The German Symphony between Beethoven and Brahms

The German Symphony between Beethoven and Brahms PDF Author: Christopher Fifield
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317030400
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 331

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Book Description
It was Carl Dahlhaus who coined the phrase ’dead time’ to describe the state of the symphony between Schumann and Brahms. Christopher Fifield argues that many of the symphonies dismissed by Dahlhaus made worthy contributions to the genre. He traces the root of the problem further back to Beethoven’s ninth symphony, a work which then proceeded to intimidate symphonists who followed in its composer's footsteps, including Schubert, Mendelssohn and Schumann. In 1824 Beethoven set a standard that then had to rise in response to more demanding expectations from both audiences and the musical press. Christopher Fifield, who has a conductor’s intimacy with the repertory, looks in turn at the five decades between the mid-1820s and mid-1870s. He deals only with non-programmatic works, leaving the programme symphony to travel its own route to the symphonic poem. Composers who lead to Brahms (himself a reluctant symphonist until the age of 43 in 1876) are frequently dismissed as epigones of Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Schumann but by investigating their symphonies, Fifield reveals their respective brands of originality, even their own possible influence upon Brahms himself and in so doing, shines a light into a half-century of neglected nineteenth century German symphonic music.

The German Symphony between Beethoven and Brahms

The German Symphony between Beethoven and Brahms PDF Author: Christopher Fifield
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317030400
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 331

Get Book Here

Book Description
It was Carl Dahlhaus who coined the phrase ’dead time’ to describe the state of the symphony between Schumann and Brahms. Christopher Fifield argues that many of the symphonies dismissed by Dahlhaus made worthy contributions to the genre. He traces the root of the problem further back to Beethoven’s ninth symphony, a work which then proceeded to intimidate symphonists who followed in its composer's footsteps, including Schubert, Mendelssohn and Schumann. In 1824 Beethoven set a standard that then had to rise in response to more demanding expectations from both audiences and the musical press. Christopher Fifield, who has a conductor’s intimacy with the repertory, looks in turn at the five decades between the mid-1820s and mid-1870s. He deals only with non-programmatic works, leaving the programme symphony to travel its own route to the symphonic poem. Composers who lead to Brahms (himself a reluctant symphonist until the age of 43 in 1876) are frequently dismissed as epigones of Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Schumann but by investigating their symphonies, Fifield reveals their respective brands of originality, even their own possible influence upon Brahms himself and in so doing, shines a light into a half-century of neglected nineteenth century German symphonic music.

The German Symphony between Beethoven and Brahms

The German Symphony between Beethoven and Brahms PDF Author: Christopher Fifield
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317030397
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 366

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Book Description
It was Carl Dahlhaus who coined the phrase ’dead time’ to describe the state of the symphony between Schumann and Brahms. Christopher Fifield argues that many of the symphonies dismissed by Dahlhaus made worthy contributions to the genre. He traces the root of the problem further back to Beethoven’s ninth symphony, a work which then proceeded to intimidate symphonists who followed in its composer's footsteps, including Schubert, Mendelssohn and Schumann. In 1824 Beethoven set a standard that then had to rise in response to more demanding expectations from both audiences and the musical press. Christopher Fifield, who has a conductor’s intimacy with the repertory, looks in turn at the five decades between the mid-1820s and mid-1870s. He deals only with non-programmatic works, leaving the programme symphony to travel its own route to the symphonic poem. Composers who lead to Brahms (himself a reluctant symphonist until the age of 43 in 1876) are frequently dismissed as epigones of Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Schumann but by investigating their symphonies, Fifield reveals their respective brands of originality, even their own possible influence upon Brahms himself and in so doing, shines a light into a half-century of neglected nineteenth century German symphonic music.

The Cambridge Companion to the Symphony

The Cambridge Companion to the Symphony PDF Author: Julian Horton
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521884985
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 469

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Book Description
A comprehensive guide to the historical, analytical and interpretative issues surrounding one of the major genres of Western music.

Johannes Brahms

Johannes Brahms PDF Author: Johannes Brahms
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780199247738
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 916

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Book Description
This book is the first comprehensive collection of the letters of Johannes Brahms ever to appear in English. Over 550 are included, virtually all uncut, and there are over a dozen published here for the first time in any language. Although he corresponded throughout his life with some of the great performers, composers, musicologists, writers, scientists, and artists of the day, and although thousands of his letters have survived, English readers have until now had scant opportunity to meet Brahms in person, through his words, and in his own voice. The letters in this volume range from 1848 to just before his death. They include most of Brahm's letters to Robert Schumann, over a hundred letters to Clara Schumann, and the complete Brahms-Wagner correspondence. They are joined by a running commentary to form an absorbing narrative, documented with scholarly care, provided with comprehensive notes, but written for the general music lover--the result is a lively biography. The work is generously illustrated, and contains several detailed appendices and an index.

Brahms's Elegies

Brahms's Elegies PDF Author: Nicole Grimes
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108474497
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 295

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Book Description
A unique insight into the relationship between Brahms's music and his philosophical and literary context from a modernist perspective.

