Brahms among friends : listening, performance, and the rhetoric of allusion

400 Pages·2014·1.93 MB·English

by  Berry

BRAHMS AMONG FRIENDS
AMS Studies in Music
christopher reynolds, General Editor
Editorial Board
Susan Youens
Victor Coelho
Richard Crawford
Julie E. Cumming
Annegret Fauser
Ellie Hisama
Susan McClary
Judith Peraino
Thomas Riis
Kay Kaufman Shelemay
Anthony Sheppard
Joseph Straus
Conceptualizing Music:
Cognitive Structure, Theory, and Analysis
Lawrence Zbikowski
Inventing the Business of Opera:
The Impresario and His World in Seventeenth-Century Venice
Beth L. Glixon and Jonathan Glixon
Lateness and Brahms:
Music and Culture in the Twilight of Viennese Liberalism
Margaret Notley
The Critical Nexus:
Tone-System, Mode, and Notation in Early Medieval Music
Charles M. Atkinson
Music, Criticism, and the Challenge of History:
Shaping Modern Musical Thought in Late Nineteenth-Century Vienna
Kevin C. Karnes
Jewish Music and Modernity
Philip V. Bohlman
Changing the Score:
Arias, Prima Donnas, and the Authority of Performance
Hilary Poriss
Rasa:
Affect and Intuition in Javanese Musical Aesthetics
Marc Benamou
Josquin’s Rome:
Hearing and Composing in the Sistine Chapel
Jesse Rodin
Details of Consequence:
Ornament, Music, and Art in Paris
Gurminder Kaur Bhogal
Sounding Authentic:
The Rural Miniature and Musical Modernism
Joshua S. Walden
Brahms Among Friends:
Listening, Performance, and the Rhetoric of Allusion
Paul Berry
BRAHMS AMONG
FRIENDS
Listening, Performance, and the
Rhetoric of Allusion
Paul Berry
1
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Berry, Paul, 1977- author.
Brahms among friends : listening, performance, and
the rhetoric of allusion / Paul Berry.
pages cm.— (AMS studies in music)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-19-998264-6 (hardback : alk. paper)
1. Brahms, Johannes, 1833-1897—Criticism and interpretation. I. Title.
ML410.B8B425 2014
780.92—dc23
2013031618
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
For friends past and present

acknowledgments
To fully recount the kindness of those who have made this volume possible, I
would need to write another book. During the final months, Suzanne Ryan,
Adam Cohen, Jessen O’Brien, Erica Woods-Tucker, Mary Sutherland, and the
staff at Oxford University Press guided the project to fruition smoothly and
graciously. Paul Kerekes and Benjamin Wallace created reams of meticulous
musical examples with unflappable good cheer. Most of all, Christopher Rey nolds
read and reread each chapter with extraordinary precision and sympathy. For
myriad improvements of style and substance, for stimulating interchange, and
for unfailing encouragement, I remain deeply in his debt.
Throughout a decade of work on the book, crucial funding has come from
several institutions, including a Fellowship from the National Endowment for
the Humanities and research grants and fellowships from Yale University, the
Yale School of Music, the University of North Texas, and the American Brahms
Society. I am grateful to administrators and staff at Yale and the University of
North Texas, especially Robert Blocker of the Yale School of Music and James
Scott of the UNT College of Music. Without their support, the book would
not exist. Likewise, I could never have completed it without assistance and gen-
erous permissions from archives, libraries, and publishing houses on two conti-
nents. In particular, I thank Dr. Prof. Otto Biba, Suzanne Lovejoy, Amy Hague,
Dr. Prof. Wolfgang Sandberger, Richard Saunders, Dr. Roland Schmidt-Hensel,
Dr. Wolf-Dieter Seiffert, Dr. Michael Struck, Dr. Thomas Synofzik, Dr. Silvia
Uhlemann, Anita Wilke, and the caring staff at the Brahms-Institut an der
Musikhochschule Lübeck, the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna, the
Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, the Smith College Library, the
Staatsbibliothek in Berlin, the Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek in Hamburg,
the Universitätsbibliothek in Basel, the Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek in
Darmstadt, the Wienbibliothek im Rathaus, the Yale University Music Library,
and the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University.
viii acknowledgments
At every stage of the project, colleagues and friends have given unstintingly
of their time and expertise. Floyd Grave provided detailed editorial assistance
with my article, “Old Love: Johannes Brahms, Clara Schumann, and the Poetics
of Musical Memory” ( Journal of Musicology, 2007), which now forms the basis
for chapter 6. Kristina Muxfeldt, Michael Friedmann, and Leon Plantinga have
each continued to offer invaluable comments throughout the years since they
served as readers for my dissertation, parts of which have worked their way into
several chapters of the present volume. In addition to the readers and editors
named above, I have benefited enormously from conversation and music
making with Styra Avins, Daniel Beller-McKenna, Eric Bianchi, Benjamin
Brand, David Brodbeck, David Clampitt, Richard Cohn, Dane Gordon, Virginia
Hancock, Joel Haney, James Hepokoski, Robert Holzer, Evan Horowitz, Patrick
McCreless, Margaret Notley, Ellen Rosand, Charles Rosen, Karl Schrom, Sarah
Waltz, and the wonderful graduate students who challenged me each week in
seminars on Brahms and Schubert at the UNT College of Music and the Yale
School of Music. Because of them, and many others, each of the pages that
follow will always bear the imprint of fond memories.
My gratitude goes last to those dearest to me. To my father, Paul, forever my
favorite singer, and my mother, Elvera, the most dedicated rhetorician I know,
for nurturing the confluence of interests that sustains my work; to my sons,
Quinby and Benjamin, for long patience with a parent distracted by music and
history; and above all to my wife, Holly, my truest friend, for all that we are and
will be together—my thanks and love.
contents
Introduction: Historiographies of Allusion 3
Part I Occasional Lullabies
1. Old Melodies, New Identities 41
2. Lessons in Politics and Innuendo 73
Part II Themes and Variations
3. Emulation as Empathy 109
4. Consequences of Criticism 134
Part III Clara at the Keyboard
5. Family Resemblances 175
6. Shared Nostalgia 199
7. Grief and Transformation 229
Part IV Rhetorics of Closure
8. Forests of the Heart 269
9. Counterpoint and Catharsis 296
10. Concealment as Self-Restraint 332
Bibliography 353
Index 373
ix