Oh, I don't doubt the influence. I was really only surprised about your assertion that Schoenberg believed that he carried on the traditions of both Brahms and

Oh, I don't doubt the influence. I was really only surprised about your assertion that Schoenberg believed that he carried on the traditions of both Brahms and Wagner, given the fractious climate around these two composers at the time. Not that he wasn't influenced by Wagner's music at all, but I've certainly considered him more in the Brahms camp. What you said about the Brahms symphony reminded me of something Schoenberg wrote in "Brahms the Progressive", and so went to look it up and found another, more pertinent essay, "My Evolution" (written at 75). In Schoenberg's essay "My Evolution", he writes that prior to Zemlinsky, he was a Brahmsian, but after he had a deep appreciation for Wagner's genius for writing music for stage action and goes on to detail how Verklärte Nacht was modeled on "Wagnerian 'model and sequence'...and on Brahm's technique of developing variation. He surely did acknowledge the influence as you suggest, which I suppose is tantamount to carrying on the tradition in some way, even if he didn't become primarily a composer for the stage. Thanks for the post -- I had never thought to place Schoenberg somewhere in the Brahms/Wagner rift until your comment. That Schoenberg wrote the above about Wagner in 1949 rather than 1901 also let's Schoenberg affirm the influence with little risk to a new career.