The Brahms Keller Correspondence

For two decades, beginning in the early 1870s, Robert Keller, music editor for N. Simrock Verlag in Berlin, worked with diligence and devotion to usher into print most of Johannes Brahms's major compositions, including all four of his symphonies, the Violin Concerto, the Double Concerto, the Second Piano Concerto, and numerous chamber, choral, and vocal works. This volume collects for the first time the complete extant correspondence between Brahms and Keller, as preserved in the collections of the Library of Congress and the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna. To read their correspondence is to witness a relationship of mutual respect and increasing friendship and to gain an appreciation for the meticulous labor that went into the publication of Brahms's masterpieces. Keller’s admiration for the composer's genius was answered by Brahms's affection for Keller’s diligence and musical expertise. The vicissitudes of the publication process from composer’s manuscript to printed score are documented in fascinating detail. This edition includes a transcription of the letters in the original German.

A great deal of evidence survives about how Brahms and his contemporaries performed his music. But much of this evidence - found in letters, autograph scores, treatises, publications, recordings, and more - has been hard to access, both for musicians and for scholars. This book brings the most important evidence together into one volume. It also includes discussions by leading Brahms scholars of the many issues raised by the evidence. The period spanned by the life of Brahms and the following generation saw a crucial transition in performance style. As a result, modern performance practices differ significantly from those of Brahms's time. By exploring the musical styles and habits of Brahms's era, this book will help musicians and scholars understand Brahms's music better and bring fresh ideas to present-day performance. The value of the book is greatly enhanced by the accompanying CD of historic recordings - including a performance by Brahms himself.

First Published in 2003. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First published in 2011. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This collection explores the boundaries between Brahms' professional identity and his lifelong engagement with private and amateur music-making.

This book is the first comprehensive collection of the letters of Johannes Brahms ever to appear in English. Over 550 are included, virtually all uncut, and there are over a dozen published here for the first time in any language. Although he corresponded throughout his life with some of the great performers, composers, musicologists, writers, scientists, and artists of the day, and although thousands of his letters have survived, English readers have until now had scant opportunity to meet Brahms in person, through his words, and in his own voice. The letters in this volume range from 1848 to just before his death. They include most of Brahm's letters to Robert Schumann, over a hundred letters to Clara Schumann, and the complete Brahms-Wagner correspondence. They are joined by a running commentary to form an absorbing narrative, documented with scholarly care, provided with comprehensive notes, but written for the general music lover--the result is a lively biography. The work is generously illustrated, and contains several detailed appendices and an index.

The eight essays in Brahms Studies 2 provide a rich sampling of contemporary Brahms research. In his examination of editions of Brahms?s music, George Bozarth questions the popular notion that most of the composer?s music already exists in reliable critical editions. Daniel Beller-McKenna reconsiders the younger Brahms?s involvement in musical politics at midcentury. The cantata Rinaldo is the centerpiece of Carol Hess?s consideration of Brahms?s music as autobiographical statement. Heather Platt?s exploration of the twentieth-century reception of Brahms?s Lieder reveals that advocates of Hugo Wolf?s aesthetics have shaped the discourse concerning the composer?s songs and calls for an approach more clearly based on Brahms?s aesthetics. In his examination of the rise of the ?great symphony? as a critical category that carried with it a nearly impossible standard to meet, Walter Frisch provides a rich context in which to understand Brahms?s well-known early struggle with the genre. Kenneth Hull suggests that Brahms used ironic allusions to Bach and Beethoven in the tragic Fourth Symphony in order to subvert the enduring assumption that a minor-key symphony will end triumphantly in the major mode. Peter H. Smith examines Brahms?s late style by concentrating on Neapolitan tonal relations in the Clarinet Sonata in F Minor. Finally, David Brodbeck delineates the complex evolution of Brahms?s reception of Mendels-sohn?s music.