[COBOL2Java]

Brahms gets tagged as "neoclasical", but in chamber music he was a revolutionary. As a musical historian, he was one of the few people in Vienna who was familiar with Palestrina and Gesualdo, even if he had no knowledge of genuine Renaissance or Baroque performance practice due to the distance of time. But he wrote a lot of good music in the forms created by Haydn and earlier composers.

That's what my Music History professor told us. Brahms wanted to preserve the classical music forms, particularly in symphonic music.

Brahms was a great admirer of Wagner, and one of his prized possessions was an autographed score of Wagner's Die Meistersinger. It was Bruckner that Brahms abhored.

I think Brahms perceived Bruckner's enthusiastic appreciation of Wagner as bordering on sycophantical. If I remember correctly, after one performance, Bruckner genuflected before Wagner.

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FWIW, Charles Ives greatly respected Brahms, and disliked Tchaikovsky.

[Publius]

Check out Charles Ives: A Life in Music by Jan Swafford.

[Borges]

Ives disliked any music he percieved as ‘feminine’.