Brahms and the Scherzo: Studies in Musical Narrative (review)

Abstract

EUROPE Brahms and Scherzo: Studies in Musical Narrative. By Ryan McClelland. Farnham, U.K.: Ashgate, 2010. [xiv, 320 p. ISBN 9780754668107. $124.95.] Music examples, bibliography, index. As twenty-first century enters its second decade, there seems little left to say about Brahms's multi-movement instrumental works. After all, composer's orchestral, chamber, and solo piano output has been subject of an intense analytical scrutiny that dates back over a century and a half. However, primary focus of past criticism has been on first movements, privileging Brahms's relationship to classical sonata form. Inner movements remain comparatively neglected and Ryan McClelland's new book on Brahms's scherzos seeks to redress this imbalance. In this sense, book complements Margaret Notley's work on Brahms's slow movements in redirecting our critical attention toward sites of some of composer's greatest innovations (Margaret Notley, Late- Nineteenth-Century Chamber Music and Cult of Classical Adagio, 19th- Century Music 23, no. 1 [Summer 1999]: 33-61). The principal aim of book is twofold. First, author provides a comprehensive analytical description of complete repertoire of Brahms's scherzos within context of composer's evolving style. Second, he connects this to an investigation of Brahms's projection of and meaning. McClelland's conception of scherzo is broad, including a number of related movement types such as minuets, intermezzos, and waltzes, along with several hybrids more difficult to categorize. He relies on both composer's designations and his own identification of stylistic features to define boundaries of repertoire. The book is organized around a combination of chronology and what McClelland terms expressive types. The methods and techniques employed are largely those of what author refers to at one point as conventional analysis (p. 298). He engages a level of analytical detail found in few previous books on Brahms, almost all of which are concerned with more limited repertoires. Fred Lerdahl, Ray Jackendoff, Carl Schachter, William Rothstein, and Harald Krebs are all cited as influences on author's conception and analytic approach. McClelland displays extensive coverage of secondary literature and book features an unusually rich array of music examples and helpful charts. A central preoccupation of study is explication of musical narratives. McClelland conceptualizes as a series of events that create expressive trajectories characterized by affective distinctions such as conflict, struggle and transcendence. These narratives are formed through development and transformation of main material of a movement and it is the relationship of initial music to its subsequent versions [that] creates a narrative (p. 6). McClelland sees rhythmic structure as a key to understanding Brahms's narratives, and of metric dissonance occupies a sizable proportion of study. Although he does not neglect local rhythmic issues such as hemiola, author is particularly interested in exploring hypermeter-levels of metric organization greater than notated measure. He discovers hypermeter as favored context in Brahms's scherzos for creation of structural tension as well as a primary form-defining element. The composer's relationship to Beetho - ven's scherzos looms as a principal compositional reference, sometimes as a source for allusion, more often as a template that Brahms composes against. McClelland strikes a splendid balance between reinforcing much-discussed relationship between Brahms and Viennese classics and locating examples of stylistic innovation within music. He also reinforces important point that theories designed to explain music from beginning of nineteenth century remain largely valid for Brahms. …