was a genius. As was Brahms. And Tchaikovsky.

I believe that Brahms regarded Draeseke as his most formidable rival, but it would be great to nail down an actual quotation...

[febnyc]

Funny - the most comprehensive biography of Brahms which I've encountered mentions nothing about Draeseke.  Nada.  The term "rivals" could most accurately apply to Liszt - about whom Brahms (and his friend Joachim) wrote a "manifesto" against the so-called "New German School" which they dubbed as "Music of the Future."  The manifesto was aimed, mainly, at Liszt and his propaganda machine which attempted to  split with the past and keep the living composer in the forefront.  Brahms and Joachim also had their sights on Wagner, but to a lesser degree, when Wagner declared that Bach, Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven's music had been "superseded" by the new music.

Interestingly the two also mentioned Raff,  as a "petit-Liszt," particularly for his prize-winning "To My Fatherland."  In the 1860s Raff was one of the foremost German symphonists and represented a future that Brahms/Joachim tried to obstruct.  Nevertheless, Brahms expressed a fondness for Raff's music.

The manifesto, as it turned out, was a failure. Although the music of the past remained the staple of the concert hall, it also served as the foundation of the future. Notwithstanding the support of such composers as Gade, Bargiel, Clara Schumann and others - the new romanticists, the abstractionists, eventually won out.

For Wagner, the historic meaning of Beethoven was that he paved the way for Wagner.  This sort of battle over the hearts and minds of music-makers was a true mid-nineteenth century rivalry which included many composers on both sides of the issue.

But I've never seen Draeseke mentioned specifically - except as a "member" of the New German School.  I doubt he would qualify as Brahms' "most formidable" rival since Liszt and Wagner were around at the time, and were the all-stars in the firmament of the future-is-now claque.

[febnyc]

In the case of others, e.g. Gernsheim, the comparison, whilst more apt, has the effect of totally obscuring their real qualities. Try Gernsheim's two Piano Quintets, for example, and ask yourself whether they are in any way inferior to that of Brahms...

Sorry, this is rather off-topic!

Or, for that matter, most of the music of von Herzogenberg.  He (and his wife, especially) had a very close relationship with Brahms, of course, and von H's style is echt-Brahmsian.

[Alan Howe]

My understanding from the material I have encountered on Draeseke is that Brahms regarded Draeseke as his foremost symphonic rival, along with Bruckner. In this sense Liszt and Wagner weren't rivals at all, but the advocates of a completely different musical aesthetic in which the symphony had been replaced by the symphonic poem or opera ('music-drama'). By contrast, Draeseke, who was also Brahms' almost exact contemporary, was attempting to grapple with the problem of the symphony (and other classical forms, such as concerto and chamber music) in the light of the advances of the 'music of the future'. In this respect, as with Bruckner, he represented a real alternative to Brahms' more conservative classicism.

The three great Germano-Austrian symphonic statements of the 1880s are Brahms 4 (1884-5), Bruckner 8 (1884-7, rev.1889-90) and Draeseke 3 (1886). Their contrasting solutions to the symphonic problem are utterly fasinating.

Just a footnote: it is very tricky to fill out the wider context in which Brahms' development as a symphonist took place. In particular, very little attention has been paid to the influence of, for example, Albert Dietrich or Johann Rufinatscha, both of whose symphonies pre-date Brahms' 1st and both of whom were also part of his circle. Until this overall context is filled out by future musicology, the picture presented to the public of Brahms is bound to remain inadequate at best and downright skewed at worst. Fortunately, such musicological research is currently being undertaken here in the UK and one awaits the results with keen anticipation...

[John H White]

Certainly, in the field of opera one of the best known composer rivalries has to be between Mozart and Salieri. Ironically, Mozart's son, Franz Xaver Mozart had Salieri as one of his teachers. In the early 19th Century there must certainly have been some rivalry between pianist composers such as Ignaz Moschelles and John Field.

[JimL]

Just a footnote: it is very tricky to fill out the wider context in which Brahms' development as a symphonist took place. In particular, very little attention has been paid to the influence of, for example, Albert Dietrich or Johann Rufinatscha, both of whose symphonies pre-date Brahms' 1st and both of whom were also part of his circle. Until this overall context is filled out by future musicology, the picture presented to the public of Brahms is bound to remain inadequate at best and downright skewed at worst. Fortunately, such musicological research is currently being undertaken here in the UK and one awaits the results with keen anticipation...

As far as Rufinatscha is concerned, maybe the 5th Symphony can be considered as having influenced Brahms, but as far as the 6th is concerned, unless Brahms had a good look at the manuscript (which may not actually be beyond the realm of possibility), I would say that unfortunately, Rufinatscha's most substantial and grand symphonic utterance had no influence on Brahms whatsoever.

[Alan Howe]

The proposition put forward by the musicologists associated with the Institut für Tiroler Musikforschung basically has two thrusts with regard to Rufinatscha's influence:
1. That he was part of Brahms' circle in Vienna.
2. That, stylistically speaking, he was responsible for the introduction of a particular tone of high solemnity which was taken up in different ways by different composers.

[Mark Thomas]

Surely Brahms' main specific influences were his Hamburg teacher Marxen and his idol Schumann together with Beethoven in the general way that he influenced most of Brahms' contemporaries? In the field of orchestral music it is very interesting to speculate whether Julius Otto Grimm's magnificent and large scale D minor Symphony of the late 1850s had an influence. Grimm was a good friend of Brahms and shared his Schumann-influenced aesthetic. Like that of Albert Dietrich (another Schumann acolyte), although Grimm's music recalls Brahms to our modern ears, it is in fact a quite independent and parallel result of Schumann's influence. I guess that Brahms' friend Joachim's orchestral writing might have had some influence on him too.

I'd be very surprised if Rufinatscha influenced Brahms at all. He seems to have been unsung even in his own lifetime.