As one of the most significant and widely performed composers of the nineteenth century, Brahms continues to command our attention. Rethinking Brahms counterbalances prevailing scholarly assumptions that position him as a conservative composer (whether musically or politically) with a wide-ranging exploration and re-evaluation of his significance today. Drawing on German- and English-language scholarship, it deploys original approaches to his music and pursues innovative methodologies to interrogate the historical, cultural, and artistic contexts of his creativity. Empowered by recent theoretical work on form and tonality, it offers fresh analytical insights into his music, including a number of corpus studies that interrogate the relationships between Brahms and other composers, past and present. The book brings into sharp focus the productive tension that exists between the perceived fixedness of musical texts and the ephemerality of performance by considering how historical and modern performers shape established understandings of Brahms and his music. Rethinking Brahms invites the reader to hear familiar pieces anew as they are refracted through historical, artistic, and philosophical prisms. Bringing us up to the present day, it also gives sustained attention to the resounding impact of Brahms's compositions on new music by exploring works by recent composers who have engaged deeply with his oeuvre. Combining awareness of overarching contexts with perceptive insights into Brahms's music, this book enlivens our understanding of Brahms, providing a dynamic, multifaceted, complex, and invigoratingly fresh portrait of the composer.
Contributor Biographies Introduction Nicole Grimes and Reuben Phillips Part 1: Intellectual Contexts 1. Brahms in the Schumann Library Reuben Phillips 2. Johannes Brahms, Connoisseur of Graphic Arts Styra Avins 3. Settling for Second Best: Brahms's Männerchor-Lieder in Historical Context David Brodbeck 4. Hearing and Seeing Brahms's Harps Jane Hines Part 2: Rehearing Brahms 5. Brahms and the Unreliable Narrative Janet Schmalfeldt 6. The Transmission and Reception of Courtly Love Poetry in Late Folksong Settings by Johannes Brahms, Friedrich Wilhelm Arnold, and Wilhelm Tappert Loretta Terrigno 7. Rehearing Brahms's Late Intermezzi: The Eternal Recurrence of Reflection Tekla Babyak 8. Joachim and Brahms in the Spring and Summer of 1853: Formative Influences and Performative Identities Reconsidered Katharina Uhde 9. Doesn't Play Well With Others: Performance and Embodiment in Brahms's Chamber Music with Piano Anna Scott Part 3: Analytical Perspectives 10. First-Theme Syntax in Brahms's Sonata Forms Julian Horton 11. Formal Elision in the Chamber Music of Mendelssohn and Brahms: A Case-Study in Romantic Formenlehre Benedict Taylor 12. Compositional Range versus Compositional Ideal Type: Some Reflections on Brahms and Dvo?ák Peter H. Smith 13. Intentional Transgressions: Transformation and Prolongation in Selected Works by Brahms Frank Samarotto Part 4: Monuments and Memorialization 14. Images, Monuments, Constructs: Johannes Brahms in the Culture of Remembrance Wolfgang Sandberger 15. Templates for Grief: Brahms's Requiem after the Dresden Firebombing Martha Sprigge 16. 'Aimez-vous Brahms?' The History of a Question Daniel Beller-McKenna Part 6: Afterlives of Brahms 17. Brahms's Serious Songs in the Orchestral Imagination: Two Episodes in the Arrangement History of Op. 121 Frankie Perry 18. Hearing Rihm Hearing Brahms: Symphonie 'Nähe fern' and the Future of Nostalgia Nicole Grimes 19. Spectres and 'Derangements': Michael Finnissy's Summonings of Brahms the Progressive Edward Venn Bibliography Index
Nicole Grimes is Associate Professor of Music at the University of California, Irvine. Her books include Brahms's Elegies: The Poetics of Loss in Nineteenth-Century German Culture, Rethinking Hanslick: Music, Formalism, and Expression (co-edited with Siobhán Donovan and Wolfgang Marx), and Mendelssohn Perspectives (co-edited with Angela Mace), and numerous articles and chapters on the music of Brahms, Clara Schumann, Robert Schumann, Schoenberg, Liszt, Wolfgang Rihm, and Donnacha Dennehy. Her research has been funded by a Marie Curie International Fellowship from the European Commission, the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst, and the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences. She is currently at work on a large-scale analytical project on the music of Emilie Mayer (1812-1883). Reuben Phillips is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the Faculty of Music in Oxford. He was a doctoral student at Princeton University and was awarded the Karl Geiringer Scholarship of the American Brahms Society for his PhD dissertation that explored Brahms's engagement with German Romantic literature. He has been the recipient of research grants from the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst, the Staatliches Institut für Musikforschung in Berlin, Edinburgh University's Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, and of an Edison Fellowship from the British Library. In addition to his work on Brahms, he has written articles on the British music scholar Donald Francis Tovey and the exhumation and reburial of composers in late nineteenth-century Vienna.
Reviews for Rethinking Brahms
This volume includes original approaches to Brahms's music and pursues innovative methodologies to interrogate the historical, cultural, political and artistic contexts of his creativity. Rethinking Brahms is well worth the read. * Andrew Lorenz, Stringendo * This wide-ranging collection provides fresh perspectives on Brahms's treatment as a legendary figure in his own lifetime, and on his influence upon twentieth and twenty-first-century creative thought. A thought-provoking read, bringing together multiple perspectives and opinions across performance, composition, analysis and historical contexts which - refreshingly - don't always agree with each other. -Katy Hamilton, editor of Brahms in the Home and the Concert Hall and Brahms in Context Rethinking Brahms will have broad appeal to music scholars, performers, and cultural and social historians. Curated by two leading experts, this volume demonstrates how relevant, even essential, the composer, his works, and his world remain well into the twenty-first century. -Walter Frisch, Columbia University Rethinking Brahms offers readers a treasure trove of engaging essays that invite us to consider Brahms and his world anew. Drawing upon art and literary history, music analysis, performance and sound studies, and more, this collection provides a timely reconsideration of nineteenth-century musical style and practices while situating Brahms and his works within an increasingly nuanced and multifaceted cultural context. Each well illustrated chapter contains new insights while also providing a welcome overview of sources and previous scholarship that will prove useful to scholars, students, performers, and listeners interested in a fuller understanding of Brahms and his music. -Marie Sumner Lott, Associate Professor of Music History, Georgia State University
