Piano Quartet Research Articles

The fate of the postmodern world: On melancholy and rebellion by Milan Mihajlovic

The musical oeuvre of Milan Mihajlovic (b. 1945) enjoys a high reputation and position in contemporary Serbian music. This has been proven by the many awards he has received, countless performances of his compositions at home and abroad, and especially by the warm and approving reactions of the audience. The stylistic consistency in his oeuvre is a result of his creative use of Scriabin?s scale. The concept of this scale was first theoretically elaborated in an extensive study written by Mihajlovic in 1980 and, since then the scale has been functioning as a crucial cohesive element in all Mihajlovic?s compositions. The novelty in his oeuvre, composed during the 1990s, were intertextual references made by using citations from his own works and those of other composers (Monteverdi, Mozart, Stravinsky, Rachmaninov, Vasilije Mokranjac). The most characteristic features of his mature style are also recognizable in his recent works Melancholy (2014) and Rebellion (2015). The interval structure of Skriabin?s scale is projected along the horizontal (melodical) and vertical (harmonical) axes of the both works while the formal design resulted from shifts of tensions and relaxations. Developmental sections are based on variation and improvisation of the small number of different motifs (three basic ones in Melancholy, four in Rebellion) above the metrically moveable ostinato layers and the releases are marked by change of tempo, dynamic, meter and texture. The most significant and radical release is the one which marks the abrupt ending of Rebellion by the physical gesture of slamming down the keyboard lid. As the composition was written for the BUNT festival (Belgrade) it fits the festival?s idea of expressing resistance to the government?s neglect of academic musicians and institutions. In the wider sense, it becomes a sign of the resistance to the world we live in, and that is the world of lost ideals. Both works are composed for the wind instrument and the piano quartet and in the both cases the author?s voice, with its figures of sorrow and anger, is personified in singing, narrative lines of the wind instrument (the oboe in Melancholy and French horn in Rebellion respectively). These two compositions also demonstrate the specific concept of a circle that is intuitively searched for and ingeniously implemented. It is manifested by the cyclic concept of Scriabin?s scale and projected in all of the author?s compositional procedures as a vehicle for the expression of lament and resignation.

Patricia Carpenter in Commemoration

Patricia Carpenter (1923-2000) studied with Arnold Schoenberg for seven years (1942-1949) at UCLA and in private lessons. This experience proved crucial for her later research, teaching, and writing. Carpenter taught music theory at Barnard College and Columbia University from 1961-1989. The publication of the following two articles celebrates the 2004 renaming of the Music Theory Society of New York State's Young Scholar Award after Professor Carpenter. The previously unpublished paper, "Schoenberg's Tonal Body," was the keynote address at the 1988 MTSNYS conference. "The Piano Music of Arnold Schoenberg" is an early article (1961) that appeared in The Piano Quarterly} Those interested in Schoenberg's concepts of Grundgestalt, developing variation, and the Musical Idea, in both the tonal and post-tonal repertoire, will find these articles helpful. Both essays apply these notions concretely to music, including the first movement of Brahms 's Piano Quartet in C minor, op. 60 and Schoenbeig's piano pieces op. 1 1, no. 2 and op. 25. The following remarks are meant to introduce the kind of endeavor we believe Pat Carpenter was doing in these and her other writings.

