Make no mistake that the world of classical music composition is competitive and difficult by nature.

The Frederick Symphony Orchestra is diving into the most famous feuds from composers and highlighting those who are featured in our concert, Moscow On The Monocacy, at the end of the month:

• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Antonio Salieri. Known as the most famous classical music feud that never was, historical accounts of this feud show differing sides from these composers. According to surviving letters, Mozart and his father complained about Italian “cabals” (a secret political clique or faction) in the court who were attempting to derail his career.
  
  This letter singled out Salieri, but many historians believe this was a scapegoat to explain why Mozart’s career wasn’t yet where it was anticipated to be. In the cutthroat Italian city of Vienna, the duo created competition, but Salieri has no record of disliking Mozart. In fact, the two co-composed a cantata, Per La Ricuperata Salute Di Ophelia, which translates to For The Recovered Health Of Ophelia, in 1785.

• Johannes Brahms and Franz Liszt. In a 19th century clash of old versus new, Brahms and Liszt were competing classical music composers with an aesthetic disagreement. 

  Brahms’ Leipzig Conservatoire-based camp focused on traditional symphonists descended from Mozart and Josef Haydn. However, Lizst’s “New German School” allowed musical innovators to incorporate daring harmonies and evocative programs.

  While both groups saw Ludwig van Beethoven as their patron saint, his music was viewed differently for each. For Brahms, Beethoven’s music represented formal, classical structures while Liszt admired his music for using adventurous harmony to disrupt tradition.

  As if their ideologies didn’t differ enough, Brahms and Liszt had little respect for one another personally, according to records. Brahms allegedly fell asleep during Liszt’s premiere of his Piano Sonata in B minor, and Liszt mostly found Brahms’ compositions “hygienic, but unexciting.”

• Brahms and Pyotr Tchaikovsky. Tchaikovsky called Brahms “a giftless bastard” and a “conceited mediocrity [that] is regarded as a genius” while Brahms fell asleep at the premiere of Tchaikovsky’s 5th Symphony. In an old letter to his patroness, Tchaikovsky wrote:

  “I would have to tell him this: ‘Herr Brahms! I consider you to be a very untalented person, full of pretensions but utterly devoid of creative inspiration. I rate you very poorly and indeed I simply look down upon you.'”

  Fortunately, when the two finally met at a rehearsal of Brahms’ Piano Trio No. 3, Tchaikovsky learned that Brahms wasn’t quite the pretentious celebrity he once thought — though he still didn’t like his composition.

  You can hear Tchaikovsky’s keen ear in Moscow On The Monocacy, a concert featuring his Eugene Onegin and Symphony No. 2 in C Minor “Little Russian”.

• Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel. What happens when a rising star becomes greater than his mentor? The consideration for whether or not the mentor, Debussy, had become the mentee put the French music community on edge. 

  Historians know that Debussy was offended when Ravel ignored his advice to leave his String Quartet unchanged — even though he changed it after recommendations from his new teacher, Gabriel Fauré. Ravel also provided financial support to Debussy’s wife after he left her for his mistress. 

  Ravel noted, “It’s probably better for us, after all, to be on frigid terms for illogical reasons.”

• Sergei Prokofiev and Igor Stravinsky. After the world premiere of Prokofiev’s opera The Love for Three Oranges in Chicago, the composer played the vocal score for Diaghilev and Stravinsky in Paris. 

  Stravinsky hated it and said Prokofiev was “wasting time composing operas.” Prokofiev retorted that Stravinsky “was in no position to lay down a general artistic direction, since he is himself not immune to error,” at which Stravinsky became “incandescent with rage.”

  “We almost came to blows and were separated only with difficulty,” Prokofiev recalled of the 1922 spat. “Our relations became strained and for several years Stravinsky’s attitude towards me was critical.”

• Sergei Rachmaninoff and Walter Piston. American composer Piston wrote in the 1954 edition of Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians:

  “As a composer, [Rachmaninoff] can hardly be said to have belonged to his time at all. His music is well constructed and effective, but monotonous in texture, which consists in essence mainly of artificial and gushing tunes accompanied by a variety of figures derived from arpeggios.

  The enormous popular success some few of Rachmaninoff’s works had in his lifetime is not likely to last, and musicians never regarded it with much favor.”

  Rachmaninoff’s legacy continued, and we’re playing his Piano Concerto No. 2 in C Minor on Oct. 21, 2017 at Frederick Community College. For tickets, click below: