I was just thinking about composers I enjoy and reading a few online biographies, and I always find it interesting who worked with/was influenced by/taught who, for example one of my favourite piano composers is Heller, who studied briefly under Czerny and then was friends with Berlioz, Chopin and Lizst; or how Ravel and Debussy influenced each other, and how Ravel met Gershwin and that Vaughn Williams studied under him, or how Bridge, another favourite of mine, was influenced by Ravel and also taught Britten.

Anyway, does anyone know of any 'who-influenced-who' map for composers, the way they get drawn for rock bands etc?

There is, as you quite correctly say, the excellent 'Rock Family Trees', which actually covered all sorts of popular music, and was made into a very good BBC2 series several years ago.

I can't think of an equivalent classical one, but I'd imagine it'd be very interesting if such a project was launched.

I haven't seen anything like it, but it wouldn't be particularly difficult to make one as places like wikipedia will give all the necessary information to create the links.

Hmm, might add to the bottom of the 'things to do on a rainy day' list!

Wonders if it would be a bad thing to add to my ways to procrastinate list.

Hummel was influenced (and taught by) Mozart.

Schubert was influenced by Beethoven.

Puccini was influenced by Verdi.

Hummel can be heard in early works of Chopin and Schumann.

Berlioz was also influenced by Beethoven, and I believe he wrote the Symphonie Fantastique as a tribute to him.

Well, I've started a composer web and after making the connections mentioned on the wikipedia pages for Beethoven, Mozart, JS Bach, Clementi, CPE Bach, Hadyn and the ones DC's just mentioned, it's looking very much like an explosion in a spaghetti factory already and soon there won't be room for arrows without them running through other names. If anyone wants to see the work in progress, I can email it to you (or upload it somewhere) as a powerpoint slide as it's waaaay too big to post as a picture here! (If I were to print it out it would be a 150cm square. )

ooh, how have you done it? I was thinking different coloured arrows to signify 'taught/studied under', 'friends/contemporaries', 'influenced by the style of' etc etc

There's lots and lots of arrows, which are labelled 'teacher', 'father' etc for anything in particular, or left blank if they were just an influence but no particular relationship.

http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=07c7a4c...04e75f6e8ebb871

That's it. The yellow and blue blobs don't mean anything musical - they're just to remind me which one's I have or haven't got round to looking up yet.

EDIT: Just realised that the link takes you to a list of several files. The one you want is the composer tree one, but I guess you could have worked that out yourself.

Fauré was influenced by Saint-Saëns, met Liszt and was fascinated by Wagner; his pupils included Ravel, Koechlin, Roger-Ducasse, Enescu and Nadia Boulanger. J S Bach influenced Mozart, Mendelssohn, Brahms and Stravinsky. Brahms influenced Reger, who influenced Hindemith, who taught Arnold Cooke, Franz Reizenstein and Walter Leigh. Weber, founder of German Romantic opera, influenced Wagner, whose own influence was huge: obvious in Bruckner, Mahler and Richard Strauss and some works of Dvorak, but also many late 19th C. composers in the French school, including Chabrier and Franck, the last also having an influence on d'Indy, Duparc, Chausson, Lekeu, Vierne, Dukas and Guilmant. Liszt's tone poems inspired Smetana and the atonalism of his late piano works was taken up by Schoenberg, who also combined ideas from Wagner and Brahms. Nadia Boulanger taught Copland, Carter and many others. Elgar was influenced by Wagner[1] and also by Strauss[2] (E. and S. were mutual admirers). Dukas taught Messiaen, possibly the most important composition teacher of the 20th C. Messiaen's many students include Alexander Goehr, Peter Maxwell Davies, Easley Blackwood, Pierre Boulez, Oliver Knussen, George Benjamin, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Iannis Xenakis, Mikis Theodorakis and Tristan Murail.

[1] Compare Prelude to "Parsifal" with the opening of "Gerontius".

[2] Cf. "Alassio" and "Don Juan".

I think it would probably be easier to list all the post-Beethoven composers who weren't influenced by him than all of those who were ...

This is an updated version with Kenm's links added.

http://www.mediafire.com/?2ngzzmm5iij

Keep the connections coming (it's easier than trawling through wikipedia!) and tell me if there's any glaring holes.

Well, as far as glaring holes go, Beethoven should definitely have more arrows pointing away from him ... looking at the composers you already have in the chart, there should should definitely be arrows connecting Beethoven to Brahms, Wagner, Liszt, Schumann, Mahler, Dvorak, and Schoenberg. Probably to Shostakovich, Tchaikovsky, and Strauss as well.

As well as Copland, Nadia Boulanger also taught Elliott Carter and Phillip Glass, among others.

There should also be arrows connecting Bach, Mozart and Mahler to Schoenberg. Oh, and Debussy to Messiaen.

Looks good though. Perhaps you could use different coloured lines to signify "taught", "influenced", "related", etc. ?

http://www.mediafire.com/?idxojtmjzmv

Glaring holes are filled and we have new colour-coded arrows. Red is family, light green is taught by and dark green is friends/met/knew each other etc, black is influenced by but no particular relationship.

I don't mean to be a pedant but it should really be "who was influenced by whom" Really sorry - you can blame my mum!

Anyway in terms of influence it is my understanding that Beethoven was the major influence for symphonies and Mozart was the major influence for operas.

Looks good, I like the colours.

You could also put in Schoenberg's pupils, Berg and Webern, and he also taught John Cage at one point. Also I just noticed you have two JC Bachs. Is one of them JS Bach's father? If so I think it should be JS's son (Johann Christian) who influenced Mozart rather than his father.

Oops, I made the link with Mozart before I realised there were multiple JCs.




The one above JS is his uncle, the one diagonally to his right is his older brother and the one below to the left is his son.