Analysis Of Brahms The Progressive

Brahms the Progressive

Johannes Brahms was a famous German composer that was born in Hamburg on 7 May 1833. “Beethoven, who was to cast such a long shadow over the mature man, had been dead for six years; Schubert, whom he revered almost as much, for five” (Holmes 7). Brahms’s father was a musician and his everyday repetitions supported boy’s interest to music. The man made a great career as a pianist and composer. Unlike Lizst and Wagner, who represented new movement of a descriptive music, Brahms preferred to use German classical musical compositions as a basis for his works. As the composer opposed the “music of the future” movement, some experts could call him a conservator. However, many authors believe Brahms was a progressive composer. This issue became the main idea of the essay Brahms the Progressive written by Arnold Shoenberg. The author had a purpose to prove this “classicist [and] academician, was a great innovator in the realm of musical language, that, in fact, he was a great progressive” (Shoenberg 56). Brahms’s music was used as a

This style is characterized by prevalence of syncopations and asymmetrical usage of dissonance. With the aid of such techniques Brahms created more complicated, intricate structures, like A Major Sonata, which shifted from simple 1, 2, 3 – 1, 2, 3rhythm to a more complex 1…2… 3…. The composer achieved a perfect interplay between harmonic rhythm and harmony. Brahms advanced in this sphere more than his counterparts Mozart and Haydn by the “development toward liberation from formal restrictions of musical thoughts” (Shoenberg 75). Composer created a stronger bond between melodies and poems they are based on by reflection of text’s metrical feet in music. “For instance, the first half of "Meerfahrt" (H. Heine) consists exclusively of three-measure phrases, on account of the poem's meter of three metrical feet” (Shoenberg