# Composers on other composers



## DavidMahler (Dec 28, 2009)

Please use this thread to post composers discussing other composers' music. I love reading what contemporaries felt about each others' music as well as their heroes from the past.

I'll see if I can post one of my favorites soon as I find it.


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## Trout (Apr 11, 2011)

Here: (credits from Couchie)


> "Rossini would have been a great composer if his teacher had spanked him enough on the backside." - Ludwig van Beethoven
> 
> "Take the Spanish airs and mine out of the score, and there remains nothing to Bizet's credit but the sauce that masks the fish." - Charles Gounod on Bizet's "Carmen"
> 
> ...


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## poconoron (Oct 26, 2011)

Not all of these are composers; also included are musicians and "professors" of music:

Thoughts on the Genius of Mozart
Compiled by David Gordon for the International Mozart Year 2006

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

_*For one moment in the history of music all opposites were reconciled; all tensions resolved; that luminous moment was Mozart. 
- (Phil Goulding)

Mozart is the highest, the culminating point that beauty has attained in the sphere of music. 
- (Tchaikovsky)

A phenomenon like Mozart remains an inexplicable thing.
- (Goethe)

Mozart is happiness before it has gotten defined.
- (Arthur Miller)

A light, bright, fine day this will remain throughout my whole life. As from afar, the magic notes of Mozart's music still gently haunts me.
- (Franz Schubert)

Mozart is the musical Christ.
- (Tchaikovsky)

Mozart creates music from a mysterious center, and so knows the limits to the right and the left, above and below. He maintains moderation.
- (Karl Barth)

Mozart's music always sounds unburdened, effortless, and light. This is why it unburdens, releases, and liberates us. 
- (Karl Barth)

Mozart's music is so beautiful as to entice angels down to earth.
- (Franz Alexander von Kleist)

Mozart makes you believe in God because it cannot be by chance that such a phenomenon arrives into this world and leaves such an unbounded number of unparalleled masterpieces. 
- (Georg Solti)

How can such a disproportionately large number of people have a definite, and unusually positive relationship to Mozart?
- (Wolfgang Hildesheimer)

Listening to Mozart, we cannot think of any possible improvement.
- (George Szell)

Mozart's music is an invitation to the listener to venture just a little out of the sense of his own subjectivity.
- (Karl Barth)

Mozart never did too little and never too much; he always attains but never exceeds his goal.
- (Grillparzer)

Mozart is the most inaccessible of the great masters.
- (Artur Schnabel)

Mozart's mental grip never loosens; he never abandons himself to any one sense; even at his most ecstatic moments his mind is vigorous, alert, and on the wing. He dives unerringly on to his finest ideas like a bird of prey, and once an idea is seized he soars off again with an undiminished power.
- (W. J. Turner)

It may be that when the angels go about their task praising God, they play only Bach. I am sure, however, that when they are together en famille they play Mozart. 
- (Karl Barth)

Mozart's music represents neither the prolonged sigh of faith that characterizes so much of the music written before his time, nor the stormy idealism which cloaks most music after him. Rather he is that mercurial balance of the skeptic and the humane. Like him, and in him, we can always discover new worlds.
- (Joseph Solman)

Most wrote everything with such ease and speed as might at first be taken for carelessness or haste. His imagination held before him the whole work clear and lively once it was conceived. One seldom finds in his scores improved or erased passages. 
- (Franz Niemetschek)

The riddle of Mozart is precisely that "the man" refuses to be a key for solving it. In death, as in life, he conceals himself behind his work.
- (Wolfgang Hildesheimer)

Mozart does not give the listener time to catch his breath, for no sooner is one inclined to reflect upon a beautiful inspiration than another appears, even more splendid, which drives away the first, and this continues on and on, so that in the end one is unable to retain any of these beauties in the memory. 
- (Karl Ditters von Dittersdordf)

If any fault had to be found in Mozart, it could surely be only this: that such abundance of beauty almost tires the soul, and the effect of the whole is sometimes obscured thereby. But happy the artist whose only fault lies in all too great perfection.
- (Music reviewer)

Does it not seem as if Mozart's works become fresher and fresher the oftener we hear them?
- (Robert Schumann)

If we cannot write with the beauty of Mozart, let us at least try to write with his purity.
- (Johannes Brahms)

Beethoven I take twice a week, Haydn four times, and Mozart every day!
- (Rossini)

