Brahms ... inexplicable innit

[Richard Barrett]

Okay - this is a personal response; but it would be interesting to know why you are "turned off" by such Music

In terms of logic and, er, "argument", I don't have a leg to stand on of course. It's just that I have an almost overwhelmingly negative reaction to the sound, the structures and (what I perceive as) the expressive identity of Brahms's music and I'm looking without much success to rationalise it, because for me just saying I like or dislike something is never enough, I have to try and incorporate such reactions into a more all-embracing view of things (harking back to Stockhausen saying something like if there's music you don't like it corresponds to something in yourself that you don't like - though I wonder what Stockhausen might have said about Rutter or Einaudi in this connection!). I don't think I would make a binary opposition between "rationality" and "irrationality". I perceive Brahms's music as occupying a limited range of the spectrum between the two and not really caring to extend or even explore the limits of that range - as you say, it's "presented in such rational, certain, knowing, balanced overall structures", unlike in some other 19th century composers I wouldn't have this problem with - Beethoven, Schubert, Wagner, perhaps Schumann, for example. I suppose I'm interested in a music which to put it in vague and inadequate terms is trying to "go outside itself".

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

attended a recital of German Lieder yesterday evening and we were completely swept away by this song ..

[Serial_Apologist]

attended a recital of German Lieder yesterday evening and we were completely swept away by this song ..

For me the expressive qualities of something like that song were more interestingly investigated by successors like Wolf, Mahler, Schoenberg, Berg, Webern and, dare I say, Strauss, who heard possibilities in it that says something about their genius. I go for the Brahms of unexpected harmonic lead-ins and sometimes lead-outs, of developments and variations that proceed from the go, rather than being separate from their expository material, and of the cleverly disguised interwoven canons of some of the late piano works, and maybe elsewhere if I knew more about him - all of which follow up on late Beethoven quartets and foreshow Schoenberg and serialism. I actually find the ostensibly more orthodox harmonic procedures more flexible and less predictable or predictive than those of Wagner.

[Vile Consort]

Theory:

People who like Brahms prefer Bach to Mozart.

And the other way around for people who don't.

Does this have legs?

[richardfinegold]

Theory:

People who like Brahms prefer Bach to Mozart.

And the other way around for people who don't.

Does this have legs?

With due respect, it's paralyzed.

[Vile Consort]

With due respect, it's paralyzed.

You've seen the statistics then?

[Nick Armstrong]

Theory:

People who like Brahms prefer Bach to Mozart.

And the other way around for people who don't.

Does this have legs?

It's walking all over the place in this house!

[Richard Barrett]

As I've said before ad nauseam, I'm not that keen on comparing composers, but I think I would have to say that I prefer Bach to Mozart, based on the fact that I spend much more time with Bach's music than Mozart's. So the Brahms thing doesn't work with me.

[Petrushka]

I prefer Mozart to Bach and love Brahms so the theory doesn't have legs where I am concerned

[kea]

What about those mythical people who like Bach, Mozart and Brahms? Has anyone ever seen one of them???

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

i am no unicorn but a jazbo who likes Bach & Mozart & Brahms .... & Miles Davis &c

[muzzer]

Likewise. Everything in moderation. Including moderation.

[Oliver]

I agree with the OP's comments about the sextets. Both are magnificent. Come to think of it, while I seldom listen to my Brahms orchestral CDs now (with the exception of the 1st Piano Concerto) the chamber works regularly grace my CD player; particularly the Piano Quartets.

[gurnemanz]

indeed so Caliban; this one gets me too

By coincidence, we went to an excellent Imogen Cooper solo recital in Reading Concert Hall last night which included Schubert D960 and Schumann's First Sonata. One of the other items was his arrangement of the Op 18 Andante. I did not previously know it existed (done for Clara, of course) and notice that she included it on a recent Chandos disc.

[Roehre]

By coincidence, we went to an excellent Imogen Cooper solo recital in Reading Concert Hall last night which included Schubert D960 and Schumann's First Sonata. One of the other items was his arrangement of the Op 18 Andante. I did not previously know it existed (done for Clara, of course) and notice that she included it on a recent Chandos disc.

Guess who nicked this melody? The same guy who used Bruch's grand melody from his violin concerto again in an Alpine setting: Richard Strauss. Brahms returns in the pompous Festliches Präludium op.61 from 1913