Composers you don't get

[Purusha]

Although, I think that Brahms's language became more rarefied with time

It becomes more like Webern IMO. The change can already be heard around the Opus 76. This one for instance i think is a very transparent example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_P8OqTHLvLQ

But i think he achieves his peak by the time he wrote the second string quintet. All of his late works from this period are all incredibly distilled, and that goes equally for the late chamber works, the late piano miniatures and even the chorale preludes which in my opinion are equal in greatness to his late piano music.

It was around this time too that Reger declared Brahms as the greatest living composer, that he had grown so advanced that he surpassed everyone else. And if you listen to Reger's music during this period, one can see just how much of an impression Brahms's late music had on him, starting even as early as the first cello sonata, where Reger tries to expand on his this idea of constant variation, if a bit awkwardly.

[Purusha]

Oh, I completely misunderstood your first post, sorry.

No worries. Generalizing about the 20th century is really impossible anyway. The point was to try to understand in what way Schoenberg understood Brahms to be "progressive". And, if i may so, also to reject this notion that Brahms was something of a lesser Beethoven. He was his own artist, with his own aesthetic ideas and musical aims that were not wholly identical to those of Beethoven.

[Karl Henning]

No worries. Generalizing about the 20th century is really impossible anyway. The point was to try to understand in what way Schoenberg understood Brahms to be "progressive". And, if i may so, also to reject this notion that Brahms was something of a lesser Beethoven. He was his own artist, with his own aesthetic ideas and musical aims that were not wholly identical to those of Beethoven.

Agreed on all points.

[Mandryka]

I always loved this example of rarified Brahms, though, and it's actually pretty early, the exquisite op 21 Variations. As Malcolm Macdonald pointed out, this page recalls nothing so much as Webern in its stripped-down nature, in which huge intervals bestride the piano in delicate two-part counterpoint, recalling Webern's own Variations, in fact. But Brahms has everything. I adore him without any reservation whatsoever.

Hi, btw!

Thanks for this - which just prompted me to go listen to that wonderful 7th variation.

[Karl Henning]

It becomes more like Webern IMO. The change can already be heard around the Opus 76. This one for instance i think is a very transparent example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_P8OqTHLvLQ

But i think he achieves his peak by the time he wrote the second string quintet. All of his late works from this period are all incredibly distilled [....]

All inessentials pared away;  way ahead of his time!

[Purusha]

Well, maybe not entirely "ahead". More like above, as in, timelessness. 

[Karl Henning]

Yes, I'm with you.

Or outside of time in a way roughly similar to you.

[Fagotterdämmerung]

 
  I enjoy how one line of sarcasm flowered into all these passionate defenses of Brahms ( It Might Get Prolix: the GMG Documentary ). When I get a chance, I will listen to Brahms-as-Webern ( Johannes Barraqué? ) with open ears, however. Webern's a man I could listen to all day, but unfortunately that would mean listening to his complete works several times over, so horizons must expand, inevitably...

  Perhaps I should dis Schoenberg for some enlightening analysis. I'd be fibbing, though: I think he's hot stuff. ( He'd take the La Marseillaise from the French if he could! "Germany did whole-tone harmony first!" ...The Harmonielehre gets more dubious as it gets close to its own present. )

[Mandryka]

Maybe someone wouldn't mind spelling out what I'm supposed to be listening for in that little capriccio that is like Webern. Or in op 111/2.

[Ken B]

  I enjoy how one line of sarcasm flowered into all these passionate defenses of Brahms

Count your blessings! Dis Shostakovich in this neck of the woods and you might not make it out alive!

[Purusha]

Maybe someone wouldn't mind spelling out what I'm supposed to be listening for in that little capriccio that is like Webern. Or in op 111/2.

There is no fat in it, nothing superfluous. This is more obvious if you listen to it vertically, like you would with Bach:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAERQ92DOOQ

It is an exercise in constant variation, or constant motivic development really. There's also a great deal of rhythmic variation (which relates to the counterpoint). But it is what he does later on that is truly amazing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9DRthQSSUc

Alas, i lack the technical means to really explain why this is so impressive (at least to me), but there are articles out in the net that deal with this subject:

http://davidsbuendler.freehostia.com/spaet.htm

The spareness is not simplicity as some people assume, but conciseness. By saying less, he ends up saying more. And every note has some kinda of harmonic relation with the other, to the point one doesn't really know when the vertical begins, and the horizontal ends, and vice versa. Motivic development is counterpoint, and counterpoint is motivic development. It is as if the music rotates in a spiral, like a concentric canon.

Which is precisely what Webern does, except to a more extreme degree:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lED-ymqR2E4

Sorry if this sounds stupid, i don't have any other way to describe it, but its how i hear it.

[Purusha]

BTW, can i mention the Chorale Preludes again, possibly his most underrated composition? This is one of those works where i almost brake into tears when i listen to it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyuWroI0148

[Purusha]

Another one, just because you simply can't get enough of this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsWY6WWyF8E

This is a great performance too. My current benchmark was Rudolf Innig but i think i will have to acquire this one as well. Bless you, youtube.

[Mandryka]

Another one, just because you simply can't get enough of this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsWY6WWyF8E

This is a great performance too. My current benchmark was Rudolf Innig but i think i will have to acquire this one as well. Bless you, youtube.

I haven't heard Innig, but I very much enjoyed his Messiaen. I too like the chorale preludes - the performance which impresses me the most is by Gerd Zacher.

[Karl Henning]

BTW, can i mention the Chorale Preludes again, possibly his most underrated composition? This is one of those works where i almost brake into tears when i listen to it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyuWroI0148

I love these.

[Purusha]

Just to close this argument, here's an article devoted to Reger, his relation to Schoenberg, and their mutual relation to Brahms:

http://www.biu.ac.il/hu/mu/min-ad02/kreinin.html

I wish i knew enough about music theory to really explain this stuff myself. I hear it with my ears, but can't express it in words. It is frustrating.

[Karl Henning]

I've just given it a cursory look as yet, but a nice article, thanks!

[Fagotterdämmerung]

   I definitely see some Bach influence ( Bachianas Brahmsileiras? ) on that last one. I do get where the Webern people are coming from if I don't exactly agree: they share a spare and somewhat somnambulant quality in some works.

   Don't get me started on Reger, though. If I'm lukewarm on Brahms, Reger is my poster child for late Romantic bloat gone awry. 

   

[Karl Henning]

   I definitely see some Bach influence ( Bachianas Brahmsileiras? ) on that last one.   

(I should leave such biographical details to Luke, who has better command of them than I) Brahms was, I believe, to the pioneering edition of Bach's works.

[Ken B]

   Don't get me started on Reger, though. If I'm lukewarm on Brahms, Reger is my poster child for late Romantic bloat gone awry. 

   

Fagotterdämmerung, meet Mr Gurrelieder. Mr Gurrelieder, Fagotterdämmerung.