The Progressive Poet: Brahms's Fourth Symphony and modernism

The Progressive Poet: Brahms’s Fourth Symphony and

Modernism.

By Christian Griffiths

INTRODUCTION

The so-called “War of the Romantics” seems, in historical retrospect, to be little more

than a clash of artistic vanities that was later rationalised into a philosophical schism.1

While it is certainly the case that analysis of the debate offers valuable insights into

the artistic process, the ideological chasm between the ‘progressive’ New German

School, led by Liszt and Wagner, and the ‘absolutists’, represented by Brahms, should

be regarded as largely superficial in terms of true progress in the medium of music. In

“Brahms the Progressive”,2 Schoenberg attempts to harmonise the debate. However,

he is only partially successful, for while he demonstrates the undeniable value of

Brahms’s work, he never directly addresses the criticisms that had branded the

composer’s approach as regressive in the first place. Liszt, looking back on the artistic

conflict that had escalated through the 1850s, wrote that the ‘progressives’ had sought

for the “renewal of music through its intimate connection with poetry”,3 as a measure

to halt what he saw as the backsliding of a generation of composers into the “…empty

formulae…” and “…pseudo-classicis[m]…” of absolute music.4 This was to be

accomplished through the tradition of narrative, or “programme”, music that had

germinated in the symphonies of Beethoven and was developed in the 1830s by

Berlioz. While Schoenberg’s essay demonstrates that, in Brahms’s hands, absolute

music was far from formulaic, further argument is needed if we are to align the goals

of the composer with his New German School contemporaries.

An analysis of Brahms’s Fourth Symphony Op. 98 offers a number of

instances that demonstrate that, although the composer never made claim to

progressive ideals, his approach to composition typified exactly that spirit of renewal

1 For a full account of the escalations of this conflict, see: Alan Walker, Liszt. Volume II. The Weimar

years, 1848-1861. (London: Faber, 1997), 338-367. 2 Arnold Schoenberg, ‘Brahms the progressive’ in Style and Idea: Selected Writings, ed. L. Stein.

(London: Faber, 1975), 398-441 3 Alan Walker, Liszt. Volume II, 339.

4 Ibid, 340.

2

that Liszt embraced. In Brahms’s music, a relationship to the world of literature, while

by no means a certain intention of the composer, is certainly a quantifiable outcome of

his compositional style. Analysis will reveal that not only was Brahms progressive in

precisely this respect, but also that he nimbly outstripped his more ‘literary’ peers.

I

Schoenberg, as composer himself, is able to offer considerable critical insight into the

artistic process, but his writings reveal that he is a partisan, if not outright disciple, of

Brahms’s compositional approach. His critical objective in “Brahms the Progressive”

seems not to seek progressive ideas in Brahms’s music, but rather to redefine the

concept of ‘progressive’ so Brahms may be included in the description while others,

previously thought to be so, should be excluded from it. Therefore, it might be wiser

to proceed armed with Schoenberg’s insights, but to let his arguments serve only as a

rough guide to the issue.

Despite his apparent bias, Schoenberg comes dangerously close to aligning

Brahms with the programmatic/literary principles of the New German School,

particularly in his assessment of the composer’s approach to metre. He argues that

Brahms was the first composer since Mozart to make extensive use of themes

constructed of phrases unequal in length.5 This practice, combined with his use of

musical phrases that occur in irregular metrical patterns, is described by Schoenberg

as “musical prose”.6 In the first movement of Brahms’s Fourth Symphony Op. 98, we

find a number of features that correspond to this apt poetic/literary concept.

II

The first eight measures of the first movement present the principal theme. The theme

is regular in metre and length, and therefore may be described as strophic:

5 Arnold Schoenberg, ‘Brahms the progressive’ in Style and Idea: Selected Writings, ed. L. Stein.

(London: Faber, 1975), 6Walter Frisch, “Brahms, Developing Variation and the Schoenberg Critical

Tradition” 19th-Century Music, Vol. 5, No. 3 Spring, 1982.

3

Example 1: mm. 1-9. 1 & 2 Violin

This opening idea is especially responsive to Schoenberg’s concept. Each unit of the

melody resembles a poetic ‘foot’: the two notes that make up each phrase correspond

to the two-syllable feet of an ‘iamb’. Shakespeare used iambic forms for his dramatic

verse in the standard meter of ‘pentameter’, that is, five groups of two syllabic feet per

line. In the musical phrases above, the intervallic variety has a recitative quality that

resembles the pitches of human speech, therefore we may posit that the opening

theme of the symphony resembles a line, or rather a couplet, of musical verse. Since a

metre based on five feet, or beats, does not resemble an intuitive musical rhythm, the

standard measure of four is substituted. Brahms gives us iambic tetrameter as the

ideal metre for musical poetry.

