Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)

[Brahmsian]

Aye, easier to imitate Mendelssohn (oh, I kid, I kid . . . .)

  I'm enjoying my mini-Mendelssohn marathon, currently.

[ibanezmonster]

Aye, easier to imitate Mendelssohn (oh, I kid, I kid . . . .)

I wonder how easy or hard Mendelssohn is to imitate... needless to say that I don't listen to him often when I forget that he even existed.

My top 2 favorites (Mahler and Prokofiev) are what I have in mind when I say easy to imitate, although Prokofiev is just super easy (maybe it's just my natural tendency to write like him), while Mahler takes a bit more work, but isn't too hard once he's been well-studied.

Anyone ever study his scores and picks up on the unique things that Brahms does? Probably one of the most interesting Brahms-ism is how he achieves a sort of graceful smoothness by using at least one tied note across bars for many bars, instead of how most other composers my "take a breath" in-between bars. Although I discovered this years ago, I still feel it is a Brahms thing.

[ibanezmonster]

http://www.youtube.com/v/ZSf2veLfC-w
The good stuff... Intermezzo no.2 at 1:50.

This is nostalgia. It's like remembering something good, but knowing that it can never happen again.

[Brahmsian]

Good Saturday Morning! 

Listening to some Brahms solo piano music:

Ballades, Op. 10
Rhapsodies, Op. 79
Klavierstucke, Op. 76
Fantasien, Op. 116
Intermezzi, Op. 117
Klavierstucke, Op. 118
Klavierstucke, Op. 119

Håkon Austbø, piano

Brilliant Classics

A marvelous way to start the a Saturday morning! 

[Florestan]

He is certainly the best composer when it comes to nostalgia and probably even melancholy in general. Mahler can be nostalgic, but no one really comes close to Brahms.

Not even Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov?...

Baroque music can also be intensely melancholic.

[ibanezmonster]

Not even Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov?...

Baroque music can also be intensely melancholic.

Well, for melancholy, I guess you could say he would be my favorite composer that writes melancholic music (I wouldn't consider Mahler much of a "melancholic" composer, but something else instead). Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov definitely write what I'd consider melancholy music, though.

For "nostalgic"-sounding, I wouldn't consider those two to be so. Pretty much only Brahms write nostalgic-sounding music with any sort of consistency. I think what I posted above is a perfect example.

Baroque melancholy? Hmm... never really picked up that vibe much from any of it. Maybe sad or austere, but not really melancholy.

[Dancing Divertimentian]

Baroque melancholy? Hmm... never really picked up that vibe much from any of it. Maybe sad or austere, but not really melancholy.

Bach in his cantatas out-melancholy's everyone in the baroque era. They're a good place to start, anyway.

[ibanezmonster]

Bach in his cantatas out-melancholy's everyone in the baroque era. They're a good place to start, anyway.

Any specific one? I've only gotten around to a few but have them all on a hard drive, though they aren't known to be the best recordings. 

[Wakefield]

I have a serious problem to accept melancholy as a main feature of Baroque music, specially if we are talking of sacred Baroque music.

I understand melancholy as a feeling of sadness that you don't know from where it comes. It's a sort of cosmic sadness. But Baroque composers always exactly know from where man's sadness comes from. Man is sad and afflicted because is a sinner. There is a cause for his pain.

That said, in music I identify the Elizabethan period as the Age of Melancholy: John Dowland and his contemporaries are, IMO, a superb examples of this feeling.

[Dancing Divertimentian]

Any specific one? I've only gotten around to a few but have them all on a hard drive, though they aren't known to be the best recordings. 

Try BWV 198, Trauerode. It's always struck me as melancholy...though not a spiral into destruction. But daring and purposeful (and ragingly beautiful). I have Herreweghe. I found a Youtube of Herreweghe:



 
http://www.youtube.com/v/HOEbPrjuKXA



It can also be just parts of a cantata, like my favorite cantata of all, BWV 8. Check out the opening movement:



http://www.youtube.com/v/Hfkq-S7Vis8

[Mandryka]

I have a serious problem to accept melancholy as a main feature of Baroque music, specially if we are talking of sacred Baroque music.

I understand melancholy as a feeling of sadness that you don't know from where it comes. It's a sort of cosmic sadness. But Baroque composers always exactly know from where man's sadness comes from. Man is sad and afflicted because is a sinner. There is a cause for his pain.

That said, in music I identify the Elizabethan period as the Age of Melancholy: John Dowland and his contemporaries are, IMO, a superb examples of this feeling.

What about Froberger? He gets melancholy because the king's died, stuff like that, or just thinking about the fact that one day he's gonna die himself, or that he skirted with death after a nasty boat trip. Sin doesn't seem to enter into the picture for him.

I would also say that some Francois Couperin's music is melancholic too, the first duo for viole and continuo, for example. I don't know if that music has any sort of relation to ideas about sin.

By the way, I think that Dowland's lachrimae is a sort of study of melancholy -- and in the preface he is extremely precise about the possible origins of the feeling, not at all idiopathic, to use a medical word. So I'm not sure I agree that for Renaissance thinkers melancholy was necessarily a "feeling of sadness that you don't know from where it comes. . . a sort of cosmic sadness"

[Mandryka]

Well, for melancholy, I guess you could say he would be my favorite composer that writes melancholic music (I wouldn't consider Mahler much of a "melancholic" composer, but something else instead). Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov definitely write what I'd consider melancholy music, though.

For "nostalgic"-sounding, I wouldn't consider those two to be so. Pretty much only Brahms write nostalgic-sounding music with any sort of consistency. I think what I posted above is a perfect example.

Baroque melancholy? Hmm... never really picked up that vibe much from any of it. Maybe sad or austere, but not really melancholy.

No, I don't think so. What you posted is melancholic I think, but it's something which the Perrahia has overlaid on the music.
Here's Backhaus.

http://www.youtube.com/v/JG66pQ9g4MY

I don't think nostalgia or melancholy was quite so dominant in his interpretation, not in Yudina neither

http://www.youtube.com/v/s0bI0E9JSBY

The tradition of a dominating autumnal nostalgic melancholy in late Brahms is  well established, the old bloke crying into his beer,  But there are other equally valid ways of interpreting what Brahms was up to in the music.

[amw]

There's no real reason to play that particular intermezzo as a "nostalgic" or "melancholic" piece apart from tradition. A major is traditionally a very bright and optimistic key, and look at the other pieces Brahms wrote in it—the Serenade Op. 16, the Piano Quartet Op. 26, the Violin Sonata Op. 100, etc—mostly pieces that are happy and untroubled, at least one of which was written during one of his short-lived relationships with a woman not named Clara Schumann. Definitely playing Op. 118/2 as Largo molto sostenuto rather than the Andante Brahms specifies can imbue it with a certain melancholy, but note the other part of Brahms's tempo marking: teneramente (tenderly). I always think of A major as the key of Brahms in love.

Certainly there's melancholy, nostalgia, etc—E minor/major is commonly associated with that, e.g. in the first movements of the Cello Sonata Op. 38 and the Fourth Symphony, and the Intermezzo Op. 119/2, where the return of only the first few bars of the central episode at the end does give more of a sense of irrevocable loss. Another excellent "melancholy" piece is the Intermezzo Op. 117/3 which one could describe as a lullaby for a dead child. But in the larger-scale works he'll often start out with melancholy and nostalgia and eventually work his way round to heroic defiance (e.g. the symphony and cello sonata) or peaceful resignation (the finale of the Violin Sonata Op. 78, the "Regenlied" that ends with the sun coming out from behind the clouds, as it were). Brahms's music is made of stronger stuff than people sometimes seem to realise.

[The new erato]

Well, the gloomiest piece I know of is in C major, Schubert's string quintet. Schubert seems to have mastered the art of being depressed in joyful keys like nobody else.

[amw]

Well, the gloomiest piece I know of is in C major, Schubert's string quintet. Schubert seems to have mastered the art of being depressed in joyful keys like nobody else.

Indeed. He also has quite a good deal of happy, carefree music in F minor, and the C-sharp minor Moment Musical is the only piece I can think of where the part in the minor is significantly more joyful than the part in the major. But Schubert is a special case >.> (And there is hardly any "nostalgia" in Schubert for that matter, except perhaps in bits of the intensely tragic D959 and D960 piano sonatas, in A major and B-flat major respectively.)

[Mandryka]

Indeed. He also has quite a good deal of happy, carefree music in F minor, and the C-sharp minor Moment Musical is the only piece I can think of where the part in the minor is significantly more joyful than the part in the major. But Schubert is a special case >.> (And there is hardly any "nostalgia" in Schubert for that matter, except perhaps in bits of the intensely tragic D959 and D960 piano sonatas, in A major and B-flat major respectively.)

When the theme you met at the start  returns at the end there's nostalgia, I seem to remember (no pun intended) that happens in the second piano trio.

I think the whole issue about how time, memory, nostalgia works in Schubert is  interesting.

[The new erato]

I think the whole issue about how time, memory, nostalgia works in Schubert is  interesting.

Yes, in many ways he is one of the most original of composers.

[Mandryka]

Try BWV 198, Trauerode. It's always struck me as melancholy...though not a spiral into destruction. But daring and purposeful (and ragingly beautiful). I have Herreweghe. I found a Youtube of Herreweghe:



 
http://www.youtube.com/v/HOEbPrjuKXA



It can also be just parts of a cantata, like my favorite cantata of all, BWV 8. Check out the opening movement:



http://www.youtube.com/v/Hfkq-S7Vis8

The sad one I like is the very early cantata Aus der Tiefen rufe ich, Herr, zu dir, BWV 131

[Wakefield]

What about Froberger? He gets melancholy because the king's died, stuff like that, or just thinking about the fact that one day he's gonna die himself, or that he skirted with death after a nasty boat trip. Sin doesn't seem to enter into the picture for him.

I would also say that some Francois Couperin's music is melancholic too, the first duo for viole and continuo, for example. I don't know if that music has any sort of relation to ideas about sin.

By the way, I think that Dowland's lachrimae is a sort of study of melancholy -- and in the preface he is extremely precise about the possible origins of the feeling, not at all idiopathic, to use a medical word. So I'm not sure I agree that for Renaissance thinkers melancholy was necessarily a "feeling of sadness that you don't know from where it comes. . . a sort of cosmic sadness"

As so many others maybe this is only a terminological discussion. But an interesting one.

I guess I would need some time to justify this assertion, but I think that a world with a strong sense of the divinity is not easily melancholic (and I was talking principally about Baroque sacred music). Its natural "negative" feelings are remorse and guilt and then pain and tears.

But pain and tears could have many other external and internal causes. And melancholy is more natural in a secularized world.

Reflecting on melancholy -as Froberger- is not necessarily to be a melancholic person, if I say: There is no reason to the sadness because all of this has a sense. 

BTW, as I write I'm listening to this excellent disk of Ewald Demeyere:

[Brahmsian]

Many here at GMG know that Brahms has been one of my favourites for quite some time.

I have to honestly say though, melancholic and nostalgic are not words, terms or visions that come to mind for me. 

Perhaps, in the Adagio to the Piano Concerto No. 1, written in the memory of his lost friend, Robert Schumann.