11.brahms bruckner dvorak

8/20/2019 11.Brahms Bruckner Dvorak

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text pp. 731-63


2/27

THE SYMPHONIC DRY DECADES 1840-1870

• Wagner (in The Artwork of the Future): Beethoven’s NinthSymphony made all purely instrumental music obsolete.

• Not a single symphony composed in the 1850s&60s hassurvived in the repertoire. [Anton Rubenstein; Joachim Raff;Niels Gade; etc.]

• Emil Naumann (1827-88): Illustrated History of Music (1880):“Reflecting on the great achievements of the past, we observe

tonal art an organic whole. It is complete and finished.”


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—MUSEUM CULTURE• In the middle 19th century, the concert hall began to rival the opera house as a potential source of

profit:

• Leipzig Gewandhaus (draper’s hall), 1781; rebuilt 1882-84.

• Vienna Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde (Society of Friends of Music), 1831.

• The Gesellschaft had been star ted in 1812 as an amateur orchestra, endowed the first Vienneseconservatory in 1817.

• Goldener Saal (large hall) for the Künstlerverein (Artist’s club, now the Vienna Philharmonic), 2000 seats, 1870.

• Gewerbehaussall (Chamber of Commerce Hall), Dresden, 1871.

• Société des Concerts du Conservatoire, Paris, 1828.

• Cirque Napoléon, Paris (5000 seats), 1861.

• St. Jame’s Hall, London (2100 seats), 1858

• Royal Albert Hall, London (6500 seats), 1871—home of the Promenade (Proms)

• Carnegie Hall, NY (2800 seats), 1891.

• Symphony Hall, Boston (2650 seats), 1881.

• Assembly Hall of the Nobility, St. Petersburg (1300 seats), 1830s


4/27

—MUSEUM CULTURE• In 1800, 80% of all music performed in Vienna, Leipzig, Paris and London was the

work of living composers.

• After 1850—and especially by 1870—the ratio of living to dead authorsperformed was almost exactly reversed. The concert hall had become a museum.The symphonic repertoire purveyed in the latter half of the 19th century hadbeen frozen at the century’s midpoint.

• Why? Commercial profit: Selling music to a mass public meant guaranteeing itsquality by invoking the “test of time.” To attend a concert was “to documentone’s membership in a coterie” (Peter Gay).

• The esthetic of Romanticism—of perpetual progress and renewal of artistic

means—collided with the realities of musical life as actually lived. “Classicalmusic”—as defined today—is music in the “permanent collection,” first definedaround 1850.

• The ultimate paradox: Modernity in music has come to be chiefly defined by arelationship to the past, rather than a relationship to the future.


5/27

NEW PATHS: JOHANNES BRAHMS• 1833-97 [compare to Wagner: 1813-1883]

• Born in Hamburg; raised/adopted to/by Vienna.

• Schumann’s last article in Neue Zeitschrift , now edited by Brendel: “NeueBahnen” (New Paths), 1853. Schumann saw himself as an embattled classicist

in opposition to the emerging New German School.

• Schumann’s article: see text, pp. 735-6

• Joseph Joachim—violinist, former concertmaster of Weimar, who haddefected from Liszt (see his letter/manifesto of “antihistoricism” to Liszt,

text, pp. 654-55)

• Schumann was confined to a sanatorium for the mentally ill in 1854, anddied in 1856. Brahms took his place as the head of the Schumannhousehold.


6/27

TOWARD THE FIRST SYMPHONY

• Feb, 1854: Schumann’s suicide attempt into the Rhine.

• July, 1854: Brahms completes sketches of three movements ofa symphony in D minor for piano duet, and orchestrated the

first movement—became the D minor piano concerto, op. 15

• Opens with a visualization of Schumann’s leap

•

Allusions: Schumann’s Symphony No. 4 (D-minor ; actuallyhis second, but published posthumously as #4); Beethoven’s

9th (the D-minor symphony)


7/27

BRAHMS’ ALLUSIONS

• The D-minor concerto is as laden withsymbolism as Beethoven’s Ninth, but unlike the Beethoven—and the New GermanSchool composers—it contains no built-in

decoder key, no public aids to interpretation,and therefore no certifiable message.

• F. Schiller (1794): “the real and expresscontent that the poet puts in his work

remains always finite; the possible content that he allows us to contribute is an infinitequality.”


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THE SERENADES

• 1857-59: Brahms worked 4 months per year as Kapellmeister to the minor princely court of Detmold—he was one of thelast composers to enjoy the security of aristocratic patronage.

