# Composer lineage



## violadude (May 2, 2011)

So this is something I've been thinking about doing for a while now. I want to trace composers lineage as far as influence goes. I couldn't figure out how to draw this with just one chart so I have created multiple charts that show the lineage of composers influence. Some composers come from similar lineage and split their influence into two, so I have multiple charts that are similar due to that. Please, what do you think about this? Is there anything I can add? Anything you think is wrong? Any lineage lines you want to add feel free! As you can see, some of these even trace Boulez's lineage all the way back to Bach! I don't know much about music pre-bach era to be honest, so sorry that nothing goes earlier than Bach 





Bach-------Mozart------Rossini-----Bellini------Verdi

Bach-------Beethoven------Berlioz------Wagner-----Strauss----Mahler-----Schoenberg---Berg

Bach------Beethoven-------Berlioz------Wagner-----Strauss---Mahler-----Schoenberg----Webern-----Boulez

Bach-------Beethoven-----Schubert-----Brahms----Schoenberg----Berg

Glinka----Glazunov-----Rimsky-Korsokov-----Stravinsky


----------



## Delicious Manager (Jul 16, 2008)

Well you would have to pre-date any Bach entry with the name of Buxtehude.

And you've missed an important French line

Buxtehude-----Bach-----Beethoven-----Mendelssohn-----Wagner-----Debussy-----Messiaen-----Boulez


----------



## violadude (May 2, 2011)

Delicious Manager said:


> Well you would have to pre-date any Bach entry with the name of Buxtehude.
> 
> And you've missed an important French line
> 
> Buxtehude-----Bach-----Beethoven-----Mendelssohn-----Wagner-----Debussy-----Messiaen-----Boulez


Yes I was trying to think of where I should put the French composers. To be honest though, I've never really thought of Mendelssohn leading to Wagner. Would you care to explain?
Also, do you think Vincent D'indy should come somewhere before Debussy?


----------



## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

violadude said:


> Glinka----Glazunov-----Rimsky-Korsokov-----Stravinsky


You know what I say to that? lololololol! :lol:

Don't worry, you're not the first to make that mistake there. Isn't it just weird that Glazunov is so old fashioned that people think he's R-K's age, even older? I've even heard Classical music radio announcers make that mistake! It's uncanny! But it's not true! Yes, even when Glazunov died, musicians around the world were saying "What??? He died _now_?? I thought he died long ago! At least 30 years ago!" I think it's a both hilarious and pitiful position to be in at the same time, imagine someone saying that about you.  Glazunov: *1865-1936*

Here's the correct line:

Glinka ----> Balakirev -->(smaller arrow) Rimsky-Korsakov ----> Glazunov, then later Stravinsky. Yes, both of them studied under Rimsky-Korsakov, just at different times.
(cont'd)
Glazunov --> Prokofiev, then later Shostakovich.

Some of this stuff is a little complicated to write out, because people influenced people at different times, and some were influenced by more than one person. I've learned this stuff over years of research, by the way, it takes I long time sometimes to find an answer.


----------



## violadude (May 2, 2011)

Huilunsoittaja said:


> You know what I say to that? lololololol! :lol:
> 
> Don't worry, you're not the first to make that mistake there. Isn't it just weird that Glazunov is so old fashioned that people think he's R-K's age, even older? I've even heard Classical music radio announcers make that mistake! It's uncanny! But it's not true! Yes, even when Glazunov died, musicians around the world were saying "What??? He died _now_?? I thought he died long ago! At least 30 years ago!" I think it's a both hilarious and pitiful position to be in at the same time, imagine someone saying that about you.  Glazunov: *1865-1936*
> 
> ...


Well you're the expert 
I actually didn't do too much studying before I posted this  shame on me I guess.


----------



## Delicious Manager (Jul 16, 2008)

violadude said:


> Yes I was trying to think of where I should put the French composers. To be honest though, I've never really thought of Mendelssohn leading to Wagner. Would you care to explain?
> Also, do you think Vincent D'indy should come somewhere before Debussy?


Listen to very early Wagner - it sounds just like Mendelssohn. Actually it should be Fauré before Debussy - Fauré's influence on French music cannot be underestimated.


----------



## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

Chopin -> Szymanowski -> Me


----------



## 20centrfuge (Apr 13, 2007)

I know this thread hasn't been touched in years but I thought it would be fun to resurrect it. Lineage could be in the form of influence(s) OR in the form of a teacher-pupil relationship (which is also a form of influence).

Prokofiev is my favorite composer so I have often wondered who carries his torch nowadays, if anyone. It has led me to explore a number of Russian composers in search of something that hearkens back to him. I haven't necessarily felt that any one composer carries the FEEL of Prokofiev, but it has led me to speculate about other relationships among composers.

