Johannes Brahms
Johannes Brahms

Author: Jan Swafford

Publisher:

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 699

ISBN-13: 9780333725894

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In an expansive study Johannes Brahms emerges from Jan Swafford's book is not a bearded eminence but rather an assemblage of contradictions. He grew up in grinding poverty and as a teenager was forced to play the piano in brothels. Recognized by his teachers as a stupendous talent, Robert Schumann proclaimed Brahms at only twenty-years-old to be the saviour of German music. Brahms spent the rest of his life living up to the that prophecy. He experienced triumphs few artists have enjoyed in their lifetime, yet lived with a relentless loneliness and a growing fatalism about the future of music and the world.

Chamber Music
Chamber Music

Author: James M. Keller

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 517

ISBN-13: 019020639X

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Chamber Music: A Listener's Guide brings together acclaimed program annotator James Keller's essays on the essential chamber-music repertoire. Written to be meaningful to non-professional music-lovers while also providing enrichment for chamber-music professionals, these notes offer generous historical background for 193 works by 56 composers from the 18th century to the present.

The Vintage Guide to Classical Music
The Vintage Guide to Classical Music

Author: Jan Swafford

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 1992-12-15

Total Pages: 626

ISBN-13: 0679728058

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The most readable and comprehensive guide to enjoying over five hundred years of classical music -- from Gregorian chants, Johann Sebastian Bach, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to Johannes Brahms, Igor Stravinsky, John Cage, and beyond. The Vintage Guide to Classical Music is a lively -- and opinionated -- musical history and an insider's key to the personalities, epochs, and genres of the Western classical tradition. Among its features: -- chronologically arranged essays on nearly 100 composers, from Guillaume de Machaut (ca. 1300-1377) to Aaron Copland (1900-1990), that combine biography with detailed analyses of the major works while assessing their role in the social, cultural, and political climate of their times; -- informative sidebars that clarify broader topics such as melody, polyphony, atonality, and the impact of the early-music movement; -- a glossary of musical terms, from a cappella to woodwinds; -- a step-by-step guide to building a great classical music library. Written with wit and a clarity that both musical experts and beginners can appreciate, The Vintage Guide to Classical Music is an invaluable source-book for music lovers everywhere.

Performing Brahms
Performing Brahms

Author: Michael Musgrave

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2003-10-02

Total Pages: 436

ISBN-13: 9780521652735

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A great deal of evidence survives about how Brahms and his contemporaries performed his music. But much of this evidence - found in letters, autograph scores, treatises, publications, recordings, and more - has been hard to access, both for musicians and for scholars. This book brings the most important evidence together into one volume. It also includes discussions by leading Brahms scholars of the many issues raised by the evidence. The period spanned by the life of Brahms and the following generation saw a crucial transition in performance style. As a result, modern performance practices differ significantly from those of Brahms's time. By exploring the musical styles and habits of Brahms's era, this book will help musicians and scholars understand Brahms's music better and bring fresh ideas to present-day performance. The value of the book is greatly enhanced by the accompanying CD of historic recordings - including a performance by Brahms himself.

Brahms
Brahms

Author: John Bell Young

Publisher: Courier Dover Publications

Published: 2016-11-28

Total Pages: 179

ISBN-13: 0486817776

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Engaging survey covers Brahms' major orchestral, choral, and piano music, culminating in a discussion of the German Requiem. Commentary places the composer's compelling music within the context of his era and environment.

The Music of Brahms
The Music of Brahms

Author: Michael Musgrave

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 1994

Total Pages: 354

ISBN-13: 9780198164012

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Michael Musgrave presents a contemporary view of Brahms 150 years after his birth, seeing him not simply as the "conservative" figure so often stressed in the past, but as one who creatively reinterpreted a wider range of historical elements than any composer of his time. Brahms absorbed his studies directly into his music making and composition and in so doing helped to evolve not merely a personal language which was regarded as progressive and sometimes difficult by a range of contemporaries and successors, but also helped to establish an ethos of historical reference which anticipates the twentieth century. The Music of Brahms concentrates on the music, with Brahms's life discussed briefly in the introduction. The works are considered in four phases according to genre, with an emphasis on connection and on the development and elaboration of a unified language. The list of works includes recent discoveries and a calendar outlines the pattern of his musical life, including relevant information concerning performances.

The Songs of Johannes Brahms
The Songs of Johannes Brahms

Author: Eric Sams

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2000-01-01

Total Pages: 396

ISBN-13: 9780300079623

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"Essential to the composer's method of song-writing was a harmony between musical form and poetic text. Sams takes us right to the heart of that creative method and helps to explain how and why a particular part of the text matches a particular piece of music. He includes a list of the motifs employed by Brahms to help show how the mind of the composer worked when seeking apposite music for the imagery of the poem."--BOOK JACKET.

Brahms's Vocal Duets and Quartets with Piano
Brahms's Vocal Duets and Quartets with Piano

Author: Paul Stark

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 1998-07-22

Total Pages: 173

ISBN-13: 0253028450

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" . . . a generous treatment of some of Brahms's most endearing and imaginative creations." —Choice " . . . an excellent addition to the literature on vocal chamber music . . . " —Notes In this sequel to A Guide to the Solo Songs of Johannes Brahms, Lucien Stark opens up a beautiful and largely neglected repertoire, providing the full German text for each song, along with a new English translation, notes on vocal ranges, and a wealth of engaging commentary of technical, aesthetic, and historical interest.