Deryk Barker replies to me:

>>This seems to me a muddled way of going about things.  This isn't a war,
>>and yet war is the dominant metaphor.  In 20th-century music (and later)
>>music alone do we find the eager creation of mutual enemies.
>
>The pro-Wagner and pro-Brahms factions in 19th century Vienna?

The war seems different to me in kind.  The only Viennese critic I've
read from that era is Hanslick, so I can't say much about the pro-Wagner
faction.  Consequently, I have to shift the discussion to Europe and
America at large.  Granted, both composers had their rabid partisans.
But the wrath of one side for the other seems confined either to those two
specific figures or to a very limited group.  Furthermore, it seems more
frequent that there were "breakthrough" works on either side.  For example,
even the Perfect Wagnerite, Shaw, had nice things to say about Brahms,
although his attacks are better known.  Then, of course, there are the
people who hated both, like Strong.  I guess I'm saying that I don't see
a categorical dislike in that controversy.

>>At any rate, I don't know of people fighting with the same passion over
>>the worth of early Romanticism.
>
>But they did 150 years ago.

Not as such.  They fought over specific composers, not over a group.
Furthermore, many who wrote against Beethoven tended to agree that he was
the best living composer, at least after Haydn died.

Steve Schwartz