# Composer Rivalries?



## MonagFam (Nov 17, 2015)

I am always curious and interested in the day-to-day life of people from the past. I am intrigued by how they interacted with each other. 

What are some good rivalries between composers? Who couldn't be in the same concert hall together? Who never had a nice thing to say about the other person? Who disliked but had a healthy respect for the rival?

Also, feel free to recommend any articles or books on similar topics if you know of any.


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## cimirro (Sep 6, 2016)

Some tips for your research:

Bach X Marchand
Mozart X Clementi
Beethoven X Steibelt
Dussek X Woelf
Liszt X Thalberg
Clara Schumann X Liszt
Brahms X Wagner
Tchaikowsky X Brahms

Wagner X Jews :lol:


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## Tchaikov6 (Mar 30, 2016)

Well, Prokofiev said of Stravinsky... "Bach on the Wrong Notes."

Clara Schumann on Liszt... "This is just meaningless noise- not a single healthy idea anymore, everything confused, a clear harmonic progression is not to be found here any longer."

Bizet on Wagner... "He is endowed with such insolent conceit that criticism cannot touch his heart- admitting that he has a heart, which I doubt."

Schneider on Debussy's La Mer... "The Audience expected the Ocean. Something big, something colossal, but they were served instead some agitated water in a saucer."

That should get you started, but there are plenty of other comments and rivalries... Britten-Stravinsky, Stravinsky-Messiaen, Copland-Vaughan Williams, Schumann-Wagner, Brahms-Wagner, Bizet-Wagner, Rossini-Wagner (Many anti-Wagners). Yeah, you get the picture.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

Then there was Berlioz, whose dislike of the conductror Habeneck resulted in a legendary anecdote he told about the premiere of his Requiem.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

cimirro said:


> Some tips for your research:
> 
> Bach X Marchand
> Mozart X Clementi
> ...


What? Wagner against the Jews? Please expand.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Hugo Wolf on Brahms: Wolf hated Brahms to the point (literally) of insanity. But his problem wasn't just Brahms. Anybody know whether it got to Brahms?


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

hpowders said:


> What? Wagner against the Jews? Please expand.


Please don't. .....


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

Tchaikov6 said:


> Schneider on Debussy's La Mer... "The Audience expected the Ocean. Something big, something colossal, but they were served instead some agitated water in a saucer."


That's a great put-down!


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> Please don't. .....


Agreed. I want to hear about Wagner and Jews as much as I want to hear again that famously dumb comment Beecham made about harpsichords.


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## MonagFam (Nov 17, 2015)

cimirro said:


> Some tips for your research:
> Mozart X Clementi:


Thanks for the original list. I am making my way through it and looked at these guys first. So it looks like they had an impromptu piano duel setup by the Emperor. Officially a draw on the record books, but by all accounts Mozart won. Clementi came away more impressed with his opponent than Mozart was.

Was there any more before/after this? We're piano duels a thing?


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## cimirro (Sep 6, 2016)

MonagFam said:


> Thanks for the original list. I am making my way through it and looked at these guys first. So it looks like they had an impromptu piano duel setup by the Emperor. Officially a draw on the record books, but by all accounts Mozart won. Clementi came away more impressed with his opponent than Mozart was.
> 
> Was there any more before/after this? We're piano duels a thing?


Their "duel" in a Christmas eve was their first meeting as far a I know, probably not the only one, but I would need to check... 
what I remember from my readings is Clementi presented some very powerful pieces like his Toccata Op.11 - very technically perfect played probably, on the other hand Mozart was not so "technical" as composer, he was more a "brilliant style" player a we can see in his pieces, anyway he was perfect too.
Both impressed the audience. Anyway Mozart later told his sister to do not study Clementi pieces (as she was doing) because in his opinion she would lost her refinement in playing such pieces.

Years later, Beethoven considered Clementi Sonatas as "reference study" for any pianist
So, opinions are opinions... I like these people, even when they don't like each other...

All the best
Artur


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## Neward Thelman (Apr 6, 2017)

Strange Magic said:


> Hugo Wolf on Brahms: Wolf hated Brahms to the point (literally) of insanity. But his problem wasn't just Brahms. Anybody know whether it got to Brahms?


By the time that Wolf hit the scene, Brahms was old and sick. He's not likely to have cared very much about every new chromatacist who happened to pop up.


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## Neward Thelman (Apr 6, 2017)

Bulldog said:


> Agreed. I want to hear about Wagner and Jews as much as I want to hear again that famously dumb comment Beecham made about harpsichords.


Beecham was right.


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## Neward Thelman (Apr 6, 2017)

" We're piano duels a thing?"


They sure were in jazz during the 1910's thru the 1920's. Those were known as "cutting contests".


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## Neward Thelman (Apr 6, 2017)

hpowders said:


> What? Wagner against the Jews? Please expand.


Wagner didn't say one or two things about Jews. His anti-Semitism was part of many things he said, and worked into his many treatises.

However, virtually everyone today fails to understand the context from which Wagner's anti-Semitism arose. It was, in actuality, part of everyday living in 19th century Europe. The roster includes the humble peasant toiling in the soil, barely keeping alive, all the way up to the greatest intellectuals and artists of the period.

