# Composers with imposing friends



## Cosmos (Jun 28, 2013)

This is something that I've only noticed twice. Basically, it's whenever a composer writes something and shows it to his/her friends who proceed to tell them it's all wrong and begin to revise it.

First, I know this happened to Tchaikovsky with his early draft of his second piano concerto. Alexander Siloti thought he should cut out the violin and cello's prominent part in the second movement, among other revisions. Tchaikovsky was angry and refused, yet Siloti went ahead and made the cuts and had his edition published.

Second happened to Rachmaninov with his second symphony* and first piano sonata. His friends said both were "too long" and needed to be cut, which, to Rachmaninov, felt like he was cutting into his own flesh.

(*though this wasn't by friends, there were even more extensive cuts to the symphony, with some editions throwing away half of the score)

While perhaps Rach's friends were giving him constructive criticism, IMO Siloti's version ruins the work. What are some other stories of friends messing around with the composer's work?


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Bruckner had recently had a relative success with his Seventh Symphony under the conductor Levi. So, Bruckner was eager to show him his newly completed Eighth in C minor, on which he had been hard at work for some time. Levi couldn't make heads or tails of it, considering the orchestration and form "quite impossible".

Bruckner was devastated, but turned to his original score and revised it, changing almost every single bar in the process.


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## Cosmos (Jun 28, 2013)

Mahlerian said:


> Bruckner had recently had a relative success with his Seventh Symphony under the conductor Levi. So, Bruckner was eager to show him his newly completed Eighth in C minor, on which he had been hard at work for some time. Levi couldn't make heads or tails of it, considering the orchestration and form "quite impossible".
> 
> Bruckner was devastated, but turned to his original score and revised it, changing almost every single bar in the process.


Funny enough I'm pretty sure that's the back story for EVERY Bruckner symphony!


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

I love the 3rd Bruckner symphony with Karajan/BPO (just under 1 hour) and was struck to hear the original version, some 80 minutes long! One could barely identify it as the same opus. Bruckner was correct, IMO to have it revised (several revised versions exist). The version that Karajan chose sounds like the best one. His friends didn't lie!


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

hpowders said:


> I love the 3rd Bruckner symphony with Karajan/BPO (just under 1 hour) and was struck to hear the original version, some 80 minutes long! One could barely identify it as the same opus. Bruckner was correct, IMO to have it revised (several revised versions exist). The version that Karajan chose sounds like the best one. His friends didn't lie!


Ouch, this statement is bound to produce a lot of antagonism here at TC! You should hear the original version with Inbal/FrankfurtRSO.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

joen_cph said:


> Ouch, this statement is bound to produce a lot of antagonism here at TC! You should hear the original version with Inbal/FrankfurtRSO.


I haven't, but what I heard sounds disappointing. The revised version that Karajan performs seems to strike the right balance, IMO. Key phrase: IMO.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

hpowders said:


> I love the 3rd Bruckner symphony with Karajan/BPO (just under 1 hour) and was struck to hear the original version, some 80 minutes long! One could barely identify it as the same opus. Bruckner was correct, IMO to have it revised (several revised versions exist). The version that Karajan chose sounds like the best one. His friends didn't lie!


The revised third is abysmal, bombastic, and makes nonsense out of the original. Its "correction" of irregular phrasings to foursquare ones feels awkward. I can barely stand listening to it, despite the improvements in orchestration.

On the other hand, I agree that the revised Fourth and Eighth constitute improvements, although the originals are also interesting.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Mahlerian said:


> The revised third is abysmal, bombastic, and makes nonsense out of the original. Its "correction" of irregular phrasings to foursquare ones feels awkward. I can barely stand listening to it, despite the improvements in orchestration.
> 
> On the other hand, I agree that the revised Fourth and Eighth constitute improvements, although the originals are also interesting.


To each his own.


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## Alfacharger (Dec 6, 2013)

This is the ending to Bruckner's 5th edited by Schalk. The highly re-orchestrated and edited version was the performing work for about 50 years. Plenty of Cymbal crashes!


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

Cosmos said:


> This is something that I've only noticed twice. Basically, it's whenever a composer writes something and shows it to his/her friends who proceed to tell them it's all wrong and begin to revise it.
> 
> First, I know this happened to Tchaikovsky with his early draft of his second piano concerto. Alexander Siloti thought he should cut out the violin and cello's prominent part in the second movement, among other revisions. Tchaikovsky was angry and refused, yet Siloti went ahead and made the cuts and had his edition published.


Far more than that, when Anton Rubinstein saw the 1st piano concerto, he thought it was horrendous and proceeded to bitterly criticize Tchaikovsky for it. The 2nd piano concerto was Tchaikovsky's response to the criticism, saying that he acceded to all the input, and Rubinstein was happier.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Cosmos said:


> This is something that I've only noticed twice. Basically, it's whenever a composer writes something and shows it to his/her friends who proceed to tell them it's all wrong and begin to revise it.
> 
> ...


A number of composers I've read about played Liszt their works in progress. As far as I know, Liszt was encouraging. Saint-Saens was one, also Smetana, and Grieg another. I read that when Liszt saw some wierd modulation (well, wierd for the time) in the score of Grieg's piano concerto he was excited, he said keep it in there.

