Ludwig Rellstab

Ludwig Rellstab (1799–1860) was a German poet and influential music critic. Rellstab is known for coming up with the title ‘Moonlight’ for Beethoven’s Sonata No. 14 in C sharp minor, Op. 27, No. 2 and for his extraordinarily scathing and largely irrelevant reviews of Chopin’s works. In his review of the Mazurkas Op. 7, he discerned ‘an urge’ of the part of the composer of these works, which were ‘sated to the point of nausea’, to write ‘in an elaborate an unnatural manner’. He deemed the Piano Concerto No. 1 in E minor, Op. 11, to be saturated with ‘an excess of harmonic combinations seasoned with dizziness and headaches’ (Rellstab took it that the Concerto had absorbed these attributes under the influence of the ‘effeminate triteness of Italian music’).