Brahms Beyond Mastery. His Sarabande and Gavotte, and its Recompositions

In 1853 Robert Schumann identified fully-formed compositional mastery in the young Brahms, who nevertheless in the years following embarked on a period of intensive further study, producing, among other works, the neo-baroque Sarabande and Gavotte. These dances have not been properly recognized as constituting a distinct Brahms work before now, but manuscript evidence and their performance history indicate that Brahms and his friends thought of them as such in the mid-1850s, when they became the first music of his performed publicly in Gdansk, Vienna, Budapest and London. He later suppressed the dances, using them instead as a thematic quarry for three chamber music masterpieces, from different stages in his life and in distinctly different ways: the Second String Sextet, the First String Quintet and the Clarinet Quintet. This book gives an account of the compositional and performance history, stylistic features and re-uses of the dances, setting these in the wider context of Brahms?s developing creative concerns and trajectory. It constitutes therefore a study of a ?lost? work, of how a fully-formed master opens himself to ?the in-flowing from afar? (in Martin Heidegger?s terms), and of the transformative reach and concomitant expressive richness of Brahms?s creative thought.

CONTENIDO:

Preface
The Sarabande and Gavotte
The Second String Sextet, op. 36, and its second movement
The First String Quintet, op. 88, and its second movement
The Clarinet Quintet, op. 115

Conclusion
Bibliography
Index