Book description
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 Brahms's most
"absolute" works.
"In the work of these authors we encounter the productive
intersection of the best analytical tools that contemporary music
theory has to offer--Schenkerian analysis, sonata theory, semiotics,
recent theories of rhythm and meter, and neo-Riemannian theory--and
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." -Patrick McCreless, Professor of Music, Yale University
Peter H. Smith is Professor of Music at the University of Notre
Dame and author of Expressive Forms in Brahms's Instrumental Music
(IUP, 2005).
Heather Platt is Professor of Music History at Ball State University
and author of Johannes Brahms: A Research and Information Guide (2nd
edition, 2011).
