Brahms's Song Collections [Hardcover]

A detailed analysis of the songs of Johannes Brahms.In considering the songs of Brahms in the groups in which the composer published them, rather than as individual entities, Inge van Rij presents a way of thinking about this much loved repertoire. The book contains original analysis and an investigation of many previously unexplored primary sources.In considering the songs of Brahms in the groups in which the composer published them, rather than as individual entities, Inge van Rij presents a way of thinking about this much loved repertoire. The book contains original analysis and an investigation of many previously unexplored primary sources.Brahms once complained that singers never performed his songs in the groups in which he had published them, which he likened to 'song bouquets'. Over a century later, many singers and musicologists continue to ignore Brahms's wishes and focus on the individual songs rather than the bouquet groups. This is a detailed study of the implications of Brahms's comments. Following an examination of contemporary aesthetic and generic frameworks, the book traces Brahms's Lieder from their conception, to the arrangement into bouquets, to performance and reception, and examines the sometimes contradictory roles played by poet, composer, performer and recipient in creating coherence in song collections. An investigation of the graphic cycles of Max Klinger reveals a startling visual analogue of Brahms's conception of the song bouquet, and a final examination of the evidence of Brahms's aesthetic outlook reveals that his intentions may have been cyclic in more than one sense.Introduction; Part I: Context; Organicism; Lyric cycles; Self-reflexivity, fragments, and Hoffmann's Kater Murr; Textual coherence in the song-cycle canon; Key sequence; Key characteristics and other alternative approaches to tonal sequence; Part II: Conception to publication; Before composing: texts and notebooks; From conception to arrangement: 'Heine cycles'; Orderinl3j