Home Music Lane

It's all about the music, dude! Sit down, relax and listen to some tunes.

[ Follow Ups ] [ Post Followup ] Thread: [ Display  All  Email ] [ Music Lane ]
[ Alert Moderator ] [ Edit ] [ Delete ]

RE: What makes you think he was fighting it?

174.131.171.91

Bombastic? I don’t totally agree with this, but I feel there is something worth considering here for those who might berate themselves for not enjoying Brahms. I do not agree with everything he says, BTW. Also, I still enjoy the Piano Concerto #2. One more thing that might be of interest, there was not one mention of Bruckner in this 450 page book.

From B. H. Haggins book “The New Listerner’s Companion and Record Guide:

“…For many years Brahms’ music was for me, every note of it, the greatest of all. Until one day, as I was playing through the slow movement of the Cello Sonata Op.99 at the piano, I suddenly was aware of hearing not real creative activity but the pretense, the pose of such activity—the pretense of feeling in synthetically contrived themes that were being manipulated by formula to fill out the pattern of the movement. And having heard it here I began to hear it in other works.
……………………………………………………………………………
Tchaikovsky’s comments on Brahms have been quoted as an illustration of one composer’s inability to understand and justly appraise the work of another; but actually composers have sometimes written about other composers with the special insight of the practitioner of an art; and when Tchaikovsky criticizes in Brahms’ music the conscious aspiration to something for which there was no poetic impulse, the striving for something that must be unstriven for, the conscious attempt at Beethoven’s profundity and power that results in caricature of Beethoven, and the operation, for these purposes, of the technical mastery that produces “so many preparations and circumlocutions for something which ought to come and charm us at once”—when Tchaikovsky speaks of all this he is describing what is plain to hear in the works that Brahms wrote, as he himself expressed it, with the consciousness of the tramp of Beethoven behind him.

The superb song ‘Botschaft’ exhibits the genuine emotional impulse and musical gift of a lyricist, a creator of small forms; the Variations on a Theme of Haydn is one of the fine works the small-scale artist produces when he employs his technical skill to say the one small thing a number of different ways, and creates a large form by writing a continuous series of small ones. On the other hand, the opening movement of Brahms’ first published work, the Piano Sonata Op. 1, exhibits the labored and bombastic proclamations, the stretches of arid manipulation, that are the results of the small-scale artist’s attempt to write greater than he feels and to produce with technique what doesn’t issue from emotional impulse. Similar striving for portentous utterance and similar arid manipulation are exhibited by the opening movement of the Piano Concerto No. 1, which grew out of Brahms’ first attempt at a symphony after hearing Beethoven’s Ninth; by the opening movement of the Symphony No.1 that he did produce after twenty years’ labor with the tramp of Beethoven behind him; by the other concertos, the equally pretentious chamber music and choral works. Nor are the cloying saccharine sweetness of many of the slow movements, the archness of many of the scherzo movements, easier to endure.”

This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:
  Kimber Kable  

Follow Ups Full Thread
Follow Ups
FAQ

Post a Message!

 Forgot Password?
Moniker (Username):
Password (Optional):
  Remember my Moniker & Password  (What's this?)    Eat Me
E-Mail (Optional):
Subject:
Message:   (Posts are subject to Content Rules)
Optional Link URL:
Optional Link Title:
Optional Image URL:
Upload Image:
E-mail Replies:  Automagically notify you when someone responds.

[ Top Top of Page ] [ Contact Us ] [ Support/Wish List ] [ Copyright © 2024, Audio Asylum, all rights reserved ]
[ General ] [ Speakers ] [ Tubes ] [ Vinyl ] [ Digital ] [ Hi-Rez ] [ Video Asylum ] [ Cables ] [ Tweaks/DIY ] [ Music ] [ Films ]