Completions of Mozart Aria Fragments

Stanley Sadie. Completions of Mozart Aria Fragments. Edited by Dorothea Link with a Foreword by Julie Anne Sadie. (Recent Researches in the Music of the Classical Era, 88.) Middleton, WI: A-R Editions, 2012. [Contents, p. v; foreword, p. vii; acknowledgments, p. viii; introd., p. ix-xiv; texts and trans., p. xv-xix; score, p. 3--190; crit. report, p. 191-96. ISBN 978-0-89579-760-5. $160.] This volume usefully brings together a number of completions by the late Stanley Sadie of arias Mozart left unfinished. As such, it not only allows us to imagine what these works might have been like had Mozart completed them, but also--and perhaps most importantly--the volume represents a fitting tribute to one of the great Mozarteans of recent times. There was never any doubting Sadie's devotion to Mozart. And there was never any doubting his willingness both to share his enthusiasm and knowledge, and to encourage and promote future generations of Mozart scholars. The arias in the volume include Se di lauri il crine adorno; Lungi da te, mio bene; and Nel grave tormento, all originally intended for Mitridate, re di Panto, K. 87; and the arias Der Liebe himmlisches Gefuhl K. 119; In te spero, o sposo amato K. 440; Musst ich durch tausend Drachen K. 435; Ah! spiegarti, oh Dio, vorrei K. 178; Schon lacht der holde Fruhling K. 580; and a rejected from Le nozze di Figaro; Giunse il momenta alfine--Non tardar, amato bene. The completions are, on the whole, both well-informed and attractive. In several instances, Mozart left enough music to provide linking material for missing transitions, ritornellos, or recapitulations, and he occasionally left clues concerning orchestration. In other cases, Sadie relied on his fertile and impressive imagination. The most surprising decision, perhaps, is Sadie's adaptation of the finale of the Piano Quartet in E-Hat Major K. 493 to serve as the otherwise entirely missing fast section of Giunse il momenta alfine. It strikes our ears as curious to hear such a well-known work in such a different context. But Sadie gives a reasonable justification for his decision--the apparent need for a reasonably fast gavotte rhythm in the missing section--and in any case, parallels with either Mozart's direct quotation of vocal music in an instrumental work (such as the finale of K. 551, the Jupiter symphony) or the evocation of vocal music in an instrumental work (as in the finale of the Piano Concerto no. 22 in E-flat Major K. 482) suggest it is not such an outrageous idea. What is more, although the use of the material from K. 493 is more extensive than in any Mozart example, the words fit the melodic material surprisingly well. The volume is edited by Dorothea Link, whose admiration for Sadie is clear in both what she says and how she says it. from the musical texts, she contributes an introduction that includes extensive quotations from Sadie's own writings, notes on the texts, and a critical report. Some additional comments on the introduction are perhaps in order. K. 119, Die Liebe himmlisches Gefuhl, is assumed without question to be by Mozart, yet there is no unequivocal evidence for his authorship: no autograph survives, nor any other authentic source or document; it is known only, as Link acknowledges, as a vocal score published by Breitkopf & Hartel in 1814. Similarly, the date of K. 435, Musst ich auch durch tausend Drachen, is far from certain: the surviving autograph fragment is on a type of paper Mozart used as early as 1781 and as late as 1787. Accordingly, there is no reason to think it must date from 1783. In any case, Link is a bit equivocal: in the introduction she states Aside from the year of its composition, nothing is known about this unfinished aria (p. …

Absolute Color, Fluctuating Mischfarben, and Structurally Functional “Gypsy” Orchestration

Correlating particular instrumental colors with pitch chromaticism, three early twentieth-century scholars demonstrate how a methodical use of colorful winds, less colorful strings, and wind-string mixtures informed actual orchestrational practices. After demonstrating how Wagner’s use of instrumental “residue” creates an “articulate unity” in a passage from Lohengrin, Theodor Adorno describes how Alban Berg’s orchestration of the Frühen Lieder combines particular instrumental colors and generalized orchestral sonorities into articulate Mischfarben that distinguish whole-tone scales from functional harmony. After defining “absolute color” in the context of Gluck’s orchestration, Ernst Kurth demonstrates how “absolute” wind instrument colors delineate “absolute” “destructive” harmonic colors in Wagner’s Tristan instrumentation. Finally, Arnold Schoenberg’s functional orchestration of the “Rondo alla Zingarese” from Brahms’s G-minor Piano Quartet matches “indirectly related” harmonies with vivid wind and percussion colors and “closely related” harmonies with string-centered sonorities.

