Failed Musical Memory and Intertextuality in Brahms s Op. 83 Andante

Transcription

1 Failed Musical Memory and Intertextuality in Brahms s Op. 83 Andante AMS/SMT Annual Meeting, November 1-4, 2018 San Antonio, TX David Keep (Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester) davidakeep@gmail.com

2 Example No. 1: Song Allusions in the Op. 83 Andante a) Lerchengesang, Op. 70, No. 2 (1877), mm. 1-3 c) Piano Concerto in B-flat Major ( ), III. Andante, mm Texture b) Todessehnen, Op. 86, No. 6 (1878), mm Melody

3 Example No. 2: Op. 83 Andante Form Diagram Form A B A Tempo Andante rit. in tempo rit. Più Adagio Tempo Primo rit. Più Adagio Themes (Arp.) (Arp.) (Arp.) Main Theme (MT-based) Song Allusion Main Theme Orch. Measure Tutti Solo Solo + orch. Solo + orch. Coda (solo) Dotted shapes = Interpolations Key Cadences B Major: I V i sequence i #V (F# Major) - I PAC PAC PAC Most Significant Features 1. Interpolations in Ternary Form 2. Emphasis on Main Theme 3. Emphasis on B-flat tonic, save for Song Allusion

4 Example No. 3: Piano s Thematic Involvement with Main Theme a) III. Andante, mm. 1-4 (orch.) d) mm (piano) b) mm (orch.) e) mm (piano) c) mm (piano and orch.) Most Significant Features 1. Double-neighbor motive 2. Starts on SD 3 or 5 3. Changes in affect/rhetoric 4. Variation in rhythmic/motivic shape

5 Example No. 4: Arpeggio Interpolations (Leads Directly to Song Allusion) a) Interpolation No. 1, mm (Leads Directly to Variant of Main b) Interpolation No. 2, mm Theme) c) Interpolation No. 3, mm (Leads Directly to Recollection of 1st Movement s coda, see Ex. 5 ) Most Significant Features 1. Tempo reduction 2. Enharmonic G-flat/F# 3. Two-note figures 4. Exist on formal boundaries 5. Unlock past themes

6 Example No. 5: Conclusions from First and Third Movements of Op. 83 a) I. Allegro non troppo, mm b) III. Andante, mm

7 Example 6a: Texts and Translations Todessehnen, Max von Schenkendorf Ach, wer nimmt von meiner Seele Die geheime, schwere Last, Die, je mehr ich sie verhehle, Immer mächtiger mich fasst? Möchtest du nur endlich brechen, Mein gequältes, banges Herz! Findest hier mit deinen Schwächen, Deiner Liebe, nichts als Schmerz. Dort nur wirst du ganz genesen, Wo der Sehnsucht nichts mehr fehlt, Wo das schwesterliche Wesen Deinem Wesen sich vermählt. Hör es, Vater in der Höhe, Aus der Fremde fleht dein Kind: Gib, dass er mich bald umwehe, Deines Todes Lebenswind. Dass er zu dem Stern mich hebe, Wo man keine Trennung kennt, Wo die Geistersprache Leben Mit der Liebe Namen nennt. Yearning for Death, trans. Eric Sams Ah, who will take from my soul this secret heavy burden which, the more I conceal it, seizes me ever more powerfully? If only you could break at last, my tormented anxious heart! All you find here, with your weaknesses and your love, is nothing but grief. There alone will you completely recover, where your yearning lacks nothing, where a sister-being is united with your own being. Hear me, Father on high, your child pleads from this alien land; grant that your life-giving wind of death may soon blow around me. Grant that it may lift me to the star where parting is unknown, where the language of spirits calls life by the name of Love.

8 Example 6b: Texts and Translations Lerchengesang, Karl Candidus Larks Song, trans. Eric Sams Ätherische ferne Stimmen, Der Lerchen himmlische Grüsse, Wie regt ihr mir so süsse Die Brust, ihr lieblichen Stimmen! Ethereal distant voices of the larks heavenly greetings, how sweetly you move my heart, you dear voices! Ich schliesse leis mein Auge, Da ziehn Erinnerungen In sänften Dämmerungen Durchweht vom Frühlingshauche. I gently close my eyes, and memories pass by in soft haft-lights pervaded by the breath of springtime.

