Allusion as Narrative Premise in Brahms's Instrumental Music

Jacquelyn E. C. Sholes

Description

Who inspired Johannes Brahms in his art of writing music? In this book, Jacquelyn E. C. Sholes provides a fresh look at the ways in which Brahms employed musical references to works of earlier composers in his own instrumental music. By analyzing newly identified allusions alongside previously known musical references in works such as the B-Major Piano Trio, the D-Major Serenade, the First Piano Concerto, and the Fourth Symphony, among others, Sholes demonstrates how a historical reference in one movement of a work seems to resonate meaningfully, musically, and dramatically with material in other movements in ways not previously recognized. She highlights Brahms's ability to weave such references into broad, movement-spanning narratives, arguing that these narratives served as expressive outlets for his complicated, sometimes conflicted, attitudes toward the material to which he alludes. Ultimately, Brahms's music reveals both the inspiration and the burden that established masters such as Domenico Scarlatti, J. S. Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, Schumann, Wagner, and especially Beethoven represented for him as he struggled to emerge with his own artistic voice and to define and secure his unique position in music history.

Acknowledgements
List of Musical Instrument Abbreviations
Introduction
1. The Notion of Allusion as Narrative Premise in Brahms's Instrumental Music
2. Lovelorn Lamentation, or Histrionic Historicism?: Re-Examining Allusion and Extramusical Meaning in the B-Major Piano Trio, op. 8
3. Musical Memory and the D-Major Serenade, op. 11
4. An Historical Model, an Emerging Soloist, a Young Composer in Turmoil: The Piano Concerto in D Minor, op. 15
5. A Later Example: Tragic Antiquarianism in Brahms's Fourth Symphony
Conclusion
Selected Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• Musique
• Histoire de la musique
• Technique musicale
• Technique musicale
• Techniques musicales
• MUSIC
• Música instrumental
• Multiple signal classification
• Study
• Symphony No. 4
• Narrative
• History of classical music traditions
• Schumann
• Theory
• Allusion
• Joseph Haydn
• Instrumental
• Instruction
• Wagner
• Robert Schumann
• Domenico Scarlatti
• Johann Sebastian Bach
• Franz Schubert
• Johannes Brahms
• Ludwig van Beethoven
• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 24 mai 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 3
• EAN13: 9780253033192
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 18 Mo

