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Brahms Vs. Tchaikovsky

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21K views 68 replies 28 participants last post by  GraemeG  
#1 ·
haha before you start ranting to me about starting another one of these silly versus threads, that's not what this is. I was wondering about the comparison of these two composers, I've seen a lot of people in the past say something similar to "if you like Brahms you probably wont like Tchaikovsky" or vice versa or just comparing these two in general. To me this seems like a really strange comparison and I am wondering why it is made. Maybe someone who knows more about these two can tell me something I'm missing. I know Tchaikovsky thought Brahms was a giftless ******* and all, but to me their music is not similar enough to compare, and not total opposite enough to pit against each other like that.

So what's the deal??
 
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#4 ·
The similiarity is that they both were conservative/backward-looking composers and the difference is that you hear it clearly in Brahms music while Tchaikovsky was fresh from the very beginning. Brahms adored Beethoven and wrote work to be called "Beethoven's 10th", Tchaikovsky adored Mozart but never wrote anything that would really sound like Mozart pastiche.
 
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#6 ·
Aramis said:
Brahms adored Beethoven and wrote work to be called "Beethoven's 10th"
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Of course, that was never his own label, and he didn't aim for people to call it that at all...

Personally, I find it an interesting comparison. I was expecting a (damned!) poll and was obviously going to pick Brahms, but was going to say that it's a tremendously difficult opposition.

For me, I find that, though they both wrote in the Romantic 'idiom', they are kind of polar opposites, and both reward me in very different ways, though I certainly need both of them. As such, I can see why some people might only like one, but I need both. Although all kinds of holes can be picked in this analogy, to keep it brief I think a Brahms/Tchaikovsky comparison has the same kind of divide (not the same actual differences, mind!) as a Baroque/Romantic comparison. Brahms is dense, tight, concerned with immense structures and development, frequently melancholic, introspective. Tchaikovsky, on the hand, has a very 'open' feel about his music; yes, its structure is still good (despite what they say!), but he's the 'melodist', his music feels extroverted, it's as sad as Brahms's, but it's more melodramatic than it is melancholic.
 
#5 ·
Brahms was master of structure with a deeper understanding of musical forms.

Tchaikovsky was a brilliant melodist who generally will captivate on first listen far more than Brahms.

Brahms' understanding of the piano was far more advanced than that of Tchaikovsky

Tchaikovsky's was a master at large works ballets and operas

Brahms' Symphonic writing is the height of Viennese symphonic tradition

Tchaikovsky's symphonies are more groundbreaking and unique

I take Brahms more seriously as a composer.... to me Tchaikovsky is more easy listening by comparison.
 
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#7 ·
#18 ·
To my mind I it is untrue to say that you can only like one or the other as I am quite fond of both Composers.
They are both sentimental, wear your heart on your sleeve Romantic composers too so I think they have a bit in common with each other perhaps?.
If was a death match between the two I would probably choose Brahms as his body of chamber music is much larger! :).
 
#19 · (Edited)
I agree with Conor, there is no need to choose between them at the end of the day.

Of course, there are differences I can hear. Not only the ones that have been mentioned, but the gist of what Couchie says above is that Brahms has a certain restraint, it's like Romanticism is bursting throught the seams of these Classicist strictures, whereas Tchaikovsky - in some works at least - just lets it all hang out so to speak. Eg. Tchaikovsky ending a symphony - the Pathetique - with a slow movement would never ever have been done by Brahms in a million years.

The essence of it is that Brahms was a Classicist & Tchaikovsky more of a Romantic. Both looked forward in many ways, composers until this day are inspired by them in different ways. The restraint of Brahms' Violin Concerto (esp. in terms of the size of orchestra, combination of instruments used) is said to have inspired Philip Glass when he was writing his first work in that genre (in the 1980's). & Mahler was said to have admired the Pathetique, going off the bat of that and ending his own 9th with a slow movement, equally autobiographical as the Russians' one was...
 
#25 ·
meh, Brahms cello sonatas, piano quartet in cminor, and his string quartets won me over. But to be honest, to me they feel like two faces on the same coin kind of thing. Contrastingly different, and yet, contemporary to each other.
 
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#34 ·
Brahms pieces do not stand out on first listen but grow on the listener. They have depth, so they wear very well.

Tchaikovsky has melodies that one likes on first listen. They do not have the "depth" of Brahms (though they have depth of emotion. Tchaikovsky is bad at form while Brahms excels at it. It turn, Tchaikovsky is a better orchestrater.

It is useful to contrast them, but it doesn't follow that to love one is to dislike the other.
 
#42 ·
I find Tchaikovsky’s struggle to work within traditional forms somewhat of a hindrance in his symphonies. I think he finally solved this problem in his magnificent 6th, one of my favorite symphonies of all time, but the others can seem overlong, repetitive, and without a clear trajectory of where he’s going with his ideas IMO. In other words, rather scatterbrained and hard to follow. Today I listened to his 1st symphony “Winter Dreams” and found it very hard to sit through. Of course that’s a youthful work and he shouldn’t be judged by that, but I also find the 4th and 5th, despite their lovely moments, rather too long and bombastic. My second favorite is the 2nd, which is a delightful stream of tunes that doesn’t really need a form to be enjoyable.
 