Before Mozart, all ambition turns to despair.
- (Charles Gounod)

Mozart encompasses the entire domain of musical creation, but I've got only the keyboard in my poor head.
- (Chopin)

What gives Bach and Mozart a place apart is that these two great composers never sacrificed form to expression. As high as their expression may soar, their musical form remains supreme and all-efficient.
- (Camille Saint-Saens)

The most tremendous genius raised Mozart above all masters, in all centuries and in all the arts. 
- (Richard Wagner)

In Bach, Beethoven and Wagner we admire principally the depth and energy of the human mind; in Mozart, the divine instinct.
- (Edvard Grieg)

Together with the puzzle, Mozart gives you the solution. 
- (Ferruccio Busoni)

I find consolation and rest in Mozart's music, wherein he gives expression to that joy of life which was part of his sane and wholesome temperament.
- (Peter Tschaikovsky)

Mozart tapped the source from which all music flows, expressing himself with a spontaneity and refinement and breathtaking rightness.
- (Aaron Copland)

Mozart's music is particularly difficult to perform. His admirable clarity exacts absolute cleanness: the slightest mistake in it stands out like black on white. It is music in which all the notes must be heard.
- (Gabriel Faure)

Mozart shows a creative power of such magnitude that one can virtually say that he tossed out of himself one great masterpiece after another. 
- (Claudio Arrau)

Mozart's music is free of all exaggeration, of all sharp breaks and contradictions. The sun shines but does not blind, does not burn or consume. Heaven arches over the earth, but it does not weigh it down, it does not crush or devour it. 
- (Karl Barth)

The works of Mozart may be easy to read, but they are very difficult to interpret. The least speck of dust spoils them. They are clear, transparent, and joyful as a spring, and not only those muddy pools which seem deep only because the bottom cannot be seen.
- (Wanda Landowska)

I never heard so much content in so short a period. 
- (Pinchas Zukerman)

Mozart 's music is very mysterious.
- (W. J. Turner)

Mozart resolved his emotions on a level that transformed them into moods uncontaminated by mortal anguish, enabling him to express the angelic anguish that is so peculiarly his own. 
- (Yehudi Menuhin)

Designing an opera by Mozart is like doing something for God-it's a labor of love.
- (Maurice Sendak)

I my dreams of heaven, I always see the great Mozart gathered in a huge hall in which they are reside. Only Mozart has his own suite. 
- (Victor Borge)

Mozart's joy is made of serenity, and a phrase of his music is like a calm thought; his simplicity is merely purity. It is a crystalline thing in which all the emotions play a role, but as if already celestially transposed. Moderation consists in feeling emotions as the angels do.
- (Andre Gide)

Mozart said profound things and at the same time remained flippant and lively.
- (Michael Kennedy)

Mozart began his works in childhood and a childlike quality lurked in his compositions until it dawned on him that the Requiem he was writing for s a stranger was his own.
- (Will and Ariel Durant)

Mozart touched no problem without solving it to perfection. 
- (Donald Tovey)

Mozart's music is the mysterious language of a distant spiritual kingdom, whose marvelous accents echo in our inner being and arouse a higher, intensive life.
- (E. T. A. Hoffmann)

The best of Mozart's works cannot be even slightly rewritten without diminishment. 
- (Peter Shaffer)

Mozart is the greatest composer of all. Beethoven created his music, but the music of Mozart is of such purity and beauty that one feels he merely found it-that it has always existed as part of the inner beauty of the universe waiting to be revealed. 
- (Albert Einstein)

Most of all I admire Mozart's capacity to be both deep and rational, a combination often said to be impossible.
- (Allan Bloom)

Sometimes the impact of Mozart's music is so immediate that the vision in the mind remains blurred and incomplete, while the soul seems to be directly invaded, drenched in wave upon wave of melancholy.
- (Stendhal)

Mozart combined high formality and playfulness that delights as no other composition in any other medium does.
- (Roy Blount, Jr.)