• He composed for a 45-piece orchestra in Detmold;

• Serenade in D Major, op. 11 (1858)—modeled on Haydn(London Symphony_IV in particular)

• Serenade in A, op (1859)—dedicated to Clara Schumann


9/27

Letter from Clara Schumann, July 1862

“Johannes sent me recently—think what a surprise—a symphonic firstmovement with the following bold opening. That is rather audacious, perhaps,but I have quickly become used to it. The movement is full of wonderful

beauties, with a mastery in the treatment of motifs which is indeed becomingmore and more characteristic of him. Everything is so interestingly woven, yetas spirited as a first outburst. One enjoys it so completely to the full, withoutbeing reminded of the craft.” (Litzmann, Clara Schumann, III, 123)

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10/27

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11/27

Why the delay?“I congratulate you regarding [Max] Bruch’s symphony [No. 2]; hopefully I

will be properly envious of it when I see it. As usual, I am alwayssurprised less that I am so lazy than that others can be soindustrious.” (Letter to Fritz Simrock, March 1870, Briefwerkel , IX, 95) “I will never compose a symphony! You have no idea how it feels to oneof us when he continually hears behind him such a giant.” (Quoted as spoken

to Hermann Levi, October, 1871, Kalbeck, Brahms, I, 165)

1863: composed Rinaldo —oratorio after Goethe—to become the

director of the Vienna Singakademie, one of the two Vienna choral

societies. —directorship lasted one year—

1868: German Requiem

1871: Triumphlied (song of triumph—his most popular work)

1874: returns to work on first symphony

1876: Ring des Nibelungen premieres at Bayreuth;

Symphony No. 1 is performed in Karlhruse


12/27

My Symphony is longand not exactly

charming.

The Symphony is longand difficult.

My Symphony is longand in C-minor.

What Brahms had to say

about his first symphonybefore the premiere:


13/27

“One ought never to forget that by actually perfecting one

piece one gains and learns more than by commencing or half-finishing a dozen. Let it rest, let it rest, and keep going back toit and working at it over and over again, until it is completed asa finished work of art, until there is not a note too much or

too little, not a measure you could improve upon. Whether itis beautiful also, is an entirely different matter, but perfect it

must be. You see, I am rather lazy, but I never cool down overa work, once begun, until it is perfected, unassailable.” (letter to

George Henschel, 1876,Henshel , Personal Recollections of Johannes

Brahms, [Boston, 1907], 39)


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First performance in

Karlsruhe, Nov.

4, 1876.


15/27

Critical ResponsesIn Brahms’s First Symphony there appears to be a large quantity

of mere surplusage, a strenuous iteration and reiteration, after themanner of one who is unable to utter his thought once and for all,or even to clear it up to his own satisfaction—an uneasy shiftingof form, key and rhythm, and one of two bare spots of bald pathos.Boston Evening Transcript , Jan. 4, 1878

I played over the music of that scoundrel, Brahms. What a giftless bastard! It annoys me that this self-inflated mediocrity is hailed asa genius. Why, in comparison with him, Raff is a giant, not tospeak of Rubenstein, who is after all a live and important human being, while Brahms is chaotic and absolutely empty dried upstuff. Tchaikovsky’s Diary, entry under October 9, 1886.


16/27

The First Symphony of Brahms seemed to us as hard and uninspired as upon its former

hearing. It is mathematical music evolved with difficulty from an unimaginative

brain....How it ever came to be honored with the title of The Tenth Symphony is amystery to us....This noisy, ungraceful, confusing and unattractive example of dry

pedantry before the masterpieces of Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Gade or even of

the reckless and over-fluent Raff! Absurd!.....It is possible that as we grow more familiar

with this symphony it may become clearer to us, but we might pore over a difficult

problem in mathematics until the same result was reached without arriving at the

concluding that it is a poetic inspiration.Boston Gazette, January 24, 1878

Brahms takes an essentially commonplace theme; gives it a strange air by dressing it in

the most elaborate and far-fetched harmonies; keeps his countenance severely; and finds

that a good many wise-acres are ready to guarantee him as deep as Wagner, and the true

heir of Beethoven...Strip off the euphuism from these symphonies and you will find astring of incomplete dance and ballad tunes following one another with no more organic

coherence than the succession of passing images reflected in a shop window in Piccadilly

during any twenty minutes of the day.