Another like this is Brahms, who sought advice on his music (particularly technical matters) from the violinist Joachim and Clara Schumann, one of the finest pianists of the time. He consulted both for his Piano Concerto #2, and Joachim for many of his chamber works in particular, and also his Violin Concerto.

So the opposite is true, of advice that is constructive and not kind of destructive. There are also cases - similar to Tchaikovsky and Rubinstein - of a person who knows his instrument back to front and tries to control the composer producing a work for him. Jascha Heifetz was one, in the case of Walton's violin concerto, the composer found working with him to be a nightmare. In the case of Schoenberg's concerto, Heifetz sent back the fresh score and said it was unplayable and was proven wrong. So you've got the case of people who can't see past their own ways of thinking about an instrument, how a composer should write for an instrument. I suppose advice is one thing, giving orders that can't be refused or negotiated is another.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Sid James said:


> A number of composers I've read about played Liszt their works in progress. As far as I know, Liszt was encouraging.


Liszt seems to have been quite a nice guy. But he didn't always get the same treatment. When he played his B-minor Sonata for Brahms, Brahms fell asleep. (or so I seem to remember...)


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## Orfeo (Nov 14, 2013)

joen_cph said:


> Ouch, this statement is bound to produce a lot of antagonism here at TC! You should hear the original version with Inbal/FrankfurtRSO.


I agree. For me, though, Simon Young with the Hamburg Philharmonic is the best all round recording of this symphony (in its original version, that is). 
http://www.amazon.com/Bruckner-Symp...qid=1388012328&sr=8-3&keywords=bruckner+young

I can't praise it more highly enough. It's that good.


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## mikey (Nov 26, 2013)

Huilunsoittaja said:


> Far more than that, when Anton Rubinstein saw the 1st piano concerto, he thought it was horrendous and proceeded to bitterly criticize Tchaikovsky for it.


Actually it was Nikolai.

There's also the famous story about Barber's Violin concerto - 3rd mov pronounced unplayable then learnt in a few days.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

KenOC said:


> Liszt seems to have been quite a nice guy. But he didn't always get the same treatment. When he played his B-minor Sonata for Brahms, Brahms fell asleep. (or so I seem to remember...)


He wasn't the only one!


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## Couac Addict (Oct 16, 2013)

I think Rossini had a large, burly man to collect the receipts.


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## mikey (Nov 26, 2013)

KenOC said:


> Liszt seems to have been quite a nice guy. But he didn't always get the same treatment. When he played his B-minor Sonata for Brahms, Brahms fell asleep. (or so I seem to remember...)


That story is debatable - I've read Brahms had been travelling all day and was actually tired.


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

mikey said:


> Actually it was Nikolai.


Ah the pianist brother! Funny enough, Nikolai Rubinstein never got to premiere ANY of the Tchaik concerti, because Sergei Taneyev did the honors instead (for the Moscow premiere anyhow). Taneyev premiered all 3 Tchaik PCs one way or another. Yes, that teacher/composer was also outstanding pianist.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

KenOC said:


> Liszt seems to have been quite a nice guy. But he didn't always get the same treatment. When he played his B-minor Sonata for Brahms, Brahms fell asleep. (or so I seem to remember...)


Yeah as mikey says, Brahms had made an arduous journey to Weimar, and was tired as a result of that when Liszt played him his new sonata. I remember reading that next morning at breakfast Liszt didn't mention it, he kept being a hospitable host to the young Brahms.

What the anecdote says to me, and also I think Liszt never played that work in public (nor anything as radical as that, he mainly played his transcriptions) is that he was interested in what other composers - even younger and less experienced ones - had to say about his more radical music. Liszt did still play concerts, but they where to fellow musicians and those in the music scene. He did make an impression on the young Debussy when he was studying in Rome. That's probably the most valuable experience Debussy had in what he largely saw as an ungratifying experience, another thing was hearing Palestrina's music in the Vatican.

That having been said, Brahms didn't warm to Liszt's aesthetic then, but its said that he did study Liszt's late piano pieces, and incorporated techniques from those into his own late piano works. I'd say that pared down and less flashy side of Liszt appealed to Brahms, but its the older Brahms I'm talking about, not when he visited Weimar as a young man.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

mikey said:


> ...
> There's also the famous story about Barber's Violin concerto - 3rd mov pronounced unplayable then learnt in a few days.


That's right, and another one (apart from the Schoenberg I mentioned on this thread before) was Tippett's Piano Concerto. I made a thread about that, with more examples, here.

The playability thing is a funny issue. Obviously when a musician like Heifetz says something isn't playable, he believes it isn't. But its just like one expert opinion, as with any other thing, the composer can ask for a second (or even third?) opinion.


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## peeyaj (Nov 17, 2010)

Brahms and Joachim, and that fella who always ripped Wagner. (clue E.H.)


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Musorgsky never received much respect from the other members of The Five. Most, or perhaps all of them, stated at one time or another that he was an idiot. Rimsky-Korsakoff then revised Boris Godunov in a particularly idiotic way, demonstrating the extent to which he failed to comprehend and appreciate the best features of his friends style.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

mikey said:


> That story is debatable - I've read Brahms had been travelling all day and was actually tired.


I'll remember that excuse the next time I fall asleep in public listening to a piece I can't stand. Thank you Herr Brahms!


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