{"id":683,"date":"2008-01-22T11:12:10","date_gmt":"2008-01-22T19:12:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2008\/01\/22\/brahms-the-wallflower\/"},"modified":"2013-02-07T18:33:43","modified_gmt":"2013-02-08T02:33:43","slug":"brahms-the-wallflower","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2008\/01\/22\/brahms-the-wallflower\/","title":{"rendered":"brahms the wallflower?"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

Anne Midgette, writing<\/a> for the Washington Post, talks about her non-response to the music of Johannes Brahms, which she describes thusly:<\/p>\n

Certainly I, for one, have always had trouble pinning him down. And I have always had trouble liking his music.<\/p>\n

Not that I find listening to Brahms actually odious. I have been known to muster warm feelings for the Sextet in G or the C Minor Quartet; and I am partial to the later solo piano music. But in general, Brahms is not a composer who makes my heart leap when he walks into the room. Rather, I greet his appearance as you would the entrance of a person at a party whom you’re not all that eager to talk to, even though you may have had intense and intermittently rewarding conversations over the years. As a musician friend of mine said of Brahms’s music, “It just goes on . . . and on . . . and on.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Apparently Bernard Holland of the New York Times agrees<\/a>:<\/p>\n

For all their sophistication and invention, Brahms\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s string quartets are tough love, and hearing consecutively both ends of his Opus 51 \u00e2\u20ac\u201d one piece in C minor, the other in A minor \u00e2\u20ac\u201d is an awful lot of genial determination at one sitting. To ensure that a large audience at the Rose Theater kept any hint of a smile off its collective face, there was the F minor Quintet for Piano and Strings after intermission, with the pianist Gilbert Kalish.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I can’t find fault with what they say – it’s their own reaction to his music. That’s true for them, if not to me, and I’ve got to respect that. But I find the reserve and austerity of Brahms – his northern Germanic nature, rather than the thigh-slapping Southern, Bavarian Germanic nature of say, Mozart – is appealing to me.<\/p>\n

He never quite gets to the heart of the matter – always eluding the crux through sleight of hand – until it can be avoided no longer and there is that ray of sunshine, or the intense gut feeling of despair.<\/p>\n

These payoffs are what his music is all about. I think about the decade or so it took for him to use the formal “du” form of address with Clara Schumann, as opposed to the formal “sie”.<\/p>\n

It’s easy to get wrapped up in the construction of his music – he’s taking old models and adapting them through constant reworking of themes and rhythms, it’s true – but this is just the elaborate wrapping paper on the gift that reveals the true depths of his feeling.<\/p>\n

<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Anne Midgette, writing for the Washington Post, talks about her non-response to the music of Johannes Brahms, which she describes thusly:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":303,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[148,115],"tags":[120],"class_list":["post-683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-appreciations","category-music","tag-classical-music"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa8kC-b1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2133,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2009\/03\/14\/brahms-sweet-brahms\/","url_meta":{"origin":683,"position":0},"title":"brahms sweet brahms","author":"Charles Noble","date":"March 14, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Johannes Brahms Ever fallen in love with a familiar piece all over again?\u00c2\u00a0 That's what happened to me this week with the Brahms 3rd Symphony.\u00c2\u00a0 It was the first Brahms symphony that I played, back in the Tacoma Youth Symphony under our wonderful conductor Harry Davidson (now at Duke University).\u00c2\u00a0\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "appreciation"","block_context":{"text":"appreciation","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/appreciations\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Johannes Brahms","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/04\/brahms5.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":6708,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2011\/07\/26\/brahms-is-complicated\/","url_meta":{"origin":683,"position":1},"title":"brahms is complicated","author":"Charles Noble","date":"July 26, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"I love Brahms. There are no two ways about it - I unapologetically adore listening to and performing the music of Brahms. I love practicing Brahms - because to be able to bring off a good performance of Brahms, one must be aware of the fact that Brahms is as\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "bloggers"","block_context":{"text":"bloggers","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/bloggers\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/08\/Johannes_Brahms_1853-e1281144932286.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2144,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2009\/03\/15\/mmm-brahms\/","url_meta":{"origin":683,"position":2},"title":"mmm, brahms…","author":"Charles Noble","date":"March 15, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"","rel":"","context":"In "fun"","block_context":{"text":"fun","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/fun\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"churchsign","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/03\/churchsign.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":12660,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2013\/05\/20\/brahms-tidbits\/","url_meta":{"origin":683,"position":3},"title":"brahms tidbits","author":"Charles Noble","date":"May 20, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Above: The alphorn melody heard by Brahms on a walk, written on a birthday greeting to Clara Schumann. Below: The autograph score of the First Symphony, with the horn solo that quotes the alphorn melody written above.","rel":"","context":"In "the orchestra world"","block_context":{"text":"the orchestra world","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/the-orchestra-world\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"alphornbrahms","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/alphornbrahms-500x277.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3184,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2009\/09\/30\/brahms-youthful-concerto\/","url_meta":{"origin":683,"position":4},"title":"brahms’ youthful concerto","author":"Charles Noble","date":"September 30, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"This weekend, the Oregon Symphony is performing the early (op. 15) First Piano Concerto of Johannes Brahms with the great pianist Jon Kimura Parker.\u00a0 It's long been one of my favorite pieces, a stormy, hyper-emotional, post-adolescent expression of the 25 year old Brahms.\u00a0 I only own one recording of this\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "appreciation"","block_context":{"text":"appreciation","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/appreciations\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"brahms","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/09\/brahms-400x355.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4877,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2010\/06\/23\/brahms-on-vuvuzelas\/","url_meta":{"origin":683,"position":5},"title":"brahms on vuvuzelas","author":"Charles Noble","date":"June 23, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Thanks to Opera Chic for finding this and sharing it with the world.\u00a0 Go USA!!","rel":"","context":"In "fun"","block_context":{"text":"fun","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/fun\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/303"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=683"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}