Extrait

ALLUSION AS NARRATIVE PREMISE IN BRAHMS’S INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC
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ALLUSION AS NARRATIVE PREMISE IN BRAHMS’S INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC
Jacquelyn E. C. Sholes
Indiana University Press
Publication of this book was supported by the AMS 75 PAYS Endowment of the American Musicological Society, funded in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
© 2018 by Jacquelyn E. C. Sholes
A version of chapter 2 was published as “Lovelorn Lamentation or Histrionic Historicism? Reconsidering Allusion and Extramusical Meaning in the 1854 Version of Brahms’s B-Major Trio” in 19th-Century Music 34/1 (2010): 61–86. This material appears here in accordance with the copyright agreement with the University of California Press.
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses’ Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Cataloging information is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-0-253-03314-7 (cloth)
ISBN 978-0-253-03315-4 (paperback)
ISBN 978-0-253-03316-1 (ebook)
1 2 3 4 5 23 22 21 20 19 18
To my parents , Barbara and Joseph Sholes , and in loving memory of my grandmothers , Ruth Stella Coran Sholes (1918–2013) and Evelyn June Kagan (1907–2014)
Contents
Acknowledgments
List of Musical Instrument Abbreviations
Introduction
1 The Notion of Allusion as Narrative Premise in Brahms’s Instrumental Music
2 Lovelorn Lamentation or Histrionic Historicism? Reexamining Allusion and Extramusical Meaning in the B-Major Piano Trio, op. 8
3 Musical Memory and the D-Major Serenade, op. 11
4 A Historical Model, an Emerging Soloist, a Young Composer in Turmoil: The Piano Concerto in D Minor, op. 15
5 A Later Example: Tragic Antiquarianism in Brahms’s Fourth Symphony
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
I WOULD LIKE to thank the numerous colleagues, friends, mentors, and family members who generously gave of their time and expertise and provided much encouragement and support during the period in which this book came into being. I begin by thanking acquisition editors Janice Frisch and Raina Polivka, series editor Robert Hatten, the editorial board of Indiana University Press, and the manuscript reviewers for their enthusiasm about this project, for their expertise and insight, which were invaluable as I made final revisions to the text, and for guiding me so smoothly through the review and publication process with my first book. Thanks also to those on the production teams at Indiana University Press and at Ninestars who helped to prepare the project for publication, particularly Nancy Lightfoot and Narasimhan, and to Benjamin Ayotte for typesetting the musical examples. I send most profound thanks to Christopher Reynolds for his encouragement and his support of this project and for his detailed, thoughtful feedback on the manuscript. Many thanks to Margaret Notley for her editorial work for 19th-Century Music on my article on Brahms’s op. 8 Trio, as well as to Lawrence Kramer and the journal’s editorial board for their helpful feedback on the article, on which Chapter Two of this book is based; both the article and the chapter are the stronger for their work.
I will be forever grateful to my dissertation advisor, Allan Keiler, for his thoughtful readings of early versions of some of the material presented here and for his guidance not only in developing this material, but in developing as a thinker and a writer. I am also deeply grateful to the other members of my dissertation committee, Eric Chafe and Daniel Beller-McKenna, whose feedback on early drafts was, similarly, delivered with much insight and much kindness. I am thankful to all three for remaining so steadfastly supportive of my work and my career over the past several years.
I am deeply thankful as well to the American Musicological Society for two generous publication subventions from the AMS 75 Pays Endowment, funded in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, which helped to cover costs related to the preparation of this book. I am grateful to the American Brahms Society for the award of a Geiringer Scholarship in Brahms Studies, which helped to support my research in its early stages—and also to the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and the Music Department at Brandeis University for supporting my work with a Phyllis G. Redstone Dissertation-Year Fellowship, a Herbert and Mildred Lee Fellowship, and a four-year doctoral fellowship.
In my current position in Boston University’s Department of Musicology & Ethnomusicology, I have been extremely grateful for the advice and support of department chairs Victor Coelho and, before him, Jeremy Yudkin, and for the collegiality of current and former fellow department members Marié Abe, Michael Birenbaum-Quintero, Sean Gallagher, Brita Heimarck, Miki Kaneda, Thomas Peattie, Joshua Rifkin, Andrew Shenton, and Rachana Vajjhala. I am grateful to Jeremy Yudkin and Lewis Lockwood, co-directors of the Center for Beethoven Research at Boston University, for the opportunity to serve as Scholar in Residence at the Center in 2017–18. I would also like to thank current and former mentors, colleagues, and research and administrative staff in the music departments and libraries of Boston University, Brown University, Wellesley College, Williams College, Harvard University, and Brandeis University, including Jennifer Bloxam, Pamela Bristah, Marci Cohen, Vera Deak, Marion Dry, Claire Fontijn, Dana Gooley, Marjorie Hirsch, Sarah Hunter, David Kechley, Robert Levin, Michael McGrade, Holly Mockovak, Jessie Ann Owens, Eric Rice, Darwin Scott, Laura Stokes, and Anthony Sheppard.
I am grateful to Roger Moseley for sharing with me the contents of his article on Brahms’s B-Major Piano Trio just prior to the article’s publication in the Journal of the Royal Musical Association and to Paul Berry for discussing with me in detail the contents of his book Brahms among Friends in advance of the book’s publication in 2014. Thanks also to Scott Burnham, David Ferris, Nancy Reich, the late Joel Sheveloff, and Boston University German Studies scholar William Waters for responding quickly and thoroughly to questions related to their respective areas of expertise.
I would like to thank several other fellow Brahms scholars not yet mentioned for welcoming me so warmly into their ranks in the early years of my career, for their collegial support and, in some cases, for their feedback on work published elsewhere. Sincerest gratitude and admiration to Styra Avins, George Bozarth, David Brodbeck, Robert Eshbach, Walter Frisch, Valerie Goertzen, Virginia