Talk:War of the Romantics

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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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)