# Brahms: Progressive or Conservative?



## BenG (Aug 28, 2018)

This is a weird one. I hear many people on TC and other places describing Brahms as a conservative composer who natrually followed Beethoven. However, Schoenberg wrote an article called "Brahms the Progressive", arguing that Brahms was a modernist for his time. What do you think?


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## Animal the Drummer (Nov 14, 2015)

He was both, as all the great composers are at various times.


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## ORigel (May 7, 2020)

I voted "conservative" because he eschewed program music. However, Mendelssohn was much more conservative than Brahms.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

< Old Brahms a Modernist? In More Ways Than One, By Michael P. Steinberg >
https://www.nytimes.com/1996/09/29/arts/old-brahms-a-modernist-in-more-ways-than-one.html


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## Room2201974 (Jan 23, 2018)

Up until 1894 Brahms is the most innovative rhythmic composer of the latter half of the 19th century. His constant use of hemiola, writing across the bar line and ripping melody away from meter is unmatched in the era.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

He couldn't have been much of a progressive if that reptilian reactionary Hanslick worshipped him.


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

elgars ghost said:


> He couldn't have been much of a progressive if that reptilian reactionary Hanslick worshipped him.


In Swafford's bio it is revealed that Hanslick didn't really get a lot of Brahms music. It was the more basic things like Hungarian Dances and stuff of this kind that he liked best. It appears the main reason Hanslick championed Brahms so much was because he needed some kind of paragon to hold up against Wagner, so he chose Brahms.


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## Knorf (Jan 16, 2020)

The answer is "yes." Brahms was both a traditionalist, and a progressive.

For anyone who doubts the latter, please do read Schönberg's terrific article, "Brahms the Progressive."

As for Hanslick, he was a full-frontal knobhead. I'm glad he supported Brahms, but, really, fork him.



Room2201974 said:


> Up until 1894 Brahms is the most innovative rhythmic composer of the latter half of the 19th century. His constant use of hemiola, writing across the bar line and ripping melody away from meter is unmatched in the era.


100% agree. It's odd that Brahms gets so little credit for this.


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## ORigel (May 7, 2020)

tdc said:


> In Swafford's bio it is revealed that Hanslick didn't really get a lot of Brahms music. It was the more basic things like Hungarian Dances and stuff of this kind that he liked best. It appears the main reason Hanslick championed Brahms so much was because he needed some kind of paragon to hold up against Wagner, so he chose Brahms.


What a coincidence! I am reading Swafford's bio of Brahms right now. (I am going through a Brahms phase.)


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## Knorf (Jan 16, 2020)

ORigel said:


> What a coincidence! I am reading Swafford's bio of Brahms right now. (I am going through a Brahms phase.)


A Brahms phase is a wonderful thing. And that's a great bio, too!


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## Room2201974 (Jan 23, 2018)

ORigel said:


> What a coincidence! I am reading Swafford's bio of Brahms right now. (I am going through a Brahms phase.)


Watch the link I provided in post #5. It's long, but worth the view. Adolphe has several lectures on Brahms that are humorous, entertaining and informative.


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

Brahms stuck with traditional forms throughout his life. Some of the 4th symphony uses forms going back to the Renaissance.

Brahms famously feuded with "modern" composers of his time including Tchaikovsky, Bruckner and Wagner. Part of this was his irascibility, part his conservatism.

Certainly there's no shame in conservatism. Brahms is by most standards the fourth-greatest composer behind the big 3. Other conservatives like St. Saens, Mendelssohn and the Strauss family retain their popularity while topical composers come and go.


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## ORigel (May 7, 2020)

tdc said:


> In Swafford's bio it is revealed that Hanslick didn't really get a lot of Brahms music. It was the more basic things like Hungarian Dances and stuff of this kind that he liked best. It appears the main reason Hanslick championed Brahms so much was because he needed some kind of paragon to hold up against Wagner, so he chose Brahms.