It is hard to think of another composer who so perfectly marries form and passion. 
- (Leonard Bernstein)

In Mozart's music, all intensity are crystallized in the clearest, the most beautifully balanced and proportioned, and altogether flawless musical forms.
- (Phil Goulding)

The sonatas of Mozart are unique: too easy for children, too difficult for adults. Children are given Mozart to paly because of the quantity of notes; grown ups avoid him because of the quality of notes. 
- (Artur Schnabel)

There are three thing in the world I love most: the sea, Hamlet, and Don Giovanni.
- (Gustave Flaubert)

Lengthy immersion in the works of other composers can tire. The music of Mozart does not tire, and this is one of its miracles. 
- (George Snell)

Mozart has reached the boundary gate of music and leaped over it, leaving behind the old masters and moderns, and posterity itself.
- (A. Hyatt King)

Mozart, prodigal heaven gave thee everything, grace and strength, abundance and moderation, perfect equilibrium.
- (Charles Gounod)

Who has reached the extreme limits of scale with the same infallible precision, equally guarded against the false refinement of artificial elegance and the roughness of spurious force? Who has better known how to breathe anguish and dread into the purest and most exquisite forms? 
- (Charles Gounod)

It is a real pleasure to see music so bright and spontaneous expressed with corresponding ease and grace.
- (Brahms)

Give Mozart a fairy tale and he creates without effort an immortal masterpiece.
- (Saint Saens)

I listened to the pure crystalline notes of one of Mozart's concertos dropping at my feet like leaves from the trees.
- (Virgil Thompson)

What was evident was that Mozart was simply transcribing music completely finished in his head. And finished as most music is never finished. Displace one note and there would be diminishment. Displace one phrase and structure would fall. I was staring through the cage of those meticulous ink strokes at Absolute Beauty. 
- (Peter Shaffer)

Mozart's music is constantly escaping from its frame, because it cannot be contained in it. 
- (Leonard Bernstein)

Mozart combines serenity, melancholy, and tragic intensity into one great lyric improvisation. Over it all hovers the greater spirit that is Mozart's-the spirit of compassion, of universal love, even of suffering--a spirit that knows no age, that belongs to all ages. 
- (Leonard Bernstein)

21 piano sonatas, 27 piano concertos, 41 symphonies, 18 masses, 13 operas, 9 oratorios and cantata, 2 ballets, 40 plus concertos for various instruments, string quartets, trios and quintets, violin and piano duets piano quartets, and the songs. This astounding output includes hardly one work less than a masterpiece. 
- (George Szell)

What a picture of a better world you have given us, Mozart!
- (Franz Schubert)

*_


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## DavidMahler (Dec 28, 2009)

two invaluable posts! Thank you!!!

Can't there be but one negative comment about Mozart? There's quite a few in history


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## Webernite (Sep 4, 2010)

Tchaikovsky's comment about Mozart being the musical Christ is always taken out of context. It's from a diary entry where he contrasts Mozart "the musical Christ" with Beethoven "the musical God." Nobody ever mentions the bit about Beethoven!


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## DavidMahler (Dec 28, 2009)

Webernite said:


> Tchaikovsky's comment about Mozart being the musical Christ is always taken out of context. It's from a diary entry where he contrasts Mozart "the musical Christ" with Beethoven "the musical God." Nobody ever mentions the bit about Beethoven!


maybe because Tchaikovsky's assessment is weak consider God came before Christ hehe


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## regressivetransphobe (May 16, 2011)

DavidMahler said:


> two invaluable posts! Thank you!!!
> 
> Can't there be but one negative comment about Mozart? There's quite a few in history


People who speak ill of Mozart get a knock on the door the next night and "disappear".


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## pjang23 (Oct 8, 2009)

I started a thread a while back on "Composers' Lists of Greatest Composers".

Martijn had a super long post:


martijn said:


> Hello, I'm new here. This is an interesting topic, but as someone who has done quite some research in this field, I must say there are quite some errors here.
> 
> Among composers, Mozart, Bach and Beethoven have always been the most popular composers. If you were to hold a poll among composers, probably Mozart would end as number 1, with Beethoven a close second. Here some favorite composers of great composers:
> 
> ...


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## DavidMahler (Dec 28, 2009)

Brahms' favorite composer was not Beethoven, but Mozart, though he deeply admired Beethoven as well. Next to Mozart, Bach was his favorite. He also worshipped Schubert, Haydn, Mendelssohn, Schumann and Dvorak, and even Wagner. 

From my reading this is untrue

Brahms did not worship Dvorak, Mendelssohn nor Wagner. He appreciated their music for sure though.

I also believe I have read that Brahms thought Beethoven was the greatest composer.


