Composers about Composers - Stupidest Statements

[DavidW]

Yes, but you mentioned the operas. Theo is an oratorio. (Which you could I suppose call an opera to an English text.)

Yeah, I read some quotes regarding his operas last night, but I can't find them today.

[DavidW]

OTOH Handel's oratorios seem to have directly inspired/influenced Haydn's Creation and Seasons.

You don't have to convince me. I'm a Handel fan. I do not agree with the quotes! Same for the other ones.

[Karl Henning]

The 'Stravinsky quote is both funny (in a wicked way)  and has an element of musical truth to it from Stravinsky's aesthetical pov.

Plausibility is after all, why many mistook Testimony as genuinely Shostakovich's memoirs.

The fact that I love Rachmaninov's music makes no difference to my appreciation of Igor's satirical sharpness.

And you make my point: Is this thread "stupidest statements," or "statements with which I disagree æsthetically?"

[Karl Henning]

Back to the subject: Benjamin Britten "developed a particular animosity towards Brahms, whose piano music he had once held in great esteem; in 1952 he confided that he played through all Brahms's music from time to time, 'to see if I am right about him; I usually find that I underestimated last time how bad it was!'"

Why does poor Brahms come in for such a licking?

I think there was some self-loathing in there. when young. Britten admired Brahms a good deal. I have no insight on just why he turned on Brahms, but it was a dramatic change.

[DaveF]

I'm not checking this, so it may be myth, but Weber is supposed to have said, with reference to the seesawing chromatic bass-line at the beginning of the 1st movement coda of the 7th symphony: "Now at last Beethoven is ready for the madhouse".  A bass-line very like those used to express menace in an opera called Der Freischütz - I forget who composed that one.

Again from memory, didn't Boulez say something like "If we play Shostakovich, why don't we play Hindemith"?  I'm never sure whether he meant Hindemith was more deserving of performance, or whether, if we insist on scraping the barrel, we might as well give it a really good scrape.

[Karl Henning]

I'm not checking this, so it may be myth, but Weber is supposed to have said, with reference to the seesawing chromatic bass-line at the beginning of the 1st movement coda of the 7th symphony: "Now at last Beethoven is ready for the madhouse".  A bass-line very like those used to express menace in an opera called Der Freischütz - I forget who composed that one.

Again from memory, didn't Boulez say something like "If we play Shostakovich, why don't we play Hindemith"?  I'm never sure whether he meant Hindemith was more deserving of performance, or whether, if we insist on scraping the barrel, we might as well give it a really good scrape.

I think the von Weber/Beethoven quote appears in Slonimsky's Lexicon of Musical Invective. 

[(poco) Sforzando]

Boulez on Shostakovich:

I heard [the First Cello Concerto] twice over the years, and I am not saying that it made me physically sick or anything like that, but Tchaikovsky was more radical than Shostakovich. I heard the Fifth Symphony a few years back here in Chicago; it is so conventional. And Symphony Fifteen, this business of long quotes from Rossini, what a poor excuse for some imagination. If we are to play Shostakovich, why not Hindemith?...

You know, in the history of music, there are composers without whom the face of music would be completely different, and composers whom if they had never existed, it would have made no difference whatsoever.

Elsewhere:

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.

[ritter]

Again from memory, didn't Boulez say something like "If we play Shostakovich, why don't we play Hindemith"?  I'm never sure whether he meant Hindemith was more deserving of performance, or whether, if we insist on scraping the barrel, we might as well give it a really good scrape.

I think I read once an interview with Boulez in which he mentioned Prokofiev and Hindemith as important 20th century composers (or something to that effect), but not in the league of Bartók, Stravinsky, Webern, etc. (the names we always associate with the "canon" as seen by Boulez). Of Shostakovich, OTOH, he famously talked of "a second or third pressing of Mahler" ("pressing" as in olive oil). So, I'm almost sure he'd rather conduct Hindemith than Shostakovich. Just for the record, I actually saw him conduct Prokofiev with the LSO.

EDIT: I see my pressing of olive oil was second to that of @(poco) Sforzando . 

[(poco) Sforzando]

Boulez said Messiaen's music made him want to vomit. The Turangalila Symphony was like "brothel music." Perhaps Yuja Wang should be engaged to play the piano solo?

[(poco) Sforzando]

Stravinsky on Richard Strauss: "I do not like the major works, and I do not like the minor works."

[(poco) Sforzando]

Stravinsky, on walking out of a performance of Siegfried with his party: "We all have diarrhea."

[ritter]

Boulez said Messiaen's music made him want to vomit. The Turangalila Symphony was like "brothel music." Perhaps Yuja Wang should be engaged to play the piano solo?

Not all of it, just the Turangalîla and some other pieces. He was a champion for much of his teacher Messiaen's music in concert and on record.

Of the Turangalîla he detested, he also said it was like "Bernini of the suburbs". Quite witty, I'd say...

[Todd]

Boulez said Messiaen's music made him want to vomit. The Turangalila Symphony was like "brothel music." Perhaps Yuja Wang should be engaged to play the piano solo?

I heard Steven Osborne play it in person.  Oh dear.

[ritter]

Stravinsky, on walking out of a performance of Siegfried with his party: "We all have diarrhea."

Then again, young Stravinsky raved about Parsifal (which he saw in concert in Monte-Carlo, with Cosima Wagner in attendance). His attitude to Wagner changed dramatically at some point, and in a French interview in the 30s he said all German music (IIRC, including Bach) was "bad".

[Todd]

and in a French interview in the 30s he said all German music (IIRC, including Bach) was "bad").

In the 30s, you say?

[ritter]

In the 30s, you say?

Yes, IIRC. The interview was reproduced in an Actes Sud volume of articles by and interviews with IS from before his departure to America. I don't have it at hand now, but can look it up later.

[Todd]

Yes, IIRC. The interview was reproduced in an Actes Sud volume of articles by and interviews with IS from before his departure to America. I don't have it at hand now, but can look it up later.

I don't doubt he made such a statement.  The broader point is about when and where he said it, and the politics of the era. I'd gladly read the interview while eating freedom fries.

[ritter]

I don't doubt he made such a statement.  The broader point is about when and where he said it, and the politics of the era. I'd gladly read the interview while eating freedom fries.

Well, good old Igor Fyodorovich's politics (particularly in the 30s) were, shall we say, sui generis... 

[ritter]

Stravinsky on Richard Strauss: "I do not like the major works, and I do not like the minor works."

Stravinsky on Richard Strauss, once more: "Ariadne makes me want to scream!" 

[Iota]

Plausibility is after all, why many mistook Testimony as genuinely Shostakovich's memoirs.

And you make my point: Is this thread "stupidest statements," or "statements with which I disagree æsthetically?"

Your question's certainly a valid one. The conflation of those two things or their like, is common just about everywhere I think.