Brahms's Song Collections

ISBN-13: 9780521835589 / Angielski / Twarda / 2006 / 284 str.

Inge Van Rij

Opis

Brahms once complained that singers never performed his songs in the groups in which he had published them, which he likened to 'song bouquets'. Over a century later, many singers and musicologists continue to ignore Brahms's wishes and focus on the individual songs rather than the bouquet groups. This is a detailed study of the implications of Brahms's comments. Following an examination of contemporary aesthetic and generic frameworks, the book traces Brahms's Lieder from their conception, to the arrangement into bouquets, to performance and reception, and examines the sometimes contradictory roles played by poet, composer, performer and recipient in creating coherence in song collections. An investigation of the graphic cycles of Max Klinger reveals a startling visual analogue of Brahms's conception of the song bouquet, and a final examination of the evidence of Brahms's aesthetic outlook reveals that his intentions may have been cyclic in more than one sense.

Recenzje

Review of the hardback: '… it is a dense, detailed exploration of an essentially academic subject …' Classical Music

Spis treści

Introduction; Part I: Context; Organicism; Lyric cycles; Self-reflexivity, fragments, and Hoffmann's Kater Murr; Textual coherence in the song-cycle canon; Key sequence; Key characteristics and other alternative approaches to tonal sequence; Part II: Conception to publication; Before composing: texts and notebooks; From conception to arrangement: 'Heine cycles'; Ordering for publication; Titles and title pages; Flower imagery; Part III: Arrangement; Plot archetypes: sorrow to comfort; Narrative; Op. 32 as narrative; Op. 57 as narrative; Narrative elements in other bouquets; Self-reflexivity; Alternatives to narrative: juxtaposition and resonance; Tempo, closure, and cyclic patterning; 'Wie Melodien'; Part IV: Performance; Performance contexts; Criteria in assembling a recital programme; Gender and dramatic characterisation; Identification between singer and narrator; Tessitura, range, and performance by several singers; Transposition; Performance and coherence in the Ophelia-Lieder; Part V: Reception; Reviews; Responses of Brahms's acquaintances; Identification of composer with narrator; Dedicatory cycles and the composer's voice; The graphic cycles of Max Klinger; Part VI: Cyclic Intent.