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The most humble composers and the most arrogant composers

38K views 155 replies 86 participants last post by  Larkenfield 
#1 ·
Here is my list for the humble. Haydn, Chopin, Bruckner, Bach and Bizet.
The most arrogant, Wagner, Mozart, Brahms, Beethoven.

What sayest thou :D
 
#2 ·
Why do you think Chopin was humble? It is said that he was very supercilious towards other composers.

Tchaikovsky was very arrognant. So was Scriabin.

I have nothing against arrogance, great composer must know his value. Only Brahms is annoying, he makes impression of acrimonious old geezer that hated everything new.
 
#83 ·
Why do you think Chopin was humble? It is said that he was very supercilious towards other composers.

Tchaikovsky was very arrognant. So was Scriabin.

I have nothing against arrogance, great composer must know his value. Only Brahms is annoying, he makes impression of acrimonious old geezer that hated everything new.
Tchaikovsky? Arrogant?

If you're referring to his refusal to accept Rubinstein's criticism, that was a just dismissal of Rubinstein's out-of-proportion claims.

Tchaikovsky would regularly sink into bouts of depression over his ability to write, and he was easily affected by reception to his pieces. Most of the time, he would grow disillusioned with his own pieces, claiming their artistic immaturity or some minor imperfection. His self-esteem level throughout his level was never quite high, so how can he be called arrogant? :p

Wagner, on the other hand... that's a different story altogether. Not going to open that can of worms.
 
#3 ·
Hm, I don't know that I'd call Brahms 'arrogant', exactly. Irascible, perhaps, but not arrogant. He had an acerbic wit, certainly, but he was well liked by his compatriots. He wisely chose to distance himself from the "Brahms/Wagner" opposing camps (which was started not by him, but by the music critic Eduard Hanslick), and in fact attended Bayreuth several times for Wagner performances--it is said that he liked "Parsifal" quite a bit.

But someone who would describe his own massive Second Piano Concerto to a colleague as "A tiny piano concerto with a tiny, tiny wisp of a Scherzo", or ask the orchestra to wear black mourning armbands at the premiere of his Second Symphony--well, this does not strike me as an 'arrogant' composer at all.

Now, Chopin, on the other hand----exactly how arrogant do you want to get?

Tom
 
#4 ·
I'm not sure how humble Bach was... didn't he get fired from his first organ post because he wouldn't stop improvising really complex stuff during hymns? And I thought he was always complaining about the quality of players he had to endure.

Maybe he was more humble as just a composer, but I don't think in other respects. He was recognized as the finest organist in Europe, and he thought himself as such.
 
#16 ·
I'm not sure how humble Bach was... didn't he get fired from his first organ post because he wouldn't stop improvising really complex stuff during hymns? And I thought he was always complaining about the quality of players he had to endure.

Maybe he was more humble as just a composer, but I don't think in other respects. He was recognized as the finest organist in Europe, and he thought himself as such.
Bach supposedly composed parts of WTK book 1 in jail, where he was because he had hit someone "important", iirc. But I guess ill-tempered and arrogant isn't necessarily related.

Chopin is supposed to have just looked at Kreisleriana (a famous work that Schumann dedicated to Chopin) and just dismissed it as "not music". Hopefully Schumann didn't know of this.

Poulenc, despite his often fun and charming music, is also supposed to have been arrogant, probably in an ironic and "French" way..
 
#5 ·
I think arrogance can arise from the presumption of superiority. In Beethoven's case, that was not a presumption. That probably applies to most others on the list as well.

On the arrogance side I might include Rameau and Bernard Hermann. Both were reputed to be ill tempered anyway. I don't know if that equates to arrogance.

On the humility side I might add D. Scarlatti who dismissed his compositions as fun little trifles. I think that John Cage had a considerable endowment of humility - as well he might considering what he was doing. In the case of Bruckner I think it was unfortunate. There is no definitive version of his symphonies as he kept revising them. One could say this is great - we have more versions of them, but some of us like our collections a little neater.
 
#71 ·
I think arrogance can arise from the presumption of superiority. In Beethoven's case, that was not a presumption. That probably applies to most others on the list as well.
And Mozart wasn't arrogant to Haydn at all. Both him and Beethoven may have had arrogance towards lesser composers but as their achievements were greater it was arguably justified. And they did very much respect some other composers, even those out of fashion like JS Bach.
 
#8 ·
The most humble I can think of would be John Cage. Schoenberg is up there as well. Schubert, Mendelssohn and Schumann seemed pretty humble too.