Study, Copy, and Conquer

Schumann's 1842 chamber music exemplifies a common theme in his critical writings, that to sustain a notable inherited tradition composers must not merely imitate the past but reinvent it anew. Yet Schumann's innovative practices have not been sufficiently acknowledged, partly because his instrumental repertory seemed conservative to critics of Schumann's day and beyond, especially when compared to his earlier experimental piano works and songs. This essay offers a revisionist perspective by exploring three chamber movements that recast sonata procedure in one of two complementary ways: either the tonic key monopolizes the exposition (as in the first movement of the Piano Quartet in E♭ major, op. 47), or a modulating main theme undercuts a definitive presence of the tonic key at the outset (as in the first movement of the String Quartet in A major, op. 41, no. 3, and the finale of the String Quartet in A minor, op. 41, no. 1). Viewed against conventional sonata practice, these chamber movements appear puzzling, perhaps even incoherent or awkward, since they thwart the tonal contrast of keys so characteristic of the form. Yet these unusual openings, and the compelling if surprising ramifications that they prompt, signal not compositional weakness but rather an effort to reinterpret the form as a way of strengthening its expressive power. My analyses also draw on other perspectives to illuminate these sonata forms. All three movements adopt a striking thematic idea or formal ploy that evokes a specific Beethovenian precedent; yet each movement also highlights Schumann’s creative distance from his predecessor by departing in notable ways from the conjured model. Aspects of Schumann’s sketches, especially those concerning changes made during the compositional process, also illuminate relevant analytical points. Finally, in the analysis of the finale of the A-minor quartet, I consider how Schumann’s evocation of Hungarian Gypsy music may be not merely incidental to but supportive of his reimagined sonata form. Ultimately, the perspectives offered here easily accommodate—even celebrate—Schumann’s idiosyncratic approach to sonata form. They also demonstrate that Schumann’s earlier experimental tendencies did not contradict his efforts in the early 1840s to further advance his inherited classical past.

Emotions in Music

In this essay we argue that musical expressiveness is not confined to “emotion characteristics in appearances,” i.e., musical gestures which are experienced as resembling gestures or behaviors characteristic of a person in a particular emotional state, such as vocal expressions of sadness or anger (sighing, wailing, shouting, etc.) and behaviors expressive of joy (skipping lightly), or sadness (moving heavily and slowly as in a funeral procession). We claim that sometimes music can appropriately be heard as containing a “persona,” a fictional or virtual agent whose emotions are expressed in the music, and that this persona can be experienced as expressing more complex emotions, such as hopefulness or resignation, as well as blends of emotion, and emotions that develop and change over time. A complex piece of music may have a composed expressive trajectory or musical “plot,” which dramatizes a psychological journey by a persona. Moreover, listeners may be invited not only to recognize the emotions expressed in such music but also to experience those emotions themselves, either actually or in imagination, by empathizing with the musical persona as he or she travels on a psychological journey through the music. Such experiences are typically reinforced by the arousal of actual physiological states and action tendencies in listeners. We illustrate our argument by means of analyses of the Prelude in E♭ Minor from Book I of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier and the third movement of Brahms's Piano Quartet in C Minor, Opus 60. Finally, we admit that not all listeners will approach music in the way we suggest, but we argue that listening in the way we recommend can significantly enrich our musical experiences.

Fauré's Piano Quartets

Fauré's Piano Quartets

André Previn: A Bridge Between Two Worlds (review)

