# Why is Brahms so great?



## juliante (Jun 7, 2013)

BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist said:


> Brahms is single my favorite composer, perhaps tied with Bach. A lot of the major points that come to mind in terms of what makes him a great composer have already been mentioned, but I notice no one's really brought up his sense of rhythm. In my opinion this is one of the most striking and innovative features of his music. His use of syncopation and metric dissonance, his juxtaposition of melodic and harmonic rhythms, and the rhythmic interdependence of the voices in his contrapuntal writing give his music a fluid, protean and ultimately _natural_ sense of time that somehow remains firm and grounded in a pervasive sense of structural integrity. Time is the essence of music, and Brahms understood it in such a beautiful and unique way.
> 
> I'll mention one other thing for now (I could go on for ages) that relates more to why I personally love Brahms rather than the qualities which make him great. I find his compositional development fascinating: the exuberant, almost Schumann-esque Romanticism of his youth, the balance he struck between structure and expression in his middle years, and the profound, ripened wisdom of his late works. His oeuvre taken as a whole tells a beautiful and inspiring story, a story of passion, love, joy, sorrow, discovery, resignation, and acceptance. His biography may not be the most interesting of the great composers', but his musical odyssey speaks to me like no other.


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