Singing Like Germans

Singing Like Germans PDF Author: Kira Thurman
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 150175985X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 434

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Book Description
In Singing Like Germans, Kira Thurman tells the sweeping story of Black musicians in German-speaking Europe over more than a century. Thurman brings to life the incredible musical interactions and transnational collaborations among people of African descent and white Germans and Austrians. Through this compelling history, she explores how people reinforced or challenged racial identities in the concert hall. Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, audiences assumed the categories of Blackness and Germanness were mutually exclusive. Yet on attending a performance of German music by a Black musician, many listeners were surprised to discover that German identity is not a biological marker but something that could be learned, performed, and mastered. While Germans and Austrians located their national identity in music, championing composers such as Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms as national heroes, the performance of their works by Black musicians complicated the public's understanding of who had the right to play them. Audiences wavered between seeing these musicians as the rightful heirs of Austro-German musical culture and dangerous outsiders to it. Thurman explores the tension between the supposedly transcendental powers of classical music and the global conversations that developed about who could perform it. An interdisciplinary and transatlantic history, Singing Like Germans suggests that listening to music is not a passive experience, but an active process where racial and gendered categories are constantly made and unmade.

Nineteenth-Century Music

Nineteenth-Century Music PDF Author: Carl Dahlhaus
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520076440
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 432

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Book Description
This magnificent survey of the most popular period in music history is an extended essay embracing music, aesthetics, social history, and politics, by one of the keenest minds writing on music in the world today. Dahlhaus organizes his book around "watershed" years--for example, 1830, the year of the July Revolution in France, and around which coalesce the "demise of the age of art" proclaimed by Heine, the musical consequences of the deaths of Beethoven and Schubert, the simultaneous and dramatic appearance of Chopin and Liszt, Berlioz and Meyerbeer, and Schumann and Mendelssohn. But he keeps us constantly on guard against generalization and clich . Cherished concepts like Romanticism, tradition, nationalism vs. universality, the musical culture of the bourgeoisie, are put to pointed reevaluation. Always demonstrating the interest in socio-historical influences that is the hallmark of his work, Dahlhaus reminds us of the contradictions, interrelationships, psychological nuances, and riches of musical character and musical life. Nineteenth-Century Music contains 90 illustrations, the collected captions of which come close to providing a summary of the work and the author's methods. Technical language is kept to a minimum, but while remaining accessible, Dahlhaus challenges, braces, and excites. This is a landmark study that no one seriously interested in music and nineteenth-century European culture will be able to ignore.

Brahms' Symphonies

Brahms' Symphonies PDF Author: David Hurwitz
Publisher: Continuum
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 168

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Book Description
"Brahms was a famously complex character: an irascible curmudgeon, and a famously learned composer who took tremendous pride in composing tuneful, expressive melodies of great popular appeal. This accounts at least in part for the enduring esteem that his symphonies enjoy among musicians, scholars, and the listening public alike. This duality between the learned and the popular sides of Brahms' musical personality has made his music as difficult to analyze and discuss as was his singularly complex and mysterious personal life. This book attempts to aid the general listener in bridging the gap between these two seemingly irreconcilable aspects of Brahms' character, aspects that are particularly in evidence, and balanced with particular poise, in his four symphonies. First, author David Hurwitz examines Brahms' place in the German symphonic tradition, his obsessive preoccupation with his place in the grand line of classical composers stretching back to Bach, and proceeding through Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schumann. Despite his ongoing struggle to master orchestral writing, Hurwitz argues that Brahms did achieve a unique symphonic style, one found nowhere else in his (or anyone else's) works in symphonic form. Finally, each symphony is described from two perspectives: in the most helpful musical context, and then also in movement by movement descriptions of Brahms' expressive argument. Finally, a list of recommended recordings concludes a discussion that shows today's music lovers that the riches contained in these perennially attractive works do not hide beneath the surface, but in fact lie liberally scattered in plain view, just waiting to be savored." --Back cover.

The Cambridge Companion to Brahms

The Cambridge Companion to Brahms PDF Author: Michael Musgrave
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139825305
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
This Companion gives a comprehensive view of the German composer Johannes Brahms (1833–97). Twelve specially-commissioned chapters by leading scholars and musicians provide systematic coverage of the composer's life and works. Their essays represent recent research and reflect changing attitudes towards a composer whose public image has long been out-of-date. The first part of the book contains three chapters on Brahms's early life in Hamburg and on the middle and later years in Vienna. The central section considers the musical works in all genres, while the last part of the book offers personal accounts and responses from a conductor (Roger Norrington), a composer (Hugh Wood), and an editor of Brahms's original manuscripts (Robert Pascall). The volume as a whole is an important addition to Brahms scholarship and provides indispensable information for all students and enthusiasts of Brahms's music.

Brahms and the German Spirit

Brahms and the German Spirit PDF Author: Daniel Beller-McKenna
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674013186
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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Book Description
Beller-McKenna counters music historians's reluctance to address Brahms's Germanness, wary perhaps of fascist implications. He gives an account of the intertwining of nationalism, politics, and religion that underlies major works, and enriches both our understanding of his art and German culture.