Michael Musgrave (ed.) - The Cambridge Companion to Brahms

The Cambridge Companion to Brahms

This companion gives a comprehensive view of the German composer Johannes Brahms (183397). Twelve chapters by leading scholars and musicians provide systematic coverage of the composers life and works. Their essays represent the latest research and reflect changing attitudes towards a composer whose public image has long been out of date.

The first part of the book contains three chapters on Brahmss early life in Hamburg and on the middle and later years in Vienna. The central section considers the musical works in all genres, while the last part of the book offers personal accounts and responses from a conductor (Roger Norrington), a composer (Hugh Wood) and an editor of Brahmss original manuscripts (Robert Pascall).

The volume as a whole is an important addition to Brahms scholarship and provides indispensable information for all enthusiasts and students of Brahmss music.

Michael Musgrave is Emeritus Professor of Music at Goldsmiths College, University of London. He is author of The Musical Life of the Crystal Palace , The Music of Brahms , and Brahms: A German Requiem in the series Cambridge Music Handbooks.

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The Cambridge Companion to

BRAHMS

.............................

EDITED BY

Michael Musgrave

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

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Cambridge University Press

The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK

Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York

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Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521481298

Cambridge University Press 1999

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 1999

A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data

The Cambridge Companion to Brahms / edited by Michael Musgrave.

p. cm.

Includes work list, bibliographical references, and index.

ISBN 0 521 48129 5 (hardback) ISBN 0 521 48581 9 (paperback)

1. Brahms, Johannes, 18331897 Criticism and interpretation.

I. Musgrave, Michael, 1942 .

ML410.B8C36 1998

780.92dc21 983057 CIP

[B]

ISBN-13 978-0-521-48129-8 hardback

ISBN-10 0-521-48129-5 hardback

ISBN-13 978-0-521-48581-4 paperback

ISBN-10 0-521-48581-9 paperback

Transferred to digital printing 2006

Contents

Kurt Hofmann

Michael Musgrave

Leon Botstein

John Rink

David Brodbeck

Kofi Agawu

Malcolm MacDonald

Daniel Beller-McKenna

Michael Musgrave

Roger Norrington with Michael Musgrave

Robert Pascall

Hugh Wood

Illustrations

Acknowledgements

Music examples are reproduced by kind permission of the copyright owners. , Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, Vienna. The jacket image is by courtesy of the Portrait Gallery of the Royal College of Music, London, with thanks.

Particular thanks are expressed to Morna Flaum for assistance with typing and to Daniel Grieco for assistance with translations; to Edward Roesner and Virginia Hancock; and to Lucy Carolan for her most painstaking and helpful editing of the text. Finally, I am indebted to my contributors for their patience during the preparation of this book, and I thank Roger Norrington especially for his kind hospitality during the preparation of his chapter.

Michael Musgrave

Contributors

Kurt Hofmann has assembled since the 1950s the largest private collection of Brahms material, which has formed the main part of the Brahms-Institut at Lbeck, of which he is Director with Renate Hofmann. His research has resulted in publications, many of them standard works of reference, including the editing of the reminiscences of Richard Heuberger and Richard Barth, a study of the first editions (Die Erstdrucke der Werke von Johannes Brahms, Tutzing, 1975), a detailed calendar of Brahmss life (Johannes Brahms: Zeittafel zu Leben und Werk , with Renate Hofmann, Tutzing, 1983), a revised listing of Brahmss library (Die Bibliothek von Johannes Brahms , Hamburg, 1974), and studies of Brahmss connections with Hamburg and Baden Baden. Professor Hofmann is an editor of the Johannes Brahms Briefwechsel: Neue Folge, which has continued the original, sixteen-volume, series of Briefwechsel .

Leon Botstein is editor of The Musical Quarterly , conductor of the American Symphony Orchestra and President of Bard College, New York, where he has pioneered annual festivals devoted to individual composers, including, in 1990, Brahms. His Brahms writings include articles on concert life, science and music in Brahmss Vienna, and on Brahms and nineteenth-century painting. He is editor of and contributor to The Compleat Brahms, forthcoming from Schirmer in 1999. As a conductor he has performed little-known nineteenthand twentieth-century orchestral and choral works. His recordings include performances of works by Joachim and Schubert, in orchestrations by Joachim, Mottl and Webern, and Brahmss Serenade in D, in both its published version and a reconstructed version as a nonet.

John Rink is Reader in Music at Royal Holloway, University of London. His fields of specialism are performance studies, theory and analysis, and nineteenth-century studies. He is the author of Chopin: The Piano Concertos (1997), joint editor, with Jim Samson, of Chopin Studies 2 (1994) and editor of The Practice of Performance: Studies in Musical Interpretation (1995), all published by Cambridge University Press. Dr Rink is Project Director and one of three series editors of The Complete Chopin A New Critical Edition (Peters Edition).

David Brodbeck is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Music at the University of Pittsburgh. He is former President of the American Brahms Society and edits the series of Brahms Studies published by the University of Nebraska Press. He has contributed essays to Brahms Studies: Analytical and Historical Studies (Oxford University Press, 1990), Mendelssohn Studies (Cambridge University Press, 1992), Brahms and His World and Mendelssohn and His World (both Princeton University Press) and Schubert: Critical and Analytical Studies (University of Nebraska Press), as well as to the periodicals 19th-Century Music and Journal of Musicology