This book brings together nine essays authored by leading music scholars, each of which analyzes some music of Brahms with a particular focus on the music's temporality. Publications under such a rubric have the potential for both corroboration and innovation. With regards to corroboration, both Brahms studies and music-analytical studies are thriving well in the first decades of the twenty-first century. Moreover, the prosperity of each has significantly contributed to the prosperity of the other. For example, in article titles of the last fifteen years from the esteemed British journal Music Analysis, the name of Brahms has appeared more often than the name of any other composer. From this point of view, the nine essays in this volume are in good company. With regards to innovation, sophisticated theories of rhythm and meter do currently flourish in contemporary musical scholarship. However, less bountiful—or at least less conspicuous—is scholarship whose primary goal is the close reading of musical works and whose primary analytical perspective is more time-based, rather than pitch-based. From this point of view, these nine essays provide a welcome complement to the current state of the field.

These essays also complement each other well: the analytical subjects range from a few measures to an entire multi-movement work, from music written in the 1850s to music written in the 1890s, and from many of the genres within which Brahms composed. Before progressing to a summary of each essay, the first two parts of this introduction locate the collective contribution of these essays within current scholarly practice, building upon the aforementioned binary framework of corroboration and innovation.

The Tradition of Analyzing Brahms

What is it about the music of Brahms that, to echo words of Kevin Korsyn, compels us to adopt an analytical attitude? Perhaps this compulsion stems from an abstract consanguinity between Brahms and today's music analyst. In a recently published essay called “The Composer as Critic,” Edward T. Cone makes the case that the line separating composition from criticism, an activity inherently enmeshed with analytical goings-on, “is never so distinct as we imagine.” Brahms has earned enough honorifics over the years—“the Classicist,” “the Progressive,” “the Ambivalent,” “the Subversive,” and so on—that one more would do no harm: Brahms the Analyst. Those familiar with the composer's biography know this epithet to be appropriate for many reasons.