Well I would say they are different, but perhaps not so different as with other composers. This is an extract from a writing about the life of Brahms, if it is true his work was likened to Beethoven.
As his reputation grew, though, Brahms felt new pressures. In the 1860s, he had made his home Vienna, the musical capital of Europe, where he lived in the shadows of other great Viennese composers, namely Mozart, Schubert, and Beethoven. The urge to compose a symphony grew stronger, but Beethoven had proven himself the master of the genre 50 years earlier.
Brahms knew he would be compared to Beethoven, and he respected and feared his idol enough to avoid seriously entertaining the idea of writing a symphony for years. “You don’t know,” Brahms observed, “what it means to the likes of us when we hear [Beethoven’s] footsteps behind us.”
His immeasurable fastidiousness and humility, and a fear of being compared to Beethoven, staved off the release of his first symphony for 14 years, but in 1876 he
completed his Symphony in C minor. Immediately, his nightmares came true. The critic Eduard Hanslick wasted no time comparing Brahms to Beethoven, saying that Brahms had relied heavily on Beethoven’s serious side, he lacked “heart-warming sunshine,” and that the string melody in the fourth movement was reminiscent of Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.”
The influential conductor Hans von Bulow nicknamed the symphony “Beethoven’s Tenth,” which also significantly irked Brahms. The criticism was not all bad, though. Hanslick ultimately called the piece “an inexhaustible fountain of sincere pleasure and fruitful study,” and it was an immediate hit with audiences. Today Brahms’ Symphony No. 1 stands as a monumentally important work on its own merit.
Margaret
