june 29, 12:34am | 9m | brahms

every day, several times, i think of composers who lived at the same time as brahms. somewhere along the line i started using him as my measuring device for historical reference. today, teaching the third (and my favorite) satie gymnopédie, i thought of how brahms lived at the same time as its composition. i’ve thought that exact thought before. do you think he knew about satie? and what could he have thought? i tend to skew modern. like, did he know of debussy? did he know of schoenberg? stravinsky? what about any of the americans? well, i could just buy that damn jan swafford book that i’ve wanted for about a decade. on the reverse—how did composers of the world regard him? i can’t imagine going about my day knowing that brahms kicked around somewhere out there. what did that feel like? anything? 

i’ve never even really loved brahms, honestly. a couple pieces i adore, and others i like and respect, and others i completely don’t get. but he has always fascinated me. the insane technical exercises, which i incorporated into my hours-long routine at indiana. the crippling self-doubt. the secrecy and need to control the narrative, thus burning pieces and letters. the mythic childhood in a brothel. the alcoholism. the shocking abandon of his harmonic choices. the strict adherence to symmetry and theoretical sequences—retrogrades, inversions, etc.— that sometimes lead to crushing dissonance, but that work in the end. his faith. his stubborness. and of course, that beard.

i see him at a giant piano in a giant house. a giant person with giant hands. what those eyes had seen. who those hands had touched, and what they shaped.