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## poconoron (Oct 26, 2011)

DavidMahler said:


> Brahms' favorite composer was not Beethoven, but Mozart, though he deeply admired Beethoven as well. Next to Mozart, Bach was his favorite. He also worshipped Schubert, Haydn, Mendelssohn, Schumann and Dvorak, and even Wagner.
> 
> From my reading this is untrue
> 
> ...


I believe pjang23 is correct here about the Mozart aspect. From my book Composers on Composers, a conversation with Brahms recorded by Richard Heuberger - (Brahms is speaking):

"I understand very well that the new personality of Beethoven, the new outlook, which people found in his works, made him greater, more important in their view (than Mozart's later works). But 50 years later this judgment has been altered. The attraction of novelty must be differentiated from inner value. I admit that the (Third Piano) Concerto of Beethoven is more modern, but not so important. I am able to understand too, that Beethovebn's First Symphony did impress people colossally. In fact, it was a new outlook! But the last 3 symphonies of Mozart are much more important! Some people are beginning to feel that now."

Also, in the same book: "Brahms venerated Mozart, especially the operas, and possessed the manuscript of the Mozart Symphony #40 in G Minor. In 1896, just prior to his death, he went to Berlin to conduct his two piano concertos and attended a dinner given by Joachim. The violinist proposed the toast to "the most famous composer", but Brahms interposed hastily, "Quite right: here's to Mozart" and clinked glasses."


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

"It is a piece of philistinism to believe that the absence of faults produces greatness. On the contrary, the greatness of Bruckner is all the more impressive by virtue of the fact that he overcomes his faults and makes them unimportant." Wilhelm Furtwangler (composer and conductor.)


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## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

_I adore Scriabin's music now, but there was a time when him and his music scared the living **** out of me. _ - Roderick Borcherding on Alexander Scriabin


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## Tapkaara (Apr 18, 2006)

I have more skill, but he is greater. (Richard Strauss on Jean Sibelius)


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## Webernite (Sep 4, 2010)

poconoron said:


> I believe pjang23 is correct here about the Mozart aspect. From my book Composers on Composers, a conversation with Brahms recorded by Richard Heuberger - (Brahms is speaking):
> 
> "I understand very well that the new personality of Beethoven, the new outlook, which people found in his works, made him greater, more important in their view (than Mozart's later works). But 50 years later this judgment has been altered. The attraction of novelty must be differentiated from inner value. I admit that the (Third Piano) Concerto of Beethoven is more modern, but not so important. I am able to understand too, that Beethovebn's First Symphony did impress people colossally. In fact, it was a new outlook! But the last 3 symphonies of Mozart are much more important! Some people are beginning to feel that now."
> 
> Also, in the same book: "Brahms venerated Mozart, especially the operas, and possessed the manuscript of the Mozart Symphony #40 in G Minor. In 1896, just prior to his death, he went to Berlin to conduct his two piano concertos and attended a dinner given by Joachim. The violinist proposed the toast to "the most famous composer", but Brahms interposed hastily, "Quite right: here's to Mozart" and clinked glasses."


I think Brahms probably did regard Mozart more highly than Beethoven, but still, it's a bit misleading to use that first quote as evidence. He's specically contrasting Beethoven's _early works_ with Mozart's late works, after being asked what he thought of Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 3.


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## poconoron (Oct 26, 2011)

Webernite said:


> I think Brahms probably did regard Mozart more highly than Beethoven, but still, it's a bit misleading to use that first quote as evidence. He's specically contrasting Beethoven's _early works_ with Mozart's late works, after being asked what he thought of Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 3.


Thanks for that clarification!


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## Philip (Mar 22, 2011)

My favourite:

"_*The Chaconne is for me one of the most wonderful, incomprehensible pieces of music. On a single staff, for a small instrument, the man writes a whole world of the deepest thoughts and the most powerful feelings. If I were to imagine how I might have made, conceived the piece, I know for certain that the overall excitement and awe would've driven me mad.*_"

(Letter from Brahms to Clara Schumann dated June 1877; Johannes Brahms Life and Letters; translation by Josef Elsinger and Styra Avins; Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1997, pp. 515-6.)


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## DavidMahler (Dec 28, 2009)

Tapkaara said:


> I have more skill, but he is greater. (Richard Strauss on Jean Sibelius)


I like this more than what Jean said of richard....

"He has more skill but I am greater"


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## poconoron (Oct 26, 2011)

Tchaikovsky considered Bizet's Carmen a masterpiece and one of those rare compositions that reflect the musical aspirations of an entire epoch. He said it was delightful and charming from beginning to end, and that he could not watch the last scene without weeping.