The theme that follows, however, is considerably less formal in meter: it is

longer than the first theme (Dunsby identifies ten measures,7 while Bairstow counts

eleven8) and it contains three consecutive rhythmic ideas:

Example 2: mm. 8-18. 1 & 2 Violin

Dunsby argues that this theme is not a “consequent”,9 that it is not a direct answer-

response to the first theme. The extended length corresponds to Schoenberg’s

7 Jonathon Dunsby, Structural Ambiguity in Brahms. (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1981), 42.

8 Edward Bairstow, “Brahms's Fourth Symphony, Op. 98” The Musical Times, Vol. 78, No. 1129,

(Mar. 1937), 221.

http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy1.acu.edu.au/stable/918030 9 Jonathon Dunsby, Structural Ambiguity in Brahms, 42.

http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy2.acu.edu.au/action/showPublication?journalCode=musicaltimes

4

hypothesis of thematic asymmetry. It is apt because what follows is not answering

couplet, but a line from a different literary form. Bairstow relates the lengthening of

this theme directly to the needs of human speech:

... Brahms tightens things up by dove-tailing. All this comes from speech. It is

customary to dwell on that which is important and not to pause when this

would only allow attention to wander.10

The altering rhythms further the impression of natural speech. What Brahms has done

in mm. 1 - 18 is to present the listener with a line of musical poetry, followed by a line

of musical prose.

The repeat of the two themes at mm. 20 - 53 elaborates on this idea in a way

that further emphasises the literary meaning. The discrete units of the first theme are

broken into quavers, but rather than appearing at metrically regular points, the phrases

are split randomly between the first and second violins:

Example 3: mm. 21-27. 1 & 2 Violin.

This creates a dialogue effect, thus introducing a third key literary effect: drama.

When the second theme repeats, it begins as it appeared at m. 9, but it evolves

and varies after m. 33, sometimes repeating rhythmic motives from the first statement

in new modulations, sometimes adding new ones:


m. 33

10

Edward Bairstow, “Brahms's Fourth Symphony, Op. 98”, 221.

5

The theme still exists as the free style of prose speech it represented in the first

statement, but the effect here is prolonged and deepened by the variation. The sense is

of a spoken thought being expanded and elaborated.

III

A particularly arresting feature of the way these literary allusions are developed is

their distinctly Modernist nature. A common feature of practically all

literary/programmatic music of the nineteenth-century is that, from Schubert to

Wagner, its literary sources were basically nostalgic, such as the ‘traditionalist’ poetry

of the German romantics, the Bible and Shakespeare etc. Even the literary source

models of the works of Strauss11

and Wagner12

were drawn from the legends of the

past. In fact, it is arguable that Romanticism in music is itself merely a belated

reaction to the Romantic Movement in literature and visual art that began in the late

eighteenth century. Brahms, however, in his use of metre, cleverly anticipates features

of Modernist poetry, arguably placing him as the only composer who can claim to

have influenced the development of literature, rather than simply having responded to

it. Perhaps the reason that the New German School did not acknowledge the literary

relationship in Brahms’s music is that they were insufficiently educated in the

discipline to recognise it.

11

J. Peter Burkholder, Donald Jay Grout, Claude V. Palisca. A History of Western Music, 7th Ed. (New

York : W.W. Norton & Co, 2006), 733. 12

Ibid, 693.

6

When the second group arrives at m. 95, we are given a military fanfare-like

theme that is soon joined by a recitative-like theme in arpeggiated quavers that first

appears at m. 107:

Example 5: mm 107-109. 1 & 2 Violin.

In its context, presented between the formal musical phrases, the mysterious theme is

suggestive of a refrain in the Modernist poetry style of T. S. Eliot. The contrast

between the two types of musical phrasing is reminiscent of the contrasts that Eliot

achieves by use of interjection and juxtaposition. Note this use in “The Hollow Men”

(1925):

Between the motion

And the act

Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the emotion

And the response

Falls the Shadow

Life is very long13

This theme is then varied in triplets and is answered in the woodwind at 123. When it

reappears with subtle variations between 184 and 218, it appears like a babble, not of

dialogue, but of overlapping crowd speech, like a repeated line in an avant-garde

theatre piece.

When the opening theme reappears in the development at 145, it appears in its

original eight measure form.

Example 6: mm 144-152. 1 & 2 Violin.

13

T. S. Eliot, “The Hollow Men”.

http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/784/

7

It is then varied four times in irregular orchestration and rhythm, while still retaining

its strophic structure through its broader rhythm and harmony, creating a remarkable

poetic conceit where ‘natural’ speech is placed within a rhythmic structure to which it

conforms without losing its ‘free’ quality.


Variation 1: 153-160.




8

The product is consequently both poetry and prose simultaneously. We may find this

approach in the work of modern poets such as Robert Frost:

I didn’t make you know how glad I was

To have you come and camp here on our land.