Reviewed by: André Previn: A Bridge Between Two Worlds John L. Clark Jr. André Previn: A Bridge Between Two Worlds. DVD. Directed by Horant H. Hohlfeld. Berlin: C Major, 2010, 2008. 703208. $24.99. The title of this DVD (separating the worlds of Jazz and concert music) is somewhat misleading - while Previn began his public career as a teenaged jazz pianist, that part of his musical life has taken a backseat to his activities as a classical performer, composer and conductor since the 1960's. The sheer variety of his work since then is presented here through a series of clips and interviews—although "conversations" is perhaps a better way of describing them. Sequences with Mia Farrow, Renée Fleming, Anne-Sophie Mutter, and Tom Stoppard are enhanced by Previn's participation—he frequently turns the questions on the interviewer. This active curiosity is a crucial part of the personality that is the focus of this documentary. Conversations with his sons Fletcher and Lukas and reflections on the difficulties of maintaining family ties for a touring musician are fascinating, especially considering the obviously warm relations between them. A distracting part of the production is that about a third of the interviews (with Mutter and a long biographical monologue by Previn) are conducted entirely in German, so for those without a reasonable proficiency, an ability to navigate the language menu and activate the subtitles is key. At the beginning of the film, the languages ping-pong back and forth from scene to scene, which interrupts the flow to a considerable degree. Perhaps the greatest contribution of this film comes through Previn's observations about his performance philosophies. Scenes of him conducting a rehearsal of the Vienna Philharmonic and archival footage with the London Symphony emphasize his genial demeanor and personal interaction with musicians. His humor is further demonstrated with a clip from his memorable appearance on the Morcambe and Wise show for Thames Television in the 1970's which has found frequent reissue in British comedy retrospectives. Previn's thoughts about the similarities and differences between jazz and classical performance are also enlightening. The sympathetic interplay between players in jazz is explored through his 1974 duet with pianist Oscar Peterson and his more recent partner, bassist David Finck, while the communication between members of a chamber group is clearly in evidence on the bonus tracks of this DVD—two Mozart piano quartets he recorded in Salzburg in 2000. Rehearsal footage of Previn conducting his orchestral piece Diversions, Concerto for Violin and String Orchestra (with Mutter) and his opera Brief Encounter is also included [End Page 145] to illustrate his dealings with musicians on a number of creative levels. This documentary presents Previn as one who has never been content to remain still—even in his eighties he continues to explore new avenues of intellectual endeavor and accept new challenges. This curiosity has been an integral part of his professional development in all fields but which, as several of those interviewed here point out, may have kept him from becoming known as preeminent in any one of them. While this could be seen as regrettable, Previn himself obviously does not think that way, preferring to ally himself to an almost extinct form of intellectual progressivism that emphasizes diversity as the greatest expression of ability. John L. Clark Jr. Connecticut College Copyright © 2012 Music Library Association, Inc.

Brahms, Rhythm, and the Renaissance

Johannes Brahms’s deep engagement with the past contributed to his compositional style in many ways. This article considers Brahms techniques that look back to and expand on those of Renaissance composers, in particular metric conflict and cadences, voice displacement, changes in proportion, rhythmic augmentation and diminution, and the hocket. Examples are taken from Brahms’s Academic Festival Overture, Variations On A Theme By Haydn, Piano Quartet in A Major, and Symphony No. 3 in F Major.

Maxim Vengerov: Violin Masterclass at the Royal Academy of Music, London, Benjamin Britten, Violin concerto opus 15: Violin masterclass , and: Ana Chumachenko at the Verbier Festival Academy, Violin masterclass , and: Gábor Takács-Nagy at the Verbier Festival Academy, Johannes Brahms, Piano quartet no. 3 in C minor: Chamber music masterclass , and: Aaron Rosand: Celebrating a Life in Music

