Brahms Listening
I have been doing some listening to Brahms. Once again, these are simply notes, with a composer like Brahms one needs to devote a lot of time to study the devices used and wat makes the music work so well. These notes do not attempt in any way to do this. I have been using Botstein's volume "The Compleat Brahms" as a resouce on all the works. It is comprehensive, interesting and well done. My notes as of today follow:
Opus 28: Four Duets for Alto and Baritone with Piano (1863): Some of these were really quite nice. Particularly the first and the third. In the first it is an inexorable harmonic progression and drama that make the dull ballad form become exciting. In the third, I'm particularly pleased with the shifts between 4/4 and 6/4 that he pulls off so nicely: you can hear the stratching of the phrase. Quite beautiful.
Opus 27: The Thirteenth Psalm (1864): Relatively minor work for women's choir. The organ part flies by which makes me not feel the gravity of the psalm.
Opus 30: Geistliches Lied - Spiritual Song for Four-voice Chorus with Organ or Piano (1864): It seems to me that Brahms is trying to make too much out of these essentially liturgical motets. In short, the first begins with a chorale and then uses each phrase of the chorale as a fugue subject. It becomes a little pedantic. The second, a setting of "Create in me a clean heart" has several imitative passages after a homophonic opening. The first, is too eighth-notey and the tension isn't worked well in that there is little or no rhythmic differentiation between the layers. I feel like Brahms had just received a volume of the Bach edition and wanted to try some fugal stuff, or else was trying to train his choir to do bigger and better things.
Opus 31: Three Quartets for Soprano, Alto, Tenor, Bass and Piano (1864): In these pieces we can clearly see the dictum that Brahms' music is best understood through dance. All three are stylized dances (similar in some respects to the other vocal quartets- the Liebeslieder) The first particularly lovely with the interlocking of two minuets, graceful, stylized. Deserves to be more often heard.
WOO: Fugue in A Flat minor (1864): The fugue is clearly Brahms trying to out-Bach Bach. Who would think to write a fugue in Ab minor, such a nasty key, he modulates to B minor at some point, likely its enharmonic for the even nastier Cb minor third relation. The theme is a few sighing things. Eventually it becomes a chorale at the end. If I'm not mistaken it is the classic Christ lag in Todesbanded.
WOO: 14 German Folksongs for mixed Chorus (1864): All the old favories make another appearance.
Opus 33: Romanzen (Magalone-Lieder) - Romances (Magelone Songs) for Voice and Piano (1865/1869): This is said to be Brahms closest approximation to a song-cycle: various poems taken from a volume by Tieck that interrupt(?) a German medieval story about a man in love, captured by Moors, etc. There is some exceelent imagery and some quite nice songs - I'm thinking especally of the wave imagery and some of the later songs. Brahms has used the free ballad-style form in which he is able to switch imagery depending on the mood of the song. We also get a sene o the Schubertian plan of having the accompaniment fulfill the mood of the song. All in all, I don't think the work succeeds as a cycle - dramatically its rather weak. I also find that some of the songs are over-accompanied. #12, however is quite gorgeous.
Opus 37: Drei Geistliche Chöre - Three Spiritual Choruses for Women's Chorus a cappella (1865): Three quite lovely choruses for women's choir. The first, exquisite: O Bone Jesu, the second a glorious canonic Adoramus ending with a homophonic declaration on Domine, miserere nobis - similar in effect to Josquin's famous Ave Maria. The third, not my favorite, a Rgina Coeli with two solo voices and a choir interupting with Alleluia. Beller-Mckenna makes a very interesting point in his discussion about Brahms' use of historicist procedures, in thius case the canon. Brahms' desire to learn these was in now way Romantic - that is because of the trappings of sirituality that these would symbolize, instead his use of the techniques is purely to gain skill in craft, the early music works that he studied, it is said these were composed while Brahms was studying Palestrina, appear not as spiritual gems, but rather as homes of technique. In this method of study - the non-Romanticizing, Brahms becomes truly a modernist. I can agree with this completely - these works are truly honest, truly Brahmsian, though they use early-music contrapuntal devices.