I am reading that part: once Hanslick complained to the composer Heuberger that he could barely stand a new Brahms quintet. Then he wrote a glowing review of that Brahms quintet.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

I also feel both. However I feel his progressiveness led to some real ugly sounding stuff, while still using more conservative idioms that's hard for me to accept.


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## flamencosketches (Jan 4, 2019)

I am going through a major Brahms phase right now. I would say he has entered the upper echelon for me, & I love everything about his music. I voted "Progressive". Brahms had great respect for tradition, yes, and often worked within the established forms. But so did Beethoven, whom, I suspect, few would call a conservative. It seems to me that Brahms was no less revolutionary than the composer he sometimes idolized, in his own ways. As is previously cited, his rhythmic innovations, but also the unique ways he has his voices interact with one another seems to really presage the Modern era. Having gotten into the younger composer first, I sometimes hear a lot of Webern in Brahms. Brahms used a lot of the same intricate, jeweler-like craftsmanship that makes Webern's music so special, especially in his chamber music, with its delicate balances of force. Brahms's music often condenses extreme power into a small, delicate package. Speaking harmonically, his music never rests, always in flux, like an everflowing river. It's a very progressive way to think about harmony, presaging Mahler.

I'm glad to see that so many others see it similarly.



Phil loves classical said:


> I also feel both. However I feel his progressiveness led to some real ugly sounding stuff, while still using more conservative idioms that's hard for me to accept.


Care to cite an example of this "ugly progressiveness" in Brahms?


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

Room2201974 said:


> Up until 1894 Brahms is the most innovative rhythmic composer of the latter half of the 19th century. His constant use of hemiola, writing across the bar line and ripping melody away from meter is unmatched in the era.


And also his extensive use of chromaticism. This piece is one of my favorites (Op.76, No.5), where you have the hemiola and chromaticism as the very foundations of the piece, not just as mere coloration:






Also, near the end, a rework of the initial motif but with an explosive syncopation.


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## Room2201974 (Jan 23, 2018)

Oh, and we haven't even discussed "developing variations" yet. While other composers before him used the technique, with Brahms it IS one of the hallmarks of his method. He's always taking little "cells" and making bigger ideas from them. I've used this statement in here before, so excuse me if it's a "summer rerun" but the little joke my comp prof made one day in seminar was: "If you're looking for Brahms to start developing in the "development section" you're 64 measures too late."


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

flamencosketches said:


> Care to cite an example of this "ugly progressiveness" in Brahms?


I feel it mainly in his orchestral works. His Academic Festival Overture is chock full of these harmonizations and changes in rhythms and themes. His 1st symphony has it all over as well. The diminution in his violin concerto, and just the dramatic arc in the intro sounds really bombastic and grating. Those idioms he uses work only in certain conditions which he applies in unusual ways (my personal opinion). I can't take him seriously when he transposes a theme or part of it or jumps to a distant chord mid-phrase, without prior development, it's comical to me, but he maintains a serious tone. If he worked in a more modern idiom, like say Mahler's, it would sound better to me.

In his chamber music, there isn't that heavy ambience of the orchestra, where I feel his antics work a lot better.


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## KIMCHI (Jun 8, 2020)

I think as people compare Wagner and Brahms, they have come to perceive Brahms as excessively conservative.


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## Gallus (Feb 8, 2018)

I don't think of him as either "progressive" or "conservative". Brahms was Brahms.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Being satisfied with existing forms is not enough to qualify Brahms as a conservative. His control and rigour were not typical hallmarks of the Romantic but his classicism is not really conservatism - perhaps it is the opposite? Certainly, when I listen to Brahms I find myself asking a question that only presses me with music that I find to be among the greatest and most original ever written: "where did _that _come from?"


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Gallus said:


> I don't think of him as either "progressive" or "conservative". Brahms was Brahms.


Then leave this thread now.

The reason Schoenberg called Brahms a 'progressive' was because Brahms was contrapuntal and used motivic cells. The 12-tone method was also primarily contrapuntal, and did not rely on harmonic movement since it basically had "no harmony." It was linear.

Other than that, I see Brahms as a conservative.


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