Johannes Brahms (1833 – 1897) was a German composer
and pianist of the Romantic period. Born in Hamburg
into a Lutheran family, Brahms spent much of his
professional life in Vienna, Austria. His reputation
and status as a composer are such that he is sometimes
grouped with Johann Sebastian Bach and Ludwig van
Beethoven as one of the "Three Bs" of music, a comment
originally made by the nineteenth-century conductor
Hans von Bülow.
Of all the major composers of the late Romantic era,
B...(+)
Johannes Brahms (1833 – 1897) was a German composer
and pianist of the Romantic period. Born in Hamburg
into a Lutheran family, Brahms spent much of his
professional life in Vienna, Austria. His reputation
and status as a composer are such that he is sometimes
grouped with Johann Sebastian Bach and Ludwig van
Beethoven as one of the "Three Bs" of music, a comment
originally made by the nineteenth-century conductor
Hans von Bülow.
Of all the major composers of the late Romantic era,
Brahms was the one most attached to the Classical ideal
as manifested in the music of Haydn, Mozart, and
especially Beethoven; indeed, Hans von Bülow once
characterized Brahms' Symphony No. 1 (1855-1876) as
"Beethoven's Tenth." As a youth, Brahms was championed
by Robert Schumann as music's greatest hope for the
future; as a mature composer, Brahms became for
conservative musical journalists the most potent symbol
of musical tradition, a stalwart against the
"degeneration" represented by the music of Wagner and
his school. Brahms' symphonies, choral and vocal works,
chamber music, and piano pieces are imbued with strong
emotional feeling, yet take shape according to a
thoroughly considered structural planMost likely
composed in the summer of 1893, the Klavierstücke
(Piano Pieces), Op. 119, were published in Berlin by
Simrock in 1893. They were first performed in London in
January 1894.
Brahms was uncomfortable with descriptive titles for
his collections of pieces, and often resorted to the
non-committal, "Klavierstücke." The Piano Pieces, Op.
119, do not require the technical facility necessary to
play many of his earlier works, but an incisive
musicality is paramount for a proper performance of
these musical miniatures. Of the four works, the final
"Rhapsody" is perhaps the best known and most
effective, and may date from earlier in Brahms' career.
Occasionally unsure what title, if any, he should give
an individual piece, he used the title rhapsody to get
himself out of a bind. The Alto Rhapsody, Op. 53, was
the first piece for which Brahms used the term, and
which has a very different format than the Two
Rhapsodies, Op. 79, of 1879.
The Op. 119 Rhapsody in E flat major, is the longest of
Brahms' late piano works. In three-part song form, the
first section is itself ternary. A passage built of
triplets encloses the more lyrical central episode,
which features a stepwise melody over broken chords in
A flat major. Brahms' predilection for variation takes
hold as the triplet passage reappears to round off the
central section, bringing with it a return of E flat
major. Variation continues as the entire opening
section, in the "wrong" key, appears before the literal
reprise. Here, Brahms inserts new material on E flat
minor, a key far removed from the tonic. The Rhapsody's
firm close on E flat minor is very unusual and looks
back to the second of Schubert's Four Impromptus, D.
899, which reverses the typical Classical era procedure
of moving from a minor key to close on a related major
key.
Although originally composed for solo piano, I created
this Interpretation of the "Rhapsody" in Eb Major (Op.
119 No. 4) for Woodwind Quintet (Flute, Oboe, Bb
Clarinet, French Horn & Bassoon).
PARTITION