Stirling Newberry writes:

>Brahms is, like so many others of that
>time, finding his identity in being an archaicism - a ruin if you will.  "A
>Ruin is a monument facing backward".  In stretching to make this identity
>work - he often procedes to engage in some of the most far flung synthesis
>of techniques.

This reminds me that the strongest impression Brahms makes
on me is of incredible refinement - his music, even such a granitic
colossus as the 1st piano concerto, has no rough edges.  He took
the traditions he was given to their limits, and in that sense he, for
me anyway, perfectly embodied the end of an era, rather than the
beginning of a new one.

And no, I can't give concrete examples; this is just an intuitive
feeling I have about how his music affects me.

len.