Composers can be Harsh Critics
Wed, Oct 24 2012, 1:49PM
A couple of interesting snippets from Shostakovitch on other composers, from Testimony:
'...at one of his lectures Sollertinsky was talking about Scriabin, whom he didn't like very much. He shared my opinion that Scriabin knew as much about orchestration as a pig about oranges. Personally, I think all of Scriabin's poems - the Divine, and the Ecstasy, and Prometheus -are gibberish'.
'Once Prokofiev was showing his assignments in orchestration to Rimsky-Korsakov. This was always done in front of the entire class. Rimsky-Korsakov found a number of mistakes in Prokofiev's work and grew angry. Prokofiev turned to the class triumphantly - there, the old man is mad. He thought that it somehow increased his standing. But as he later told it, his friends' faces remained serious; he didn't find support in this instance. And by the way, he never did learn how to orchestrate properly'.
Just for the record Shostakovitch did have a high opinion of Stravinsky and Mahler.
Anybody got any thoughts on his views. I like Prokofiev!
Mark
Wed, Oct 24 2012, 4:07PM
#2
RE: Composers can be Harsh Critics
Hi, Mark and welcome back.
I guess composers, when dealing with their peers, they tend to become rather myopic, focusing on specific works at a specific time framework. In this way, it is not surprising that certain works of Stravinsky or Prokofiev might cause completely different reactions.
In any case, I believe the "comments", "views" etc. of composers for other composers are useful literature to enrich our understanding on them, but not a definitive source of information.
By all means, I love Prokofiev despite he is uneven in his opus. I appreciate Scriabin's few virtues, which, in some way, overcome his various limitations, including the ones on orchestration. As for Shostakovich, needless to repeat it. I strongly believe he is The composer of the 20th century.
Parla
Wed, Oct 24 2012, 4:27PM
#3
RE: Composers can be Harsh Critics
We all know what Bartok thought of Shostakovitch. As stated with eloquence in Concerto for Orchestra.
Wed, Oct 24 2012, 10:08PM
#4
RE: Composers can be Harsh Critics
Two things here - first of all I always approach 'Testimony' with a little apprehension as what we have is Solomon Volkov's version of Shostakovich... but it does make for good reading.
Secondly, while not a composer, Daniel Barenboim was once a very staunch critic of Shostakovich... I think in he once said there was just 'page after page of quarter notes' or some such thing. At the time I remember taking him off my Christmas list - he only made it back when I heard his Mendelssohn :-)
It seems now times have changed - I note his now going to conduct an all Shostakovich concert with Gidon Kremer: 2nd violin concerto and 13th symphony.
Boulez was also critical of opera houses - he did rather impetuously suggest we burnt them all down. I wonder if he had to be restrained from suggesting such a coup de theatre when conducting Gotterdammerung at Bayreuth? Since that time he has of course appeared in the pit on a number of occasions and I do treasure his 'Lulu' recording.
Schumann (both Clara and Robert) are pretty clear in their writings. Herz gets a pasting from Robert and Liszt seemed to really upset Clara. In all my readings of Liszt's letters etc. I have never found much to suggest the feelings were mutual. And I am always amazed at Liszt's benign attitude to Wagner, one of the most shameless spongers of all time. I am sure Wagner is the greater composer, but I suspect I would have found him an insufferable bore, whereas I might fancy sharing an armagnac with Liszt.
Thu, Oct 25 2012, 12:25AM
#5
RE: Composers can be Harsh Critics
This ego stuff is something to be avoided, but we bump into such remarks now and then and somehow they arises our curiosity: it's inevitable.
Just to add some "gossips" to the above mentioned (if memory serves): It seems that Brahms didn't like Bruckner's symphonies at all: "...those huge serpents" (or something of the sort). We can easily imagine why Brahms used to say that.....but most of us like them both: Brahms & Bruckner's symphonies.
Debussy on his Monsieur Croche Antidilettante makes hard comments about the depiction of nature made by LvB in his 6th Symphony ("...sans parler du rossignol en bois et du coucou suisse, qui appartiennent plus à l'art de M. de Vaucanson qu'à une nature digne de ce nom...."......"Tout cela est inutilement imitatif ou d'une interprétation purement arbitraire"......"Un homme n'est pas tenu de n'écrire que des chefs-d'oeuvre, et si l'on traite ainsi la Symphonie Pastorale, cette épithète manquerait des forces pour qualifier les autres"....)
