Seven Works Dedicated to Robert Schumann

 by Emily E. Hogstad  January 8th, 2025

Robert Schumann was one of the leading figures of classical music’s Romantic Era. His music – by turns tempestuous and ecstatic and always heartfelt – made a huge impression not only on audiences but on his fellow composers, too.

Today, we’re looking at seven works that Robert Schumann’s friends and colleagues wrote as tributes to him and his genius.

Josef Kriehuber: Robert Schumann, 1839

Frédéric Chopin: Ballade No. 2 (1836-39) 

Frédéric Chopin and Robert Schumann had a bit of an awkward relationship. Schumann raved about Chopin’s music in his music journalism, but Chopin seems to have had a cooler opinion about Schumann’s work.

They met twice. The first time was in 1835 when Chopin was passing through Leipzig after visiting his parents. Schumann wrote about the encounter with great enthusiasm in his diary, but if Chopin ever recorded his impressions of the meeting, such an account hasn’t survived.

Frédéric Chopin

The second and final time was in 1836. Schumann tried initiating the meeting via letter but got no response. Then, one day, he arrived home to find Chopin waiting at his doorstep! They played music for one another, and Robert’s soon-to-be-wife Clara Wieck joined them.

After the visit, Schumann dedicated his Kreisleriana to Chopin, calling him “my friend” on the dedication page. Chopin reciprocated by dedicating this Ballade to Schumann…but was much more formal, dedicating it to “Mr. Robert Schumann,” and (perhaps pointedly) making no mention of friendship.

William Sterndale Bennett: Fantaisie, Op.16 (1837) 

William Sterndale Bennett was a British pianist, composer, and conductor who was born in 1816.

He began composing at an early age, and several big names in European music were very impressed by him. Felix Mendelssohn invited the young man to Leipzig, where he met Robert Schumann. All three men deeply admired each other’s work.

William Sterndale Bennett

In 1837, the year he turned twenty-one, Bennett began teaching at the Royal Academy of Music in London. He also wrote this four-movement “Fantaisie” for solo piano and dedicated it to his friend and mentor Robert Schumann.

Clara Wieck Schumann: 3 Romances, Op.11 (1839) 

Robert Schumann admired many composers, but the one he loved the most was his girlfriend and later wife, Clara Wieck Schumann, who he married in September 1840, a day before her twenty-first birthday.

Andreas Staub: Clara Wieck, 1839

Their courtship was stormy. Her father disapproved of the match and went to court to try to prevent it. There were periods of time when the two were separated against their wills or when Clara was away concertising in the capitals of Europe. But they always found their way back to each other.

It is tempting to read her longing for Robert into these three-yearning works for solo piano that she dedicated to him in 1839, the year before their marriage.

Ignaz Moscheles: Cello Sonata No. 2 (1850-51) 

Ignaz Moscheles was born in 1794 in Prague. He was a talented pianist and composer, and was one of the earliest champions of the music of Beethoven.

As a young man, he made sensational impressions on audiences touring through Europe. One of the listeners particularly affected by his piano playing was none other than Robert Schumann.

Ignaz Moscheles

Moscheles enjoyed a great friendship with the Mendelssohn family due to their Jewish heritage, passion for music, and Moscheles’s acknowledgement of Mendelssohn’s genius. Moscheles and the Mendelssohns were also friends with the Schumanns. (Moscheles even played a three-harpsichord concerto with Clara Schumann once – an unusual sight in the mid-nineteenth century!)

Given their overlapping friendships, it makes sense that Moscheles dedicated this charming Romantic cello sonata to Robert Schumann.

Woldemar Bargiel: Piano Trio No. 1 (1851) 

German composer Woldemar Bargiel’s origin story was complicated.

Bargiel’s mother Mariane Tromlitz was a professional singer. In 1816, she married a demanding piano teacher named Friederich Wieck and had five children with him, among them a prodigy pianist named Clara.

In 1824, unable to endure her marriage any longer, Mariane divorced Wieck and (awkwardly) married Wieck’s best friend Adolphe Bargiel instead. She eventually had three more children with Adolphe, including Woldemar.

Woldemar Bargiel

It worked out well for the young and musical Woldemar to have a brilliant half-sister pianist nine years his senior. She gave career advice and provided him introductions to giants like Mendelssohn and Schumann. Their social circle suggested that he study at the Leipzig Conservatory, which he did between the ages of eighteen and twenty.