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## poconoron (Oct 26, 2011)

Webernite said:


> Tchaikovsky's comment about Mozart being the musical Christ is always taken out of context. It's from a diary entry where he contrasts Mozart "the musical Christ" with Beethoven "the musical God." Nobody ever mentions the bit about Beethoven!


Here's the full context as I have been able to discover it (from the book Composers on Composers by John L Holmes):

"Tchaikovsky wrote in a letter that while he bowed down before the grandeur of some of his compositions, he did not love Beethoven. He explained that his relationship with Beethoven was similar to the way he felt in childhood towards God, to whom he felt great veneration and fear. But he did not love him, and these sentiments remained unchanged throughout his life.

On the other hand, "Christ callls forth exclusively the feeling of love", as he is God but also Man. Tchaikovsky saw the parallel with Mozart: while Beethoven had a place in his heart analagous to God, he loved Mozart as the musical Christ. Mozart was pure as an angel, and his music is full of divine beauty."


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## Webernite (Sep 4, 2010)

I don't dispute anything in your post. What I said still stands, though.


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## Manok (Aug 29, 2011)

Carl Maria von Weber basically called Beethoven's symphonies crap. I don't remember the exact quote, but thats the jist of it. I wonder whos symphonies are more famous now?


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## jalex (Aug 21, 2011)

poconoron said:


> Here's the full context as I have been able to discover it (from the book Composers on Composers by John L Holmes):
> 
> "Tchaikovsky wrote in a letter that while he bowed down before the grandeur of some of his compositions, he did not love Beethoven. He explained that his relationship with Beethoven was similar to the way he felt in childhood towards God, to whom he felt great veneration and fear. But he did not love him, and these sentiments remained unchanged throughout his life.
> 
> On the other hand, "Christ callls forth exclusively the feeling of love", as he is God but also Man. Tchaikovsky saw the parallel with Mozart: while Beethoven had a place in his heart analagous to God, he loved Mozart as the musical Christ. Mozart was pure as an angel, and his music is full of divine beauty."


If you are interested the original words of Tchaikovsky were:

"Probably after my death people will be interested to know what my musical passions and prejudices were, especially since I rarely expressed these in conversation.

I shall make a small start now and eventually, when I get to those composers who lived at the same time as me, I will also discuss their personalities.

I'll start with Beethoven, whom it is customary to praise unconditionally-indeed, one is supposed to cringe before him as before God. And so, what does Beethoven mean to me?

I bow before the greatness of some of his works, but I do not love Beethoven. My attitude towards him reminds me of how I felt as a child with regard to God, Lord of Sabaoth. I felt (and even now my feelings have not changed) a sense of amazement before Him, but at the same time also fear. He created heaven and earth, just as He created me, but still, even though I cringe before Him, there is no love. Christ, on the contrary, awakens precisely and exclusively feelings of love. Yes, He was God, but at the same time a man. He suffered like us. We are sorry for Him, we love in Him His ideal human side. And if Beethoven occupies in my heart a place analogous to God, Lord of Sabaoth, then Mozart I love as a musical Christ. Besides, he lived almost like Christ did. I think there is nothing sacrilegious in such a comparison. Mozart was a being so angelical and child-like in his purity, his music is so full of unattainably divine beauty, that if there is someone whom one can mention with the same breath as Christ, then it is he.

Speaking about Beethoven, I have stumbled across Mozart. It is my profound conviction that Mozart is the highest, the culminating point which _beauty_ has reached in the sphere of music. Nobody has made me cry and thrill with joy, sensing my proximity to something that we call the ideal, in the way that he has.

Beethoven also caused me to shudder. But it was rather out of something akin to fear and painful anguish."

http://www.tchaikovsky-research.net/en/people/beethoven_ludwig.html


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## poconoron (Oct 26, 2011)

jalex said:


> If you are interested the original words of Tchaikovsky were:
> 
> "Probably after my death people will be interested to know what my musical passions and prejudices were, especially since I rarely expressed these in conversation.
> 
> ...


Thanks for fleshing that out even further......... fascinating stuff.


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## DavidMahler (Dec 28, 2009)

I find Tchaikovsky's analysis very interesting.