Maxim Vengerov: Violin Masterclass at the Royal Academy of Music, London, Benjamin Britten, Violin concerto opus 15: Violin masterclass. DVD. Directed by Mischa Scorer. Bristol, England: Masterclass Media Foundation, 2008. MMF 2-022. £11.99 individual/£19.98 institution. Ana Chumachenko at the Verbier Festival Academy, Violin masterclass. DVD. Directed by Mischa Scorer. Bristol, England: Masterclass Media Foundation, 2009. MMF 2-027. £23.99 individual/£39.98 institution. Gabor Takacs-Nagy at the Verbier Festival Academy, Johannes Brahms, Piano quartet no. 3 in C minor: Chamber music masterclass. DVD. Directed by Mischa Scorer. Bristol, England: Masterclass Media Foundation, 2008. MMF 014. £17.99 individual/£29.98 institution. Aaron Rosand: Celebrating a Life in Music. DVD. Produced and directed by Sheila Halpern and Steve Halpern. [Pleasantville, New York]: SMH Music, 2007. SMH7878. $29.95. Aaron Rosand: The Teacher. DVD. Produced and directed by Sheila Halpern and Steve Halpern. [Pleasantville, New York]: SMH Music, 2010. $29.95. Since 2006, The Masterclass Media Foundation has been systematically filming classes conducted by some of the world's greatest classical performers and teachers. Founded as a non-profit by documentary director and producer Mischa Scorer, the foundation has produced 35 DVDs that include lessons by such well known instrumentalists as Maxim Vengerov on violin, Steven Isserlis on cello, and Andras Schiff at the piano. The five-year goal is to create a library of over 100 DVDs that will cover a wide range of genres including instrumental solos, chamber music, conducting, and even early music. These films are wonderful. Top-notch performers and teachers give thoughtful and articulate advice on how to play and interpret some of the greatest musical works of all times. The classes are beautifully filmed in an artistic yet unobtrusive way and the overall sound is very good. Maxim Vengerov is included in ten of the twelve violin DVDs. At age 32, he is Professor of Violin at the Royal Academy of Music in London. In 2004 Vengerov was awarded both a Grammy and an Edison Award for his recording of the Britten Violin Concerto and after watching this video it is obvious why he is featured so prominently. His class begins with Giovanni Guzzi, accompanied by piano, performing the first movement of the Britten concerto after which Vengerov launches into a lengthy discourse on his artistic conception of the overall piece. Next Vengerov works through the first movement of the concerto with the student. His relaxed nature and ability to generate a positive interpersonal dynamic is communicated on camera. Both student and teacher are engaged in the lesson, and under the direction of the master, this initially intellectual and sterile work is enlivened with drama and emotion. The class was filmed at the Royal Academy before a live audience. The overall tone quality of the instruments was somewhat diminished in this setting but for the most part the class translated well onto video. Ana Chumachenko, now a Professor at Die Hochschule fur Musik und Theater Munchen, studied violin first with her own father, a disciple of Leopold Auer's, and later with Yehudi Menuhin and Joseph Szigeti. This class, devoted to Mozart's Concerti 3, 4, and 5, was filmed at the Verbier Festival Academy and was arranged especially for this series. As such, there was no audience and the Verbier set offered superb sound and more artistic videography than that shot at the Royal Academy. The first performer, Eldbjorg Hemsing, gives a beautiful performance of the first movement of Concerto No. 3, however, the videography in this lesson is extremely distracting. The camera focuses so closely on her face that her hands and instrument are constantly moving in and out of the screen. Also, Chumachenko is sometimes difficult to understand because she was positioned to face the student and was slightly turned away from the camera. …

Biographical Myth and the Publication of Mozart's Piano Quartets

The story that Mozart was commissioned to write three piano quartets for publication in Franz Anton Hoffmeister's subscription series has proved to be remarkably resilient in the Mozart literature. According to the account that first appeared in Georg Nikolaus von Nissen's biography (1828), Hoffmeister gave Mozart an advance payment for the works, but decided to withdraw after the first quartet, K.478, was poorly received. The article exposes a series of flaws in this narrative by locating Hoffmeister's edition of K.478 in a wider contextual and bibliographical framework than has been hitherto attempted. A revised chain of events, based on a new understanding of Hoffmeister's business, suggests a more complex narrative for Mozart's dealings with the publisher. It also prompts us to reconsider the circumstances surrounding Mozart's composition of his two completed piano quartets and the reception of his chamber music in Vienna before 1791.

