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Listened to Hans Rott for the first time.

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Posted on June 30, 2025 at 09:39:59
jimbill
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Posts: 3150
Location: Texas
Joined: May 31, 2004
 I listened to his first (and only?) symphony. I was quite impressed. It's very obvious that he influenced the works of others. Mahler, Sibelius, and Richard Strauss come to mind. But then, I'm not a musical historian.

I wonder why Brahms and his mate had a problem with it. Was it too different from what they were writing? I he'd been encouraged to produce more.

 

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Just guessing, but. . . , posted on June 30, 2025 at 12:13:52
Chris from Lafayette
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 . . . I suspect that Brahms may have wanted to put these students of Bruckner (young whippersnappers like Rott!), "in their place". After all, they were so arrogant as to travel to see (disturb!) the Master and show him their work, hoping for his help in getting their music performed, even though Brahms was a kind of figurehead of the anti-Wagner, anti-Bruckner contingent within the music world at that time. OR it's possible that he might have been genuinely offended by all the Wagnerian/Brucknerian influences in their music. I don't think we know exactly what faults Brahms found with Rott's music, although, according to Wikipedia, Brahms told Rott that he had no talent at all and that he should give up music!

In any case, Rott's Symphony is a wonderful piece IMHO. And certainly, with Mahler being his fellow student in Bruckner's circle, Rott's influence on Mahler was obviously strong. Mahler knew Rott's Symphony because he had seen the manuscript. As for Strauss and Sibelius, I'm not sure they would have known Rott's music - certainly not the Symphony, which was not performed until 1989 - in Cincinnati.

BTW, I got the story wrong about Rott's train trip - I said that he was under the delusion that Brahms was trying to kill him with a revolver, which is incorrect. His actual delusion was that Brahms had filled the train with dynamite - and Rott, carrying a pistol, was trying to alert the other passengers about the danger. (Shades of that Twilight Zone episode, "Nightmare at 20,000 feet", with William Shatner trying to warn the other passengers on an airplane flight that a gremlin, which only Shatner's character sees, is trying to sabotage the plane's engine(s)!)



When Rott died from TB at the age of 25, after having been committed to an insane asylum during his final years, both Bruckner and Mahler attended his funeral.

 

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