In 1848, he moved to Berlin to pursue his career there. This piano trio was written in 1851 and was unpublished for five years until Robert and Clara Schumann worked their connections so that it could be printed. In gratitude, he dedicated it to Robert.

Franz Liszt: Piano Sonata in B-minor (1852-53) 

Clara Wieck Schumann and Franz Liszt had a rocky professional relationship. It started out positively. When she was a young girl, she was awed by his virtuosity, and for his part, Liszt found her compositions impressive, “especially for a woman,” as he reported to his partner, Marie d’Agoult.

Franz Hanfstaengl: Franz Liszt, 1858

But as the years went on, Clara became more and more leery of his brash style and willingness to depart from the score.

An all-out feud erupted in 1848 when Liszt called Robert Schumann’s Piano Quintet “typically Leipzig”, which insulted Clara. But Robert smoothed things over, to Clara’s irritation; in her artistic maturity, she didn’t want anything to do with Liszt’s style of music-making.

In 1854, Liszt published this piano sonata and dedicated it to Robert Schumann. Not surprisingly, Clara had a strong reaction, writing in her journal:

Today, Liszt sent me a Sonata dedicated to Robert and some more pieces, together with a polite note. But those pieces are so creepy! Brahms played them to me and I felt really miserable … This is only blind noise – no more healthy thoughts, everything is confused, one cannot see any clear harmonies! And, what is more, I still have to thank him now – this is really awful.

Despite her disgust, Liszt cheerfully retained his admiration for her music and her playing.

Clara Wieck Schumann: Variationen über ein Thema von Robert Schumann, Op.20 (1853) 

It’s fitting that the final work on this list is another one of Clara’s.

This set of variations on a theme originally composed by Robert was written as his 41st birthday present. She wrote it in less than a week.

In this work, Clara includes references to multiple pieces of music by her husband, herself, and Felix Mendelssohn (who had died young and unexpectedly a few years before).

Eduard Magnus: Mendelssohn, 1846

It was one of the last musical projects they shared. Over the winter, Robert’s mental health deteriorated. In February 1854, he nearly died by suicide after jumping off a bridge into the Rhine River. It was determined that he needed to go to an asylum for his own safety. He died in the asylum in 1856. Clara would only be allowed to see him once more, shortly before his passing.

To comfort her, Johannes Brahms wrote his own variations for Clara based on this work after Robert had been institutionalised. It may not be dedicated to Robert officially, but it certainly was dedicated to him in spirit, so here it is as a bonus. We wrote about it here.

10 Pieces of Classical Music About Friendship

by Emily Hogstadt, Interlude

Making and having friends is one of the great joys of the human experience. Not surprisingly, many classical composers have been deeply inspired by their friendships with other people, and especially with other creative people.

Today, we’re looking at ten pieces of classical music that reflect on composers’ friendships in some way, whether it’s Beethoven’s dedication of a private string quartet to a friend or Elgar’s extravagant orchestral puzzle dedicated to his friends.

Enjoy!

Ludwig van Beethoven: String Quartet No. 11 (1810-11)

Beethoven’s eleventh quartet was a unique piece from the start: he wrote in a letter to a friend that “The Quartet is written for a small circle of connoisseurs and is never to be performed in public.”

In it, Beethoven allowed himself to experiment and take risks. It was written the year after Napoleon invaded Vienna when the routines of people in the city had been shattered, so there weren’t many audiences interested in coming to performances, anyway.

Nikolaus Zmeskall von Domanovecz © Wikipedia

Beethoven dedicated this work to his friend, Count Nikolaus Zmeskall von Domanovecz. Zmeskall was a civil servant and an amateur cellist who hosted gatherings in his home where chamber music was performed. These house concerts were the first place where much of Beethoven’s later chamber music was first heard.

Frédéric Chopin: Variations on “Là ci darem la mano” (1827) 

Frédéric Chopin had such an intense friendship with political activist Tytus Woyciechowski that some scholars have recently claimed that the two had a romantic relationship.