It's hard to get past Wagner as the most arrogant. Apparently Handel was a bit of an **** as well.

Richard Strauss gave a somewhat humble description of himself near the end of his life as a 'first-class second-rate composer'.
 
#23 ·
The most humble I can think of would be John Cage. Schoenberg is up there as well.
Cage always seemed super self-absorbed, & he was a no talent musically (even going as far as believing harmony wasn't important, how wrong & limited he was - having a strong foundation in harmony is SO important in order to express deeper things) ... a lot of what he said & did was just plain stupid and a result of that self-absorption, hiding up the fact that he was a musical lightweight. 4'33 is a perfect example of that ... the player(s) do nothing, and the 'liner notes' are a book long explaining & justifying to the audience why that's profound "art". Puh-lease.

And Schoenberg wasn't that humble, he no doubt had a high opinion of himself... once claiming that his system secured the dominance of german music for the next 100 years ... he was pretty off the mark on that claim to say the least, but at least he was musically talented and produced some amazing music - so it wasn't just all pontificating...
 
#11 · (Edited)
Pretentious Composers: Mahler, Stravinsky

Just plain proud: Prokofiev wahaha

Unpretentious Composers: Sibelius, Schubert, Dvorak

Humble to the point of inferiority complex: Glazunov indeed, except when comparing his music to the recherche cacophonists haha

This is only what I can tell by listening to their music. By personal life, the only one I'm sure of is Prokofiev, whose favorite thing was to write out and reread his whole life story in his diaries so other people would read them like a book. He already got to doing that when he was a teenager I think.

Rachmaninoff was pretty humble too, but he was also self-critical to a negative level.

Paul Dukas, if you've heard his story, was so critical of himself that he burned most of his works (incompleted, or just disliked) before his death. That is almost a kind of pride in itself, as if his own music wasn't good enough for him.
 
#13 ·
@151, we can from reading composer's biographies, and their quotes tell what type of personalities they had. To say you have to wait until you meet someone to tell what type of person they are is to defeat basic investigatory methodology. "Because I never met Stalin, I will withhold judgment on him as to whether he was evil or not."


I read some quotes of Wagner, that man takes the cake. He ripped into Schumann's symphonies by saying that they are a sort of jargon that has the appearance of profundity but it is of my opinion just as bereft of content and meaning". Brahms was pretty insensitive and callous. He rejected Hans Rott's symphony which such negativity that poor Hans snapped. And his rejection of Hans Rott symphony was merely because Anton Bruckner thought highly of Hans. Chopin is said to have commented once that he can only compose for the piano. Beethoven's temper is common knowledge commencing from his dispute with Haydn over the publication of his (Beethoven) early piano trios. Also Beethoven said that Rossini would have composed better if his mama had spanked him some more. (ouch)

Mendelssohn and Schumann were pretty humble, I could have dinner with them.
 
#15 ·
Good question ScipioAfricanus. I think it's difficult not to give Wagner the gold medal for arrogance here. At least (in my book) he was able to back it up.

I get the sense that Ralph Vaughan Williams is a humble and reserved composer. Stravinsky was rather a tool though. Bernstein could be intolerant of other composers -- I'm thinking of his rude dismissal of the music of Hovhaness.

Certainly the post-war atonalists have a reputation for arrogance: Stockhausen's artistic demeanor was one extreme self-genius promotion. And there's Boulez and his pronouncement "Schoenberg is dead!" A quite different frenchie, Henri Dutilleux was extremely humble and selective in his output.
 
#17 ·
Charles Ives is another arrogant one that comes to mind, especially when he said to take his music "like a man."

As for previous posters saying that we shouldn't pass judgement because we never met them, and that attitude doesn't matter, just music does- I don't think thats really true. I can appreciate the music of a composer even if he was known as being arrogant- and knowing the personality of a composer better helps me understand their music.
 
#18 ·
Mendelssohn, Saint-Saens, Schoenberg and Debussy all sounded pretty arrogant from the descriptions I've heard of them. Mendelssohn especially.

If I was going to call Wagner arrogant, I should probably get some sort of award for understatement of the century.

I don't think Bach ever described himself as the greatest composer of all time so I guess that makes him pretty humble. :p
 
#19 ·
Chopin is supposed to have just looked at Kreisleriana (a famous work that Schumann dedicated to Chopin) and just dismissed it as "not music". Hopefully Schumann didn't know of this.
That was not very rude of him considering that Schumann was the one that claimed that Chopin's second piano sonata is not music.
 