George Bernard Shaw, The World , London, June 18, 1890


17/27

StructureInstrumentation: 2 2 2 3*—4 2 3 0 timp. str

I. Un poco sostenuto—Allegroc

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18/27

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19/27

II. Post cards…

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Beethoven Symphony No. 6/2Brahms Symphony No. 1/2


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IV. Adagio-Allegro non troppo ma con brio

Modified “Three-part” Sonata Form: Introduction (mm. 1-61)

Exposition (mm. 62-183)

Recapitulation of main theme (185-204.)

Development (mm. 204-301)

Recapitulation of Second and Closing groups (302)

Plus, Alphorn @ m. 285 + trombone chorale @ m. 407-16

What is missing?

Re-statement of main theme in the recapitulation—is Brahmscircumventing the sonata principle?


21/27

Birthday card greeting to Clara Schumann, September1868. Sent from Switzerland “Also blus das Alphornhert” with the inscription, “Thus blew the alphorn today:

High in the mountains, deep in the valley, I greet you a thousand times over!”

Also, Schubert #9 in C….Schumann #2 in C

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Alphorn Theme


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Beethoven 9th, Rounded binary

Brahms 1st, asymmetrical,


24/27

BRAHMS’S CRITIQUE OF

“WAGNER’S BEETHOVEN”• Brahms’s hymn quotes both Beethoven and Bach, Cantata no. 106 (see text,pg. 746)

• The unique form of the fourth movement, with the vocal theme’s

recapitulation “liquidated” and replaced by the trombone’s hymn theme,reflects Brahms’s intent of placing Beethoven in the context of a largerGerman tradition—along with Luther.

• Brahms’s “liberalism”: RT: Tradition is the sole enabler of innovation that ismeaningful rather than destructive, because it is modified by social agreement

(in this case, recognition of a convention, permitting its intelligent transformation).

• Hans von Bülow called it “Beethoven’s 10th.” Wagner was….enraged ( text, pg.749)


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ANTON BRUCKNER (1824-96)• Organist, choir director at St. Florian’s monastary—near Linz—

• Moved to Vienna in 1848—taught at the Conservatory & Universityof Vienna; organist at the Imperial Court Chapel

• Composed 8 symphonies (incomplete 9th); 3 masses. DedicatedSymphony No. 3 (1873) to Wagner.

• Generally, copied the form of Beethoven’s 9th in all his symphonies

(see text, pg. 751).

• for more information: http://www.52composers.com/bruckner.html

• Ex: Bruckner 7_IV (climax)

http://www.52composers.com/bruckner.html


26/27

ANTONIN DVORAK (1841-1904)• Prolific, leading Czech composer after Smetana; violist, organist.

• Brahms prodigy: won an Austrian award in which Brahms served as a judge;Brahms helped him find a publisher (his own, Simrock) for Dvorak’s SlavonicDances.

• Chamber music: 14 string quartets, 5 piano trios, etc ( text pg. 754)

• Symphonies: 9 symphonies, cello & violin concerti, program music (pg. 754)

• 1892-95: Lived in the NY, director of the National Conservatory of Music.Composed Symphony No. 9 (“From the New World”), premiered at CarnegieHall, 1893: “the influence of American can be felt by anyone who has a

‘nose’” (pg. 756).

• Worked with Harry Burleigh (1866-1949) in learning and arranging AfricanAmerican spirituals—he recalled singing dozens of spirituals for Dvorak during

the “New World: symphony’s composition process.


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DVORAK 9_II

• Modeled more on Schubert than Brahms (sectional, episodic)

• Begins with a Lisztian chorale based on chromatic thirds…followed by the famous Englishhorn theme (“exotic”): 12 mm., ABA’. [Entire mmt = ABA’]

• Climax, 5mm before R5: bVI (Schubert, again), quoting the first movement’s main themein the trombones, the first movement’s secondary theme in the horns, violins, woodwinds.

• Motivic comparison with Wagner—extroversive and introversive significance of motives…evokes symphonic poem.

• Dvorak on the 2nd mmt: a sketch for an opera on Longfellow’s Hiawatha ( text, pg. 756)… written in trochaic meter “BY the SHORES of GItchee GUmee…” which Dvorakrelated to (similarly, the Czech language emphasizes the first syllable)….but for English =nonspecific mythical exoticism and pseudoantiquity.

• The Scherzo (III) “was suggested by the scene at the feast in Hiawatha where the Indiansdance” (Dvorak)—possibly representing the Dance of Pau-Puk Keewis from Hiawatha.

• What are “plantation songs” doing in a work that sought America’s mythic past in Indian lore?

11.brahms bruckner dvorak

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