Expressive Intersections in Brahms Essays in Analysis and Meaning [Hardcover]

Contributors to this exciting new volume examine the intersection of structure and meaning in Brahms's music, utilizing a wide range of approaches, from the theories of Schenker to the most recent analytical techniques. They combine various viewpoints with the semiotic-based approaches of Robert Hatten, and address many of the most important genres in which Brahms composed. The essays reveal the expressive power of a work through the comparison of specific passages in one piece to similar works and through other artistic realms such as literature and painting. The result of this intertextual re-framing is a new awareness of the meaningfulness of even Brahmss most absolute works.

This exceptionally fine collection brings together many of the best analysts of Brahms, and nineteenth-century music generally, in the English-speaking world today.Through its unique combination of historical narrative, expressive content, and technical analytical approaches, the essays in Expressive Intersections in Brahms will have a profound impact on the current scholarly discourse surrounding Brahms analysis. Because the analyses are so engaged with expressivity, performers too, will likely find many of them enlightening and perhaps critical in helping to hone their interpretations.In the work of these authors we encounter the productive intersection of the best analytical tools that contemporary music theory has to offerSchenkerian analysis, sonata theory, semiotics, recent theories of rhythm and meter, and neo-Riemannian theoryand cultural criticism of the highest order. These scholars are musically sensitive and culturally savvy, and what they have to offer, both in broad strokes and in the nuance of the tiniest detail, is not to be missed.

Ackowledgements
Part I
1. The Wondrous Transformation of Thought into Sound : Some Preliminary Reflections on Musical Meaning in Brahms, Heather Platt and Peter H. Smith
2. The Learned Self: Artifice in Brahmss Late Intermel“'