Tytus Woyciechowski © Wikipedia

Some historians have protested, but regardless of the truth, Chopin certainly did write some very intimate letters to Woyciechowski, including this one in 1830:

I will go and wash. Don‘t kiss me now because I haven‘t yet washed. You? Even if I were to rub myself with Byzantine oils, you still wouldn’t kiss me, unless I compelled you to do so with magnetism. There is some sort of force in nature. Today you will dream that you‘re kissing me. I have to pay you back for the nasty dream you brought me last night…

Three years earlier, Chopin had written a series of variations for piano on an aria from Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni and dedicated it to Woyciechowski.

The two friends eventually drifted apart, but they always remained in each other’s hearts. Woyciechowski eventually named one of his children after Chopin.

Felix Mendelssohn: Allegro Brillant (1841) 

Since he was very young, composer Felix Mendelssohn was a close colleague of prodigy pianist Clara Wieck Schumann (the woman who eventually married composer Robert Schumann).

Felix Mendelssohn © U.S. Public Domain

In 1835, Mendelssohn was named music director of the Gewandhaus orchestra in Leipzig. Wieck, born in 1819, was a popular up-and-coming Leipzig-born piano prodigy, so the two often worked together professionally.

As a token of his admiration, in 1841, the year after her marriage to Robert Schumann, Mendelssohn wrote the dazzling Allegro Brillant for piano four-hands for Clara.

As a token of respect for his friend’s ability, the Allegro Brillant is devilishly difficult.

Johannes Brahms: Violin Concerto (1878) 

Another musician in the Mendelssohn/Schumann social circle was a Hungarian violinist named Joseph Joachim.

In 1844, at the age of twelve, Joachim gave the first performance in decades of Beethoven’s violin concerto. This performance helped to kick off an entire reappraisal of the work. (By the way, the conductor at that concert? None other than Felix Mendelssohn!)

Joseph Joachim, 1853

When they were young, Joseph Joachim became great friends with pianist Johannes Brahms, and tried to help promote Brahms’s career. In fact, Joachim made the introductions between Brahms and the Schumanns, which became one of the most formative experiences of Brahms’s life.

Brahms and Joachim continued to be friends for many years (although their relationship had its ups and downs).

When Brahms wrote his violin concerto, he wrote it for Joachim, consulting extensively with him via mail. It shouldn’t be a surprise that the finale is extremely Hungarian in character. Joachim reciprocated the friendly gesture by writing the cadenza in the concerto, which is still the only one regularly played.

Edward Elgar: Enigma Variations (1898-99) 

When Edward Elgar published his Enigma Variations for orchestra, he included a dedication: “to my friends pictured within.”

Each movement is a portrait of someone in his life, complete with musical puzzles and extra-musical references that have kept musicologists and nerdy listeners debating as to their identities for generations.

In 1911, he expanded on his dedication:

This work, commenced in a spirit of humour & continued in deep seriousness, contains sketches of the composer’s friends. It may be understood that these personages comment or reflect on the original theme & each one attempts a solution of the Enigma, for so the theme is called. The sketches are not ‘portraits’ but each variation contains a distinct idea founded on some particular personality or perhaps on some incident known only to two people. This is the basis of the composition, but the work may be listened to as a ‘piece of music’ apart from any extraneous consideration.

Sergei Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 2 (1900-1901) 

Rachmaninoff’s second piano concerto may be among his most popular works today, but it only came to life after a lot of blood, sweat, and tears…and one especially helpful friend.

Nikolai Dahl © Wikipedia

To make a long story short, Rachmaninoff was so traumatized by the failure of his first symphony in 1897 that it triggered a mental breakdown. He wasn’t sure if he’d be able to compose again.

After several years of writers’ block, in early 1900, Rachmaninoff finally began going to a neurologist and family friend named Nikolai Dahl. Dahl helped him process the failure of his symphony and feel comfortable composing again. In gratitude, Rachmaninoff dedicated his second concerto to him.

The concerto is lush, deeply emotional, and beautifully paced and proportioned. Rachmaninoff toured the world playing and promoting it, ensuring its spot in the classical music canon.

George Enescu: Violin Sonata No. 3 (1926) 

In 1926, violinist Franz Kneisel died. Kneisel had had a remarkable career. He was born in Bucharest, Romania, and studied music there and in Vienna. He became a concertmaster when he was just a teenager; he was later handpicked to serve in that position with the fledgling Boston Symphony, and he also founded the first professional string quartet in the United States, the Kneisel Quartet, which performed in America for decades.