#20 · (Edited)
You're refering to Schumann's review, right? Well, if you want to use that sort of "revenge" logic on whether it was rude of Chopin, we should consider that this review appeared in 1841, three years after Kreisleriana. It's not unthinkable that Chopin would have received his copy by then. Plus, it's only the last movement of the sonata that Schumann calls "not music". And personally, if there's one 19th century piece that I find it easy to imagine would seem a "mockery" to contemporary audiences, it's the last movement from Chopin's 2nd sonata. Let's not forget that Schumann was the one who earlier had declared Chopin a genius, and that Kreisleriana was a personal dedication to him.
 
#22 ·
You're refering to Schumann's review, right? Well, if you want to use that sort of "revenge" logic on whether it was rude of Chopin, we should consider that this review appeared in 1841, three years after Kreisleriana. It's not unthinkable that Chopin would have received his copy by then.
Chronology aside, my point was that both composers were capeable of developing such extreme opinions.

Plus, it's only the last movement of the sonata that Schumann calls "not music".
I remember that in the same review he wrote something like: "Only Chopin writes this way - begins with dissonance and ends with dissonance (...) this can not be praised". Funeral march was also bashed.
 
#27 ·
Greetings all from a rookie to this forum. Lots of thought-provoking subjects to investigate but why not this one for starters?

Most humble composer? Quite a few but I'll stick with the romantics for now. Anton Bruckner gets the gold. I have even more respect for him once I learned of his persecution by the poisonous Hanslick. Appropriately Hanslick's grave is the one without flowers. Silver medal would go to Dvorak or Magnard, I think. Bronze goes to Elgar but I nominate him out of pure bias because I was born in the same city!

As regards proud/conceited/whatever I would say Britten could be precious rather than mean-spirited - OK, he could be up himself a bit but I don't think he would go out of his way to be intentionally vicious towards any of his contemporaries. In this respect I would liken him to Prokofiev but with maybe a little more tact? Both of these composers had a lot of faith in their own abilities but didn't feel the need to blow their own ego trumpets to the degree that Wagner did.

That's all from me for now - bye bye.
 
#32 ·
It's not bias, it's just reality. Schoenberg (and the best musicians & composers) understood how having a deep knowledge and understanding of harmony would open up the possibilities and allow the musician to see them more clearly , giving them a richer and deeper palette to work with... and it does. Cage's music is narrow, restricted, lightweight, arbitury, there is no profound musical or harmonic imagination at work there ...no matter how many 'random' sounds or elements he wants to throw into the mix, it's naive & trite. No matter how long he wants to pontificate & explain how 4 minutes of silence is music or art, it's not. He's nowhere near the focus you get with 'the best'. The best of history shown Schoenberg how harmony is vital and he in fact built his own rich harmonic approach from that rich tradition, and his own music also backs that up. Can't be argued. Cage didn't move ahead he just fell out and headed down a path that is anything but 'genius' or 'substantial' (in a musical sense), the proof is in the puddin'. Nuff said. He was a product of the times ... where trying to conjuer 'newness' like a rabbit out of a hat was in vogue, the malaise of the time ... he desperately wanted to be original but never really had the 'tools' to produce music of real substance to back up that desire. The fact that he placed little or no value on harmony's profound importance in music making as shown by the best before him was a fatal flaw and proves how wrongheaded and arrogant he 'truly' was, despite however you perceive his demeanor.
 
#34 ·
It's not bias, it's just reality. Schoenberg (and the best musicians & composers) understood how having a deep knowledge and understanding of harmony would open up the possibilities and allow the musician to see them more clearly , giving them a richer and deeper palette to work with... and it does. Cage's music is narrow, restricted, lightweight, arbitury, there is no profound musical or harmonic imagination at work there ...know matter how many 'random' sounds or elements he wants to throw into the mix, it's naive & trite. No matter how long he wants to pontificate & explain how 4 minutes of silence is music or art, it's not. He's nowhere near the focus you get with 'the best'. The best of history shown Schoenberg how harmony is vital and he in fact built his own rich harmonic approach from that rich tradition, and his own music also backs that up. Can't be argued. Cage didn't move ahead he just fell out and headed down a path that is anything but 'genius' or 'substantial' (in a musical sense), the proof is in the puddin'. Nuff said. He was a product of the times ... where trying to conjuer 'newness' like a rabbit out of a hat was in vogue, the malaise of the time ... he desperately wanted to be original but never really had the 'tools' to produce music of real substance to back up that desire. The fact that he placed little or no value on harmony's profound importance in music making as shown by the best before him was a fatal flaw and proves how wrongheaded and arrogant he 'truly' was, despite however you perceive his demeanor.
Oh, I see. Another person who confuses facts with opinions.

