Stupid Me

[Chuck Nessa]

Just playing Nielsen's Symphonic Rhapsody, drifted off and then thought I was listening to Dvorak.

Sorry if this is obvious to all but I just connected.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

I'm not familiar with either composer but

Vaughn-William's violin concerto is a rip-off of Bloch's violin concerto, composed about 3-4 years earlier.

I'm not sure how common this was in classical music.

MG

[A Lark Ascending]

Don't think you can have that right, MG. The Bloch is from 1938 whereas the only thing RVW wrote like a violin concerto was the Concerto Academico from 15 years earlier. RVW only wrote a few concertos and they don't figure in his most celebrated works. I don't know the Bloch but believe it is late-Romantic in style; iirc the RVW is a bit of a neo-classical experiment.

If you want to hear a rip-off...er...influence, listen to the last movement of Brahms 4th. I seem to recall reading that when some drew attention to the main theme's similarity to the big tune at the endof Beethoven 9 he replied with words to the effect that any fool could hear that.

[David Ayers]

As a consequence of your post I just took a look at the (extremely intermittent)Journal of Carl Nielsen Studies. Surprisingly interesting. Either that or I am easily entertained.

http://e-tidsskrifter.dk/ojs/index.php/carlnielsenstudies/index

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Don't think you can have that right, MG. The Bloch is from 1938 whereas the only thing RVW wrote like a violin concerto was the Concerto Academico from 15 years earlier. RVW only wrote a few concertos and they don't figure in his most celebrated works. I don't know the Bloch but believe it is late-Romantic in style; iirc the RVW is a bit of a neo-classical experiment.

Well, you may be right, Bev. I know that, in '69, my boss who owned the record shop I worked in then played me a piece of RVW that was written after the Bloch concerto that was a dead rip of it. Perhaps I'm remembering it wrong as a violin concerto.

Bloch was one of my favourite non-French composers. The Yehudi Menuhin version of that concerto (on HMV) was splendid.

MG

[Larry Kart]

Robert Simpson speaks in some detail of Dvorak's passing influence on early Nielsen in his book on the latter.

[David Ayers]

Possible influence of Lark Ascending on the Bloch?

[A Lark Ascending]

Would be surprising in that time period if there was not some influence of Dvorak (along with the Russians and Grieg) on composers trying to strike out from German dominance, adopting (if only for a time or as one element) the approach of nationalism.

******

You can hear Ravel in RVW (not surprising as he studied with him briefly). There's a glorious passage in Bruckner 8 in the slow movement that sounds like RVW at his mos luminescent. Not sure if he would have been familiar with Bruckner.

Edited August 1, 2012 by A Lark Ascending