Violinist Franz Kneisel in 1902 © Wikipedia

So when Kneisel died in 1926, he was very famous. Composer and violinist George Enescu – a fellow Romanian musician – decided to pay homage to Kneisel’s origins by posthumously dedicating a violin sonata “in Romanian Folk Style” to him. It became Enescu’s most popular work.

Karol Szymanowski: Violin Concerto No 2 (1932-33) 

Ukrainian violinist Paweł Kochański became sick with cancer in his forties. Cancer treatments were relatively limited at the time, and he would die at the age of 46 from the disease.

Before he died, however, he commissioned a violin concerto from his friend, Polish composer Karol Szymanowski. Szymanowski was deeply inspired by the request and wrote the concerto in a matter of weeks.

Paweł Kochański © Wikipedia

Happily, Kochański stayed well enough to premiere the work in October 1933 in Warsaw. But his health deteriorated rapidly afterward, and he died a few months later.

Before the score’s publication, Szymanowski edited the dedication to read “A la memoire du Grand Musicien, mon cher et inoubliable Ami, Paweł Kochański” (“In memory of the Great Musician, my dear and unforgettable Friend, Paweł Kochański”).

It ended up being Szymanowski’s last big work, too. He died in 1937 of tuberculosis.

Dmitri Shostakovich: Piano Trio No. 2 (1943-44) 

Composer Dmitri Shostakovich began his second piano trio in late 1943 and finished it in August 1944.

While he was working on the trio, in February 1944, a close friend named Ivan Sollertinsky died in his sleep.

Sollertinsky was a brilliant figure who reportedly spoke twenty-six languages (and no, that’s not a typo). Among other things, he helped introduce Mahler‘s music to the Soviet Union.

Understandably, Shostakovich was devastated at the loss, and he wrote that devastating into his haunting piano trio.

According to Sollertinsky’s sister, the trio’s second movement was a portrait of her late brother. It is followed by a tragic dirge.

Arvo Pärt: Für Alina (1976) 

There’s a deeply bittersweet real-life story behind Estonian composer Arvo Pärt’s short piano piece Für Alina (or “For Alina”).

In the 1970s, some family friends broke up. The father of the family left for England, and his teenage daughter Alina chose to go with him to see more of the world beyond Estonia.

The work is Pärt comforting his friend, Alina’s mother, while also recognizing her grief at her little girl leaving home.

Conclusion

Classical musicians can certainly be temperamental, but as this overview proves, sometimes the best friendships are friendships based on music!

What are your favorite friendship stories in the history of classical music? What pieces would you add to our list?

FIRST CLASSICAL CONCERT of 15-year-old Karolina Protsenko | Mendelssohn ...

15 year old Karolina Protsenko is playing Mendelssohn Violin Concerto In E Minor as soloist with Orchestra Nova LA for the first time. Karolina is playing on a Carl Becker violin Chicago 1937. Big thanks to Karolina's violin teacher Sam Fischer for nourishing her musical talent and being a great classical violin mentor for her. Condactor: Ivan Shulman Videographer: Sam Liu Soundman: Jeff Dollente

Mendelssohn: 3. Sinfonie (»Schottische«) ∙ hr-Sinfonieorchester ∙

Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy: 3. Sinfonie a-Moll op. 56 (»Schottische«) ∙ (Auftritt) 00:00 ∙ I. Andante con moto – Allegro un poco agitato 00:24 ∙ II. Vivace non troppo 17:58 ∙ III. Adagio 22:30 ∙ IV. Allegro vivacissimo – Allegro maestoso assai 32:38 ∙ hr-Sinfonieorchester – Frankfurt Radio Symphony ∙ Andrés Orozco-Estrada, Dirigent ∙

19 January: Saint-Saëns’ Cello Concerto No. 1 Was Premiered

By Georg Predota, Interlude

Saint-Saëns, 1875

On 19 January 1873, the French cellist, viola da gamba player and instrument maker Auguste Tolbecque premiered Camille Saint-Saëns’ Cello Concerto No. 1 in A minor, Op. 33, a work specifically composed for him. Tolbecque was a close personal friend, and the solo cellist of the Conservatoire orchestra. He was a composer himself, and also a published music historian. Tolbecque was influential in the performance of early music as he conducted research into historical instruments and their restoration.