Based on the music alone, I hear Beethoven as one who suffered and not Mozart. Very interesting for him to feel the opposite. I feel as though Beethoven was the first composer to allow for his inner suffering to protrude outward into the music.


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## samurai (Apr 22, 2011)

Especially after he became deaf, I would imagine. The opening notes of his *5th* might well be taken as his pounding against the barrier of his affliction so that he might hear again.


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## Jeremy Marchant (Mar 11, 2010)

Havergal Brian was a professional journalist: he was assistant editor on _Musical Opinion_, 1927-39, and contributed many thoughtful and valuable articles. 
They are collected in a projected six volume series,_ Havergal Brian on music_ (Toccata Press), of which two are so far available.
The Havergal Brian website has a over a hundred examples of Brian's writing - some 25 articles are on composers.
Worth giving it a whirl

www.havergalbrian.org/articlesbysubject.htm


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## poconoron (Oct 26, 2011)

DavidMahler said:


> I find Tchaikovsky's analysis very interesting.
> 
> Based on the music alone, I hear Beethoven as one who suffered and not Mozart. Very interesting for him to feel the opposite. I feel as though Beethoven was the first composer to allow for his inner suffering to protrude outward into the music.


Some of Mozart's slow movements express, to my ears, great anguish as in the K488 Piano Concerto and K364 Sinfonia Concertante, just to name 2 of many.


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## Dodecaplex (Oct 14, 2011)

DavidMahler said:


> I find Tchaikovsky's analysis very interesting.
> 
> Based on the music alone, I hear Beethoven as one who suffered and not Mozart.


Due to the non-existence of anesthesia, I'd bet they all suffered pretty badly.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

Jeremy Marchant said:


> The Havergal Brian website has a over a hundred examples of Brian's writing - some 25 articles are on composers.
> Worth giving it a whirl


Thanks. He has interesting insights.

He includes an amusing quote from Frederick Delius: "Don't think that the public is any more rotten than it ever has been: it was always rotten, and there never has been an artistic period."


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

Bruckner apparently studied Michael Haydn and had great respect for the masters of choral works from the distant past. Chopin also championed Scarlatti.


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

"Its sort of a blob isn't it? An orchestral amoeba."

Ryan Layne Whitney when asked what he thought of Alan Hovhaness's Symphony no. 50 Mt. St. Helens.

Then when prompted in conversation for what he thought of Symphony no. 14, Mt. Ararat, he said. "oh, there's something going on there, I guess." To which I said, it was an orchestral paramecium. To which he said, "Yes, you can see all of its little feelers writhing about."


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## poconoron (Oct 26, 2011)

Copeland on Mozart:

"Each time a Mozart work begins - I am thinking of the finest examples now - we composers listen with a certain awe and wonder, not unmixed with despair. The wonder we share with everyone; the despair comes fron the realization that only this one man at this one moment in musical history could have created works that seem so effortless and so close to perfection."


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## poconoron (Oct 26, 2011)

Some Tchaikovsky quotes on Wagner:

"I've been to the theatre a few times and heard Wagner's Walküre, from which I carried away memories of two or three glorious minutes and a whole ocean of boredom and utter emptiness"

"By the way, in all my life I have only seen one true conductor-and that was Wagner, when in 1863 he came to Saint Petersburg to give some concerts, at which he also conducted a number of symphonies by Beethoven [Nos. 3 and 5-8]. Those who haven't heard these symphonies in Wagner's interpretation cannot appreciate them fully and understand all their unattainable greatness."

Wagner's was a talent of genius, but he utterly lacked the ability to write for the stage, that is with breadth and simplicity, and without the orchestra predominating. For in his works the latter has taken everything upon itself, leaving to the singers merely the role of talking mannequins"

at the request of an American journalist during his stay in New York in 1891, Tchaikovsky sets down his views on Wagner in a few pithy statements; professes his admiration for Wagner as a composer, but unequivocally rejects Wagnerian theories; stresses that Wagner's influence on music in the second half of the 19th century had been "enormous", but that unfortunately he was "a genius who followed a wrong path"; Tchaikovsky asserts that "Wagner was a great symphonist, but not a composer of opera".


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## Lisztian (Oct 10, 2011)

Wagner, in a letter to Liszt in the 1850s.