Beethoven in B♭: Op. 130 and the Hammerklavier

Abstract Commentators have sometimes remarked on similarities between contemporaneous piano sonatas and quartets by Beethoven, as if the composer were developing ideas at the keyboard before transferring them to other genres. A particularly close connection can be seen, however, between two works in B♭ major that are separated by a greater distance in time: the Piano Sonata in B♭, op. 106 (Hammerklavier) and the String Quartet in B♭, op. 130. Correspondences between the respective first movements are particularly strong, and they suggest that the sonata may have served as something of model for the quartet. Yet the same elements that contribute to a highly integrated structure in the sonata seem to serve quite different purposes in a quartet characterized by a pointed disintegration of normative procedures. A comparison of the two works shows not only how Beethoven's style underwent significant change in the intervening time, but also how the quartet may serve as a critique of the sonata in an act of deliberate stylistic distancing. This brings into question the well established concept of a unified “late” or “third-period” style.

Serialism in the Early Music of Aaron Copland

In his 1967 “Conversation with Aaron Copland,” Edward T. Cone asked Copland about his involvement with twelve-tone and serial composition. “After the war,” Cone said, “you gradually moved toward serial or twelve-tone writing. How did that come about?” Cone must have been surprised when Copland pointed not to compositions of the 1950s, such as the Piano Quartet or Piano Fantasy, but to far earlier works that used these techniques. It seems to me that the Piano Variations [1930] was the start of my interest in serial writing … . Although it doesn't use all twelve tones, it does use seven, and it stays with them throughout in what I hope is a consistently logical way. Also I wrote a song in 1927, recently republished under the title “Poet's Song,” which is quite twelve-tony and shows that I was thinking in those terms then. Schoenberg's greater fame after the end of the last war and the continual talk and writing about the technique brought the whole matter to the front of my mind again.1

Rhetoric and Justification in Analysis

This commentary discusses the Schenkerian interpretation of the opening of Brahms’s Piano Quartet No. 3, earlier addressed by Samuel Ng and Eric Wen in this journal. It argues that the central question at issue—the location of the structural IV–V motion—is clarified by factors such as rhythm, meter, register, instrumentation, and tonal expectations. Aspects of complexity are also identified, including Brahms’s way of giving divergent structural meanings to an inherently ambiguous passage by setting it in different contexts.

Commentary on Samuel Ng’s review of Peter H. Smith’s Expressive Forms in Brahms’s Instrumental Music: Structure and Meaning in His Werther Quartet

[1] I would like to address an analytic idea proposed by Samuel Ng in his review of Peter Smith's monograph on Brahms's Piano Quartet No. 3 in C minor. In his discussion of opening of first movement, Ng takes issue with Smith's reading of G-major chord in bar 21 as dominant. Instead, he says that appearance of this chord comes as an unexpected surprise. Not only does he call it the first striking harmonic event of piece, but he also later describes it as truly expressive gesture that eludes virtually any structural explanation. Furthermore, he suggests that G chord appearing two bars later (bar 23) is more natural continuation. Ng attempts to find an integral relationship between form and content, and to reveal structural intricacies that may well embody expressive connotations. His analytic reading of opening theme is, however, surely incorrect. Not only is G-major chord in bar 21 long-expected dominant, but it is G chord that offers unexpected surprise. I wish to address this issue not just in order to present yet another alternative reading, but because correct interpretation of opening of this Brahms Piano Quartet evokes an important Classical tonal procedure that both Smith and Ng overlook in their analyses.[2] One of striking features at beginning of Brahms Piano Quartet No. 3 in C minor is quadrupled B that appears in bar 11, after half cadence on dominant. It transposes four-octave C at start of piece down a whole step, and ushers in return of opening theme in key of B-flat minor. Before examining tonal structure of antecedent part of Quartet (bars 1-31), I would like to discuss convention of this opening gesture.[3] The opening theme of Brahms is modeled after Classical construction of two parallel phrases in which second repeats opening at a different pitch level. The most usual procedure is to repeat second phrase a whole step above initial statement. In Mozart's Piano Sonata in D, K. 576, for example, rising arpeggio of opening theme announced in D major is answered by another statement of arpeggiated theme in E minor (Example 1). In order to avoid parallel fifths and octaves in voice-leading from I to II, a dominant chord appearing at end of opening phrase serves as a voice-leading corrective. The beginning of Brahms's Symphony No. 2, op. 73, has a similar construction, but here a B-minor chord, resulting from a 5-6 contrapuntal motion, breaks up potential parallels between two statements of opening theme in D major and E minor (Example 2).Example 1. Mozart, Piano Sonata in D, K. 576, i (bars 1-6)(click to enlarge and see rest)Example 2. Brahms, Symphony no. 2 in D, i (bars 1-11)(click to enlarge and see rest)[4] While parallel construction of two phrases on adjacent ascending steps appears rather frequently in major mode, reverse situation, of answering a phrase down by step, occurs much less often. In fact, in major, an answering phrase on VII is not possible if it remains in its normal form as a diminished triad. In order to enable such a repetition, must be chromatically altered to , transforming VII into a major triad.(1) The beginning of Beethoven's Waldstein Sonata presents such a procedure; following opening theme's initial statement in tonic C major, it appears four bars later in B-flat major. Example 3 shows how a contrapuntal 5-6 motion breaks up potential parallels in stepwise motion from I to VII. At foreground level, intervening chord in this contrapuntal progression is tonicized by an applied chord.[5] The initial statement of opening theme at beginning of Waldstein would appear to lead to its repeated statement in B-flat. However, first four bars are repeated over bars 5-8, and a descending chromatic bass results. …

