Go PM on the Brahms thing, guys? Or continue this on the Brahms thread?
 

I'm also not going to pursue this further in this thread (all subsequent stuff should be in the Brahms thread), just to ask that the one specific claim made, concerning the Lutheran chorale, could do with being substantiated - perhaps in that very thread?

Well, perhaps you could first tell us in which work (with bar-numbers, please) we can hear "Palestrina" in Brahms's work?

Then I'll dig out his cod chorale for you

As I said - it was not me who raised the topic of Brahms. I'm afraid that unilaterally "closing" topics you no longer wish to discuss, after opening them with such extraordinary statements,  is not in the best traditions of forum debate.  If you make unreasonable or exaggerated claims,  you must expect to have them challenged - as I have done.

Unlike you, I do not believe that ANY composer is "above challenge", and I don't put composers on pedastals as you do.  Nor, frankly, do I accept "I know better than you do" as a line of argument.

I am sure that you have composers whose works leave you entirely unmoved.  So do I.  Mine are Brahms and Bruckner. I have listened to nearly everything Bruckner wrote in attempt to understand what others see in his music.  I've listened to Brahms endlessly, I have programmed his songs in recitals.  He continues to leave me utterly unmoved.  Perhaps - if you read other posts than Ian's - you might go back to my post about the possibility of composers falling through a Zeitgeist hole?   I find there is nothing a Protestant German writing for the comfortable bourgeousie in the cosy economic certainties of late C19th Vienna has to say to me as an Atheist Brit Expat living in a country in the hairlines of American ballistic missiles. (Still less a devout Catholic organist from provincial Austria). I am slightly puzzled as to why your knee narrowly missed my head as it jerked past it for saying what I feel about a repertoire of music?

I'm not at all sure it is appropriate to move the Brahms posts to the Brahms thread.  They were advanced here in this thread to illustrate Brahms as a putative "post-modernist" - a claim which is being rapidly backpedalled upon once challenged. 

As part of a discussion of the "reuse" of older material in a conscious way to achieve some contrived effect, I believe those messages belong in this thread.

Ahem.

Can I point out what brought Brahms into the thread? There was a brief post from marbleflugel talking about various composers' relationship with the older figures who influenced them, including one sentence on Brahms, to which I replied with three sentences, arguing for a more nuanced view of Brahms's relationship to traditions. This included the sentence 'Almost every work of Brahms is considered to have its basis in some other model (which, were he doing that today, might lead to some calling him 'postmodern')', which Reiner in particular seems to have distorted into a claim that Brahms was a 'putative 'post-modernist'', which neither I nor any others I know posting on here are claiming. Other than a lot of continuous ranting on this subject, as opposed to answering the questions placed by Alistair and myself in a perfectly legitimate (on all sides) debate concerning Brahms's worth or otherwise, the rest of the comments are not really about 'postmodernism' at all - at least the term has not yet been defined in such a way that would attain some sort of general assent and as such might make this issue meaningful. It is all essentially about what we think of Brahms, about the relationship of Brahms's to his sources and influences (comments that equally come up, say, in the Grimes thread, and when discussing most composers, and are in no sense exclusive to debates on postmodernism). I do not see what would be lost by transferring it all to 'The Brahms Debate' thread. Maybe there we can also be furnished with some information on this 'cod chorale', promised if some evidence of a Palestrina connection was provided?

Shall we have another poll to determine members' views on which way Brahms himself might have voted? (assuming that he would not have abstained); if so, it'll be another three-strikes-and-you're-out moderator warning to the first person that suggests "UKIP" (as in "UKIP it where it is now", or something...)

Best,

Alistair

And if he'd gone to the pub with Liszt, well ....