I promised myself to get down some day

And see the way you lived, but I don’t know!14

Note how, in “A Servant To Servants” (1915), each line falls within the rigid structure

of iambic pentameter, yet the flow of the text resembles natural and unstructured

monologue.

IV

In describing the recapitulation, Bairstow applies a reading that suggests that, despite

these Modernist tendencies, Brahms’s music is still amenable to the traditional style

of programmatic interpretation, where the work contains a narrative meaning that is

conveyed through the ‘emotional’ tone of the music:

To me it expresses those times of doubt, when the future seems entirely black.

Shadowy fears of disaster and death flit through one’s mind. The strong man

banishes them and faces the storm with unquenchable courage as Brahms does

in the coda of this movement.15

This is remarkably similar to various interpretations of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3,

the “Eroica”,16

one of the earliest works to yield a narrative interpretation. This is

somewhat illuminating considering that the final movement of the “Eroica”, a set of

variations on an Englische dance theme,17

is argued to be a generic forbear to the

finale of the symphony under current discussion.18

Again, one wonders how both

14

Robert Frost, “A Servant to Servants”.

http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/175/ 15

Edward Bairstow, “Brahms's Fourth Symphony, Op. 98”, 222. 16

Thomas Sipe, Beethoven, the "Eroica" symphony. (New York : Cambridge University Press, 1998),

97-104. 17

Ibid, 111-116. 18

Raymond Knapp, “The Finale of Brahms’s Fourth” 19th-Century Music Vol. 13, No. 1. (1989), 4.

http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy1.acu.edu.au/stable/746207. For further examples of programmatic ideas

being applied to other Brahms pieces, especially from among his inner circle of acquaintances, see

Brown, A.P. “Brahms’ Third Symphony and the New German School”, The Journal of Musicology,

Vol. 2, No. 4, (1983), 435-436.

http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy1.acu.edu.au/stable/763689

9

Schoenberg and the New German School were able to overlook such clear

connections to literary and programmatic ideas in Brahms’s music.

The traditional programmatic interpretative approach demonstrates the natural

human impulse to apply rational, or indeed literary, meaning to forms of ‘absolute’

art, such as the attempts to impose a narrative treatment to Liszt’s unyielding

masterpiece of absolutism, the B-minor piano sonata.19

The existence of this impulse

strongly suggests that the notion of ‘absolute’ music, or “absolute’ art in general, is

actually a fallacy, and that the programmatic principle of the New German School

was hardly as radical or progressive as it appeared at the time.

V

The final movement of the Fourth Symphony reinforces the progressive qualities

found in the first movement. By presenting us with a passacaglia, a baroque

variation-form that had remained obscure since the time of Bach20

, Brahms engages

an approach that is at once blatantly regressive and daringly original, a gesture sure to

satisfy both his fans and critics at a stroke. Considering the musical implications of

this choice, it is perhaps unsurprising that its literary/programmatic qualities are

overlooked, but they, too, are a natural consequence of Brahms’s experimental and

adventurous approach.

The most striking literary feature of the finale is that, with the exception of the

coda, it is uniformly strophic. A main theme is stated in the first eight measures and is

then varied thirty times in identical measures. Needless to say, Brahms’s tendency to

avoid repetition ensures that each variation carries its own unique meaning.21

The

value of this approach in literature is demonstrated in the poem “Message Clear”

(1968) by Edwin Morgan, that uses a single line “I am the resurrection and the life”

and creates new sentences and phrases from it by repeating the line with selected

letters blanked out:

i am the resurrection and the life

i am re n t

19 Kenneth Hamilton, Liszt, Sonata in B-Minor. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 20

Walter Frisch, Brahms: The Four Symphonies, (New York: Schirmer, 1996), 130-131. 21

Walter Frisch, “Brahms, Developing Variation, and the Schoenberg Critical Tradition” 19th-Century

Music, Vol. 5, No. 3 (Spring, 1982), 216.

10

i am s a fe

i am s e n t

Just as Morgan is able to creates continuous meaning in line sequences,

i am r ife

i n

s i n and

i d i e22

so too is Brahms able to order his variations into complex groups and structures, such

as the sonata-form identified by Frisch23

. This ensures that, rather than giving a sense

of a single repeating unit to the listener, the finale presents a progression of ideas as a

coherent and organic whole.

A perhaps more prominent example of Brahms’s progressive spirit in the

finale is in the overall nature of the work itself. As Frisch states:

The movement represents a unique moment in the history of the nineteenth-

century symphony as the most thoroughgoing attempt to synthesize ancient

and modern practice.24

The archaic form of the passacaglia is made current by the considerable innovations

that are applied to it. The main theme of the passacaglia, Frisch argues, is taken from

a subject of Bach’s Cantata 150, and although the use of homage and quotation was

not new in music or literature, Modernism took the procedure to unexplored levels,

with the result that it functioned as a central and defining feature of the artistic era. In

the medium of music at least, the innovation belongs to Brahms.

