Grimm Symphony/Suite in Kanonform (cpo)

[eschiss1]

Cypressdome has uploaded/mirrored the earlier version of the symphony's finale (in manuscript full score, as digitized by Stadtarchiv Münster) to IMSLP, so in principle it should be possible for one to find out a lot about it.

See here, specifically.

But I do see I was responding to the wrong person, sorry!

[Alan Howe]

Thanks, Eric, for clearing that up - and for linking us to the manuscript of the alternative version of the finale.

I wonder whether Grimm had always had difficulties over the finale...

[Alan Howe]

So: is Grimm's Symphony the final proof that the claim of a symphonic gap between Schumann 4 and Brahms 1 proposed by Carl Dahlhaus is false?

[John Boyer]

How much proof do we need?  Grimm's symphony is just one of many.  There is a performance gap to be sure, but no gap in terms of worthy material.

[Alan Howe]

Up to now I'd thought Dietrich's Symphony was the best candidate to 'bridge the gap'; now I think Grimm's the man. So, evidently, did Chris Fifield.

[eschiss1]

And if among Brahms' by no means huge circle of composing friends (or even just in the place and time period...) we find a "gap symphony" no worse and new to us, all the better.

[Ilja]

To be honest, we've given Dahlhaus way too much credit for much too long, simply because it was convenient to consider the gap in performance as representative of the lack of "worthy" contemporary musical material. Dahlhaus, while a distinguished scholar, was also known for what is now called "presentism", the narrow vision of (in this case the musical past) through the lens of present priorities. It is, to be sure, one of the most fatal flaws that can befall any historian, but one has to regard this in the light of the ideological belligerence displayed by the West Berlin serialist avant-garde (as insular as the city they worked in) of the time.

However, even back then there were people with enough repertoire knowledge to know that this "thesis" was utter gobbledegook, not in the least because they would have performed this music before the War. Few people realise how lethal the Nazi regime was for the richness of the concert repertory. Not only Jewish and Slavic composers were barred from the concert halls, but also a host of others deemed "unworthy" for whatever reason, or simply because they weren't "the best" according to some Nazi culture chief of the time (Hans Franke's chum Bruno Schestak played a role here, too). Most of these works never returned to the repertory after the war, and the whole thing worked to confirm Dahlhaus's idea.

[Alan Howe]

As a matter of interest, I wonder when the last time Grimm's Symphony was performed prior to being taken up by Golo Berg in Münster...

[eschiss1]

Leipzig Gewandhausorchester performed the suite op.16 as early as 1867/11/14 and individual movements from it as late as 1893/1/26; the symphony at least once, on 1873/1/16, the composer conducting.