Aaron Copland and the Politics of Twelve-Tone Composition in the Early Cold War United States1

In a speech at the March 1949 Waldorf Peace Conference in New York, Aaron Copland protested the simplistic but widespread dichotomies that the Cold War encouraged, including “communism vs. the profit system” and “the mass-appeal music of a Shostakovich” vs. “the musical radicalism of a Schoenberg.” Having supported causes in the 1930s and 40s that many deemed “dangerously communist” in the early Cold War years—including the Peace Conference—Copland soon realized the urgency of demonstrating his distance from Soviet musical policies. Copland's first use of a twelve-tone technique in his 1950 Piano Quartet can be viewed as a practical demonstration of this distance.

On Metre in the Rondo of Brahms’s Op. 25

ABSTRACTThe rondo from Brahms's Piano Quartet Op. 25 projects a number of different metres which may be organised into various metric spaces modelled on those of David Lewin and Richard Cohn. Although this organisation does not yield the multiple pitch‐time analogical mappings proposed by Lewin and Cohn, it may be fruitfully applied to many works of Brahms and other composers. I argue that a movement's centrally located metre (the work's ‘logical’ metric tonic) tends also to be its primary metre (the work's ‘rhetorical’ metric tonic), and outline a new method for hearing contiguities in certain metric spaces. I conclude by designing a metric space tailored for the metres of the Op. 25 rondo, in which the refrain's ‘tonic’ metre is centrally located in three dimensions.

Expressive Forms in Brahms's Instrumental Music: Structure and Meaning in His "Werther" Quartet (review)

