Brahms Studies, Volume 2

The eight essays in Brahms Studies 2 provide a rich sampling of contemporary Brahms research. In his examination of editions of Brahmss music, George Bozarth questions the popular notion that most of the composers music already exists in reliable critical editions. Daniel Beller-McKenna reconsiders the younger Brahmss involvement in musical politics at midcentury. The cantata Rinaldo is the centerpiece of Carol Hesss consideration of Brahmss music as autobiographical statement. Heather Platts exploration of the twentieth-century reception of Brahmss Lieder reveals that advocates of Hugo Wolfs aesthetics have shaped the discourse concerning the composers songs and calls for an approach more clearly based on Brahmss aesthetics.

In his examination of the rise of the great symphony as a critical category that carried with it a nearly impossible standard to meet, Walter Frisch provides a rich context in which to understand Brahmss well-known early struggle with the genre. Kenneth Hull suggests that Brahms used ironic allusions to Bach and Beethoven in the tragic Fourth Symphony in order to subvert the enduring assumption that a minor-key symphony will end triumphantly in the major mode. Peter H. Smith examines Brahmss late style by concentrating on Neapolitan tonal relations in the Clarinet Sonata in F Minor. Finally, David Brodbeck delineates the complex evolution of Brahmss reception of Mendels-sohns music.