Author: Kelly Sedinger

UPDATE: Original video replaced, as the video I had used first was removed, for some reason….

Yes, I forgot to post this last week. This whole “two major writing projects in full force at once” thing is working out well for the two projects, but not so much for the poor blog. But anyway!

Here we have Brahms’s fourth, and final, symphony. This one is the most brooding of the four, and I always find that it feels “bigger” than it actually is. There’s an epic scope to this symphony that I think partly outstrips the amazing Symphony No. 1, and a more overall sense of mystery to this work. Brahms plunges us into melody right away, with no introduction whatsoever, and it’s a melody that seems to be always try to catch its breath as it yearns upward and falls back. (We’re in E minor, by the way, which seems to be a favorite key of mine. Lots of folks swear by D minor, and there’s a lot of wonderful music in D minor, but E minor is at the heart of some music that is very near and dear to me.)

The second movement, the slow movement, opens with a “stately brooding” theme, intoned by the horns. In doing a bit of homework for this post I learned that this theme is in what’s called a “hypophrygian” mode, but in all honesty…at this distant remove from my musical education, I honestly can’t say what that means. “Modes” are similar to scales, but they generally pre-date the development of our now-familiar major-minor scale system, so when we hear modal music, it tends to sound somewhat otherworldly in our ears, as if from a far deeper time than music we’re accustomed to.

This symphony’s third movement is one of my favorite things Brahms wrote. It’s the only straight-up scherzo in any of his symphonies (although some of his third movements have scherzo-like sections). Brahms eschews the traditional triple-time for this scherzo, though, choosing instead to use a simple 2/4, and he writes the opening theme so it descends twice onto a portentous chord, which has the effect of stopping whatever momentum we start with. This stop-start feeling that winds through the movement is Brahms at his infrequently-genial best.

Then there’s the fourth movement. Brahms breaks away from the symphonic pack again here, abandoning sonata or rondo forms in favor again of something older: a passacaglia. Now, again, I’m not entirely clear anymore on what a passacaglia is — it involves a series of variations over a repeating pattern in the bass. It’s a demanding movement and not really the easiest of listens, in terms of its form, but it is amazing nonetheless, what with those shimmering opening chords and then the start of the variations, immediately afterward.

Brahms’s symphonies are full of hard moments, but just as many wonderful ones. Years ago, when conductor Semyon Bychkov was finishing his tenure as Music Director of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, he concluded his final season with all four Brahms symphonies over two programs. I was fortunate to attend both programs, and that deep delving into the symphonic language of Johannes Brahms was one of the more deeply satisfying musical experiences I remember.

Here is Brahms’s Symphony No. 4 in E minor.

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For some reason that I’m not quite sure of, I’ve never warmed much to Brahms’s Third Symphony (F major, op. 90). I’ve listened to it more in this last week — as I write this, I’m hearing it for the fourth time — than I have in the previous, oh, thirty years. I don’t know why this is, and listening to the work now with older ears, I’m even less sure why this work has never moved me the way the First, Second, or Fourth have. The Third is…well, it’s everything I expect to hear from Brahms, with moments of melancholy directly tucked amidst moments of lyrical charm. The Third is the most meditative of Brahms’s symphonies, with the least amount of sheer bombast, which is saying something because if Brahms is anything at all, he is very careful about how he uses bombast. Bombastic moments in Brahms are usually brief and they’re always well-earned. This particular symphony doesn’t have much bombast at all. Maybe that’s why it took me so long to warm to it; in my music-listening youth, I had that youthful way of gravitating toward bombast. But I don’t think that’s it, really. For every moment of Berliozian fire I’ve ever loved, there’s a moment of Mozartean simplicity that I adore just as much, and to this day, one of my favorite memories of live music is hearing Vaughan Williams’s The Lark Ascending with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, back in the late 80s, and there you have a piece with no bombast at all.

Who knows. I’m probably overthinking it. No work of art speaks to everyone, and some works can’t speak to us when we’re in certain parts of our life. But when we come to another time, years later, perhaps we find something to love in a book, or a movie that we never liked before, or…a symphony.

So anyway! Brahms’s Third. Again, conquering the First over a period of fifteen years seems to have allowed Brahms to make his piece with the symphonic form, as again he managed to write this work in a single summer, revising it a bit after the initial performances. Apparently some partisans of Richard Wagner — with whom Brahms had a long rivalry, as it became clear that Wagner and Brahms were the two towering forces in the Germanic music tradition in the late 1800s — tried to interfere with the performance, and duels were threatened. It may seem quaint, now, to look back on all the times classical music was at the heart of violence (would anyone ever riot at a Buffalo Philharmonic performance?), but only a little more than a century ago, this stuff was a big cultural deal.

Here’s a fascinating article about the Third, which examines the work in the light of Brahms’s friendship with Robert Schumann and his lifelong, unrequited love for his best friend’s wife, Clara.

And here is the symphony itself. I’m glad to be able to hear it with better ears.

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