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#44 ·
Allegro Con Brio said:
I find Tchaikovsky's struggle to work within traditional forms somewhat of a hindrance in his symphonies. I think he finally solved this problem in his magnificent 6th, one of my favorite symphonies of all time, but the others can seem overlong, repetitive, and without a clear trajectory of where he's going with his ideas IMO. In other words, rather scatterbrained and hard to follow. Today I listened to his 1st symphony "Winter Dreams" and found it very hard to sit through. Of course that's a youthful work and he shouldn't be judged by that, but I also find the 4th and 5th, despite their lovely moments, rather too long and bombastic. ...
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Ditto. I also feel that way about his first piano concerto, which I loved when I was younger. I can't listen to it all the way through anymore.
 
#43 · (Edited)
I thought I explained the issue here.

Ethereality said:
Chopin, Tchaikovsky, and Williams are more fast-brained composers (compared to methodical composers) in that they very well understand the big idea of 'music as a whole' from an early age and simply move music along with the same talent anyone else does. It's hard for these people to work on details, and I do think Williams being fit for the industry in the 70s just coincidentally happened to be this kind of thinker. For them the idea of music is easily grasped, a studious learning and painstaking attention to details was never needed ever since they churned out their first tune. They just have passion for things to move and be explored more linearly--instead of vertically. Hence, the music inherently sounds flat. From a classical perspective, I can sense that.
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Ethereality said:
Slow-thinking or methodical composition can be listened to by empathizing with interrelated melodies and unified harmony. As a detail-oriented form, it manifests this way the most efficiently, as a scientific rule.

Fast-thinking or fast composition can be listened to by empathizing with interrelated harmonies and unified melody. As a big-picture form, it manifests this way the most efficiently, as a scientific rule.
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I think Tchaikovsky is actually a better composer than Brahms. It's just that classical lovers don't inherently have the mindset for Tchaikovsky's interpretation of music structure--it is of the much more linear, sweeping interpretation. He's not a classical composer like Bach, Mozart or Brahms. Far from it. He is a programmatic giant, and probably its era's greatest champion.

The issue of emotionality is a universal reason why we all love Classical: the orchestra is a diverse expression. These composers differences has nothing to do with emotion, but how these composers thought music should sound. Tchaikovsky didn't like Brahms, he didn't see the value in composing classical or heavily contrapuntal style, even though he adored mainly Mozart, he was heavily focused on 'large' themes for their harmonic potential to interact with themselves in different ways. Brahms was focused on all the much more detailed, complex harmonic interactions of small themes, or patterns.

Someone said Brahms was more of a champion of Beethoven, while Tchaikovsky was a champion of Mozart. I don't really agree with that, they were both heavy influencers on the composers, in just very dfferent ways.
 
#45 ·
Ethereality said:
Tchaikovsky didn't like Brahms, he didn't see the value in composing classical or heavily contrapuntal style, even though he adored mainly Mozart, he was heavily focused on 'large' themes for their harmonic potential to interact with themselves in different ways.
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Probably the main reason why Tchaikovsky had nourished such animosity towards Brahms before he actually met him was the way in which influential German critics, above all the highly conservative Eduard Hanslick (1825-1904), had been proclaiming Brahms to be the guardian of the classical tradition bequeathed by Beethoven against the 'decadent' tendencies of Liszt and Wagner. Quite apart from his dislike of Brahms's more restrained style, Tchaikovsky was angered by the way these same critics ignored or rubbished his own works on the few occasions that they had been performed in Germany so far and instead held Brahms up as the paragon for symphonic writing (when in 1876 he finally completed his First Symphony - "Beethoven's Tenth", as some in Germany called it).
http://en.tchaikovsky-research.net/pages/Johannes_Brahms
 
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#48 ·
Allegro Con Brio said:
I never for the life of me understood the "Beethoven's 10th" thing. It sounds nothing like Beethoven to me, an entirely original symphonic creation with one of the greatest finales ever written up to that point.
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The finale contains a theme rather like Ode to Joy. When it was pointed out, Brahms said, "Any a** could see that." Additionally, the symphony is epic and goes from darkness-to-light, like Beethoven's.

But the real Beethoven Tenth is Schubert's "Great" Symphony. It is epic, heroic, nearly an hour long, and directly quotes Ode to Joy in the finale. It comes across as a more-lyrical Beethoven symphony.
 
#51 ·
I've enjoyed the music of both Brahms and Tchaikovsky for well over a half century now, and in all that time I never considered the issue of which I prefer or which is the better composer. Both have proven formative to my current love for "classical" music and both have contributed immensely to my listening pleasures, countless times. I've turned to these masters many times in the past, and I shall continue to do so as long as I can.

For those of you who do have some issue at stake concerning these two wonderful Romantic composers, I hope at least that you will consider holding May 7 as a Day of Truce. My own practice for May 7, going on for dozens of years now, has been to listen to something by both men on that day. This year I chose the Klavierstücke, Op. 118 of Brahms, which includes one of my all time favorite piano pieces, the Intermezzo in A.


And, continuing in the more intimate mood set by the Brahms piano music, I chose the Piano Trio Op. 50, a work Tchaikovsky dedicated to the "memory of a great artist." It was the Perlman, Ashkenazy, Harrell rendition, on an EMI/Angel LP that I listened to, with special memory of a great artist in mind, Lynn Harrell, who died on April 27.


If you are able to choose between the "betterness" of one of these opuses over the other, then you are likely a better human being than I.
 
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