Talk:War of the Romantics

Untitled
Quite possibly no account of the War of the Romantics is begun, leave alone complete, without an account of the writings of Freigedank (Wagner) on the so-called Jewish question- not gratuitously, not because the writing of these first articles of his on the subject occurred during this period, but because the effect of those writings (and possibly his reasons for writing them just then) need to be considered in the context of the Liszt etc. Brahms etc. (ideas etc. ideas etc.) disagreement (and the fact, too, that Liszt has been considered, for many reasons including also writings that may or may not have been his- separate issue...- an anti-semite himself) - (sentence is getting lost in its own turnings here) - there may be reason? to consider those articles more of an integral part of the 'War'. ?? Schissel 16:13, Nov 27, 2004 (UTC)

An article with both a broader focus ("conservatism" and "radicalism" in music through the ages - pardon the enclosing-quotes, whose appropriateness I'm not convinced of either) and a different one (not a discussion of a debate within music history, but an aspect of music history) might succeed better. Will check to see if there is such a thing and if the best of this can be made better, incorporated within it, and otherwise blanked and deleted. Schissel-nonLop! 14:27, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Style
Could someone clean up this run-on sentence? I can barely decipher what it's trying to say:

"The 20th century brought a diversity of music against which the conflicts of the 19th seem like so many shades of the same color against a rainbow, and often, as Arnold Schoenberg lamented, criticism was one-note* and one-shade in the face of a whirlwind of styles, experimentation, returns-to, but the War of the Romantics, the writing it left and the events we know, provide a very useful insight into the time and its creative artists for all of that."

--128.105.167.39 (talk) 17:38, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Copy edit
I can correct the grammar, clarify the language, etc. but I know nothing about the subject matter and cannot add new material. If you want new material added, please provide it and I will fit it in.

Also, if you see that I am misrepresenting the facts, please let me know and correct me.

NothingMuch 23:09, 25 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I apologize for missing your comment. I finally came back today to suggest that instead of having it be cleaned up, the article might best be subsumed under some larger topic (ah, I see I already did so above- forgot), but now I see that it's jaw-droppingly clearer and better-written... and I will look into the rest and additional material, yes; fortunately I have access to other sources here (like reprints of those Neue Zeitschrift issues) besides the one (Walker's book) I quote too often without thought of his bias :) Speaking just for myself, I think that was stunning work. Schissel | Sound the Note! 16:32, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Some mistakes in your article
There are unfortunately some mistakes in your article. An example is the sentence Clara Schumann would have long been the more conservative aesthete in the Schumann marriage. The exact opposite is true. From their letters it can be seen that Clara in her youth admired a kind of music which can be regarded as the modern music of the time, the operas of Bellini and Donizetti, whereas Schumann mainly adored Beethoven and Bach. Clara hoped that she could cure him from that spleen after their wedding but it didn't work. It was only after Schumann's death when Clara became extremely conservative in her musical taste.

In the paragraph above about Schumann's relations with Liszt and Wagner, every single sentence is false. (I'm sorry for it.) Schumann did not like a radical romantic like Liszt in the least. There are many sources, among them Schumann's diaries and his letters, which show it. (In the early 1850s, in a letter to Joseph Joachim, he called Liszt the "Judas Iscariot at the Ilm".) Looking at the "Neue Zeitschrift für Musik", there was a single short period during which Liszt was praised in articles by Schumann. But this was an exception, and it was correlated with problems of Schumann's private life. Schumann hoped that Liszt would help him in his projected marriage with Clara. (Liszt did it.) In all the rest of the "Neue Zeitschrift für Musik", so far as it was under Schumann's responsibility, Liszt is looking like a caricature of an artist. Schumann praised Thalberg very much, but not Liszt. Especially Schumann’s reviews of Liszt’s etudes were catastrophic for Liszt.

Concerning Liszt and Hanslick you may go to "WWW.fullbooks.com". In the list you click at "L", and in the new list search for "Letters of Franz Liszt". Take the second entry and afterwards choose the 10th part. In this part there are two letters by Liszt to Hanslick included which show that Liszt and Hanslick were not enemies, but nearly friends. (They had met for the first time in early 1840 in Prague.) In fact, Hanslick's famous book "Vom musikalisch Schönen" had been published with Liszt's help.