Again, he who is acquainted with Debussy's works knows very well what he meant: descriptive passages of that sort are pure noise for him or any "impressionist", if the term applies. Just to illustrate: Debussy wrote one of his Préludes (Puerta del Vino - a stone gate in the gardens of a mourish palace in Granada/Spain) from a simple postcard sent to him by Falla.
However, most of us (me included) love the Pastoral and think it is quite an underrated symphony and well, we love the Images for orchestra too. But everyone likes to emphasize their strongest points. There are many Debussy's works I simply don't like and knowing most of his output quite well I just fancy that an hypothetical LvB's defense would be.......piece of cake, as they say.
Thu, Oct 25 2012, 12:42AM
#6
RE: Composers can be Harsh Critics
Probably, Debussy missed the last movement of the Pastorale (which is one of the most beautiful, musically perfect and emotionally deeply profound piece of music by Beethoven).
I think this sort of unfair criticism by fellow composers normally for better/greater ones show their frustration over the development of their own compositions. However, all this sort of "literature" is interesting in certain ways with a view to "enlightening" us about not the object of the criticism but of the...subject.
Parla
Thu, Oct 25 2012, 8:21AM
#7
RE: Composers can be Harsh Critics
Parla wrote:
I think this sort of unfair criticism by fellow composers normally for better/greater ones show their frustration over the development of their own compositions. However, all this sort of "literature" is interesting in certain ways with a view to "enlightening" us about not the objectof the criticism but of the...subject.
Exactly so!
Once in a while though, the opposite, none more true than Haydn's remark to Leopold Mozart:
"Before God and as an honest man I tell you that your son is the greatest composer known to me either in person or by name".
To which, I think most of us would say, Amen.
Chris
Thu, Oct 25 2012, 11:19AM
#8
RE: Composers can be Harsh Critics
Thankyou for all your kind comments and input. This is looking fascinating already!
Naupilus - I think there is a view that Volkov may be an example of what is sometimes termed 'the unreliable narrator' in Testimony (as distinct from the reliable narrator - if memory serves I think the terms come from Wayne Booth's The Rhetoric of Fiction).
A classic example in fiction of the unreliable narrator is Thomas Mann's Confessions of Felix Krull Confidence Man.
78 - I have Debussy's Monsieur Croche in Dover paperback's Three Classics in the Aesthetics of Music - I can't lay claim to having read it in the original French!
What does come over in Testimony is perhaps some professional jealousy or envy between Shostakovitch and Prokofiev, viz: 'In general, he scanned my works without a close reading, but he sounded rather definitive sounding opinions on them. In his lengthy correspondence with Miaskovsky, Prokofiev makes quite a few disparaging remarks about me'.
I'm sure I've heard the story though not seen it documented that Britten disliked Brahms intensely, which leads me onto that theory that composers often have a 'pet hate'!
Mark
Thu, Oct 25 2012, 11:36AM
#9
RE: Composers can be Harsh Critics
Yes - on P348 of Humphrey Carpeneter's biography of Britten, Davis Spenser is quoted as saying that Britten said to him "One day, David, you will realize that Mozart is the greatest composer that ever lived and that Brahms is easily the worst"
However, earlier in the book it is also made clear that, in his teens, Britten absolutely worshipped Brahms, but that wore off and, in his 1935 diary, Britten wrote "I can't stand Brahms these days".
Alan
Sun, Oct 28 2012, 11:29AM
#10
RE: Composers can also be kind
Thanks Alan for that reference.
These quotations all come from Wendy Thompson's book 'The Great Composers' published by Hermes.
Schubert:'Johann Sebastian Bach has done everything completely. He was a man through and through'.
Mozart: 'Handel understands effect better than any of us - when he chooses, he strikes like a thunderbolt'.
Dvorak: 'Mozart is sunshine'.
Schumann: 'Nature would burst should she attempt to produce nothing save Beethoven'.
Berlioz: 'Weber, who seems to whisper in my ear like a familiar spirit, inhabiting a happy sphere where he awaits to console me'.
Schumann: 'Paganini is the turning point in the history of virtuosity'.
Brahms: 'To me, Schumann's memory is holy. The noble, pure artist forever remains my ideal'.
Mendelssohn: 'I have not seen any musician in whom musical feeling ran, as in Liszt, into the very tips of the fingers and there streamed out immediately'.
Brahms: 'I should be glad if something occurred to me as a main idea that occurs to Dvorak only by the way'.
