Brahms and 20th-Century Classical Music (Brunner, notes)

J. Peter Burkholder, “Brahms and 20th-century Classical Music” in 19th-Century Music, Volume VIII (Summer, 1984), pp. 75-83. [Outline, by Lance Brunner]

I. Traditional View of Brahms and Modernism in music
A. Brahms was a conservative, prevailing view that he was fighting losing battle for classic musical values and forms in the face of growing nationalism and programmaticism.
B. Modern music generally viewed with respect to breakdown of tonality, which was considered “inevitable” as chromaticism eroded tonic. But this view (dogma) focuses on the evolution of pitch relationships above every other element in the music, neglecting other modernist trends not involving pitch manipulations. (p. 76)

II. Burkholder’s View: “Brahms can be characterized as the most modern and indeed the most imitated of composers of the latter 19th century…whose approach to music has become most typical of later generations of composers.”
A. Modernism redefined: not primarily about “innovations” but with the relatinship of new music to past music, the music of the concert tradition. “Modern music” written by composers obsessed with the musical past and with their place in music history, seeking to emulate the “classical masters,” measuring the value of their own music by standards of the past. [76-77] The source of modernism lies not in increasing chromaticism… but in music’s changing social function. Concerts by time of Brahms became “museums,” rather than forums for new music.
B. New works for the concert hall were expected to perform same function as masterpieces already enshrined, i.e, each new work was intended as a “museum piece,” and had to meet three basic requirements: (1) must participate in tradition of serious art music; (2) must have lasting value, rewarding rehearings, study, and analysis, becoming loved as it becomes more familiar; and (3) must proclaim a distinct musical personality (that is speak in a unique voice, but not radically outside norms), which resulted in fragmentation of style into individual dialects.
C. Beginning in 19th century music appreciated for its own sake (apart from any rituals of church, court, or commerce), art for art’s sake.
D. Pieces in a concert did not need to share style, but needed to share status as enduring classics.

III. How this relates to Brahms
A. Brahms (b. 1833) matured just as the transformation of the concert hall into a cultural museum was in the final stages.
B. After meeting Liszt & Schumann in 1850s, he renounced the avant-garde “new German School” (associated with Liszt/Wagner) and, goaded and guided in part by Schumann, turned to emulating the classics.
C. Brahms had an encyclopedic knowledge of the history of Western art music, i.e., he did his “homework!”
D. Brahms’s music pays homage to the past, not as mere imitations, but as models of ways to solving intrinsically musical problems. His interest was as a composer, not a musicologist, with historical musical problems, which he saw as basically the same as his.
E. His thorough knowledge of the past allowed him to recreate old forms and invest them with the same organic approach to form which Mozart and Bach had demonstrated. There is nothing academic about B’s music and it sounds like no other music, precisely because of the great wealth of his influences and his willingness to mix them freely, integrating procedures from vastly different traditions into his own new works.
F. Famous example of this creative synthesis is his Symphony No. 4 finale, the chaconne [78]
1. Bach, D minor chaconne for solo violin is most obvious model (see parallels, p. 78)
2. Beethoven Eroica Symphony finale is another model for Brahms. (Variations, etc.) 3. Other modes (more general) Mozart and Chopin, Schumann, and Couperin.
G. Finale (Sym 4) is “a prime example of a piece written for the concert hall museum.”
H. See other examples of B’s synthesis of two or more “alien styles”, p. 79
I. Brahms was radical in way “he faced head on the problems of writing for a concert audience familiar with the music of the past, the problem that has been the principal concern of serious composers sine his time. The requirements of composition had become paradoxical: composers sought to write new music that would find a place I the tradition of steadily aging immortal masterpieces, demanding of each piece that it visibly participate in that tradition while proclaiming its own distinctiveness.”
J. B’s solution was “dialectical, addressing not only the opposition of old and new musical styles and techniques, but also…the tension between emulation and originality.
1.“This kind of dialectic within music approaches a species of criticism, as if B were writing in his music a commentary on his own experience as a musician.”
2. “B’s music presents itself to us on two levels: for the naïve listener, as an independent musical work in abstract form, and for the connoisseur, as a gloss on the particular work, style, genre, or technique.”
3. “To experience B’s music fully, one must come to know as much about music as Brahms did—and that is no small task.”
K. “In its dialectical nature, in its role as criticism, and in its seeking not to displace the classical masters but to join them, B’s music has served as the most important model for composers of the past hundred years, challenged only by the influential avant-garde movement after WW II.” (in footnote 19, Burkholder talks about what might be called “post-modernism,” that is, those composers who rejected tradition and “the museum” of the concert hall to write completely different kinds of music: their music “celebrated sound itself in the present moment and rejected old teleological ideas of music as organic growth, sounding architecture, or emotive speech.”
L. “Modern composers have faced the same paradoxical requirements as did Brahms and have arrived at the same solution, achieving their originality through the intensification and transformation of ideas learned in their study of existing music.”