22

Edwin Morgan, “Message Clear”

http://www.elgin.free-online.co.uk/misc/message.htm 23

Walter Frisch, Brahms: The Four Symphonies, (New York: Schirmer, 1996), 132. 24

Walter Frisch, Brahms: The Four Symphonies, (New York: Schirmer, 1996), 130-131.

11

CONCLUSION

To speak of the ‘progressive’ qualities of late nineteenth-century music is an uncertain

proposition, since the common-practice era was at this time facing its extinction by

the dawning age of Edison, where the Neanderthalis of printed notation was being

supplanted by the Sapiensis of recorded sound as the most effective method of

communicating musical ideas.25

This change, combined with the growing trend

towards popular music and the emergence of African-American musical forms26

meant that writers of music would need to embrace an entirely new set of priorities if

they were to gain the attention of the average listener. In this context, it might seem

hopeless to describe any of the nineteenth-century composers as contributing to

musical ‘progress’.

However, music does not exist in a vacuum: it is a medium that is in constant

dialogue with other art forms. As we have seen, it has a particularly close relationship

with literature; not as an artificial and novel contrivance, as the New German School

might have us believe, but as a symbiosis that is integral to the linguistic articulation

and development of each. This view is somewhat vindicated by the ascendancy of

twentieth-century song-forms that represent a perfect balance of music and literature.

In this respect, Liszt’s identification of the need for music to renew itself through “its

intimate connection with poetry” is not far wrong.

Schoenberg’s insights, if not his arguments, demonstrate that Brahms, far from

viewing music as a static or retrograde form, was engaged in a constant process of

restructuring and redefining the fundamental principles of the medium. In his Fourth

Symphony, the composer tackles the basic mechanics of language, both musical and

literary, and through this process he makes a number of advances that are valuable to

the future of music: in his approach to metricality, he makes a significant advance in

the way literary models may be adapted to musical structures; and in his meshing of

metrical forms, plus his combining of old forms with new, he can be considered an

important pioneer of Modernism. It is in these respects that we should consider

Brahms a true progressive.

25 Goodall, Howard: Big Bangs: the story of five discoveries that changed musical history. (London:

Vintage, 2001), 178-212. 26

J. Peter Burkholder, Donald Jay Grout, Claude V. Palisca. A History of Western Music, 7th Ed. (New

York : W.W. Norton & Co, 2006), 752-755.

12

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Score

Brahms, Johannes. Complete Symphonies. Ed. Hans Gal. New York: Dover

Publications, 1974.

Web

http://poetry.poetryx.com/

http://www.elgin.free-online.co.uk

http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy1.acu.edu.au/

Studies

Bairstow, Edward. “Brahms's Fourth Symphony, Op. 98” The Musical Times, Vol. 78,

No. 1129, Mar., 1937.

Brown, A.P. “Brahms’ Third Symphony and the New German School”, The Journal

of Musicology, Vol. 2, No. 4, 1983.

Burkholder, J. Peter, Donald Jay Grout, Claude V. Palisca. A History of Western

Music, 7th Ed. New York : W.W. Norton & Co, 2006.

Dunsby, Jonathon. Structural Ambiguity in Brahms. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press,

1981.

Frisch, Walter. Brahms: The Four Symphonies, New York: Schirmer, 1996.

Frisch, Walter. “Brahms, Developing Variation and the Schoenberg Critical

Tradition” 19th-Century Music, Vol. 5, No. 3 Spring, 1982.

Goodall, Howard: Big Bangs: the story of five discoveries that changed musical

history. London : Vintage, 2001

Hamilton, Kenneth. Liszt, Sonata in B-Minor. New York: Cambridge University

Press, 1996.

Knapp, Raymond. Brahms and the Challenge of the Symphony. Stuyvesant:

Pendragon Press, 1997.

Knapp, Raymond. “The Finale of Brahms’s Fourth” 19th-Century Music Vol. 13, No.

1. 1989.

http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy2.acu.edu.au/action/showPublication?journalCode=musicaltimes

13

Musgrave, M. ‘Brahms the progressive: another view’, The Musical Times, Vol. 124,

No. 1683, 1983.

Schoenberg, A. ‘Brahms the progressive’ in Style and Idea: Selected Writings, ed. L.

Stein. London: Faber, 1975.

Sipe, Thomas. Beethoven, the "Eroica" symphony. New York : Cambridge University

Press, 1998.

Walker, Alan. Liszt. Volume II. The Weimar years, 1848-1861. London: Faber, 1997.

The Progressive Poet: Brahms's Fourth Symphony and modernism

Documents

Transcript of The Progressive Poet: Brahms's Fourth Symphony and modernism