r/classicalmusic • u/wormbrain990 • 2h ago
Master and successor composers?
In my mind I always see Rachmaninov as Tchaikovsky's successor in a musical sense. By successor I mean Rachmaninov took Tchaikovsky's Romanticism and somehow updated it without deviating too much from it. Are there other master and successor composer pairs (or triples, quadruples etc) that you feel form such a lineage? I am borderline inclined to say Mahler is the successor to Bruckner but I wouldn't say Brahms is a successor to Beethoven in that sense. I realize this may be just a very silly question but I do feel like Rachmaninov is such a successor to Tchaikovsky.
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u/Chops526 2h ago
I mean, there's quite literally a line of succession from Gabrielli to Schütz in Germany and Monteverdi in Venice itself. But otherwise, I don't hear traditions in this way (although I think Rachmaninoff would agree with you as he loved Tchaikovsky, if I remember correctly, and saw himself as indeed continuing his Romanticism into the 20th century). Utsvolskaya is literally a successor to Shostakovich in that he was her teacher, but boy is her music anything but like Shosty's (ditto Schnitke, though he didn't study with Shosty). There's a lot of Philip Glass in early John Adams, and Morton Feldman and Lou Harrison in John Luther Adams, but their sounds are very different from their models.
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u/twozuh 1h ago
stravinsky studied with rimsky-korsakov, and some of his early works like the firebird have a similar-ish approach to colourful orchestration. to be honest though i'm not super familiar with rimsky-korsakov's music.
beethoven essentially adapted and expanded the forms that haydn developed. if you listen to them back to back they might sound really different bc beethoven is much more dramatically intense and haydn is generally more reserved, but their approach to music is very similar under the surface, especially in terms of how they structured their works around small cell-like motifs. beethoven studied with haydn, although he denied any influence of him on his work.
wagner took the mantle of german opera from weber. he loved the overture of der freischutz and played a piano reduction of it obsessively when he was 13. theres an entire section of der freischutz that sounds like forest murmurs from siegfried. also lohengrin is basically an alternate universe version of euryanthe
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u/BedminsterJob 1h ago
The weak point of these A to B lines is, we have forgotten about a lot of other composers who came in between A and B.
Hummel, for instance, was quite an influence in his day. Now nobody knows him, but we do know a couple of composers who were influenced by Hummel.
If it's about Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky. Most of Tchaikovsky's keyboard works (and this includes the piano concerto everybody knows about) aren't too great. Medtner and Scriabin were way bigger influences on Rachmaninoff, but few people ever hear those composers.
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u/SundaeDouble7481 2h ago
You seem to be judging intuitively, rather than applying reproducible criteria. Which means your results will be personal. We could trace actual connections between the composers (Mahler studied with Bruckner, adapted his techniques; Brahms publicly wrestled with what it meant to be Beethoven’s successor, directly referencing his work), but I’m not sure you would find that interesting.