Schumann: 'I believe Johannes (Brahms) to be the true apostle, who will also write revelations'.
Parry on Elgar: 'Look out for this man's music. He has something to say and knows how to say it'.
Stravinsky on Ives: 'This fascinating composer...was exploring the 1960's during the heyday of Strauss and Debussy'.
Boulez on Stockhausen : 'In Stockhausen's good period I came to trust his music more than anything else'.
And finally, back to being cruel, Prokofiev on Stravinsky: 'Bach on the wrong notes'!
Mark
Sun, Oct 28 2012, 12:12PM
#11
RE: Composers can be Harsh Critics
I think this sort of unfair criticism by fellow composers normally for better/greater ones show their frustration over the development of their own compositions. However, all this sort of "literature" is interesting in certain ways with a view to "enlightening" us about not the object of the criticism but of the...subject.
Parla
I am not sure I agree with you about this Parla. It seems to me much more likely that in many cases a composer's distaste for the work of another is nt jealousy but instead basd upon a different aesthetic. Perhaps the most widespread discourse in all of 'classical music' is the dispute between the New German School (Liszt, Berlioz etc.) and those of the Leipzig Conservatoire (Brahms, Schumann etc.). They really felt they were fighting over the soul of music and it is fascinating to read the views of these composers, as it does give some motive to the choices they made as composers. As I have written before (and Boulez demonstrated over the last twenty years) it is ofetn that case that in order to find a voice you have to reject the voice of others, while time does bring one round to the realisation that those we rejected earlier have soemthing to offer. This is, I feel, entirely natural. The key is that the artist (composer or whomever) understands the past before rejecting it - Picasso could surely have sought to follow Rembrandt or Goya but instead he chose to take the rules and break them, in an attempt to find his own expression.
Sun, Oct 28 2012, 12:45PM
#12
RE: Composers can be Harsh Critics
Naupilus - I think there is a view that Volkov may be an example of what is sometimes termed 'the unreliable narrator' in Testimony (as distinct from the reliable narrator - if memory serves I think the terms come from Wayne Booth's The Rhetoric of Fiction).
Mark
Mark, my problem with Volkov is that he is exactly as you say, an unreliable narrator. That is fine in fiction (and is a device that has a lot of merit - it just about makes Lolita a bearable novel) but in a work of non-fiction you end up with the impossibilit of devining truth from fiction.Volkov may or ma not be as bad as James Frey but I really don't want to spend my time trying to resolve the 'truthiness' of the text...
Sun, Oct 28 2012, 3:49PM
#13
RE: Composers can be Harsh Critics
Stravinsky:"Why is it that whenever I hear a piece of music that I don`t like,it is always by Villa-Lobos"?!
Sun, Oct 28 2012, 3:53PM
#14
RE: Composers can be Harsh Critics
Hi Naupilus!
Yes you are absolutely right. It is a term coined with reference to fiction and an interesting device when used by authors. I think what I was getting at was that the term can also be applied to other non-fiction forms such as biographies etc....and as you say, more irksome if there are reasons to doubt the authenticity! Sorry if I didn't make that clear.
Mark
Sun, Oct 28 2012, 4:27PM
#15
RE: Composers can be Harsh Critics
Rossini (referring to Wagner's Lohengrin) "One cannot judge Wagner's opera after a first hearing, and I certainly have no intention of hearing it a second time"
Hi Mark! Welcome back from your 'forum holiday'. This sounds like a good subject for a thread.
Shostakovich was indeed a stern critic. But he has had his critics too. This is what Boulez had to say about him: "Well, Shostakovich plays with clichés most of the time, I find. It's like olive oil, when you have a second and even third pressing, and I think of Shostakovich as the second, or even third, pressing of Mahler." (from Alex Ross: The Rest is Noise).
As for Shostakovich's admiration for Stravinsky, I read somewhere that it was by no means reciprocated! About Scriabin, Stravinsky told a questioner "Scriabin isn't a musician at all. I never liked him as a composer and don't see that a musician can possibly like him". And about Prokofiev; "There's something unstable in his cultural makeup, something about his musical talent". [From Stephen Walsh's Stravinsky biography].
Of the three composers, I prefer Shostakovich and Boulez to Prokofiev. I can't quite get on with Prokofiev's acidicly humorous style. Many exceptions though. I love the second violin concerto for example.
Best wishes,
Chris
Chris A.Gnostic