19TH AND 20TH CENTURY COMPOSERS Expressive Forms in Brahms's Instrumental Music: Structure and Meaning in His Quartet. By Peter H. Smith. (Musical Meaning and Interpretation.) Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005. [ix, 325 p. ISBN 0-253-34483-2. $49.95.] Music examples, index, bibliography. In 1853, writing in the Neue Zeitschrifl fur Musik, Robert Schumann famously expressed his opinion that Brahms was fated give us the ideal expression of the times (translation by Malcolm MacDonald, Brahms [New York: Schirmer Books, 1990], p. 18). Such an expression indeed emerges in Brahms's piano quartet in C minor, op. 60, the Werther (Quartet, which takes its name from Brahms's own characterization of it in letters his friends Hermann Deiters and Theodore Billroth: Imagine a man who is about shoot himself, and for whom there is no other way out, and An illustration, as it were, the last chapter of the man in a blue swallow-tail coat and yellow waistcoat (p. 1). The latter is an obvious reference the tragic and quintessentially romantic figure of Goethe's Werther, a suicidal young man in love with the wife of an admired older friend. Musicologists have read into Brahms's statements a connection between the piano quartet, Werther, and Brahms's relationship with Robert and Clara Schumann. In Expressive Forms in Brahms's Instrumental Music: Structure and Meaning in His (Quartet, Peter H. Smith offers the first theoretical basis for the dramatic, suicidal content of the quartet. Although theoretical interpretations can be as subjective and controversial as expressive ones, Smith succeeds in making a compelling case by providing copious detail, reconciling multiple viewpoints, and qualifying analytic limitations. Smith's purpose is to engage the quartet as a case study for how it might be possible steer a middle course between the old music theory, which tends be purely analytical and formalist, and the new musicology, which denies itself the insights of careful music analysis in the pursuit of critical (p. 4). Thus he uses technical analysis pursue questions of expression. In addition, he treats issues of biographical significance, artistic development, and Brahmsian style. Smith's approach is based on the premise that Brahms's style is characterized by a complex interaction of musical dimensions, or dimensional counterpoint, which produces multiple interpretations. Brahms often creates discrepancies among locations of different types of critical events in the tonal plan, the beginning and ending points of thematic sections, changes in patterns of accompaniment and/or instrumentation, and large-scale instances of rhythmicmetric articulation (p. 7). To this end, in part 1, Smith compares the piano quartet other works of Brahms and works of other Viennese composers in order illustrate both its idiosyncratic and representative qualities. Although the theories of Heinrich Schenker are central Smith's analysis, he also discusses their limitations and reconciles them with the theories of Arnold Schoenberg and more recent approaches. Smith demonstrates the benefits of multiple viewpoints in part 2, where he explores the expressive motivations for the idiosyncrasies of the piano quartet. His interpretation is refreshingly undogmatic, comprehensive, and original. He provides a theoretical basis for stylistic deviations that produce an extreme expression of tragedy, suggesting both the sorrows of Werther and Brahms's frustrations with the Schumanns. To place the Werther quartet in the context of Brahms's instrumental works as well as the Viennese tradition, Smith notes Brahms's choice of C minor, a key associated with issues of fate. He offers a detailed comparison other C-minor works of Brahms: the first symphony, the string quartet, op. 51, no. 1, and the piano trio, op. 101. Eschewing the tradition of transcendence into C major, the relendessness of C minor in the piano quartet gives it a fundamentally tragic character. …

Expressive forms in Brahms's instrumental music: structure and meaning in his Werther quartet

Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Quintessential Brahms and the Paradox of the C-Minor Piano Quartet: A Representative yet Exceptional Work Part I 2. Analytical Preliminaries: Brahms's Sonata Forms and the Idea of Dimensional Counterpoint 3. A Schoenbergian Perspective: Compositional Economy, Developing Recapitulation, and Large-Scale Form 4. Brahms and Schenker: A Mutual Response to Sonata Form 5. Brahms's Expository Strategies: Two-Part Second Groups, Three-Key Expositions, and Modal Shifts Part II 6. Toward an Expressive Interpretation: Correlations for Suicidal Despair 7. Intertextual Resonances: Tragic Expression, Dimensional Counterpoint, and the Great C-Minor Tradition Notes Bibliography Index

You Reap What You Sow: Some Instances of Rhythmic and Harmonic Ambiguity in Brahms

Of all composers of the common-practice era, perhaps none has been associated with musical ambiguity more than Brahms. Several recent essays nevertheless question the usefulness of ambiguity as an analytical concept. This article defends the efficacy of ambiguity through analysis of metrically and harmonically bivalent passages from the composers' C-minor Piano Quartet, Double Concerto, Clarinet Trio, G-major String Quintet, and B-minor Rhapsody. The analyses proceed from contradictory readings of opening materials to later statements that develop precisely those characteristics that give rise to the initial double meaning. In each case, the result is an enormous tonal delay whose resolution corresponds with liquidation of the contradictory characteristics, as the movements finally achieve the clarity absent from their ambiguous openings.