# Negative Influences



## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

They are various cases of composers' influences on other composers in history. 
But are there any that can be thought (depending on perspective) as "negative"?

For example, 
"_At the beginning of the nineteenth century, before Berlioz's time, some influential critics - for instance, Julien-Louis Geoffroy - rejected Mozart as a foreigner, considering his music 'scholastic', stressing his use of harmony over melody, and the dominance of the orchestra over singing in the operas - all these were considered negative features of 'Germanic' music."_ 
(from "Mozartian Undercurrents in Berlioz: Appreciation, Resistance and Unconscious Appropriation" by Benjamin Perl)


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

I can’t help think that it’s a shame that the Versailles style became so hegemonic in France - especially in instrumental music. If there’s a composer who’s responsible, it’s Lully. The subtlety and complexity of Titelouze and Louis Couperin and Sainte Colombe and vieux Gaultier effectively obliterated for the melodies and formulaic structures of Marais and Robert De Visée and Francois Couperin and Lebegue and so on.

Was Palestrina an influential composer? His music seems so uninteresting compared with - Gombert and Josquin for example - everything which came before - that if he was influential, it can’t have been to any good.


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## RICK RIEKERT (Oct 9, 2017)

German composer and music theorist Johann Christian Lobe (1797-1881) in reaction to the "Bach mania" of his day maintained that J.S. Bach’s music was “stiff, tasteless and old-fashioned” and was having a bad influence on many composers, including Schumann, whose later works “lack expressive melody, with more and more over-subtle counterpoint”. Those who claimed to enjoy Bach, Lobe opined, were “either hypocrites, or are deceiving themselves, or really do not know what music is, will be, or can be.”


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

I forgot one of the most pernicious. The influence of the Solesmes on church plainsong has served to make uniform and brain dead what was, could still be, a living, diverse, form of music making.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

_"he was critical of Wagner's thick orchestral texture and believed that Wagnerian influence in France was ''pernicious'' and would be ''disastrous'' if unchecked."_
("Ravel · Man and Musician" By Arbie Orenstein · 1991 , P. 123)


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

Clearly Pierre Boulez influenced modern music with his edit that, “If a composer has not experienced the necessity of dodecaphonic technique, he is useless.” Some, perhaps many, musicians drank the kool-aid. There's been a lot written about him and his influence. Here's one piece:









An introduction to Pierre Boulez, classical music's last great radical - The Vinyl Factory


Founding a centre for advanced acoustic research in Paris, French composer, conductor and pianist Pierre Boulez played a key role in the development of electronic music and will be remembered alongside John Cage for breathing life (and the fear of God) 20th century classical music, tearing...




thevinylfactory.com


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## Neo Romanza (May 7, 2013)

I don't focus on the negative --- I focus on the music and what it means _to me_ as a listener.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Improvisation virtually went dormant for a long time, somewhere between the late 19th century and the late 20th, and I don't think this was a good trend. To an extent, it was kept going by HIP, and at least indirectly from the influence of jazz. Musicians obviously played around with ideas in private, not much so in public. I think that's been changing for a while now, judging from performances like Yuja Wang's variations on Mozart's _Turkish March_ (Arcadi Volodos and Fazil Say had a hand in it too).


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## composingmusic (Dec 16, 2021)

larold said:


> Clearly Pierre Boulez influenced modern music with his edit that, “If a composer has not experienced the necessity of dodecaphonic technique, he is useless.” Some, perhaps many, musicians drank the kool-aid. There's been a lot written about him and his influence.


It’s important to also consider the context of this quote: this was from 1952, quite early in his career. The young Boulez was quite polemic indeed. I heard that later in his life he withdrew this remark, stating that being so dogmatic about serialism had been “a mistake.” 

Boulez did indeed influence a lot of people, as did serialism in its various forms. There’s all kinds of movements that sprung up as a result in reaction to serialism, including spectralism and various forms of postmodernism.


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