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Brahms: The Four Symphonies
This book is the definitive guide to Johannes Brahms’s four symphonies. It presents an engaging and thorough treatment of the genesis, structure, reception, and performance history of these internationally admired and frequently performed works. Walter Frisch provides a sensitive analytical commentary on the symphonies as well as a consideration of their place within Brahms’s oeuvre, within the symphonic repertory of his day, and within the broader musical culture of nineteenth-century Germany and Austria. Frisch also pays particular attention to the evolution of performance style since Brahms’s symphonies were first heard.
The book begins with an investigation of the different ideologies of the symphony in the decades leading up to Brahms’s First. Brahms’s early development as a composer is also examined. Frisch then devotes a detailed chapter to each of the four symphonies, including an in-depth analysis of each movement. A separate chapter treats the reception of Brahms’s symphonies, and the book concludes with a history of the performances of the symphonies in the concert hall and in early recordings.
The book begins with an investigation of the different ideologies of the symphony in the decades leading up to Brahms’s First. Brahms’s early development as a composer is also examined. Frisch then devotes a detailed chapter to each of the four symphonies, including an in-depth analysis of each movement. A separate chapter treats the reception of Brahms’s symphonies, and the book concludes with a history of the performances of the symphonies in the concert hall and in early recordings.
- GenresMusic
240 pages, Paperback
First published October 23, 1996
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
July 11, 2021
A concise text that is still quite detailed and dense. I especially enjoyed the chapters on the state of the Symphony as an orchestral form at the time, and Brahms path to it. A great addition to my music library.
January 15, 2025
Read this as part of the Vienna Music Program in 2015. Don't remember that much but found an excerpt about the fourth symphony:
"But the fact remains that the Fourth is not a work that unlocks its secrets easily; it is not a work, like the Second, whose sensuous (relating to or affecting the senses rather than the intellect) beauty beckons listeners inside. In his last symphony, Brahms seems to be writing precisely for the kind of cultivated, musically literate listener whose disappearance at the end of the nineteenth century he sorely regretted.
Like the three preceding symphonies, the Fourth has a special color or quality — analogous to what Verdi referred to in his own operas as a “tinta” — imparted by certain harmonic and thematic features that span all four movements."
I also learned that the word chaconne actually has a meaning: a repeated short harmonic progression.
"But the fact remains that the Fourth is not a work that unlocks its secrets easily; it is not a work, like the Second, whose sensuous (relating to or affecting the senses rather than the intellect) beauty beckons listeners inside. In his last symphony, Brahms seems to be writing precisely for the kind of cultivated, musically literate listener whose disappearance at the end of the nineteenth century he sorely regretted.
Like the three preceding symphonies, the Fourth has a special color or quality — analogous to what Verdi referred to in his own operas as a “tinta” — imparted by certain harmonic and thematic features that span all four movements."
I also learned that the word chaconne actually has a meaning: a repeated short harmonic progression.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews