Bülow on Rubinstein
This is plain-speaking, but it should be received with caution, when we call to mind that this writer allows himself the licence at times to make such loose statements as that Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony is twice as long as any symphony preceding it, and especially in view of his over-confident assertion about Rubinstein’s unending symphonies. Some of us do not forget Hans von Bülow’s caustic wit in this matter. “Rubinstein’s works,” he said, “remind me of a journey in Russia. Long stretches of barren and tiresome country, relieved here and there with the oasis of a picturesque and interesting city.”
H. Davey
Mr. Henry Davey, in his Student’s History of Music, gives his opinion thus:—“There is, however, one German composer who stands out above the rest, and has been sometimes spoken of as if he were really a genius worthy to rank with the greatest. This is Johannes Brahms, born in 1833 at Altona, and introduced to the world by Schumann. He has published more than one hundred works, very clever and, generally, very dry. They are laboured in the bad sense of the word. Brahms with splendid gifts seems to have gone early on the wrong tack, imagining that the more abstruse he made his works the better they would be. Consequently he tangled up his themes with a complication of uneven rhythms, ravelling very ordinary ideas with skeins of harsh counterpoint; in fact, making his works as unpopular as possible, apparently with the idea that if they were unpopular they must necessarily be good.”
Another critic,[28] whose words are curiously like those just quoted, says:—“When Brahms writes musically he is usually not profound; and when he writes profoundly, he is, sometimes, not musical.... Take the opening theme (of op. 115): would not anybody without the time direction take it to be a slow scherzo? He has clouded it with his usual uneven rhythms and tangled accompaniments, but that does not atone for the poverty of the theme.”
Schumann
Against these may be placed the well-known opinion of Schumann which appeared in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik in 1853. It is needless to repeat all that Schumann said. How he found in Brahms’s works a likeness to “some onward foaming flood, bearing on the surface of its waves as they dashed downward, the peaceful rainbow, and surrounded on the bank by butterflies and nightingales’ voices. When this composer sinks his magic wand to where the powers of the masses in the orchestra and chorus lend him their strength, we shall find still more wonderful glances into the secret of the spirit-world in store for us.” Such words from one of the standing of Robert Schumann, poetically expressed though they be, may not be passed idly by.
W.J. Henderson
To this may be added the view of another competent and thoughtful writer.[29] “Brahms’s compositions show a completeness of architectonic detail, superimposed upon a symmetrical and inevitable organic development, such as are to be found in those of no other symphonist except Beethoven.... Some day, I think, if not soon, the world will see how profoundly representative of his nation and his time Brahms was, and he will be hailed, as Milton was, an organ voice of his country.... It may take time for the entire musical world to come under the spell of this austere utterance; but Brahms had the happiness of knowing ere he died that, wherever music was cultivated, his individuality at least had made itself known.”
Philip Spitta