Rosemary Ceravolo wrote:

>Regarding Brahms, the Jan Swafford Biography will make the Brahms
>debate much clearer with regard to both sides of his music.

Absolutely.  I can't recommend this book highly enough.  It's one of the
best biographies I've read, period.  It's as if Swafford had managed to
spend some time in Brahms era and wrote accordingly.

>Either he was a Hamburgian bourgeois or a minor genius who knew he
>couldn't surpass those who came before him such as the Italian Baroque
>composers along with Bach, Beethoven and Schubert.  He was caught between
>a rock and a hard place, based more on his zeitgeist than his rather
>retro sensibilities as a composer.  The influence of Liszt and Wagner,
>which typified the New German Music, probably undid his value even to
>this day.

I didn't interpret Brahms' story this way, but that's what happens when
you have a great writer telling the story of a great artist.

That said, I can't think of him as a bourgeois and certainly not a minor
genius.  He wasn't as prolific as Bach, nor as important a figure in
establishing the basis for the Western music that followed, and he may
not have been as "important" as Beethoven (and I'm not sure of that),
but for me Brahms is one of the grand figures in the history of human
art.  The sheer humanity of his music I find irresistible (though I wish
he wrote more interesting trombone parts!).  I never thought of the
influence of Liszt and Wagner as reducing his value (and I like both
composers, particularly Wagner), but that may be a matter of taste.
Finally, Swafford did make an interesting point that I had not thought
of before, and that is that Brahms had a strong influence on Twentieth
Century music. Now that Swafford mentions it, I find an easy point to
agree with.

>His fixations on Robert and Clara Schumann didn't help his music's
>developments for the most part.  Sentimentality entered his compositions
>all too frequently, including his unabated love of Hungarian gypsy music
>and folk songs.

I'm not sure they were fixations so much as sitting where he felt
comfortable going.  Maybe there's a bit of chicken and egg here, though
it's worth noting that Schumann's played a major role in promoting Brahms.
I do agree with this view of the "Hungarian" music.  Swafford is good
at telling the story about where Brahms' interest in this music came
from, but I still don't care for it.

>I agree that the conductors' interpretations of Brahms's music is key
>to feeling a congeniality with his works.  I mistakenly purchased the 4
>Symphonies conducted by Solti and was left cold, compared to the conductors
>known for their more 'Romantic' interpretations such as Walter, Barbirolli
>and Barenboim.

I actually like Solti's Brahms (including the Requiem) and no one is
more surprised than I.  I hate his Beethoven, am not that crazy about
his Bruckner, and can take or leave most of his Mahler, but his Brahms
is a most pleasant surprise that I find hard to explain.

Roger Hecht