The "Manifesto" from 1860 was written by Brahms and was signed by not more than four persons. (Brahms, Joachim, Grimm and Scholz.) From the correspondance of Barhms and Joachim it can be learnt that the "Manifesto" was aiming at Liszt as a single person, although his name was not included. Reinecke was a close friend of Liszt's. To your chapter "The war" I put the remark that a misunderstanding must have occured. There was only one anniversary in Zwickau. It was in 1860 because of Schumann's 50th birthday. Clara Schumann had been invited, but she did not want to come because of Liszt. Carolyne von Sayn-Wittgenstein will posthumously be very angry when looking at your article with her name as "Caroline", by the way. She was rather obstinate in this respect.80.145.1.69 09:47, 25 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I am aware that it was signed by only four people, though I was under the impression that this was because it was intercepted and published without Brahms' consent while he was still canvassing for more signatures (I am not "at my desk" but my source, such as it is, is volume 2 of Walker's Liszt biography, which is admittedly very biased- but also heavily documented. However, I also have problems at times with some of those documents or should I say, his willingness to use documents unavailable to other scholars for the foreseeable future, e.g.) As to the rest - the only proviso I can make before editing is that such edits should be made, to the extent possible in accordance with copyright law, with the best and most up-to-date versions of these documents and scholarship; Liszt's letters especially, I gather, have been mutilated in earlier published editions (though probably more through omissions than changes, one wishes to be careful about anything that changes sense) and one's gratitude towards La Mara is, despite all, somewhat affected by this. Schissel | Sound the Note! 18:26, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Only a concept in English-language music histories?
This is an honest question, because having learned about this "war" while studying music in the USA, and having heard or read nothing about it while studying musicology in Austria, I have begun to wonder if the "War of the Romantics" is only a concept in American and English music histories. The fact that there's no equivalent to this article on German Wikipedia is telling.

I'm not asking to raise doubts about how real this war was (though they might be justified), but because I'd honestly like to know for my own research reasons if there's discussion about this supposed schism in the modern German-language literature. So far, I haven't seen anything, but I'm still getting to know German-language musicology. If there's not, perhaps this article should reflect that. Junggai (talk) 07:09, 14 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Well, this is English and American Wikipedia. If it is a concept in American and English music history, as you acknowledge, ther ought to be an article about it here! But if you look at the articles Allgemeine Deutsche Musikverein and New German School (cited in the article), you will see that the issues involved are very much recognised by German music historians, and indeed each of these articles has a counterpart in German Wikipedia. Get out a collection of the reviews of Eduard Hanslick or look at the correpondence of Franz Liszt and you will find plenty on the topic. Or read the Alan Walker book cited in this article and form your own opinion. --Smerus (talk) 15:56, 14 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Having written the above, I would also say that the article needs a lot more citations etc. to make it more WP-worthy. If I have time I will try to get round to it.--Smerus (talk) 15:57, 14 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the tips. I'll read the chapter in Walker today before commenting again, but have a couple of suggestions in the meantime:


 * The article seems to rely exclusively on Alan Walker, who coined the phrase "War of the Romantics." He's definitely a respected scholar, but I can't tell from the article if the phrase has entered wide use, or if it's only Walker's way of describing an event that many historians talk about. That's an important distinction, because I know for sure that other historians put the "war" in much more qualified terms.


 * Again, I'm not here to dispute the article's existence, as it fills a vacuum that needed filling, but it could use a broader perspective. I'll have more to say after I've read Walker. Junggai (talk) 09:50, 15 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Hello again, just got back from the library -- unfortunately the Walker has been checked out, so I'll have to take a look later.


 * I did however read the MGG entry on "Neudeutsche Schule," which framed this issue as a political one between critics which played out largely in periodicals, sharply drawing a distinction between critics and composers (a sentiment I've heard numerous times from professors here). It also made the assertion (I'm paraphrasing and translating) "The New German School in reality had no opposing viewpoint to be against." Junggai (talk) 13:35, 15 January 2010 (UTC)


 * If your reading supports the MGG interpretation then I think that's certainly worth introducing into the article's perspectives - best regards --Smerus (talk) 06:50, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Schumann in The Leipzig conservatives
The 2nd paragraph in The Leipzig conservatives contradicts the first and third paragraph, and the facts. Please edit that to reflect 80.145.1.69 's corrections on the Schumann-Liszt relations. ReiniUrban (talk) 13:03, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

Wagner keeping above the fray?
The sentence saying that seems counter to a statement in the article that Wagner "poked fun" at the conservatives in "On conducting". The WP article on Wagner calls him a "polemicist" whose "controversial writings" included the anti-semitic Das Judenthum in der Musik. Brahms's close friend and ally in the "conservative" faction, Joseph Joachim, was ethnically Jewish. I'm waiting to edit the article itself until looking for suitable sources. Marlindale (talk) 23:00, 29 September 2014 (UTC)


