Composer Hans Rott was highly praised by his teacher Anton Bruckner and a major inspiration to fellow student Gustav Mahler. Born in a Vienna suburb in 1858, Rott studied at a Vienna conservatory from 1874 to 1878. He completed his Symphony in E major in 1880 and showed it to Johannes Brahms with the hope that his influence could get it performed. But Brahms was viciously derisive of both Rott and his music, which had an unfortunate consequence. Rott had already begun to show some mental instability and during a train ride to begin a new position as choir director, he snapped. When a fellow passenger tried to light a cigar, Rott drew a gun on him with a demand not to strike a match as Johannes Brahms had, Rott believed, loaded the train with dynamite. He was institutionalized about four months later and died in 1884, days before his 26th birthday. Bruckner and Mahler were among the many who attended his funeral, with Mahler later saying,
"It is impossible to estimate the loss that music has suffered. Consider the heights of genius to which his First Symphony rises, a work he wrote at the mere age of twenty and which makes him, without exaggeration, the founder of the new symphony as I understand it. ....Indeed, he so relates to my innermost, that he and I seem to me as two fruits of the same tree, created from the same earth, nourished by the same air." In his own later symphonies, Mahler would directly quote Rott and borrow his use of woodwinds, chorales and Ländlers among other techniques. So much so that conductor Paavo Jarvi has said that if Mahler were living today he would be sued for plagiarism.
The nearly hour-long Symphony in E-major by Hans Rott is today's Midday Masterpiece at 2:00pm.
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