I have just bought a Thorofon CD which includes August Pott's VC and Hans von Bülow's tone poem, Des Sängers Fluch (=The Singer's Curse - rather a nice piece along quasi-Lisztian lines). About four and a half minutes into the von Bülow comes a cello solo which begins identically to the one at the beginning of the slow movement of Schmidt 4. Has anyone else ever noticed this?
Nope, but as a Schmidt fanatic I will certainly check this out. I don't know the von Bulow so will have to get it. Reports about Schmidt say that he had a phenomenol and all-encompassing musical memory. Maybe he heard it once, or saw the score, and subconciously borrowed it. Or, more likely, there are only so many notes in the scale, and a finite number of ways to arrange them. Sometimes this just has to happen. On the other hand, the opening theme of Schmidt's 1st is identical to Strauss's Don Juan...
The likeness is very obvious...
Some real similarity there. I don't know if it is intentional or just coincidence. But even if it was intentional, it is very common to find passages in one composer's work that is drawn from or references a composition by another composer, quite intentionally, as an homage -- although I don't know that this was such a case.
It would be interesting to know the performing history of von Bülow's tone poem. If it was reasonably frequently played, the theme in question may simply have entered Schmidt's consciousness without his knowing. On the other hand...
Quote from: Alan Howe on Saturday 30 October 2010, 17:53
It would be interesting to know the performing history of von Bülow's tone poem. If it was reasonably frequently played, the theme in question may simply have entered Schmidt's consciousness without his knowing. On the other hand...
Will look into that a bit. It was written and premiered in 1863, for starters, and I believe he revived it in 1884 (my German is poor- I'm trying to interpret this passage (http://books.google.com/books?id=Rf43AAAAMAAJ&pg=PA95). Schmidt could already have heard that as a 10-year-old, if in the right place at the right time...) but will look further...
(edit: Leipzig, 11 March 1884, he conducted either his own or Schumann's Ballad of this name- can't tell. http://books.google.com/books?id=3hsWAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA123 (http://books.google.com/books?id=3hsWAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA123). Unfortunately, I believe Schmidt was in Hungary until his teens, and then in Vienna? Does anyone have a copy of Truscott's book which has a translation of Schmidt's autobiographical notes? That might help here.)
Eric
Today I at long last got a copy of the von Bulow under discussion. Nothing thrilling, not a first-rate composer. Then you hear the solo cellist, and I'll be danged -- those five notes, exactly the same relative pitches, same rhythm, same instrument as the Schmidt. Uncanny, unsettling, and each time the theme (or 5 note motif) reappears you just know it's going to break into the Schmidt. Weird, to say the least. Thanks for bringing this up. I wonder if anyone has ever done a chart of crossreferences from composer to composer?
I think Schmidt played the piece in the Vienna Philharmonic, where he was principal cello for a time.
Now that is interesting...