IV. Other Composer’s means of getting into the “museum” [“Each modern composer of distinction has taken a unique path, sharing with his peers only the nature of the problem and the model of B’s dialectical solution.” Examples include:
A. Mahler: Austrian symphonic tradition (from Haydn through Bruckner & Brahms), widening his net to include: “military music, bird song, folksong, and other kinds of music familiar to his audiences and with social or emotional significance.
B. Schoenberg: Germanic tradition from Bach to Reger, with his music being “truly new music which, being based on tradition, is destined to become tradition.”
C. Stravinsky: Neo-classicism (transplant reinterpretations of the past in modern terms, with the meaning of the music based largely on listener’s knowledge of style or work being glossed). Also Hindemith (Neo-baroque) and Orff (Neo-medieval)
D. Bartok: his mature music combines the elaborate art forms of fugue and sonata from the classical tradition with the rhythmic complexity, ornamentation, and dissonance of peasant music from southeastern Europe and Turkey. The synthesis of seemingly disparate traditions as folk and classical music makes clear the common dependence on motivic organization and orientation around a tonal center, and fundamental scales and intervals. Bartok’s respect for his sources helped establish the value and importance of east European folk music (in an analogous way that Brahms sponsorship of Eccard and Schuetz helped their cause).

V. The central dilemma of modern music
A. Each modern composer from Mahler to Rochberg, “has written music which focuses on the dialectics between old and new styles and between emulation and originality, music which takes music itself as its subject matter. In the process of developing his own musical language through the rapprochement of contemporary techniques with older material, each composer creates a kind of musical criticism presented in strictly musical terms, exposing hitherto unsuspected relationships between apparently unrelated musical traditions or ideas, or extending the contributions of past composers in new directions. The more familiar one is with the music used as models, the more exhilarating this criticism in music can be.” PROBLEM: most people do not know earlier models.
B. Brahms can be enjoyed on two levels: as commentary on the history of Western art music or as music of immediate appeal; but with few exceptions modern music has lost its ability to make an appeal to the naïve listener
C. Unlike the music we still think of as “modern,” despite its advancing age. Brahms’s music has attained both classic status and great popularity. Brahms recognized and solved yet a third dialectic in his composers (beyond the oppositions of the new with the old and of emulation with originality): “the tension between the present and the future—the requirement that a work demonstrate lasting value, rewarding frequent re-hearings, and becoming more loved as it becomes more familiar and yet at the same time have enough immediate appeal to move the listener to seek out a second hearing. It is on this paradox that most modern composer have foundered. Brahms, like Mozart before him, invested his music not only with hidden beauties form the connoisseur, but also with a strikingly beautiful and emotionally appealing surface…to orient the untutored listener.” Only a few composers since Brahms—notable Mahler and Debussy—have achieved the same synthesis of immediate and lasting appeal.
D. Brahms’s importance for the music of the past 100 years is this: He has provided the model for future generations of (1) what a composer is, (2) what a composer does, (3) why a composer does it, (4) what is of value in music, and (5) how a composer is to succeed. In this respect, the “music of the future” has belong not to Wagner but to Brahms. It is the change in the orientation of serious music, the change in the purpose of composition, which has been of greatest importance, rather than the changes within the language of music itself.
E. The new musical language developed by Wagner, Liszt, and their followers has had an impact on every kind of music from Muzak to jazz, yet what has determined the course of the music we call “modern” is the influence of Brahms. While other provided new musical tools Brahms helped establish the framework for using those tools, and his assumptions concerning what music is and does have been played out in succeeding generations.