|
C Dish
|
 |
« Reply #105 on: 19:06:15, 24-01-2008 » |
|
I was waiting for someone to bring up Innigkeit -- that's the word for a German phenomenon that leaves a lot of non-Germans cold, I think. Being German myself, and cherishing that characteristic, I cannot relate to Reiner's dismissiveness at all. But I am willing to believe it quite peaceably.
Brahms became less and less heavy-handed in the course of his career. I don't think he really hit his stride until the German Requiem, which I contend has some incredibly good music in it. There are good bits in the earlier works, e.g., the op. 25 Piano Quartet in G minor, but I see e.g. the op. 111 String quintet to be a masterpiece of understatement and subtlety. Same with the Clarinet Quintet, which I don't choose as my first example only because it's been talked to death already in other contexts.
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
inert fig here
|
|
|
|
Ian Pace
|
|
« Reply #106 on: 19:19:47, 24-01-2008 » |
|
Perhaps there is some underlying conclusion about the role of an artist to society... that a German artist feels no responsibility to his audience, who must instead strive to accept and understand his art-work... whereas there is a more interactive relationship in other countries? (you sound so like Taruskin there!  ) The problem with that argument is that, at least in terms of generating lasting audiences over a considerable period of time, the best German composers (at least from the 18th and 19th centuries) have been extremely successful. Whether or not Brahms or Bruckner consciously chose to write 'for audiences', there are sizeable (at least relative to those who listen to classical music in general) audiences who have wanted to and continue to want to hear the music. |
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
'These acts of keeping politics out of music, however, do not prevent musicology from being a political act . . .they assure that every apolitical act assumes a greater political immediacy' - Philip Bohlman, 'Musicology as a Political Act'
|
|
|
|
Reiner Torheit
|
|
« Reply #107 on: 19:22:24, 24-01-2008 » |
|
You mean, like some of us are doing on this thread with our Brahms aversions?
And indeed, the pro-Joh lobby are doing with their Brahms addictions  Really? I'd have said Le Roi Arthus had Wagner-worship written over every bar ....
Oh, I didn't say he'd succeeded Any more so than Debussy exorcised "Old Klingsor", who can be heard padding around Titurel's Arkel's bedroom in gumboots. But it was what he'd hoped to do. I think it's symptomatic of this over-predominance of German music that composers felt they somehow had to take-on the German composers on their own territory? There's a wearisome trend of operas about bands of knights in medieval epics... but the truly successful works of the period are those that dish the dirt on this stuff... RUSALKA, for example, bins both Wagnerian opera, and the medieval court of its "Prince", in favour of keeping company with sea-shells I remember Sorabji bemoaning at various times "dull, colourless, pompous, leaden, square-toed, Teutonic Brahms"
Really - Sorabji said all those things about Brahms?? And it needed Toscanini to scamper through the Old Teuton's works to dispel some of this? Why do I involuntarily recall the Monty Python line about ways of disguising spam in recipes?? |
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
"I was, for several months, mutely in love with a coloratura soprano, who seemed to me to have wafted straight from Paradise to the stage of the Odessa Opera-House"
- Leon Trotsky, "My Life"
|
|
|
|
Ian Pace
|
|
« Reply #108 on: 19:32:58, 24-01-2008 » |
|
You mean, like some of us are doing on this thread with our Brahms aversions?
And indeed, the pro-Joh lobby are doing with their Brahms addictions I don't think many of the 'pro-Joh lobby' have a problem with the fact that some people don't respond to Brahms (or Bruckner); what is a problem is the implication that those who do like it only do so out of some misguided devotion to something purely because it is German/Austrian, or whatever. I don't know Borodin's Symphonies, at least not at all well (I think I've heard one or two of them a while back, but don't remember much); promoters and record companies are always looking for new repertoire to perform and record, I imagine Borodin's symphonies have had certain outings outside of Russia, possibly have generated some admirers (all for the good). If they generated a sustained following over a period of time, all the better. But that is really more of the issue than whether there's some sustained conspiracy to keep Brahms/Bruckner in and Borodin out. The polemics against Germany by Taruskin and others might be more convincing if they seemed genuinely to want to advocate the other non-German musics that they hold up in opposition. Sometimes you get that in Taruskin (though only quite occasionally), but for the most part I get the feeling that nowadays 'Russia' is primarily of value to him as a stick with which to beat 'Germany' with. Which hardly seems a very fruitful way to proceed. |
|
|
|
« Last Edit: 19:45:36, 24-01-2008 by Ian Pace »
|
Logged
|
'These acts of keeping politics out of music, however, do not prevent musicology from being a political act . . .they assure that every apolitical act assumes a greater political immediacy' - Philip Bohlman, 'Musicology as a Political Act'
|
|
|
|
C Dish
|
|
« Reply #109 on: 19:50:10, 24-01-2008 » |
|
The polemics against Germany by Taruskin and others might be more convincing if they seemed genuinely to want to advocate the other non-German musics that they hold up in opposition. Sometimes you get that in Taruskin (though only quite occasionally), but for the most part I get the feeling that nowadays 'Russia' is primarily of value to him as a stick with which to beat 'Germany' with. Which hardly seems a very fruitful way to proceed.
Oi! That's a bit unfair -- or have you read Defining Russia Musically or the 2-volume Stravinsky bio? |
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
inert fig here
|
|
|
|
Ian Pace
|
|
« Reply #110 on: 19:52:47, 24-01-2008 » |
|
The polemics against Germany by Taruskin and others might be more convincing if they seemed genuinely to want to advocate the other non-German musics that they hold up in opposition. Sometimes you get that in Taruskin (though only quite occasionally), but for the most part I get the feeling that nowadays 'Russia' is primarily of value to him as a stick with which to beat 'Germany' with. Which hardly seems a very fruitful way to proceed.
