This chapter examines the way in which the idea of a European avant-garde is formed in the wake of Messiaen’s thought and the ways in which this reflexively informed Messiaen’s own work. It focuses in particular on the theoretical achievements of Ligeti, Stockhausen, and Xenakis and how formed a new ways of thinking about music.

Brahms as a point of reference for contemporary music is somewhat overshadowed by other composers. While, for example, Johann Sebastian Bach’s music is a constant subject of adaptation as well as an inspiration on different compositional levels, contemporary composers seem to be less inclined to approach Brahms’s music in this way. Whereas a composer like Helmut Lachenmann published a third voice to one of Bach’s two-part inventions and grappled with Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto K622 in his own Accanto (1975–6), he left Brahms’s music almost untouched. Even where the instrumentation suggests Brahmsian models, as in his Allegro sostenuto for clarinet, cello and piano (1986–8), a specific relationship cannot be identified. And while Brian Ferneyhough refers to Elizabethan consort music in some of his string quartets, he apparently does not consider Brahms’s contributions to this genre, such as his String Quartets Op. 51 and Op. 67.

The reception of Brahms’s music beyond his home city of Hamburg began in 1853, when the young composer made his first extended journey and presented his compositions to some of the leading figures of German contemporary music: Robert Schumann, Robert Franz and Franz Liszt. Each reacted to these unpublished works in distinctive ways.

Robert Schumann, with whom Brahms spent the whole month of October in Düsseldorf,was instantly enthralled.