Composers on composers

[verismissimo]

I thought it might be interesting to share some thoughts that composers have had on other composers - positive and negative.

As a kick-off, here's Beethoven on Handel: "He is the greatest composer that ever lived. I would uncover my head and kneel before his tomb."

It came back to me listening to Rinaldo. What a masterwork. And how disappointing and silly was last year's Carsen production at Glyndebourne.

[Roehre]

Beethoven on Bach
"He schouldn't be named Brook (Bach) but Sea (Meer)"

CM von Weber on Beethoven (Symphony 7): "The non-plus-ultra of madness"

[Il Grande Inquisitor]

It came back to me listening to Rinaldo. What a masterwork. And how disappointing and silly was last year's Carsen production at Glyndebourne.

I see that Glyndebourne production is on BBC4 next week.


I always have a wry smile to myself when I see Brahms in the same concert programme as Tchaikovsky when one recalls this famed diary entry from the latter: "Played over the music of that scoundrel, Brahms. God, what a talentless bastard!"

Hugo Wolf was also dismissive: "One cymbal clash by Bruckner is worth all the four symphonies of Brahms with the serenades thrown in."

[pastoralguy]

Elgar was quite annoyed at Walton's viola concerto saying that it was incomprehensible that such music could be written for a stringed instrument. My favourite Elgar quote is that in comparing his 2 symphonies with Beethoven's was like a tinker surveying the Forth Bridge.

I believe Elgar liked the Rite of Spring!

[Roehre]

Brahms on Bruckner: "His symphonies are orchestral boa-constrictors"

Brahms meeting Bruckner on the streets of Vienna: "Dear Bruckner. I hear you compose as well??"

[Roehre]

Beethoven on Paër's Léonore (allegedly): "Nice opera. I must compose the music."

[Pabmusic]

...I believe Elgar liked the Rite of Spring!

He certainly owned the Stokowski/Philadelphiia recording, which he cadged off HMV in 1931. He was very good at getting new gramophones and records from them.

Stravinsky also admired Elgar. On the day Elgar died, 23 February 1934, Igor was in Liverpool to give a recital. The news broke while he was at a formal lunch:

"Stravinsky then rose, or rather bounded from, his chair and, speaking rapidly in French, delivered a scintillating and intensely rhetorical, tribute to Elgar...'Our paths went in different directions", he remarked, "but Elgar was a supremely great composer of whom the English should be proud'." [Tierney, The Unknown Country, a life of Igor Stravinsky, Hale, 1977]

[verismissimo]

Dvorak to Tchaikovsky:

"I confess with joy that your opera [Eugene Onegin] made a profound impression on me — the kind of impression I expect to receive from a genuine work of art, and I do not hesitate to tell you that not one of your compositions has given me such pleasure as Onegin. [Back-handed compliment?]

"It is a wonderful creation, full of glowing emotion and poetry, and finely elaborated in all its details; in short, this music is captivating, and penetrates our hearts so deeply that we cannot forget it. Whenever I go to hear it I feel myself transported into another world.　

"I congratulate both you and ourselves upon this work. God grant you may give us many another like it."　

[verismissimo]

"This is a legitimate and valid way of looking at things, I suppose. But it is certainly painful to listen to."

Sibelius's response to hearing a Schoenberg Chamber Symphony.

(How wrong he was!)

[Serial_Apologist]

Saint-Saens' description of Franck's D Minor symphony: "Impotence carried to the point of dogma".

Debussy's recollections to Stravinsky of The Rite of Spring, (words to this effect, I've lost the exact source I'm afraid): "... A beautiful nightmare; you have suceeded in extending the boundaries of the permissible in the empire of sound". However, he described the latter's cantata "Le Roi des Etoiles" as, "getting dangerously close to the side of Schoenberg".

In his dedication of the Symphonies of Wind Instruments to the memory of Debussy, Stravinsky said, "I'm sure he would have been disconcerted at my idiom".

Stravinsky described Messiaen's Turangalila Symphony as: "L'Apres-Midi d'un Super-Faun", adding, "It is as though he were jealous of the sound barrier".

[Serial_Apologist]

Richard Strauss to Hindemith, "And how long did it take you to write it?" Hindemith to Strauss, "About two weeks". Strauss: "I thought as much!".

[rauschwerk]

Warlock on Vaughan Williams after hearing his Pastoral Symphony:-

"You know, I have only one thing to say against this composer's music: some of it is a bit too much like a cow looking over a gate. Nonetheless he is a very great composer and the more I hear the more I admire him."

[rauschwerk]

Britten's first reaction to Shostakovich's first cello concerto had to be non-verbal since the two great composers had no common language. As they sat together in a box at the RFH, Britten bobbed up and down like a schoolboy, even nudging Shostakovich with happiness at the music.

[umslopogaas]

This is a quote from "Wagner, a case history" by Martin van Amerongen (trans. S. Spencer and D. Cakebread):

"And Claude Debussy, who himself was a fervent anti-Wagnerian, after hearing Parsifal, took off his hat to the composer in the presence of a colleague: 'There is', he wrote, 'no longer any question of Wagner's usual nerve-wracking snorting noises. Nowhere does Wagner's music achieve such transparent beauty as in the prelude to the third act of Parsifal. It contains orchestral sonorities without equal, sounds never before heard, noble and powerful. It is one of the finest monuments in sound ever to have been raised to the everlasting glory of music.' "

That's quite a tribute, coming from one who apparently - and not just in the above quote - opposed all things Wagnerian with a great passion.

[EdgeleyRob]

I have played over the music of that scoundrel Brahms. What a giftless bastard!
-- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, 1886