Stirling wrote:

>In the first case - both Mozart and Brahms share a particular working
>method - creation of the top and botton voices first, and filling in the
>inner voices later, the only excetpions being at critical turns in the
>music.

Where exactly do you have reference to both composers' working methods.  If
this is, as I think it is, an assumption, please some more detail as to how
you reached this conclusion.

>This produces a particular kind of relationship between them, the
>base becomes a kind of "bass melody", with rhythmic liveliness.

This seems more akin to Bach than Mozart.

>Compare this with Beethoven and Wagner who both use a "top line and
>chords" method of composeing.  The bass line is not expected to be
>continually melodic in its interest.

Simply not true.  Listen to Die Meistersinger Overture, or Dawn and
Siegfried's Rhine Journey, where all voices are derived from the same
motives.  As for Beethoven, listen to the 7th symphony, or the Appassionata
Sonata, or even the Pathetiqe sonata.

>Though with Beethoven, a pianist, the bass line is always
>animated to a degree that one does not find in Wagner.

Isn't this due more to the fact that Wagner's works usually have a slower
harmonic rhythm than Beethoven's?

>The second is in the use of fugal procedures of a very old fashion kind
>- derrived from modal techniques - as a means of creating the harmonic
>texture.  Both composers [Mozart and Brahms] adored executing very
>polished voice leading through unexpected chords.  For both Beethoven and
>Wagner, the most distant chord would be an occasion for interutption and
>reorganisation.

Well, there are very few comparable examples between Brahms and Mozart
which include "unexpected chords".  Now, comparing Bach and Brahms on the
other hand....

>Brahms wrote for an intentionally archaic orchestra.

Hmm.  The same "archaic" orchestra that Tchaikowsky, almost an exact
contemporary, was using.  Why is it archaic? And how is this comparable to
Mozart, who immediately incorporated the clarinet in his orchestra as soon
as it was available?

>Many people do not appreciate this:  he did not hear such orchestra's
>regularly during his later years, and often notes the use of horns which
>had been out of use of decades by the time of his scores.

What? Is this a reference to Brahms or to Mozart? Schumann's symphonies
have *tons* of horns and were written well within the span of Brahms'.
Same with Tchaikowsky and Bruckner.

>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.

I agree more with Schoenberg....Brahms the Contemporary!  If he is looking
backwards, it is more to Bach....use of developing variation, motivic
integration, and vortspinnung.  However, his cross-rhythms, harmonic
pungency, and orchestration are wholly contemporary for his time---and
often forward-looking.

Marcus Maroney
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