# Creative shocks



## Andreas (Apr 27, 2012)

In 1781, Haydn published his op. 33 string quartets, which I understand impressed Mozart a great deal. And in 1782 or 1783, Mozart came across the works of J. S. Bach. I wonder if these events were shock moments to Mozart. I don't know how he thought of himself, whether he regarded himself as an epic genius (_Amadeus_ wasn't so clear about this). But I could well imagine that he looked at these works by Haydn and Bach and said to himself: Damn, I need to step up my game! Perhaps this is how his late, or rather last, period was jump-started?

Penderecki recently said in an interview that around 1970 he lived in Berlin for a while and went to the Philharmonic every week. There, he heard, for the first time, the works of Bruckner, which led him to change his own music from avantgarde back to a more traditional style.

Are there other moments when composers were so impressed by the works of a colleague, living or long dead, that it caused them to reevaluate their own efforts?


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Beethoven composed his Third Piano Concerto in C minor modeled after Mozart's 24th Piano Concerto in C minor.

If Mozart's concerto didn't exist, Beethoven's third piano concerto may have been very different.


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## Guest (Mar 30, 2015)

From wikipedia:



> *Jason Eckardt* (born 17 May 1971 in Princeton, New Jersey) is an American composer. He began his musical life playing guitar in heavy metal and jazz bands and abruptly moved to composing after discovering the music of *Anton Webern*.


I daresay this fits


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Haydn himself was later influenced by the great Handel which inspired Haydn to compose his two greatest works, the Creation and the Seasons oratorios. All is great.


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

I'm not sure if this counts, but Zappa has stated he wouldn't have been a musician were it not for hearing Varese for the first time.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

I think Beethoven came across Bach as well and was well inspired to write epic pieces like the Missa Solemnis.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

Erik Satie hung out with Debussy in his early days and discussed things like music where chords were more about sounds and not about going somewhere. When Debussy produced Pelleas, Satie remarked, "I need to find another direction." Then he started with his humorous/cubist works.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

ArtMusic said:


> I think Beethoven came across Bach as well and was well inspired to write epic pieces like the Missa Solemnis.


Beethoven was the first well-known composer to be raised on Bach, playing the WTC throughout his youth and well into his Vienna years.


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## DiesIraeCX (Jul 21, 2014)

ArtMusic said:


> I think Beethoven came across Bach as well and was well inspired to write epic pieces like the Missa Solemnis.





KenOC said:


> Beethoven was the first well-known composer to be raised on Bach, playing the WTC throughout his youth and well into his Vienna years.


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:

"Neefe had come 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, in those days more a work known to the occasional connoisseur than something active in the repertoire... Beethoven was perhaps the first musician outside the Bach family to grow up playing the WTC, imprinting music in his fingers and his heart and his very sense of music. Perhaps here he 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."

Here's the beginning section of a publication by the doing of Neefe in 1783, with Beethoven advertising himself in the third person:

"Louis van Betthoven, son of the tenor singer mentioned, a boy of eleven years and of most promising talent. He plays the clavier very skillfully and with power, reads at sight very well, and... plays chiefly The Well-Tempered Clavier of Sebastian Bach, which Herr Neefe put into his hands..."

:tiphat:


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Neefe and his life, and his influence on the young Beethoven in Bonn (which went well beyond music) are covered in some detail in Swafford's new biography of Beethoven, an invaluable doorstop of a book. [Added] Oh, you're quoting Swafford! Good show.


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