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Kind of the other side of the coin to the best insults thread. I've read quite a few examples but can only think of one of the most famous examples:Schumann in his review of Chopin's Variations on La Ci Darem La Mano..."Hats off gentlemen, a genius!"

Other examples?

What you said was the one that immediately occurred to me too.

The next was a thing that I recalled reading, about what Haydn said to Mozart's father about Mozart. I wasn't sure how authentic that is -- never exactly looked it up -- but it seems it's as authentic as these things can be if we don't have them in writing from the horse's mouth.
(as it were)

This is the thing I remembered (appears in a Wiki article, titled "Haydn and Mozart:

Before God and as an honest man I tell you that your son is the greatest composer known to me either in person or by name; he has taste, and, furthermore, the most profound knowledge of composition.

That same article also gives this, also from Haydn about Mozart:

If only I could impress Mozart's inimitable works on the soul of every friend of music, and the souls of high personages in particular, as deeply, with the same musical understanding and with the same deep feeling, as I understand and feel them, the nations would vie with each other to possess such a jewel.

And also this:

"I have often been flattered by my friends with having some genius, but he was much my superior."


The article gives some examples of Mozart in turn complimenting Haydn, but nothing as effusive as those.

Beethoven on Handel:

“He is the master us all -the greatest composer that ever lived. I would uncover my head and kneel before his tomb.”

Mozart on Handel:

"Handel understands effects better than any of us. When he chooses, he strikes like a thunder bolt"

In 1853, Schumann wrote an article about Brahms called Neue Bahnen - “New Paths” - hailing the young man as "the heir to Beethoven, the anointed Messiah of music."

“I know of only one who reaches up to Beethoven, and that is Bruckner.”
Richard Wagner

“If only I had been told that one could write a cello concerto like that.”
Johannes Brahms, after hearing Dvorak’s cello concerto.

Both from Musical Quotes and Anecdotes by Robert Giddings, 1984.

OT but also includes some interesting quotes from Samuel Pepys on amateur harpsichordists and from his fellow diarist John Evelyn on the eunuch Cifaccio [sorry I missed that ... the singing I mean].

The flock of overrated composers that rule over the composition scene here in Estonia and mock anyone who writes anything that sounds too different from their style (including A. Pärt), praise each other all the time, because no one else does. I wish I could provide you with names, but i'd rather not, for several reasons.

Brahms on Bach's chaconne from the e-minor violin partita: "On one stave, for a small instrument, the man writes a whole world of the deepest thoughts and most powerful feelings. If I imagined that I could have created, even conceived the piece, I am quite certain that the excess of excitement and earth-shattering experience would have driven me out of my mind."

Brahms on Beethoven:

I shall never write a symphony! You can’t have any idea what it’s like always to hear such a giant marching behind you!

Grieg to Tchaikovsky:

You cannot imagine what joy my meeting with you has given me. No, not joy, but much more! You have left such a strong impression on me both as an artist and as a human being.

In return, Tchaikovsky dedicated his overture Hamlet to Grieg.

So far as I know, they greatly admired each other, and exchanged many letters.

"Cramer, Cramer! We will never be able to write anything like that!" Beethoven to Cramer after hearing Mozart's C minor piano concerto.

Franz Liszt about Clara Schumann in 1838 (she was 19):
"Just one word about Clara Wieck- distintissimo (but not a man, of course). We are living in the same hotel, Zur Stadt Frankfurt, and after dinner we make as much music as possible. She is a very simple person, cultivated... totally absorbed in her art but with nobility and without childishness. She was astounded when she heard me play. Her compositions are really very remarkable, especially for a woman. There is a hundred times more ingenuity and true sentiment in them than in all the fantasies, past and present, of Thalberg."


Clara on Liszt in her diary, after that concert tour:
"We heard Liszt. He cannot be compared to any other player- he is absolutely unique. He arouses fear and astonishment and yet is a very kind artist. His appearance at the piano is indescribable- he is an original- totally involved with the piano. (...) He has a great soul; one may say of him, "His art is his life.""

Later, in a letter to Robert: "My own playing seems so boring and haphazard to me now... I've almost lost the inclination to go on tour again. After hearing and seeing Liszt's bravura, I feel like a student. (...) He plays at sight what we toil over and get nowhere with."

With the years, however, the praise slowly turned to very negative feelings, and after his death, Clara wrote in her diary, "Before Liszt, people used to play- after Liszt, they only pounded or whispered. He has the decline of piano playing on his conscience".