For example, think about Messiaen. He has a very unique compositional style, BUT he was a teacher who must have not expected his pupils to compose like he does. Here is a list of some of Messiaen's pupils:

MESSIAEN'S PUPILS
Pierre Boulez
Peter Maxwell Davies
Alexander Goehr
Gerard Grisey
Oliver Knussen
Karlheinz Stockhausen
Iannis Xenakis

Do you think there is a common thread amongst any of these composers with Messiaen?


----------



## 20centrfuge (Apr 13, 2007)

On another note regarding Messiaen:

He was influenced strongly by Debussy. This is a snippet from Wikipedia about Messiaen:

"He took piano lessons having already taught himself to play. His interest included the recent music of French composers Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel, and he asked for opera vocal scores for Christmas presents.[6] Around this time he began to compose. In 1918 his father returned from the war and the family moved to Nantes. He continued music lessons; one of his teachers, Jehan de Gibon, *gave him a score of Debussy's opera Pelléas et Mélisande, which Messiaen described as "a thunderbolt" and "probably the most decisive influence on me*"


----------



## 20centrfuge (Apr 13, 2007)

I would say that a line of influence runs from:

Debussy--->Messiaen--->Grisey (I can hear something of Messiaen in his music)--->Magnus Lindberg (one of Grisey's students)

In turn, Debussy is said to have been strongly influenced by Wagner.


----------



## 20centrfuge (Apr 13, 2007)

"In 1884 Debussy won the Prix de Rome, a competition for composers, for his cantata (a poem set to music) The Prodigal Son. While in Rome, Italy, the following year, he wrote that one of the few things that made him forget how much he missed Paris was the study of German composer Richard Wagner's (1813-1883) opera Tristan und Isolde. (Debussy returned to Paris in 1887.) Not many years later Debussy strongly criticized Wagner, but this had more to do with Wagner's drama than his music. Although Debussy scorned the characters in Wagner's Parsifal, he openly praised the music. Throughout his life Debussy was fascinated by the richness of Wagner's style, although he generally preferred opera that was less flashy."

Read more: http://www.notablebiographies.com/De-Du/Debussy-Claude.html#ixzz3XMOEqZZ4


----------



## 20centrfuge (Apr 13, 2007)

So, then by merging with violadude's original post:

Bach-------Beethoven------Berlioz------Wagner------Debussy------Messiaen------Grisey------Lindberg

I would personally LOVE to see more reponses about composer influences. Let's get cracking!!!!


----------



## MoonlightSonata (Mar 29, 2014)

Bach-----Literally everybody else


----------



## Guest (Apr 15, 2015)

Far as I can tell, J.S. Bach was no sort of influence on anyone.

Couple of his sons were influencial.

But surely Beethoven's line should start with Mozart, not Bach. And Mozart's should start with J.C. not J.S. 

And while Berlioz was enormously enamored of Beethoven and was widely considered by all (including himself) to be the heir of Beethoven, the other person in Berlioz' line should be Gluck, not Bach. Berlioz didn't even like Bach's music for most of his life--what he knew of it, anyway, which wasn't much. He didn't acquire a taste for Bach's music until quite late in his life, way too late to be in any way influenced by it.

And any line with Berlioz in it should really include people like Boito, Saint-Saens, Mahler and Varese, too.


----------



## Andreas (Apr 27, 2012)

some guy said:


> Far as I can tell, J.S. Bach was no sort of influence on anyone.
> 
> Couple of his sons were influencial.
> 
> But surely Beethoven's line should start with Mozart, not Bach.


Perhaps only as long as the source of this often-cited Beethoven quote remains obscure:

"Whenever I stagnated in my compositions, I took out the Well-tempered Clavier and immediately, new ideas began to budd."


----------



## DiesIraeCX (Jul 21, 2014)

Andreas said:


> Perhaps only as long as the source of this often-cited Beethoven quote remains obscure:
> 
> "Whenever I stagnated in my compositions, I took out the Well-tempered Clavier and immediately, new ideas began to budd."


Bach's influence on Beethoven isn't obscure anymore, in Jan Swafford's new Beethoven biography, he often discusses J.S. Bach's considerable influence on Beethoven (especially because of the WTC and variations which taught him coherence and unity), he had nearly as much influence on the formative years of Beethoven as Mozart and Haydn had. All three of them molded the years of his youth, which readied him to find his "_new path_" (Beethoven's words).

Here's a relevant post I made in the 'Creative Shocks' thread.



DiesIraeVIX said:


> Yup, and let's not forget to thank who was responsible for that, Beethoven's teacher, *Christian Gottlob Neefe*, "an irreplaceable figure in Ludwig's life. No one person shaped the child who grew up into Ludwig van Beethoven, but Neefe would be his most important mentor."
> 
> "While outside Leipzig, J.S. Bach's reputations languished in the shadow of his famous sons, Neefe understood the elder Bach's stature and the importance and the syncoptic quality of his Well-Tempered Clavier, a work in those years known only to a cultish few" (Jan Swafford). Well, thank goodness Neefe was a member of that cultish few, because as Swafford goes into greater detail:
> 
> ...


