ABSTRACT
The changing format of concerts also worked against Ernst's compositions. In the old style of concert up to thirty musicians, including singers, took part, and even leading virtuosi were given slots of only ten to twenty minutes. Consequently, leading German musicians by the 1850s had given up playing extempore fantasias, and no longer rewrote or altered composers' works to suit their own tastes. In the 1850s, a rift was opening in German musical life. This was between more conservative musicians who looked for inspiration to the Leipzig Conservatoire – the Schumanns, Hiller, David, Joachim and Brahms – and more progressive musicians who looked to Liszt at Weimar – Wagner, Berlioz, Raff, von Bulow and Cornelius. Robert Schumann was undoubtedly the leading composer in the Leipzig group in the early 1850s, and there are a number of anti-Semitic comments in his diary.
