another list of composers

I'm in temporary possession of a large folio volume called A Manual of Music: Its History, Biography and Literature, illustrated with chronological charts including biographies and portraits of eminent composers, with ... well the title goes on for a while. It's "devised and edited by W.M. Derthick" and published in 1890, "revised and improved" from an 1888 edition. It includes colored historical charts of events and trends in the history of music from the earliest Church music on, but what most interests me is the choice of "eminent composers." There's 50 of them, beginning with Bach and Handel (Telemann and Vivaldi need not apply), and going through the classics up through 14 composers still living at the time of compilation. I've heard, at least vaguely, of everyone in it, though many are obscure and two (Ferdinand Hiller and Adolf Jensen) are so much so that they had no recordings in the ten-year-old Schwann Opus I use as handy reference. The youngest is Moritz Moszkowski, born 1854. It has Rossini, Bellini, and Verdi, but not Donizetti. Of then-living composers besides Verdi, the now most eminent it includes are Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Grieg, Saint-Saens, and Gounod; the rest are pretty obscure today. The most glaring omissions of living composers are Dvorak, Sullivan, and various Russians (Bruckner could be excused for obscurity, and Mahler was too young).

The writeup on Tchaikovsky - then at the height of his powers, with Sleeping Beauty and the Fifth Symphony the most recent of his major works - is probably the shortest in the whole book. Here's what it says:

Among the most prominent of the Slav composers of the musical art,¹ who have so generously rewarded the efforts of Rubinstein to establish a Russian school of music² is Peter Tschaikowsky³, who, with Alexander Borodin,⁴ ranks next to that great master.⁵ Tschaikowsky, who was born in the province of Perm, adjoining Siberia, in 1840, entered Rubinstein's conservatory at St. Petersburg, and developed such talent that he was appointed to a professorial chair in that institution in 1866, which he held till 1877. He has established a reputation as the composer of operas, symphonies, overtures, string quartets, and concertos for the piano and violin. His most ambitious works are the symphonic poems "Der Sturm" and "Francesca di Rimini."⁶ A distinguishing feature of his work is the national characteristic, which is strongly marked, and which he combines with a quaint rhythm and a peculiar and interesting modulation.⁷ For the piano he has written many pieces, which have been largely availed of by the teachers of the day for purposes of instruction and practice, and these have become specially well known in America in that connection.⁸
While Borodin is perhaps superior in natural gift, and develops a greater mastery of polyphony,⁹ Tschaikowsky surpasses him in technique, and in the control of that spirit of impetuousness, which is the national trait, which he subordinates to add to the effect and impressiveness of a climax, while with Borodin it obtains a mastery which often mars his work.¹⁰
The extensive use of Tschaikowsky's works in modern practice makes him an important influence in the moulding of the popular musical taste, and, because of the high standard of his works, beneficial as well as important.¹¹

1. Of what other art were we expecting them to be composers?
2. Nothing is said of the more successful efforts of Balakirev to do this. Tchaikovsky was an adherent of Rubinstein's relatively "Western" school, but the deep Russian sound of composers like Borodin and Mussorgsky came from Glinka and Balakirev.
3. The German spelling of his name was universal in the West then.
4. Borodin is not otherwise included. Nor is any other Russian composer except ...
5. Derthick definitely has the hots for the now tattered and faded works of Anton Rubinstein. Even Brahms - even Brahms! - is called the greatest of contemporary composers "save Rubinstein only", my italics. Good lord.
6. His most ambitious? Really? His symphonies don't exceed them in scale and magnitude? And note there's nothing of perhaps his most characteristic works, his ballets, Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty (The Nutcracker was yet to come). "Der Sturm", by the way, was never published by the composer, deservedly, as it's not very good. I must presume Derthick had never heard Romeo and Juliet.
7. It's hard to avoid the impression that Derthick doesn't actually know what "modulation" means, and is just throwing it in as a technical term that sounds good. I'm not sure what "a quaint rhythm" would be, either. If he thinks Tchaikovsky's rhythms are quaint, he should wait twenty years for Stravinsky to come along; his head will explode.
8. Now the least known of the departments of Tchaikovsky's work. Again, deservedly so.
9. Again I get the impression that Derthick is just throwing polysyllables around.
10. I doubt that the proposition that Tchaikovsky is a less impetuous composer than Borodin would win many adherents today.
11. I think this is Pompous Music Critic for "He's good as well as popular." I'll go along with that.