Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)

[Brian]

Works I like (really) but don't quite love:
- the sextet op 36

My turning point for this work was one of my favorite GMG posts ever, this by amw explaining the sextet op 36 and how it achieves its "full circle" emotional arc:
https://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php/topic,31367.msg1415393.html#msg1415393

Using that post as a guide, I listened again and found that it went from "the less pretty one" to the one I could really love.

[lordlance]

One of the worst ideas, IMO.  I wish these people would leave Brahms' chamber music alone.  It is perfect just as it is, and the last thing we need is more orchestral music.  Especially since it is completely unnecessary: if Brahms had wanted these pieces to be orchestral he would have written them like that.

Couldn't disagree more. Schoenberg's orchestration is a genuine masterpiece and showed him capable of writing like Brahms even if some instruments are more modern. Best thing Schoenberg did I think. (Have to revisit Gurre-Lieder though.)

[Florestan]

Couldn't disagree more. Schoenberg's orchestration is a genuine masterpiece and showed him capable of writing like Brahms even if some instruments are more modern. Best thing Schoenberg did I think. (Have to revisit Gurre-Lieder though.)

If the best thing Schoenberg did was writing like Brahms then he was not worth much. A deft imitator. 

[San Antone]

Couldn't disagree more. Schoenberg's orchestration is a genuine masterpiece and showed him capable of writing like Brahms even if some instruments are more modern. Best thing Schoenberg did I think. (Have to revisit Gurre-Lieder though.)

I think you do Schoenberg a disservice - writing like Brahms, for anyone other than Brahms, is not nearly the achievement as Schoenberg writing like Schoenberg.  Are you familiar with the saying, "Be yourself, everyone else is taken."

[Jo498]

I like the Schoenberg orchestration as an oddity but with the percussion in the 3rd movement and even xylophone in the finale he goes in a way over the top with the orchestration Brahms would never have done.

I also disagree with the reasons Schoenberg gave although they might of course been true in his time (which I doubt, there were first class musicians like the Buschs already active then), namely that the piece is rarely played and almost never played well because of difficult balance between piano and strings that he wanted to remedy with the orchestration.

[Der lächelnde Schatten]

Couldn't disagree more. Schoenberg's orchestration is a genuine masterpiece and showed him capable of writing like Brahms even if some instruments are more modern. Best thing Schoenberg did I think. (Have to revisit Gurre-Lieder though.)

While I certainly admire, and love, the Schoenberg orchestration of Brahms' Piano Quartet in G minor, I don't agree it's the best thing Schoenberg has done. For me, if someone doesn't get on with the dodecaphonic music he would come to write later, then Schoenberg really isn't the composer for them. His earlier output, while obviously informed by Late-Romanticism and Wagnerian chromaticism, doesn't really show us who the composer was, but we finally hear it I believe in Drei Klavierstücke, Op. 11 --- a radical change in his style begins.

Anyway, I don't want to turn this into a whole tonal music is better, but just wanted to say that the early period of Schoenberg, while amazing in its own right, is hardly representative of the composer that came out of that earlier style.

[Mandryka]

Couldn't disagree more. Schoenberg's orchestration is a genuine masterpiece and showed him capable of writing like Brahms even if some instruments are more modern. Best thing Schoenberg did I think. (Have to revisit Gurre-Lieder though.)

If you like Schoenberg's Brahmsian music, be sure to listen to the early songs - I have a lovely recording with Roswitha Trexler and John Tilbury.

And if you like the transcription of the piano quartet, be sure to hear Robert Craft's first recording (not the one on Naxos)

There's also a really stimulating recording from The Hagen Quartet with Paul Gulda, stimulating because the programme juxtaposes the Brahms F minor piano quintet with the Webern's transcription of the Schoenberg op 9 Chamber Symphony.

[lordlance]

Yes, well, my distaste for Schoenberg has been inferred by the members here. 

Not that I dislike contemporary/non-tonal music, just not whatever Schoenberg and ilk were writing hence why I think it's the former's best work. I am certainly grateful to have it. That last movement really is such a hoot.

I am not sure if writing like Brahms is easy without it being a cheap knock off. The inclusion of instruments like xylophone is controversial I know but I love the piece still. 

[DavidW]

Not that I dislike contemporary/non-tonal music,

Schoenberg is not contemporary, and his music isn't all atonal. Contemporary music is not synonymous with atonal music, either.

[Jo498]

The early "0th" string quartet by Schoenberg sounds not unlike Brahms, or even more like Dvorak.
His real 1st quartet op.4 sounds a bit like uber-Reger, not totally unbrahmsian either. People have even called the piano concerto "Brahmsian", I recall how puzzled I was by that when I first encountered it as a relative newcomer at 18 or so but much later I could understand why commentators would describe it thus.
 
The most "Brahmsian" instrumental piece by the 2nd Viennese school might be Webern's Passacaglia op.1

[San Antone]

Schoenberg certainly found in Brahms the idea which became the basis of his life's work in music:

It was not until the mid-twentieth century when Schoenberg described Brahms as a progressive in his 1947 essay 'Brahms the Progressive,' and brought a new perspective on the way Brahms' music was crafted. This essay claims that the uniqueness of Brahms' music is predicated on a principle of composition coined by Schoenberg as 'developing variation'. According to Schoenberg, 'developing variation' rests upon the idea that "whatever happens in a piece of music is nothing but the endless reshaping of a basic shape." It is the idea that a simple thematic or motivic cell can form the basis of an entire piece of music, and any subsequent material that arises from it is merely a logical consequence of the preceding or foundational material. To create a sense of continuity, fluency and coherence in a piece of music therefore requires its structural units to be varied and transformed organically so that the musical journey unfolds in a smooth and logical manner. This method of composition was deemed by Schoenberg as artistically superior to Wagner's direct repetition and transposition of material.

Schoenberg on Brahms

[Mandryka]

Didn't Boulez berate Schoenberg because of something to do with Brahms? I think Boulez's idea is that Schoenberg never really went beyond Brahmsian forms.

In fact Boulez had a good feel for Brahms, at least if his 1973 proms performance of the Requiem is anything to go by.

[lordlance]

Schoenberg is not contemporary, and his music isn't all atonal. Contemporary music is not synonymous with atonal music, either.

Yes I know he's not contemporary. Also, yes, contemporary isn't atonal necessarily which is precisely which I wrote non-tonal because of the many variations that seem to exist... 

[DavidW]

Also, yes, contemporary isn't atonal necessarily which is precisely which I wrote non-tonal because of the many variations that seem to exist...

Non-tonal is not correct either.

[San Antone]

One of the worst ideas, IMO.  I wish these people would leave Brahms' chamber music alone.  It is perfect just as it is, and the last thing we need is more orchestral music.  Especially since it is completely unnecessary: if Brahms had wanted these pieces to be orchestral he would have written them like that.

While listening to Sally Beamish's transcription of La Mer for piano trio it struck me that I enjoy the reverse, i.e. arranging an orchestral work in a chamber version - whereas I cannot tolerate the opposite. There are a few of this kind of thing with Mahler; I wish all of his orchestral music was available for chamber groups.

I am not attracted to classical orchestral music vastly prefeing solo and chamber music.

[Jo498]

Brahms published at least 2 major works in "official" versions for 2 pianos, the Haydn variations and the 2 piano version of the piano quintet.
He did also other fun stuff like the Bach violin Chaconne for left hand or his own variation movement form the 1st sextet for piano, as well as some Schubert lieder for ensemble/orchestra.
 
As was common at the time, most of his orchestral and chamber works were later arranged for piano 4 hands and Brahms apparently cared enough to do some of them himself or at least closely supervised to proceedings. Naxos has recorded, I think, all of these 4 hand piano (or sometime 2 piano as above or for the piano concerti).

I am not of them but people have claimed that they like some pieces better in these arrangements because of rhythmic and other details.

[Herman]

In addition to this, in the first half of his composing career Brahms did not yet have very strong feelings about for what kind of genre he was composing. So, many nascent opuses (that's two Latin words in a row!) spent years going through different guises, like is this going to be a symphony, a string quartet or maybe just a massive piano solo piece?

Only the waste basket can tell...

I get the feeling that as he became an established composer with a couple of concertos and a symphony to his name (plus two or three string quartets) he became more assured of his aim, and when he started composing a violin sonata or a atrng quintet this shape shifting never occurred. Part of this may be that he did not compose massive piano sonatas after the early shape-shifting phase.

I may be mistaken here...

[Der lächelnde Schatten]

In addition to this, in the first half of his composing career Brahms did not yet have very strong feelings about for what kind of genre he was composing. So, many nascent opuses (that's two Latin words in a row!) spent years going through different guises, like is this going to be a symphony, a string quartet or maybe just a massive piano solo piece?

Only the waste basket can tell...

I get the feeling that as he became an established composer with a couple of concertos and a symphony to his name (plus two or three string quartets) he became more assured of his aim, and when he started composing a violin sonata or a atrng quintet this shape shifting never occurred. Part of this may be that he did not compose massive piano sonatas after the early shape-shifting phase.

I may be mistaken here...

I believe you're in the right mind about Brahms' own development. It does seem like he was kind of unsure in the beginning, but with someone like Schumann proclaiming him to be the man that is going to save music (and I'm paraphrasing here) simply didn't help in his confidence in himself I'd imagine. Of course, he felt tremendous pressure composing under the shadow of Beethoven --- look at how long it took him to commit to his 1st symphony, but then there is that perfection and extreme self-criticism that also conduced many manuscripts to the fireplace.

For me, part of the success in Brahms is found in the chamber and solo piano music and I say this as huge fan of his symphonies, concerti and choral works, but I think the chamber and solo piano mediums are where he gained his confidence as a composer (his lieder, too, now that I'm thinking about it). This may be hyperbole, but I don't think one can truly understand Brahms without being allured or interested in these parts of his oeuvre.

This is just my two measly cents.

[LKB]

One of the worst ideas, IMO.  I wish these people would leave Brahms' chamber music alone.  It is perfect just as it is, and the last thing we need is more orchestral music.  Especially since it is completely unnecessary: if Brahms had wanted these pieces to be orchestral he would have written them like that.

Agreed. While Brahms' orchestral works might be considered " old-fashioned " in regarding their form and orchestration, they are certainly successful on their own terms.

Conflating the chamber music of any successful composer of orchestral works is simply a distortion of their creative intent, imho.

[Der lächelnde Schatten]

Conflating the chamber music of any successful composer of orchestral works is simply a distortion of their creative intent, imho.

Be that as it may, I still relish in Schoenberg's Brahms' PQ No. 1 orchestration. I love that it gets progressively more and more zanier as it goes along. I don't think Schoenberg meant any disrespect to the composer nor do I believe it to be done in a tongue-in-cheek way --- I just think he wanted to flex his orchestrating chops and, for me, it's a fun listen.