Oi! That's a bit unfair -- or have you read Defining Russia Musically or the 2-volume Stravinsky bio? Yes, both of them (well, skimmed through the Stravinsky work, read Defining Russia Musically in great depth). Sure, sometimes he does do that (and I gather his first book, Opera and Drama in Russia as Preached and Practised in the 1860s, which grew out of his PhD thesis, is the best in this respect, though I haven't read that one), but in more recent times he seems far more interested in bashing 'Germany', 'absolute music', modernism, and various other things, than anything else. Certainly in the Oxford History he gets far more passionate against Germany (and against lots else) than he ever does in favour of Russian music. |
|
|
|
« Last Edit: 19:56:47, 24-01-2008 by Ian Pace »
|
Logged
|
'These acts of keeping politics out of music, however, do not prevent musicology from being a political act . . .they assure that every apolitical act assumes a greater political immediacy' - Philip Bohlman, 'Musicology as a Political Act'
|
|
|
|
C Dish
|
|
« Reply #111 on: 19:54:18, 24-01-2008 » |
|
I guess I overlooked the word 'nowadays' -- in which case I don't feel inclined to defend the old man.
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
inert fig here
|
|
|
|
richard barrett
|
|
« Reply #112 on: 20:01:53, 24-01-2008 » |
|
I think I must have missed something. When did anyone here say that people who like Brahms's music do so out of devotion to Germanness?
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
|
Ian Pace
|
|
« Reply #113 on: 20:07:11, 24-01-2008 » |
|
I think I must have missed something. When did anyone here say that people who like Brahms's music do so out of devotion to Germanness?
In this thread, it was Bruckner: Bruckner is, in fact, one of those second-rate composers who was elevated to first-rank status by dint of Austrian nationality - had he been born in Norway he'd be utterly obscure. And in an earlier thread: Had Brahms lived in Britain, or Italy, or anywhere other than Germany, he would be obscure and forgotten. |
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
'These acts of keeping politics out of music, however, do not prevent musicology from being a political act . . .they assure that every apolitical act assumes a greater political immediacy' - Philip Bohlman, 'Musicology as a Political Act'
|
|
|
|
C Dish
|
|
« Reply #114 on: 20:09:10, 24-01-2008 » |
|
There was also this: But you see the point about this so-called continuum of "German serious music"... that Borodin's excellent symphonies get sidelined, because of the irrational "two legs bad, four legs German" thought process?
Though I think it was a throw-away comment more than anything. |
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
inert fig here
|
|
|
|
Ian Pace
|
|
« Reply #115 on: 20:17:02, 24-01-2008 » |
|
There's also the question of the 'nationalist' card being thrown at Brahms (from early on in the thread), which is particularly potent when aimed at a German (though it could equally be said of Smetana, Verdi, Mussorgsky, or any number of others).
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
'These acts of keeping politics out of music, however, do not prevent musicology from being a political act . . .they assure that every apolitical act assumes a greater political immediacy' - Philip Bohlman, 'Musicology as a Political Act'
|
|
|
|
richard barrett
|
|
« Reply #116 on: 20:30:22, 24-01-2008 » |
|
So it's just Reiner to blame then?
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
|
richard barrett
|
|
« Reply #117 on: 22:08:23, 24-01-2008 » |
|
I can relate what strina says, about music that 'struggles and strives for something it never quite reaches, or even deliberately turns away from just as it's getting there', to my experience of Brahms much more readily (although I don't personally find it a big problem), but that's surely the opposite of saying that the music is 'too explicit, leaving nothing to the listener's imagination, he seems unaware of the possibility of implying something ... rather than stating it in forthright terms and then underlining it for good measure'.
I don't think there's any contradiction between these two remarks actually. Brahms's music occupies all the space available to it, but by doing so makes even more clear the places it isn't prepared to go, denying rather than suggesting the space around it, a horror vacui expressing itself as constraint. I would contrast this situation with the music of his contemporary Bruckner, which seems to me, in some way I can't quite describe, more "open" in time and space, concerning itself with expanding the imagination rather than with minutiae. (I realise I'm in danger of generalising whatever point I might have out of existence.) or does he just "state it in forthright terms and then underline it for good measure"? You mean, like some of us are doing on this thread with our Brahms aversions? It isn't really an aversion I have, still less a belief that I've understood the essence of Brahms's music and found it nugatory, because I do listen to and enjoy it and even study it now and again; an annoying feeling that there's something important missing in this music as far as I'm concerned, without quite being able to put my finger on what it is (as witness my none too coherent comments above). I hope it's clear to everyone though that this has precisely nothing to do with Brahms's nationality or nationalism, however interesting as a subject that might be. I'm only British of course, which as we all know is far worse than being German.  |
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
|
ahinton
|
|
« Reply #118 on: 22:14:42, 24-01-2008 » |
|
I'm only British of course, which as we all know is far worse than being German. I much appreciate all the rest of what you write here (which I don't quote simply for the sake of space saving), but "British"? You? I'd had you down for Welsh. Am I wrong? |
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
|
martle
|
|
« Reply #119 on: 22:19:34, 24-01-2008 » |
|
Alistair, what on earth is it with you and Richard being Welsh? You never miss an opportunity to bring it up. And as far as I'm aware, Richard has never ever invoked that fact in support or refutation of any argument or issue of substance on any of these boards. I ask partially cos I'm half Welsh myself.
Sorry, but I don't understand your point.
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
Green. Always green.
|
|
|
|