Opus 28: Four Duets for Alto and Baritone with Piano (1863): Some of these were really quite nice. Particularly the first and the third. In the first it is an inexorable harmonic progression and drama that make the dull ballad form become exciting. In the third, I'm particularly pleased with the shifts between 4/4 and 6/4 that he pulls off so nicely: you can hear the stratching of the phrase. Quite beautiful.
Opus 27: The Thirteenth Psalm (1864): Relatively minor work for women's choir. The organ part flies by which makes me not feel the gravity of the psalm.
Opus 30: Geistliches Lied - Spiritual Song for Four-voice Chorus with Organ or Piano (1864): It seems to me that Brahms is trying to make too much out of these essentially liturgical motets. In short, the first begins with a chorale and then uses each phrase of the chorale as a fugue subject. It becomes a little pedantic. The second, a setting of "Create in me a clean heart" has several imitative passages after a homophonic opening. The first, is too eighth-notey and the tension isn't worked well in that there is little or no rhythmic differentiation between the layers. I feel like Brahms had just received a volume of the Bach edition and wanted to try some fugal stuff, or else was trying to train his choir to do bigger and better things.
Opus 31: Three Quartets for Soprano, Alto, Tenor, Bass and Piano (1864): In these pieces we can clearly see the dictum that Brahms' music is best understood through dance. All three are stylized dances (similar in some respects to the other vocal quartets- the Liebeslieder) The first particularly lovely with the interlocking of two minuets, graceful, stylized. Deserves to be more often heard.
WOO: Fugue in A Flat minor (1864): The fugue is clearly Brahms trying to out-Bach Bach. Who would think to write a fugue in Ab minor, such a nasty key, he modulates to B minor at some point, likely its enharmonic for the even nastier Cb minor third relation. The theme is a few sighing things. Eventually it becomes a chorale at the end. If I'm not mistaken it is the classic Christ lag in Todesbanded.
WOO: 14 German Folksongs for mixed Chorus (1864): All the old favories make another appearance.
Opus 33: Romanzen (Magalone-Lieder) - Romances (Magelone Songs) for Voice and Piano (1865/1869): This is said to be Brahms closest approximation to a song-cycle: various poems taken from a volume by Tieck that interrupt(?) a German medieval story about a man in love, captured by Moors, etc. There is some exceelent imagery and some quite nice songs - I'm thinking especally of the wave imagery and some of the later songs. Brahms has used the free ballad-style form in which he is able to switch imagery depending on the mood of the song. We also get a sene o the Schubertian plan of having the accompaniment fulfill the mood of the song. All in all, I don't think the work succeeds as a cycle - dramatically its rather weak. I also find that some of the songs are over-accompanied. #12, however is quite gorgeous.
Opus 37: Drei Geistliche Chöre - Three Spiritual Choruses for Women's Chorus a cappella (1865): Three quite lovely choruses for women's choir. The first, exquisite: O Bone Jesu, the second a glorious canonic Adoramus ending with a homophonic declaration on Domine, miserere nobis - similar in effect to Josquin's famous Ave Maria. The third, not my favorite, a Rgina Coeli with two solo voices and a choir interupting with Alleluia. Beller-Mckenna makes a very interesting point in his discussion about Brahms' use of historicist procedures, in thius case the canon. Brahms' desire to learn these was in now way Romantic - that is because of the trappings of sirituality that these would symbolize, instead his use of the techniques is purely to gain skill in craft, the early music works that he studied, it is said these were composed while Brahms was studying Palestrina, appear not as spiritual gems, but rather as homes of technique. In this method of study - the non-Romanticizing, Brahms becomes truly a modernist. I can agree with this completely - these works are truly honest, truly Brahmsian, though they use early-music contrapuntal devices.
posted by Todd Tarantino at
12:36 PM
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