Brahms Essay
Johannes Brahms 1833-1897
Daniel Jung
Johannes Brahms was born in Hamburg to a Lutheran family, and spent much of his professional life in Vienna. He is grouped with J.S Bach and Beethoven to be one of the ‘three Bs’. Brahms was a virtuoso pianist, and premiered many of his own works – many of the pieces that he composed for the piano were written to match his standards. He was extremely skilled at counterpoint, and used a lot of counterpoint to ‘honour’ the ‘purity’ of the structure of counterpoint and to advance them into a romantic idiom, to create new bold approaches to harmony and melody. Brahms also had a conservative approach towards music, his music firmly being in the roots of the baroque and classical styles. But also he used novel ensemble types and new Eastern-European folk music, of which the fourth movement of his second string quintet is an example of. The second string quintet in G major was published in 1980. Brahms had troubles writing string ensemble music, destroying many of them before publication, but after his success of his string sextet in the 1850s, he adopted the string quintet, writing the piano quintet and two string quintets. The quintet is scored for two violins, two violas and a cello, which is an unusual combination. The piece provides a good example of Brahms’ style – it contains a complex sonata form in the first movement, and the final fourth movement portraying a Austrian-Hungarian dance influenced by the Czardas. This piece is also in cyclic form.
The first movement, allegro non troppo, is in sonata form, but contains two long transition sections where Brahms develops his musical ideas. Brahms included material in the movement from his planned fifth symphony, but was never released. The main theme of the exposition features a rising arpeggio theme in G major in the cello, which is then accompanied by light tremolo in the violins and the violas. The music then modulates to D major, where a three note motif which
Daniel Jung
Johannes Brahms was born in Hamburg to a Lutheran family, and spent much of his professional life in Vienna. He is grouped with J.S Bach and Beethoven to be one of the ‘three Bs’. Brahms was a virtuoso pianist, and premiered many of his own works – many of the pieces that he composed for the piano were written to match his standards. He was extremely skilled at counterpoint, and used a lot of counterpoint to ‘honour’ the ‘purity’ of the structure of counterpoint and to advance them into a romantic idiom, to create new bold approaches to harmony and melody. Brahms also had a conservative approach towards music, his music firmly being in the roots of the baroque and classical styles. But also he used novel ensemble types and new Eastern-European folk music, of which the fourth movement of his second string quintet is an example of. The second string quintet in G major was published in 1980. Brahms had troubles writing string ensemble music, destroying many of them before publication, but after his success of his string sextet in the 1850s, he adopted the string quintet, writing the piano quintet and two string quintets. The quintet is scored for two violins, two violas and a cello, which is an unusual combination. The piece provides a good example of Brahms’ style – it contains a complex sonata form in the first movement, and the final fourth movement portraying a Austrian-Hungarian dance influenced by the Czardas. This piece is also in cyclic form.
The first movement, allegro non troppo, is in sonata form, but contains two long transition sections where Brahms develops his musical ideas. Brahms included material in the movement from his planned fifth symphony, but was never released. The main theme of the exposition features a rising arpeggio theme in G major in the cello, which is then accompanied by light tremolo in the violins and the violas. The music then modulates to D major, where a three note motif which