Saint-Saëns as a boy, 1846

His compositions tend to be light in style and influenced by Mendelssohn and Schumann. Tolbecque retired before he was able to produce a recording, and he does not figure prominently in the review of the Saint-Saëns concerto published in the Revue et gazette musicale de Paris immediately after the premiere. “If Mr. Saint-Saëns should decide to continue in this vein,” the reviewer wrote, “which is consistent with his violin concerto, the Trio in F, and other works of lesser significance, he is certain to recover many of the votes that he lost with his all-too-obvious divergence from classicism and the tendencies in a number of his recent works. We must say that the Cello Concerto seems to us to be a beautiful and good work of excellent sentiment and perfect cohesiveness, and as usual the form is of greatest interest.” 

Auguste Tolbecque

At the time Saint-Saëns composed his first Cello Concerto he had already reached the age of thirty-seven. He was highly regarded in French musical circles, but as a composer he was still searching for his breakthrough work. He clearly possessed a mastery of compositional technique, and his ease, ingenuity, naturalness and productivity was compared to “a tree producing leaves.” Although he was living in a period of extreme musical experimentations, Saint-Saëns remained stubbornly traditional. Romain Rolland wrote in 1908, “He brings into the midst of our modern restlessness something of the sweetness and clarity of past periods, something that seems like fragments of a vanished world.” In his first Cello Concert, Saint-Saëns takes a deliberate stance away from what the critic calls “the (modernist) tendencies in a number of his recent works.” His unmistakable melodic charm and characteristic freshness and vitality are clothed in a formal clarity that undoubtedly accounts for the widespread popularity the 1st Cello Concerto enjoyed from the very onset. 

Opening of Saint-Saëns’ Cello Concerto No. 1

For Saint-Saëns, “form was the essence of art.” As he once wrote, “the music-lover is most of all enchanted by expressiveness and passion, but that is not the case for the artist. An artist who does not feel a deep sense of personal satisfaction with elegant lines, harmonious colors or a perfect progression of chords has no comprehension of true art.” As the anonymous critic had written after the premiere, “it should be clarified that this is in reality a “Concertstück,” since the three relatively short movements run together. The orchestra plays such a major role that it gives the work symphonic character, a tendency present in every concerto of any significance since Beethoven.” Saint-Saëns might have been looking at Franz Liszt, a composer he greatly admired, as the three movements of the concerto are interconnected. In fact, the principle theme is sounded in legato running triplets, and it appears in all movements of the concerto. 

Saint-Saëns, circa 1880

Sir Donald Francis Tovey later wrote “Here, for once, is a violoncello concerto in which the solo instrument displays every register without the slightest difficulty in penetrating the orchestra.” The orchestra clearly plays a role beyond that of mere accompaniment, “as this work never succumbs to the imbalance frequently encountered in cello concertos whereby for long stretches the soloist is seen bowing furiously but is scarcely heard.” As Saint-Saëns tellingly suggested, “Virtuosity gives a composer wings with which to soar above the commonplace and the platitudinous.” Uniting the lyrical quality of the cello with instrumental virtuosity and carful orchestral scoring produced a work valued by performers and loved by audiences. But what is more, a good many composers, including Shostakovich and Rachmaninoff considered Saint-Saëns’ Cello Concerto No. 1 to be the greatest of all cello concertos.

Five of the Angriest Classical Music Feuds

 By Emily F. Hogstad, Interlude

Artistic types are famous for their big personalities and the beef and rivalries that result. Over the centuries, classical composers have had more than their fair share of tiffs. Today we’re looking at the stories and personalities behind five of the most famous feuds in classical music history.

Salieri v. Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Antonio Salieri © slavicwritings.com

Everyone who saw the 1984 movie “Amadeus” knows the story. Antonio Salieri was a mediocre composer who was blindingly jealous of his young and impish colleague, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. In fury, he sabotages his career – and ultimately, his life.

That said… It’s not true. In real life, Salieri was a generally well-liked and well-regarded man, and a prolific and talented composer. He even taught Mozart’s son after Mozart died. And he didn’t poison Mozart.

The core of the legend came from letters that Mozart and his father wrote to each other in the 1780s, positing the existence of an “Italian cabal” that was seeking to block Mozart’s ascendance. The Mozart men were irritated that the Austrian court gave such prominence to the work of Italians; they believed that Austrian artists should reign supreme at court. This wider feud between Italian and Germanic styles of music persisted long after Mozart and Salieri, and perhaps consequentially, a rumor arose after their deaths that Salieri outright poisoned Mozart. So there was indeed a feud between the two composers, but it was a bit one-sided, and it wasn’t as dramatic – or deadly – as Hollywood suggests. 

