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.
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:
Example 4: mm. 28-53. 1 & 2 Violin.
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.
Example 7: mm. 144-184. 1 & 2 Violin.
Variation 1: 153-160.
Variation 2: 161-168.
Variation 3: 168-176.
Variation 4: 177-184.
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.
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.
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