4 ms·
> That arrangement lands particularly hard on contemporary composers, who must compete with a group of semi-mythical figures who are worshipped as house gods.
by iosonofuturista 7y ago
> That arrangement lands particularly hard on contemporary composers, who must compete with a group of semi-mythical figures who are worshipped as house gods.
Hardly a new phenomenon. Brahms could be arguably said to belong to that Pantheon, but he struggled hard with the old composers reputation. Of particular note its first symphony [0]
But also one can do a search for his quotes relating to Beethoven, Mozart or Bach.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_No._1_(Brahms) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_No._1_(Brahms)
- jancsika 7y agoRight. What I'm saying is that any composer who would have struggled with Mozart's reputation would have very quickly hit up against a bigger problem: that nearly no other human beings have the capacity to remember, synthesize, and internalize the amount of music necessary to compose the way he did. That's why while Mozart was "grandfathered" into the Romantic period by early Romantic composers and writers, everyone emulated Beethoven in practice. At least obsessive motivic transformation is a tractable problem. (One which, btw, is a subset of Mozart's output.) Bach is in that same ballpark, though I'd argue that Mozart's output also includes examples of clear mastery of Bach's contrapuntal techniques.