A knowledge of history takes the mystery out of Hitler's rise; it didn't occur in a vacuum.

That said, it must be noted that during the 19th cent, a-S wan't a monolithic, single-faceted thing. People weren't rabid Nazi haters. Indeed, there were very few deep haters of a proto-Nazi type. Most people might just make a remark or comment about their Jewish neighbors; nothing more than the kind of ethnic jokes that people say today - when they're not in public environments. Some people simply observed that some of their fellow human beings happened to be Jewish. A smaller number harbored greater animosity; Wagner was among that group. Finally, there were true bigots. We know about them because some of them published their theories of hate.

Ironically, there's evidence that Wagner's father may've been Jewish. Today's genetic testing could easily clear that up. In fact, genetic testing on Hitler's DNA has shown a Jewish predessesor in his background.


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

cimirro said:


> Some tips for your research:
> 
> Bach X Marchand
> Mozart X Clementi
> ...


Oh, dear beware of opening a can of worms.....


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## cimirro (Sep 6, 2016)

Oh, sorry, I mean "Johann Christoph Jews" a very unknown composer today because he destroyed all his own works, letters, photos and left no family, Actually no one know him, and even myself don't know who is he and never heard about him anywhere.
But if he was really a good composer, you can be sure Wagner didn't liked him... :lol:


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

cimirro said:


> Oh, sorry, I mean "Johann Christoph Jews" a very unknown composer today because he destroyed all his own works, letters, photos and left no family, Actually no one know him, and even myself don't know who is he and never heard about him anywhere.
> But if he was really a good composer, you can be sure Wagner didn't liked him... :lol:


With spin skills like this, you should be Trump's press secretary.


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## cimirro (Sep 6, 2016)

Woodduck said:


> With spin skills like this, you should be Trump's press secretary.


yeah, i'm not only a beautiful face... :lol:


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

cimirro said:


> yeah, i'm not only a beautiful face... :lol:


Your face is very tiny, and so I can't appreciate it properly. Surely you are admiring mine, however.


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## cimirro (Sep 6, 2016)

Woodduck said:


> Your face is very tiny, and so I can't appreciate it properly. Surely you are admiring mine, however.


I noticed you are looking into my eyes every time I enter the forum, but I prefer admire Pugg's photos, sorry my friend! :lol:


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

cimirro said:


> Oh, sorry, I mean "Johann Christoph Jews" a very unknown composer today because he destroyed all his own works, letters, photos and left no family, Actually no one know him, and even myself don't know who is he and never heard about him anywhere.
> But if he was really a good composer, you can be sure Wagner didn't liked him... :lol:


As Wood say, you could be a politician , on the other hand, stay at the music, you will be better of.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

cimirro said:


> I noticed you are looking into my eyes every time I enter the forum, but I prefer admire Pugg's photos, sorry my friend! :lol:


Don't flatter yourself. I look at everyone that way.


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## cimirro (Sep 6, 2016)

Woodduck said:


> Don't flatter yourself. I look at everyone that way.


Ok then, now my wife is not jealous anymore!


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## Meyerbeer Smith (Mar 25, 2016)

Donizetti and Bellini
Saint-Saens and Massenet


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

SimonTemplar said:


> Donizetti and Bellini
> Saint-Saens and Massenet


Thank goodness for small mercies, they drove each other to high operas composing.


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## ido66667 (Aug 29, 2016)

cimirro said:


> Wagner X Jews :lol:


I think this will be more accurate:
Wagner X The Rest

But really, he was a raving anti-Semite, even though he was also a musical genius (I don't like his music that much, but he was indeed a genius), and it annoys me that people come to his defense like that. I think that we can argue whether he was more like a 'regular' anti-Semite, or a 'proto-nazi', but the fact remains that he was very anti-Semitic.


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## Pat Fairlea (Dec 9, 2015)

Various versions exist of an exchange between Stravinsky and Rachmaninov:
S: Still playing the piano for a living?
R: At least I can.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

ido66667 said:


> I think this will be more accurate:
> Wagner X The Rest
> 
> But really, he was a raving anti-Semite, even though he was also a musical genius (I don't like his music that much, but he was indeed a genius), and it annoys me that people come to his defense like that. I think that we can argue whether he was more like a 'regular' anti-Semite, or a 'proto-nazi', but the fact remains that he was very anti-Semitic.


"Wagner X The Rest" - meaning, I assume, that he disliked all or most other composers - is wildly false.

Palestrina, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Weber, Mendelssohn (yes, Mendelssohn), Berlioz, Liszt, Bellini, Bruckner, Strauss (Johann), even obscure composers such as Sgambati, and even, grudgingly, Brahms (whose music "shows what can still be done with the old forms by one who knows how to handle them")...All these composers had Wagner's respect, or more than respect, and his writings and conversations show him to be an astute critic. Why should that be surprising?

If you're annoyed by people who come to Wagner's defense, I'm annoyed by some people's need, which often seems like a compulsion and often like a moral inquisition, to denigrate him, even at the expense of truth. And his anti-semitism is really irrelevant here, isn't it? It shouldn't be hauled in as an excuse to search his biography for other, especially nonexistent, faults.


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