'Let me first of all tell you, best of all men on earth, how astounded I am at your enormous productiveness! When I look back over your activities during the past years, you seem to me simply superhuman. I marvel how you can create so much and I realise your enviable position. I think I have discovered the fact that you are the greatest musician of all times!
How profound you are! I realize more and more that you are really a great philosopher. While I was reading Schopenhauer I was nearly the whole time with you. Your own thoughts I have rediscovered there in wonderful likeness. Even if you express yourself differently, because of your religous nature, I still know that it is still the same thing which you mean. You are to me such an astounding personality, that I know of no other appearance in the whole province of art or life with whom I can in any way compare you.
To-day came the second part of your Symphonic poems; they give me such a sudden feeling of opulence that I can hardly control myself. Each I read over one or the other of the scores, just as I would read a poem, quite freely and unhampered. And every time I have the feeling that I have been immersed in a deep, crystal flood, quite by myself, the whole world left behind, living for an hour my own real life. Then I emerge, refreshed and strengthened, and wishing that I might be with you...'


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## DavidMahler (Dec 28, 2009)

Lisztian said:


> Wagner, in a letter to Liszt in the 1850s.
> 
> 'Let me first of all tell you, best of all men on earth, how astounded I am at your enormous productiveness! When I look back over your activities during the past years, you seem to me simply superhuman. I marvel how you can create so much and I realise your enviable position. I think I have discovered the fact that you are the greatest musician of all times!
> How profound you are! I realize more and more that you are really a great philosopher. While I was reading Schopenhauer I was nearly the whole time with you. Your own thoughts I have rediscovered there in wonderful likeness. Even if you express yourself differently, because of your religous nature, I still know that it is still the same thing which you mean. You are to me such an astounding personality, that I know of no other appearance in the whole province of art or life with whom I can in any way compare you.
> To-day came the second part of your Symphonic poems; they give me such a sudden feeling of opulence that I can hardly control myself. Each I read over one or the other of the scores, just as I would read a poem, quite freely and unhampered. And every time I have the feeling that I have been immersed in a deep, crystal flood, quite by myself, the whole world left behind, living for an hour my own real life. Then I emerge, refreshed and strengthened, and wishing that I might be with you...'


we'll return to The Young and the Lisztless after a word from our sponsors


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## LordBlackudder (Nov 13, 2010)

While not about a specific composer I found these interviews interesting.



Japanese Composers Say Western Game Music is "Dry"


A group of Japanese game musicians recently talked a bit about soundtracks in North American videogames, which Tekken composer Nobuyoshi Sano described as "pretty dry."

Nine Japanese videogame musicians took part in a roundtable discussion for the most recent issue of Famitsu, among them Keisuke Ito (the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon series), Nobuyoshi Sano (Tekken, Ridge Racer), Takenobu Mitsuyoshi (Shenmue, Sega Rally), Takayuki Nakamura (Lumines, Virtua Fighter), Hidenori Shoji (Yakuza), Masato Kouda (Monster Hunter) and Shinji Hosoe, who created the music for many Namco games in the early 90s. The group answered a number of questions posed by the users of Noisycroak, including one about their opinions of music in Western videogames.

"You see a lot of first-person shooters put huge budgets into the music, hiring full-on orchestras and so on," Sano said. "They basically make games like they make movies and they use vast sums of money on it, so if you're asking me what I think about it, I'd respond that I'm jealous!"

"In the US they'll borrow a tank just to record sound off of it," Hosoe said. "We just can't do that here."

Despite the huge budgets for music in many American games, however, the Japanese developers weren't entirely uncritical of the result. "A lot of it does a gorgeous job at creating atmosphere, but what you never see is really unforgettable melodies -- like you see in Kouda's Monster Hunter, for example," said Mitsuyoshi. Sano concurred, saying, "That's what makes Monster Hunter so great. There's real warmth to the music, where I think the Hollywood orchestral sound has this image of being pretty dry in my mind."

And while the participants expressed good-natured envy at the amount of money their American counterparts had to work with, Nakamura pointed out that having a big bankroll doesn't necessarily add up to much. "They're great technological achievements and they're made with big budgets, but that isn't what it takes to produce good music," he said.




In another interview Nobuo Uematsu shares his thought on the movie Avatar and mentions film music:

Nobuo urged us not to tell Hollywood, but he thinks the soundtracks to most of the latest action movies are interchangeable. "Even if you have two different action flicks, if you were to switch their soundtracks, they'd both sound the same," he said through Tebbetts. Nobuo much prefers dramatic movies, listing October Sky as a constant inspiration for his music.


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