Music Educators Association of New Jersey

 

 

This presentation centered around Brahms as a culminating composer in the “era of tonal music,” and included a discussion about the composers who influenced him. Some recorded musical excerpts were played to illustrate points. The music historian L. Michael Griffel, PhD, has a most impressive resume: education (B.A. Yale summa cum laude, music theory, Juilliard MS, piano, Columbia M.A. , music theory and Ph.D., historical musicology), teaching and administration (Juilliard, CUNY, Hunter College, the Mannes College of Music), and author of published articles, described here.

The lecture’s title refers to the influence of earlier composers as heard in Brahms’s music. We’ve seen distorted images of Brahms in articles and on film. But what was Brahms really like? Michael maintained he was “sincere, hardworking, of good character and a good friend of artists. The Hungarian-Jewish violinist Joseph Joachim was one of his closest friends.” Described as a “posthumous musician,” a conservative composer focusing on century-old styles, Brahms was thought “too late” to be an innovator. Yet, in the 1880’s, his name finally replaced Berlioz as one of the “three Bs” thanks to Hans von Bülow.

In Style and Idea, Arnold Schoenberg’s article, “Brahms the Progressive” credits Brahms with rhythmic, harmonic, and structural innovations. One finds the old and the new in Brahms. To some, his music may seem like “the recap of an era,” yet we also hear new approaches in tonality, the treatment of dissonances, and other characteristics. There is more elasticity in treatments of the elements of music; the old and the new appear simultaneously.

Brahms was influenced greatly by J.S.Bach, Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Schubert, and Robert Schumann. We hear Bach’s influence in Brahms’s strict and free counterpoint, and his treatment of dissonance. Brahms’s mastery of polyphony is heard in the fugue of his Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel, Op. 24. Beethoven’s influence is evident in Brahms’s use of sonata form, theme and variations, expanded ternary form and in the generation and development of motivic material. Franz Schubert’s streaming melodies, many moods expressed in his piano pieces, songs, dances, and movements, and his palette of sonorities and tonalities are reflected in Brahms’s music. Robert Schumann’s collections of poetic miniatures {short piano pieces} perhaps led Brahms to compose his collections of short but profoundly moving pieces.

Michael Griffel proceeded to support these contentions of influences by discussing specific compositions. Influence of Bach is heard in the Intermezzo in F minor, Op 118, No. 4 with its canonic treatments, imitation, contrary motion, and canon. Another example is the passacaglia of the fourth movement of Symphony No. 4, Op. 98.

Influence of Beethoven is heard in Brahms’s Symphony No, 1 in C Minor, which ends in an uplifting C Major, reminiscent of Beethoven’s Fifth and Ninth Symphonies. Symphony No. 2 in D Major takes the opening motifs of lower neighbor and the interval of a fourth as the germ motifs to be expanded in the entire symphony. This technique was employed by Beethoven, who was very economical in his introduction of motives, and very inventive in their development. Beethoven’s composing variations, “simultaneously and continuously varying and developing themes,” certainly inspired Brahms. Michael played excerpts from the first, third, and fourth movements of Brahms’s Symphony No. 2.

Perhaps Franz Schubert’s music had the greatest influence on Brahms, particularly in the mixing of major and minor modes in a short passage, and the craftily smooth movement from one key to another, be it flats to sharps, or distantly related keys. Brahms also might create a tiny ABA form within a secondary theme. This was described in detail. Brahms edited Schubert’s symphonies, a sign of his high regard of Schubert.

To illustrate Schumann’s influence on Brahms, his Symphony No, 3, Op. 97, “The Rhenish,” was compared to Brahms’ Symphony No. 3 in F Major Op.90 in the use of rhythmic devices like dotted rhythms and use of hemiola. Reminding us of Brahms’ emotional expression, Michael played a recording of the last of the Four Serious Songs in which the meaning of life, (Faith, Hope, and Love), is the subject. It was a moving way to close.

Bertha Mandel, writer
Lisa Gonzalez, screenshots and layout