Is there a myth of Brahms?

[Quijote]

Yes, virility in music. Hard to define (using words or even algorithms, I imagine) yet we all know it. No?

[Sorrano]

Liszt/Wagner. The more I listen to the lesser of each of these pairs the more that I like them. Beethoven simply defies categorization and I think that he knew that.

[Quijote]

Brahms is quite virile, I feel, but that beard ... dunno ... a bit too masculine? Dammit, I just realized Dvorak had one too!
May I just say here that I've quit smoking (6 weeks more or less now) and I've grown a beard. New health, new look? My students love it! (Oh Maestro, such an artist's look you have now, so unlike the skinhead smooth-jawed brute you looked like before! We love you! We love you! Can we have better marks now?). My 'significant other' can't stand it. My daughter is undecided.

[Sorrano]

Brahms is quite virile, I feel, but that beard ... dunno ... a bit too masculine? Dammit, I just realized Dvorak had one too!
May I just say here that I've quit smoking (6 weeks more or less now) and I've grown a beard. New health, new look? My students love it! (Oh Maestro, such an artist's look you have now, so unlike the skinhead smooth-jawed brute you looked like before! We love you! We love you! Can we have better marks now?). My 'significant other' can't stand it. My daughter is undecided.

Don't forget Tchaikovsky's beard, as well. Visually, those three make quite the trio. Once I had a goatee until it got caught in my coat zipper. Your "significant other' will get used to it. They may say they dislike it, but sometimes I wonder....

[Quijote]

But back to Brahms and myths. That towering figure, the piercing eyes, the flowing beard, the cigars, the playing of the pianoforte in brothels, the unrequited passion between him and the virtuoso Clara, brilliant-yet-tormented wife of boggle-eyed but creative genius Robert, recipient (somehow) of the legacy handed down by the stormy wild-haired bootboy wunderkind from Bonn who single-handedly tore down the bewigged perfumed artifice delicately erected by Wolfie and Joseph who in certain respects ... [continues in this vein for 94 pages]

[Quijote]

No, but really, you get the idea. My apologies Enrique for derailing your thread, though I do think it kind of ties in (very loosely). For me, this Romantic 'myth' finds its apotheosis in the perfectly horrid ritual that is the New Year Vienna Phil concert. I am very sorry to say this, but the VPO New Year concert encapsulates all that I detest about 'classical' music.

[Quijote]

I know, I know, I've gone over the top, I'm exaggerating, I'm ranting. Again, please forgive me, but somehow the term 'music lover' ('mélomane' in French) makes me shudder.
"Oh, I do so love music!" or "Ooh, I love a good tune, me!" The hell I do! I battle with it. It must have either balls or such extreme delicacy as to make me weep. Plus a hefty dose of something "meditative". I have no time for anything else. Thus is the Gospel according to Don Quijote.
Have I covered all my bases, Ed?
[You have, you have. Medication time, dear boy! Ed.]

[Quijote]

No, but really, you get the idea. My apologies Enrique for derailing your thread, though I do think it kind of ties in (very loosely). For me, this Romantic 'myth' finds its apotheosis in the perfectly horrid ritual that is the New Year Vienna Phil concert. I am very sorry to say this, but the VPO New Year concert encapsulates all that I detest about 'classical' music.

Sorry to quote myself [Very dodgy practice. Ed.], but I remember watching the VPO New Year concert on New Year's Day 2012. OK, apart from the usual Strauss, what really made me hide my face in shame was the sight of the conductor Franz Welser-Möst hitting a triangle in time to the oom-pa-pa or honking on some sort of post-horn. It was all very embarrassing. I nearly vomited onto my plate of canapés.

[Enrique]

I deeply regret to have started a thread like this. It was a moment of insanity. The whole thing is neither fish nor <whatever the word>. In Germany the figure of Brams has always been held in great esteem. I do not know now, but the expression "the three Bs" was invented there or in Austria. Only they understood Brahms, while for the rest of Europe he was an academic composer. Brahms is the true heir of Beethoven and who does not understand this has not yet reached the ninth heaven of music.

