Review of Ryan McClelland, Brahms and the Scherzo: Studies in Musical Narrative (Ashgate, 2010)

Abstract

[1] In music-analytical studies, rarely do we encounter a book that offers detailed analyses of more than thirty individual pieces of considerable tonal, formal, and rhythmic complexity. Ryan McClelland's Brahms and the Scherzo: Studies in Musical Narrative is a notable exception. While the title of the book gives an idea on the target compositions and theoretical/analytical focus, the first chapter-titled Theoretical and Repertorial Contexts-provides several critical clarifications. First, the book tackles not only Brahms's scherzi, but also his minuets, intermezzi, and waltz-like pieces within multi-movement compositions. All of these pieces-thirty-five in total-are subsumed under the umbrella category of association between minuet and scherzo is of course well-known; the dubbing of intermezzi and waltz-like pieces as movements, however, requires explanation. McClelland justifies this typological interpretation based on three common properties among the pieces studied: (1) their position as an inner movement in a multi-movement work; (2) their somewhat livelier tempo than the slow movement; and (3) their dialogue with the ternary form typical of scherzo-trio pieces. McClelland's reliance on (1) and (2) in delimiting the target repertoire may have been the reason why he excludes op. 4-Brahms's earliest attempt at the scherzo genre-from this otherwise comprehensive study of Brahms's scherzi.[2] Second, although the title of the book suggests an engagement of recent trends in music semiotics and narrative, McClelland actually defines in Chapter 1 in much simpler terms: use the term narrative to capture the sense that these discrete events [i.e., opening materials and all their subsequent transformations] cohere into a larger framework ... By invoking the term narrative, I do not assert the presence of all of the attributes of literary narrative, including the level of specificity involved in the identification of meaning. I do intend to suggest, however, that the scherzo-type movements have musical structures that span entire movements and create effects such as conflict, struggle, triumph, transcendence, and resignation (6). An innovative component in his analytical agenda is the fact that the musical structures in question are primarily rhythmic-metric ones, which McClelland sees as capable of undergoing developments and transformations that create a sense of musical narrative. As he asserts, The central theoretical contribution of this book is to demonstrate the operation of musical narratives-especially rhythmic-metric narrative-and their connection to musical expressivity (5). Interrelations between rhythmic-metric analysis and expressive interpretation, he later adds, are treated flexibly regarding both the level of specificity in expressive content and the direction of influence between the two domains: ...my preference is to suggest an expressive interpretation that seems plausible given the observed musical relationships-recognizing of course, that one's intuitive understanding of the work's musical meaning impacts the types of structural observations one makes (10).[3] Before proceeding to the analytical chapters, McClelland concludes Chapter 1 with an overview of genre, tempo, meter, key, and form of the thirty-five movements. Particularly insightful are his observations on Brahms's treatment of repetition patterns in two-reprise schemes. Noting that the reprises are repeated either literally or with variations in many different parameters, McClelland lists the nine repetition schemes employed in the scherzo-type movements out of sixteen possible ones, and further points out that seven out of the nine are used more frequently. Overall, these schemes allow more flexibility in varying the first reprise during the written-out repetition, while the second reprise is often not varied in the repetition, or simply not repeated at all. Granted that the beginning of the second reprise is normally the most liquidated section in rounded binary forms, McClelland's list indirectly draws attention to Brahms's predilection for developmental procedures, as their prevalence in the second reprise renders repetition or further variation of entire sections more problematic than in the first reprise. …