Beethoven had traveled to Vienna in 1787 in hopes of studying with Mozart. Upon hearing Beethoven play one of his compositions Mozart is said to have remarked, "Keep your eye on this fellow. One day he will make a great noise in the music world." Sadly, Beethoven was called back to Bonn to care for his ailing parent and Mozart was dead 4 years later so Beethoven never got to study with him. Later he traveled back to Vienna for good to study with Haydn and we all know how swimmingly that went.

Brahms:
"Should the musical public ever come to realize that the sort of inspiration which trickles from my works in meager droplets, springs in a torrent from those of Mozart -- I shall have to find some other line of work."


(Paraphrased. Perhaps someone here can provide the real quote.)

Wow. Thank you for sharing this one.
Any idea if it's from a letter to a particular person? Then it would be easier to look for the original.

Mozart is consistently the most liked (as well as admired - not quite the same thing) composer by other composers: everyone from Haydn to Adès have openly admitted to loving Mozart's music and learning from it. And that includes composers whose own music appear to be as far removed away from Mozart's as is possible to imagine.

Here is one among many:
Ravel put it: "Mozart! To us, adherents of the younger modern school, he is the greatest musician, the musician par excellence, our god!"

BTW, Ravel modelled the slow movement of his G major concerto, bar by bar, on Mozart's Clarinet Quintet.......just as Beethoven modelled his own Piano & Wind Quintet on Mozart's (though he didn't admit it openly like Ravel did).

the contrary: Tchaikovsky on Händel: 'a 3rd rate composer of cheap effects', haha

I replied in the "Best Insults" thread, and I mentioned Rachmaninoff had insulted MacDowell's second piano concerto.

But here's the flip of the coin:

Franz Liszt had praised the first piano concerto of MacDowell after hearing the young American playing the piece himself, with Eugen D'Albert playing the orchestral part on a second piano. He later accepted the dedication to that first piano concerto, after MacDowell shyly wrote a letter to Liszt asking him if he would accept the dedication.

On a side note: I used to think that there was a GOOD reason that the first piano concerto was never heard in concert halls after MacDowell's death; but now I doubt it. My piano teacher, who used to be a conductor, once said, "Everyone plays MacDowell's second piano concerto because it's [musically] easier."

Obviously not alot of people play the Second either anymore, but he had heard a good amount of recordings of the Second (from my reference) when I was (and still am) attempting to learn it.

According to wikipedia, "Teresa Carreño was an early adopter of the works of one of her students, American composer and pianist Edward MacDowell (1860–1908) and premiered several of his compositions across the globe .... (She and Eugen d'Albert) were married on July 27, 1892. ... D'Albert was a controlling individual in matters related to child rearing, household management, and even Carreño's repertoire choices, which resulted in the exclusion of MacDowell's music from her performances during their marriage"

I wonder why?

The great composer Berlioz is not mentioned much in this forum - possibly because he did not play or write for the piano. He was a passionate man with deep admiration for Beethoven, and for the operas of Gluck. On 12 January 1856 he wrote the following to Théodore Ritter:

"There are two supreme gods in the art of music: Beethoven and Gluck. The former’s realm is that of infinite thought, the latter’s that of infinite passion; and though Beethoven is far above Gluck as a musician, there is so much of each in the other that these two Jupiters form a single god, and all we can do is to lose ourselves in admiration and respect for him."

He wrote the following on Gluck:

He innovated in almost every field, though in so doing he was only following the irresistible impulse of his dramatic genius. I do not think that his primary goal was to expand the art of music. But he was gifted with an extraordinary feeling for expression and a rare understanding of the human heart, and his sole aim was to give passions a true, profound and powerful language, and he used all available musical resources for this sole purpose. When rules did not stand in the way of his inspiration he followed them, but he discarded them when they became an obstacle. Only his harmonic language remained restricted; he only knew a limited number of chords, which he would often use in the same way. On the other hand he introduced many new rhythms, which Mozart subsequently adopted. Several of these have found their way into modern compositions, and musicians of our time have not been able to avoid them. They are still subject to the tyranny that this dark and powerful genius exercises over all forms of expressive music. He was the first to make this art a genuine poetic language; and had he not sacrificed everything to his system, had he shown greater variety, one might have regarded him as the Shakespeare of music.

Berlioz again:

‘A work greater than his greatest symphonies, greater than anything he wrote, and consequently greater than anything ever produced by the art of music’

(Berlioz on a performance by Mme Massart late in 1860 of Beethoven’s Appassionata sonata (op. 57, in F Minor), reproduced in À travers chants in the chapter entitled ‘Les temps sont proches’)

Another quote (source - www.hberlioz.com): "A recurring trait of Berlioz was his hankering for personal closeness with those artistic figures he admired most: Beethoven belonged to the very select few who were in that category. As he wrote in a letter to his old friend Humbert Ferrand (10 November 1864)":

"Would you believe, my dear Humbert, that I am too weak to be reconciled with the past? I cannot understand why I have not known Virgil; I seem to imagine him dreaming in his villa in Sicily; he must have been gentle, welcoming and courteous. And Shakespeare, indifference itself, impassive like a mirror that reflects objects. Yet he must have felt immense pity for everything. And Beethoven, contemptuous and rough, and yet gifted with such deep sensitivity. I think I could have forgiven him everything, his scorn and his brutality. And Gluck the proud and magnificent!…"

Another hero of Berlioz was Weber:

"[Weber was] as great in 'Freischütz' as in 'Oberon'. But the poetry of the former is full of movement, passion, and contrasts. The supernatural leads to strange and violent effects. The melodic style, harmony, and rhythm have in combination a thunderous and incandescent power; everything conspires to arrest attention. The characters are also taken from everyday experience and have widespread appeal. The depiction of their feelings and daily lives calls for a less elevated style, which is enhanced by exquisite workmanship. This gives the work irresistible charm, even for those minds who disdain musical amusements, and to the general public it comes across in this form as the pinnacle of art and a miracle of inventiveness."

Well, he didn't have a very high opinion of Brahms either.

Mendelssohn called Chopin "a perfect musician".

Beethoven, Czerny and Chopin on Clementi (from Wikipedia):

Ludwig van Beethoven, in particular, had the highest regard for Clementi. Beethoven often played Clementi sonatas and often a volume of them was on his music stand. Beethoven recommended these works to many people including his nephew Karl. A description of Beethoven's regard for Clementi's music can be found in the testimony of his assistant, Anton Schindler, who wrote "He (Beethoven) had the greatest admiration for these sonatas, considering them the most beautiful, the most pianistic of works, both for their lovely, pleasing, original melodies and for the consistent, easily followed form of each movement. The musical education of his beloved nephew was confined for many years almost exclusively to the playing of Clementi sonatas" (Beethoven as I Knew Him, ed. Donald M. McArdle, trans. Constance Jolly, Chapel Hill, and London, 1966).

Moscheles' edition of Schindler's biography quotes the latter as follows: "Among all the masters who have written for piano, Beethoven assigned to Clementi the very foremost rank. He considered his works excellent as studies for practise, for the formation of a pure taste, and as truly beautiful subjects for performance. Beethoven used to say: 'They who thoroughly study Clementi, at the same time make themselves acquainted with Mozart and other composers; but the converse is not the fact.' "

Carl Czerny also had the highest regard for Clementi's piano sonatas and used them successfully in his teaching of Franz Liszt. Czerny referred to Clementi as "the foremost pianist of his time."

Frédéric Chopin would often require his pupils to practice Clementi's preludes and exercises because of the exceptional virtues he attributed to them.

As I'm in full flow (having just played through K310), here's more:


Mozart roused my admiration when I was young; he caused me to despair when I reached maturity; he is now the comfort of my old age.
- Gioachino Rossini
"Beethoven I take twice a week, Haydn four times, and Mozart every day." - Gioachino Rossini


Mozart is sunshine - Antonín Dvořák

Mozart in his music was probably the most reasonable of the world's great composers. It is the happy balance between flight and control, between sensibility and self-discipline, simplicity and sophistication of style that is his particular province... Mozart tapped once again the source from which all music flows, expressing himself with a spontaneity and refinement and breath-taking rightness that has never since been duplicated.
- Aaron Copland

"Mozart is the musical Christ." - Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

"I believe in God, Mozart, and Beethoven." - Richard Wagner

While Mozart was Tchaikovsky's favorite composer, Robert Schumann was by far his favorite Romantic composer.

He believed that the latter half of the 19th century should be called the Schumannesque period:


He believed that no concert can be good without Schumann:


However, he did criticize Schumann for orchestration:


Josef Sittard notes he only saw Tchaikovsky angry when Schumann was being insulted:

Wow, fascinating to read! Thank you for sharing.

I
If you'd like to read more, consult the Tchaikovsky Research website where Tchaikovsky's writings are all documented:

http://en.tchaikovsky-research.net/pages/Robert_Schumann

My favorites are Tchaikovsky's analysis of Schumann's Piano Quintet and his Davidsbundlertanze.

And these extremely interesting statements about Schumann's cello concerto: