We do not think the best composers aim to express either emotions or intellectual matters. No, what they want to create is a beautiful work. Sometimes - indeed often - our emotions are stirred when we hear beautiful music, but that stirring is not the purpose of the music - the beauty is. Similarly, the purpose of a piece of music is never primarily an intellectual stimulation. The concern of true Art is always and only expression of the beautiful. Madame will know the French phrase "Art for Art's sake"!

Came across something in the library today that I have to share - in amongst one of those library volumes that bind lots of different scores together, I encountered an adaptation by Stuart Young, published by Augener, of the hymn-like melody in the last movement of Brahms's Piano Sonata in F minor Op. 5. It's for voice and piano, transposed into F - I've just copied some of the vocal part here - was about to roar with laughter until I realised that the BL is not the place for doing that. Will it ever be possible to hear it in the same way again?



(mind you, was a nice break from studying the full score of that real turkey the Triumphlied!)

Maybe you should send this wonderful piece of - er - (lost for words right now) - to the editor, or better still the probably non-existent music critic, of that rag This England that was discussed in these hallowed pages a few days ago; I'm sure that a reproduction of this work by the well-known English pastoralist John Bramley as adapted by Mr Young would go down well in that esteemed journal.

Yes, it WILL be possible to hear it "the same way again"; muss es sein - es muss sein! Any effort required to banish this temporarily amusing yet permanently appalling excrescence from one's mind will be worth making; the best way is probably to go to the nearest piano and play the original, although I accept that "we" can't all do that...

Best,

Alistair

Agreed - and expressed with more elegance and detail than my two-pennarth. The quartet I have a problem with (though not that much of one, admittedly) is the B flat, Op. 67, which strikes me as rather dull and workmanlike compared to all of Brahms's other chamber works - in fact, to me, it tends to epitomise all those things about Brahms that one hears from those who don't get close to his work and which, for the most part, I cannot perceive!

Best,

Alistair

Ollie commented on not liking the 'brown' school of Brahms performance on that other thread, wanted to recommend to him these recordings, which I think he'll like:

Weingartner is the only conductor who worked with Brahms of whom we have recordings. By all accounts, his approach was extremely different to that of Hans von Bülow and Fritz Steinbach, though it maybe shared some similarities with the conducting of Hans Richter.

This is certainly true as far as I know. Moving forward somewhat in time, however, this "brown" Brahms that bothers some people is, I think, without doubt down to performance inadequacies rather than anything to do with the musical content itself or the way in which Brahms cast it. That composer whose name I dare not speak mentioned this phenomenon and, whilst some of Brahms was not exactly his favourite cup of tea, he had been greatly enthused by Toscanini conducting Brahms for the sheer translucent clarity that he brought to his orchestral music, adding, however, that, on reflection, he'd brought no such thing to it after all because it was already there in Brahms's writing. This "problem", I think, has it roots in performing "traditions" that can grow up independently of the music itself and (as in the case of certain Brahms works) risk misleading listeners as to how that music is meant to sound. By a similar token, Malcolm MacDonald once gently but firmly took to task those who criticised certain (usually Russian) conductors for "exaggerating" certain dynamics in Tchaikovsky by reminding them that those extreme dynamics are in Tchaikovsky's score.

But to return to Brahms; there is another was to come at this, too - as Ives did when he wrote

To think hard and deeply and to say what is thought, regardless of consequences, may produce a first impression either of great translucence or great muddiness, but in the latter case there may be hidden possibilities. Some accuse Brahms's orchestration of being muddy. This may be a good name for a first impression of it. But if it should seem less so, he might not be saying what he thought. The mud may be a form of sincerity which demands that the heart be translated, rather than handed around through the pit. A clearer scoring might have lowered the thought.

Now I have to admit that I don't see Ives to Ives with him here, in that I do not as a rule find Brahms's orchestration inherently muddy in the first place, but he nevertheless had a point and an interesting thought there, I think.

I do, however, believe that "brown Brahms" is an unfortunate phenomenon that has tended to emanante principally from those who are tempted to see in his work something of German soil in the "muddy" sense. What do you think about that?

Best,

Alistair

That fattening did also go on in part in Brahms's lifetime as well (his symphonies being played by the much larger Vienna Philharmonic as well as the Meiningen Court Orchestra, and lots of other large orchestras), and it's by no means clear that he definitely opted for the thinner string sound (personally, I tend towards the opinion that he was quite well-disposed towards it specifically in the Meiningen case, but there's plenty of other evidence - it's very hard to make a conclusive case). Be wary of the possibility that what seems clear to oneself in the music may simply entail the projection of a later neo-classical aesthetic onto it.

Well, there are plenty of contemporary reports from Brahms's time describing performances in similar terms, including of those he was either involved with or clearly approved of. I don't have references with me right here at the moment, but will at some point dig them out.

As far as Toscanini is concerned, his conducting is much closer to that of Weingartner than that of Steinbach, from what we know of either. But I would say on balance there is considerably more evidence that Brahms was inclined towards the Steinbach tradition (very much more flexible than the more strict Weingartner). Gunther Schuller argues for the unequivocal superiority of the Weingartner/Toscanini approach in his book The Compleat Conductor, but without much in the way of documentary evidence - this is mostly about Schuller's own personal preferences (nothing wrong with that, of course) rather than anything that is particularly historically grounded.

I am very wary when people make quite exalted claims about certain performing traditions being at odds with the composer's intentions ('misleading listeners as to how that music is meant to sound', for example) without having investigated the matter historically.