Corlyss_D wrote:Werner wrote:I don't know what you mean by influence, Corlyss. If it is the spawning of imitators, is that significant?
Yeah, that's one way of measuring the greatness of a composer: whom did he influence? If a composer is "revolutionary" that means he did something no one else before him did. Often that novelty translates into spawning imitators. I can't think of anything that Schumann did, except possibly noodle in a more dreamy, diffuse, and improvisatory way with piano accompaniment to his songs, that was different from others before him and may have influenced song writers that came after him. I'm thinking of Lizst, Brahms, Debussy (purely piano) and Hahn. I'm not looking for an argument, just wondering out loud.
Well, outside of "Träumerei" Schumann's influence was powerful in the extreme: listen to "Prophet Bird" from "Waldszenen", op. 82. It's pure Debussy half a century before the Frenchman; Wagner, Raff, Grieg, Brahms, Lalo, Tschaikowsky, Elgar, Pfitzner, Mahler, Rachmaninoff, Debussy and Shostakowitsch, --even Schoenberg and Webern admitted to being influenced to some extent by Schumann...and one can hear it or notice it in the forms they chose. Friedrich Nietzsche, once a Wagner-lover, admitted that Schumann's influence was "even more pervasive" that Wagner's, although he didn't mean it as a compliment!
The strongest influence in Brahms' music is Schumann's voice-- heard loudest in the chamber music.
Even in the symphony----Brahms' 3rd is oozing with Schumann's harmonies; Tschaikowsky's 4th and 5th were both strongly influenced by the form of Schumann's 2nd Symphony (as were Rachmaninoff's 2nd and Shostakowitsch's 5th).
In Schumann's Fourth Symphony (the first completely "cyclical" symphony) you'll hear the "Tristan chord" between the 3rd and 4th movements.....almost thirty years before Wagner's music drama. This work is also the FIRST symphony ever in which the first movement development section goes directly into the coda---- --without a reprise!
By the way, I meant the quote was from HEINZ Holliger--not "Hans" about Schumann being the "true revolutionary" of the 19th century. Holliger is a very highly respected Swiss composer, conductor and oboist---and (like his countryman, conductor Mario Venzago)-- a Schumann expert.
Tschüß,
Jack
). Schubert's is just.....bland to me. Perhaps it was the sonata form that did him in, but you at least have to give him props for trying to best Beethoven at Beethoven's own game. 
Orchestral music....Schubert hands down. I don't think there's any arguing that, but you're more than welcome to surprise me. 
Chamber Music......gggrrrr.....Schubert again. Did Schumann even write any? 
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