 * As the section by Schissel at the top indicates, Wagner first published "Das Judenthum..." under a pseudonym (Freigedank); he later published it under his own name. The emphasis given by Schissel indicates one should at least not say that Wagner was usually "above the fray" and so I plan to delete the sentence at issue. Marlindale (talk) 02:48, 30 September 2014 (UTC)


 * The lead paragraph of the article names Wagner as one of the leaders of the "progressive" side along with Liszt, and I think he has been generally so viewed. Marlindale (talk) 03:03, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

Role of Leipzig
Although it's true that Liszt and others of the modern school were based in Weimar, the situation with Leipzig is different. The Schumanns had lived in Dūsseldorf and eventually Clara Schumann moved to Berlin. Also she was itinerant on concert tours, as often was Joachim. Brahms spent his later career in Vienna. I'm not aware that he had lived in Leipzig. In Leipzig, his first-performed orchestral piece, his first piano concerto was greeted by hissing. That is a documented fact, whereas "staged catcalls" lacks a reference. Marlindale (talk) 23:29, 5 November 2014 (UTC) Marlindale (talk) 23:52, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

Almost No Attribution?
For an article such as this, why is there almost no attribution? I counted four footnotes that listed sources. There should be considerably more. Where did all this material come from and why isn't it sourced accordingly?Jonyungk (talk) 17:22, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

Title
I've added the relevant template to this page. The material in this article is good, and very often covered in music history classes and texts. However, the name for it is extremely idiosyncratic: there is no entry for "the War of the Romantics" in, for example, the two standard survey music history texts (Taruskin and Grout/Palisca/Burkholder), the New Grove Dictionary, or, for that matter, any of the survey books about Romantic music I know (e.g. Frisch, Plantinga). Again, this is mainly a problem of terminology, and not one of content. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.132.173.87 (talk) 06:12, 21 February 2016 (UTC)
 * My personal suggestion: incorporate this material into an article about the "New German School" or "The Music of the Future."130.132.173.87 (talk) 06:13, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

German
A German version of this article would be important, can someone help? Kapeter77 (talk) 12:13, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

Beethoven - the "spiritual artistic hero" of both sides?
Someone had added the following (which I deleted): "Composers from both sides looked back on Beethoven as their spiritual and artistic hero; the conservatives seeing him as an unsurpassable peak, the progressives as a new beginning in music."

Doesn't this view exaggerate Beethoven's significance in the War of the Romantics? Did Brahms view him more as a artistic hero than Bach and Mozart?

Brahms, From a conversation with Richard Heuberger, 1896 " I always find Beethoven's C Minor concerto {the Third Piano Concerto} much smaller and weaker than Mozart's. . . . I realize that Beethoven's new personality and his new vision, which people recognized in his works, made him the greater composer in their minds. But after fifty years, our views need more perspective. One must be able to distinguish between the charm that comes from newness and the value that is intrinsic to a work. I admit that Beethoven's concerto is more modern, but not more significant! I also realize that Beethoven's First Symphony made a strong impression on people. That's the nature of a new vision. But the last three Mozart symphonies are far more significant. . . . Yes, the Rasumovsky quartets, the later symphonies—these inhabit a significant new world, one already hinted at in his Second Symphony. But what is much weaker in Beethoven compared to Mozart, and especially compared to Sebastian Bach, is the use of dissonance. Dissonance, true dissonance as Mozart used it, is not to be found in Beethoven. Look at Idomeneo. Not only is it a marvel, but as Mozart was still quite young and brash when he wrote it, it was a completely new thing. What marvelous dissonance! What harmony! You couldn't commission great music from Beethoven since he created only lesser works on commission—his more conventional pieces, his variations and the like. When Haydn or Mozart wrote on commission, it was the same as their other works. " https://books.google.ca/books?id=7iwZ-qTuSkUC&pg=PA134 https://books.google.ca/books?id=7iwZ-qTuSkUC&pg=PA135 Wikiwickedness (talk) 08:08, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

Brahms's and Wagner's mutual admiration.
Is there solid evidence they actually admired each other? According to "Brahms in the Priesthood of Art Gender and Art Religion in the Nineteenth-century German Musical Imagination", By Laurie McManus · 2021 , Page 134, "The argument that Brahms respected Wagner is based on selected anecdotes, as well as the mythologizing tendency to exempt Brahms from the now seemingly petty musical disputes of his day. Brahms biographer Max Kalbeck noted that “After Brahms's death, conciliatory obituary writers wanted to rebrand [umstempeln] him as a glowing admirer of Wagner and his music.”" Wikiwickedness (talk) 22:56, 19 August 2023 (UTC)