Somethings I can say that perhaps lessen his figure. There is localism in Brahms. Certain parts of this work are tinted with the savor of his land. And his taste for thirds and sixths, more proper to popular music. Also, hearing his slow movements some extramusical images come to my mind. Never happened with Beethoven. Nor is there any local color in his great works. Beethoven is neutral and universal.

[Peter]

Sorry to quote myself [Very dodgy practice. Ed.], but I remember watching the VPO New Year concert on New Year's Day 2012. OK, apart from the usual Strauss, what really made me hide my face in shame was the sight of the conductor Franz Welser-Möst hitting a triangle in time to the oom-pa-pa or honking on some sort of post-horn. It was all very embarrassing. I nearly vomited onto my plate of canapés.

I have to agree that was particularly nauseating, but then I was recovering from the previous night!

[Peter]

I deeply regret to have started a thread like this. It was a moment of insanity. The whole thing is neither fish nor <whatever the word>. In Germany the figure of Brams has always been held in great esteem. I do not know now, but the expression "the three Bs" was invented there or in Austria. Only they understood Brahms, while for the rest of Europe he was an academic composer. Brahms is the true heir of Beethoven and who does not understand this has not yet reached the ninth heaven of music.

Firstly I see no reason to regret starting the thread which is provoking some interesting responses. Secondly, I very much admire the music of Brahms but I think labels such as 'true heir' are unhelpful and detrimental to a proper understanding of Brahms, just as describing his 1st symphony as Beethoven's 10th is absurd.

Berlioz, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Wagner, Liszt, Bruckner, Mahler etc.... all these composers were greatly influenced by Beethoven, so in reality posterity is the true heir.

[Chaszz]

I agree this thread has elicited some interesting responses. In some ways it's like those new clever little magazines one increasingly finds on the internet where to be provocative is the most important thing.

However, I'd like to say for me Brahms is simply a very great composer and I just plain love his music. His influences, his relationship to other composers, his continuing or not the tradition of this one or that one, his progressivism or conservatism, etc., are all relatively unimportant compared to the simple worth of his music. Not to provoke, just to comment, e.g., I can't get into Dvorak very much, but for 50 years Brahms has been my companion and I still find new things to listen to that show his touch of simple majesty, warmth and inspiration. When I was 19 back in the prehistoric era I painted every day to his symphonies, now I do the same with his chamber music which I am thoroughly and pleasurably exploring.

[Sorrano]

I have to agree that was particularly nauseating, but then I was recovering from the previous night!

I absolutely refuse to watch those.

[Quijote]

Dear Enrique, my apologies once again for going off on some manic tangent. Back to Brahms then. Symphonies 1 & 4 : such great works. But I'm prejudiced because I've played 'cello in those two! Now I come to think of it, they didn't seem to have 'muddy orchestration', but I was in the middle of things and is hard to judge in that position. On the other hand, I remember playing 'cello in Schumann's Rheinische symphony and thinking the whole thing was not hanging together well.

[Enrique]

Firstly I see no reason to regret starting the thread which is provoking some interesting responses. Secondly, I very much admire the music of Brahms but I think labels such as 'true heir' are unhelpful and detrimental to a proper understanding of Brahms, just as describing his 1st symphony as Beethoven's 10th is absurd.

Berlioz, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Wagner, Liszt, Bruckner, Mahler etc.... all these composers were greatly influenced by Beethoven, so in reality posterity is the true heir.

That thing about the 1st symphony looks like the advertising of a new product on TV. And it lacks sense. In saying 'true heir' I was carried away by enthusiasm. All composers the lived in the XIX were under Beethoven's aegis, you're right. But if I had to choose one that was closer to his legacy, I'd choose Brahms. Think about the things in which Beethoven excelled. What was the most important one?: his treatment of form. Precisely that which characterizes Brahms. And this is the feature that makes his followers to limp. They lack that inner logic one finds in Beethoven.

Another feature, strongly connected with the former: his ability to build an entire section from mere motifs or bare cells. Example: the first theme, first movement, Brahms fourth symphony. It is constructed out of a third, by inversion and transposition. The whole movement is built by transformations of this insignificant material. Is this not the way Beethoven did it?

Form and development. These are not two ornaments of music. They are it's very essence. Music does not go directly to the heart. It makes its way through the brain.