I'll add that plenty of cultures and musical traditions of both past and present, have either no knowledge of or give little importance to harmony. I think the harmony you speak of is the theories that exist that try to organise it. It's not like Cage didn't utilise harmony. Everytime any two differing tones are heard in his music, a harmonic effect occurs. He just didn't follow the preceding theories on its structure and order. Similar in many respects to Schoenberg's 'emancipation of the dissonance'.

The strangest part of your argument is that, as Poppin' Fresh said, I'm sure plenty of people could make very similar accusations of both Schoenberg and Stockhausen along with a fair few other composers, that you are making in regards to Cage.

Or did Cage run over your dog or something?
 
#33 ·
I believe Cage found other equally interesting approaches to music and harmony that broke from the forms of the past. His influence speaks for itself. But you're obviously set on twisting everything to prove that JOHN CAGE WAS SO ARROGANT! HE THOUGHT HE WAS A GOD AND SO IMPORTANT! According to you, the humble manner in which he lived, spoke, and wrote is only a kind of camouflage to a real inner self-absorption. There's obviously nothing that anyone could possibly say that would change your mind.
 
#37 ·
Well this is obviously going nowhere. Let's return to topic -- humility and arrogance in composers, regardless of how we feel about the quality of their output personally.

From what I know, Gabriel Fauré was extremely self-effacing (and, in unfortunately many cases, composition-effacing - he destroyed tons of his large scale works). He had no taste for self-promotion. He was constantly seeking colleagues and friends for advice before publishing his music - for some, the constant search for approval is the manifestation of a certain kind of arrogance all its own, but in Faure's case, his interest in the opinions of others was genuine. Apparently, his music criticism was unusually generous, tending to focus on the positive and the unique in the works of his peers, rather than the petty.

Perhaps this personality is captured in his work, which shies from bold gestures and unnecessary grandoliquence without forsaking sensual power. He was a master of understatement, even in the warhorses of his like the Requiem.
 
#69 · (Edited)
Well this is obviously going nowhere. Let's return to topic -- humility and arrogance in composers, regardless of how we feel about the quality of their output personally.

From what I know, Gabriel Fauré was extremely self-effacing (and, in unfortunately many cases, composition-effacing - he destroyed tons of his large scale works). He had no taste for self-promotion. He was constantly seeking colleagues and friends for advice before publishing his music - for some, the constant search for approval is the manifestation of a certain kind of arrogance all its own, but in Faure's case, his interest in the opinions of others was genuine. Apparently, his music criticism was unusually generous, tending to focus on the positive and the unique in the works of his peers, rather than the petty.

Perhaps this personality is captured in his work, which shies from bold gestures and unnecessary grandoliquence without forsaking sensual power. He was a master of understatement, even in the warhorses of his like the Requiem.
That's true about Faure.
-Myaskovsky was also very self-effacing and an extreme introvert.
-Bax too was very private.
(in fact, like Faure, they did not promote their music that much).
-Massenet was often self-critical and made a habit of not attending performances of his operas (he would be told of them by his friends/colleagues soon thereafter).
-We know about Bruckner (although he could be fresh from time to time).
-Nielsen was jovial about life, and very perspective.
-Richard Strauss (according to Horenstein) was cold, icy cold.
-Glazunov was a stubborn traditionalist of a gentleman.
-Rimsky-Korsakov was insecure.
 
#39 ·
Haha, yet another thread that deteriorates into people arguing about the merits of Cage. Seems like he did make an impact, whatever the conservatives may think, as people are still debating his music long after his death. I think that it is often the way that music makes one think about life and art that makes the difference, not merely the writing pretty "harmonies."

Anyway, I don't really care about whether composers were arrogant or humble. I'm much more interested in their music. Sure, it's interesting to read about their lives, and develop an understanding of what their personalities were like, but (for me) the music takes centre stage, everything else is of much less importance. It wouldn't really make a difference if Wagner wasn't an arrogant #@%*, I think I'd still find his operas (as I do now) quite a drag. But then again, I'm not the hugest fan of opera anyway...
 
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