----------



## Guest (Apr 15, 2015)

Very interesting, guys.

Thanks for the info. And nice to be correctly so gently, too.


----------



## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

DiesIraeVIX said:


> Bach's influence on Beethoven isn't obscure anymore, in Jan Swafford's new Beethoven biography, he often discusses J.S. Bach's considerable influence on Beethoven (especially because of the WTC and variations which taught him coherence and unity), he had nearly as much influence on the formative years of Beethoven as Mozart and Haydn had. All three of them molded the years of his youth, which readied him to find his "_new path_" (Beethoven's words).
> 
> Here's a relevant post I made in the 'Creative Shocks' thread.


This idea that LvB learned coherence and unity from JSB, where does that idea come from?

I wonder what the latest scholarship is on whether and how the Goldberg Variations influenced Beethoven. I beieve he had copied and maybe commented in Bach's music in some of his commonplace books, but I've never had the opportunity to verify this and explore exactly what's involved.

I should say that, just speaking informally, just about my listening impressions, I don't hear much influence between Bach and Beethoven.


----------



## Guest (Apr 15, 2015)

20centrfuge said:


> I know this thread hasn't been touched in years but I thought it would be fun to resurrect it. Lineage could be in the form of influence(s) OR in the form of a teacher-pupil relationship (which is also a form of influence).
> 
> Prokofiev is my favorite composer so I have often wondered who carries his torch nowadays, if anyone. It has led me to explore a number of Russian composers in search of something that hearkens back to him. I haven't necessarily felt that any one composer carries the FEEL of Prokofiev, but it has led me to speculate about other relationships among composers.
> 
> ...


Also, if you want to continue into the current time, I believe it was Dusapin that was a pupil of both Varese and Xenakis?

I know that I've read fairly often, too, the phrase "studied with Franco Donatoni". Might be a good place to look for connections, considering Donatoni surely had links to the past as well, what with his associations with Darmstadt.


----------



## DiesIraeCX (Jul 21, 2014)

Mandryka said:


> This idea that LvB learned coherence and unity from JSB, where does that idea come from?
> 
> I wonder what the latest scholarship is on whether and how the Goldberg Variations influenced Beethoven. I beieve he had copied and maybe commented in Bach's music in some of his commonplace books, but I've never had the opportunity to verify this and explore exactly what's involved.
> 
> I should say that, just speaking informally, just about my listening impressions, I don't hear much influence between Bach and Beethoven.


Mandryka, you're right to note that a readily audible influence isn't to be heard in Beethoven's music. He also came to adore Handel above all, but that would come later after hearing his oratorios which "helped move him toward his eventual conviction that Handel was the greatest of all" (pg. 158). J.S. Bach's influence on LvB wasn't the same as Dvorak being influenced by Brahms and sounding like Brahms sometimes (or Brahmsian), or Brahms/Schumann sounding very Beethovenian at times. It was a different kind of influence, more along the lines of Beethoven's more _indirect_ but still great influence on Berlioz and Wagner.

Jan Swafford's new biography makes a great case for Bach's tangible influence on Beethoven, and that came way of the most pivotal of Beethoven's teachers in Bonn, Christian Neefe. Neefe came from Leipzig, "where Bach's music was still alive decades after his death, and his student's keyboard studies were centered on The Well-Tempered Clavier" (pg. 57). The reason why I see his influence on Beethoven in his formative years as important is because of this; "Perhaps here [Beethoven] began to learn what Bach called "invention", in which the whole of a piece elaborates a single idea. Here, for the first time, this giant of the past nourished a budding giant. Teaching the boy the WTC from the age of ten or eleven may have been the single most important thing Neefe did for him."

You'll notice that early in Beethoven's years as a composer (pre-Vienna), he composed quite a few (and some of those quite impressive) Variations. "If Bach was the model of invention, writing variations put the idea into practice. From here on, the concept and technique of variation lay at the core of Beethoven's art in whatever genre he took up." (pg. 58). So, I see Bach as teaching him a fundamental concept that would be some of Beethoven's greatest assets, his ability to form a cohesive whole, thematic unity, and variations.

- _Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph_ (Jan Swafford)


----------



## 20centrfuge (Apr 13, 2007)

A better title for this thread might have been *"A Composer's Lineage of Major Influences."*

I'm a bit surprised that this thread never really took off. It seems fascinating to evaluate the family tree of composers including teachers and major influences.

I've been thinking about Unsuk Chin lately who was of course taught by Ligeti. Evaluating Ligeti's major influences is not something I'm knowledgeable
enough to do, but I think it would be fascinating to trace backwards.

Another one I thought about recently was:

Debussy --> Messiaen --> George Benjamin


----------

