Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Part I Stages of creative development and reception
- 1 Brahms the Hamburg musician 1833–1862
- 2 Years of transition: Brahms and Vienna 1862–1875
- 3 Brahms and his audience: the later Viennese years 1875–1897
- Part II The music: genre, structure and reference
- Part III Brahms today: some personal responses
- Notes
- List of works
- Bibliography
- Index
3 - Brahms and his audience: the later Viennese years 1875–1897
from Part I - Stages of creative development and reception
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 September 2011
- Frontmatter
- Part I Stages of creative development and reception
- 1 Brahms the Hamburg musician 1833–1862
- 2 Years of transition: Brahms and Vienna 1862–1875
- 3 Brahms and his audience: the later Viennese years 1875–1897
- Part II The music: genre, structure and reference
- Part III Brahms today: some personal responses
- Notes
- List of works
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Music in the public sphere: Brahms and the spectre of Wagnerism
The writing of music history frequently gains its primary impetus from that which we regard in our own time as great music: those works through which we have chosen to define the essential achievement and identity of a composer. Working backwards, so to speak, from a retrospective evaluation of an entire corpus of music, we distort biography and history to fit our judgements, justifying our own tastes through the medium of scholarly historical explanation. In the case of Johannes Brahms, his popularity and renown are now most often associated with his orchestral music. Therefore, among the most carefully scrutinised aspects of his evolution as a composer is his presumedly difficult and sustained struggle with the task of writing a symphony. His first explicit public foray into this genre was completed relatively late in his career. The C minor Symphony was finished and first performed in 1876. Brahms was already well established and world famous. His substantial early reputation throughout Europe obviously did not derive from his work as a composer of symphonies. His most spectacular success before the completion of Op. 68 was achieved with Ein deutsches Requiem in 1868 and (with the added fifth movement) in 1869. The prominent Berlin critic Louis Ehlert, who considered himself a fair-minded but not uncritical Brahms enthusiast, had little doubt, writing in 1880, that the symphonic form was not, and would likely never be, Brahms's forte.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge Companion to Brahms , pp. 51 - 76Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1999
- 1
- Cited by