The Compleat Brahms: A Guide to the Musical Works of Johannes Brahms - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393047083 ISBN 13: 9780393047080

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 1999

Synopsis

The 1997 centennial of Brahms's death has intensified interest among concertgoers and music lovers in the composer's prodigious body of work.

For all those eager to delve more deeply into Brahms's music, The Compleat Brahms is an indispensable companion. In a single volume that covers every work written by Brahms, leading scholars from across the country provide details of each work's composition and discuss its important stylistic features. Interspersed are fascinating essays ― such as "Brahms, Joachim, and the Schumanns" ― that bring the composer and his contemporaries to life. Much more than a collection of program notes, The Compleat Brahms vividly portrays the work and world of one of the giants of Western music history.

About this title

About the Author

Leon Botstein is president of Bard College and director of the American Symphony Orchestra. Among his publications are Music and Its Public and Jefferson's Children: Learning and the Promise of a Democratic Culture.

Reviews

Botstein, president of Bard College and director of the American Symphony Orchestra, presents this helpful and user-friendly compendium as the "first and only annotated catalog of Brahms' music in English." Essays by such scholars as Walter Frisch and Michael Musgrave (whose Cambridge Companion to Brahms is forthcoming) are gathered into chapters on Orchestral Music, Chamber Music, Solo Piano Music, Solo Lieder and Vocal and Choral Music. Botstein himself, who writes on many vocal works, has a welcome tendency toward brevity, and never goes on too long about minor works or even major ones. All the essays are anchored in the composer's life, revealing such matters as his relations with Robert and Clara Schumann as well as other still-debated details of his love life. Some of the more outstanding essays in this vein are by Jan Swafford, author of Johannes Brahms: A Biography, who introduces the "Alto Rhapsody" in a way guaranteed to appeal even to those who consider Brahms to be merely "Gloomy Joe," as the EMI record producer Walter Legge used to sarcastically refer to him, adding: "The main problem with Brahms is that he never got syphilis." By contrast, the book's writers' are all Brahms enthusiasts, and their excitement is infectious, in good part because the essays are not permitted to go on to Brahmsian lengths. Botstein has compiled a valuable, welcome addition to the bibliography.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

This collection of approximately 100 short essays from 30 scholars provides analysis and discussion on virtually every one of Brahms's compositions. The works are grouped in chapters according to genre. Larger works (e.g., symphonies) are given individual essays, and smaller ones (e.g., songs) are grouped chronologically. Each writer was given the freedom to approach the subject independently, and the entries, which range from one to several pages in length, vary in the amount of biographical, historical, and analytical material they contain. Some of the essays are chatty, while others are quite technical. Botstein, president of Bard College and director of the American Symphony Orchestra, provides some unity in an introductory overview of Brahms's life and short introductions to each of the five major chapters, but for the most part this is a reference book for the serious Brahms lover.ATimothy J. McGee, Univ. of Toronto
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0393047083
• ISBN 13: 9780393047080
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 450
• Editor: Botstein Leon