Brahms v. Wagner

Johannes Brahms and Richard Wagner © operalibera.net

After Beethoven’s revolutionary contributions to orchestral music, composers had to make tough decisions about how they would respond. Would they continue to embrace and refine the more instrumental-based genres that Beethoven had embraced, like the symphony or the sonata? Or would they throw out the old rule book and push forward to create new musical concepts and languages, as seen in program music? What genre would win the battle for cultural relevance: symphonies or operas?

This argument grew incredibly heated in the mid-1800s and became known (perhaps a bit melodramatically) as the War of the Romantics. Generally speaking, Johannes Brahms, Felix Mendelssohn, and Robert and Clara Schumann were seen as the “conservatives” in this struggle, while figures like Liszt, Berlioz, and Wagner were seen as the “radicals.” A great deal of ink was spilled delineating the positions of the two camps. In the end, Wagner never wrote a symphony, and Brahms never wrote an opera.

Although their music was very different, Brahms appreciated at least some of Wagner’s music. “I’m the best of Wagnerians,” he told his friends in private. He even collected original Wagner manuscripts (much to Wagner’s irritation). That said, Brahms wasn’t such a fan of the loud extra-musical opinions that Wagner blared in various screeds and pamphlets.

Debussy v. Ravel

Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel © wfmt.com

The music of Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel is often jammed together on compilation discs with titles like “French Impressionism.” But just because the two men were writing music at the same time in the same city doesn’t mean they were best friends.

They met around 1900 when Debussy’s stepson Raoul Bardac, a classmate of Ravel’s, introduced them. Ravel was thirteen years younger and at a different stage of artistic and professional development than Debussy was, and Ravel admired the older man’s work intensely, to the point where he was criticized in the press for copying Debussy too closely.

In 1903, a hubbub arose when Debussy wrote a piece that seemed to be inspired by the Spanish-sounding strains in Ravel’s music. It was understandable for a younger man to copy an older one, the train of thought went, but should the older one be the composer copying the younger one? Then in 1913 the two – without knowing the other one was embarking on the same project – set some of Stéphane Mallarmé’s new poetry to music, before the poetry had been published. Their mutual distrust grew.

Another scandalous issue closer to home had caused the two composers to drift apart emotionally. Raoul Bardac introduced his (married) mother to (the married) Debussy…and the two fell in love and ran off together. Debussy’s first wife was left without a husband, and Ravel was one of the Parisians who made a financial contribution to her. The feud became official. 

Mendelssohn v. Liszt

Franz Liszt and Felix Mendelssohn

We wrote an entire article about the rivalry between Felix Mendelssohn and Franz Liszt! But to make a long story short, these two men got caught up in the War of the Romantics, just like Brahms and Wagner did. On a more personal note, Liszt once rewrote portions of Mendelssohn’s G-minor piano concerto, which understandably greatly irritated Mendelssohn. They also had an encounter at a salon gathering that could easily have turned into a disaster, when Liszt debuted yet another arrangement that he’d made of one of Mendelssohn’s work, the Capriccio, Op. 5…but Mendelssohn managed to smooth it over by joking afterward and congratulating Liszt on his extraordinary performance. 

Stravinsky v. Prokofiev

Sergei Prokofiev and Igor Stravinsky, 1920 © History of Music Facebook Page

Stravinsky and Prokofiev are often mentioned in the same sentence simply because they both were Russian composers, born in 1882 and 1891 respectively. But just like in the case of Ravel and Debussy, that didn’t guarantee they got along.

Although Stravinsky once magnanimously praised Prokofiev’s ballet “Chout” as “the single piece of modern music [he] could listen to with pleasure”, the relationship eventually deteriorated. By the following year, when “Chout” was being run through for a possible revival, Stravinsky started an argument with Prokofiev, telling him he was wasting his time writing opera. The younger man retorted that Stravinsky “was in no position to lay down a general artistic direction” since Stravinsky himself “was not immune to error.”

Prokofiev later described what came next: Stravinsky “became incandescent with rage” and “we almost came to blows and were separated only with difficulty.”