9 A 1. Stanza Example 7: Todessehnen, Op. 86, No. 6, Variation of phrase endings used to underscore gradual psychological transformation Variation begins (compare with m. 5) B 3. Stanza 7 2. Stanza 23 Subphrase is varied (compare with m. 22, b. 3) 11 27

10 Example 7 cont d C Passage Re-used in Op Stanza Variation begins (compare with m. 46) Stanza 52 79

11 Example 8: Lerchengesang, Op. 70, No. 2, Prelude Variation of stanza beginnings used for subtle recontextualization fixed conclusion to stanza (compare with mm ) 13 4 Stanza 1 16 Interlude 7 20 Stanza 2 (varied) 10 24

12 Example 8 cont d 28 fixed conclusion Postlude 39

13 Example 9: Excerpts from Walter Benjamin, Regarding Memory and the Folded Fan Most people probably will have had the following experience: if you are in love, or even just intensely preoccupied with someone else, then you will find the other person s portrait in nearly every book. Indeed, the beloved will appear as both protagonist and antagonist. In tales, novels and novellas you will encounter [the beloved] in ever new metamorphoses. Thus it follows from this that the faculty of imagination is the gift of making interpolations into infinitely small spaces, of conceiving every intensity as an extensiveness, thereby discovering in it a newly compressed fullness in short, of receiving every image as if it were that of a folded fan that only in unfolding draws breath and presents, by way of its new expanse, the features of the beloved object within. John Daverio s translation (Crossing Paths, pp ) of Walter Benjamin, Einbahnstraße, in Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 4-i, ed. Tilman Rexroth (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1972), 117. He who has once begun to open the fan of memory never comes to the end of its segments. No image satisfies him, for he has seen that it can be unfolded, and only in its folds does the truth reside that image, that taste, that touch for whose sake all this has been unfurled and dissected; and now remembrance progresses from small to smallest details, from the smallest to the infinitesimal, while that which it encounters in these microcosms grows ever mightier. John Daverio s translation (Crossing Paths, p. 128) of Walter Benjamin, A Berlin Chronicle (1932), in Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, vol. 2: , trans. Rodney Livingstone and others, ed. Michael W. Jennings, Howard Eiland, and Gary Smith (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999): 597. It is through photography that we first discover the existence of [the] optical unconscious, just as we discover the instinctual unconscious through psychoanalysis. Details of structure, cellular tissue, [things] with which technology and medicine are normally concerned all this is, in its origins, more native to the camera than the atmospheric landscape or the soulful portrait. Yet, at the same time, photography reveals in [these] material physiognomic aspects, image worlds, which dwell in the smallest things meaningful yet covert enough to find a hiding place in waking dreams. John Daverio s translation (Crossing Paths, 129), of Walter Benjamin, Little History of Photography (1931), in Walter Benjamin, vol. 2,

14 Example No. 10: Form as Poetic Rendering with Benjamin s Fan Metaphor Atemporal cyclic interpolations, folds of the fan open (A B A ) Interpolations into infinitely small spaces Interpolations into infinitely small spaces Intensity conceived as an extensiveness Interpolations into infinitely small spaces No image satisfies, continual interpolations search the mind s memory, which result in various triggers to other ideas/thoughts/images. After each, the fan closes, return from memory back to present. Only in the fan s folds does the truth reside. Song interpolation marks most significant temporal expansion, perhaps longest contemplation of memory

15 Select Bibliography Benjamin, Walter A Berlin Chronicle. In Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, vol. 2: , translated by Rodney Livingstone and others, edited by Michael W. Jennings, Howard Eiland and Gary Smith. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Berry, Paul Memory, Inspiration, and Compositional Process in the Solo Songs of Johannes Brahms. PhD diss., Yale University. Bockmaier, Claus and Siegfried Mauser Johannes Brahms Interpretationen seiner Werke. Laaber: Laaber-Verlag. Daverio, John Crossing Paths: Schubert, Schumann, and Brahms. New York: Oxford University Press. Davis, Andrew Sonata Fragments: Romantic Narratives in Chopin, Schumann, and Brahms. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Frisch, Walter Brahms and the Principle of Developing Variation. Berkeley: University of California Press. Horton, Julian Brahms Piano Concerto No. 2, Op. 83: Analytical and Contextual Studies. Leuven: Peeters. Klein, Michael L Intertextuality in Western Art Music. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Parmer, Dillon Brahms the Programmatic. 19th-Century Music 19: Reynolds, Christopher Motives for A"usion: Context and Content in Nineteenth-Century Music. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Rosen, Charles Influence: Plagiarism and Inspiration. 19th-Century Music 4, 2: Sams, Eric The Songs of Johannes Brahms. New Haven: Yale University Press. Sholes, Jacquelyn A"usion as Narrative Premise in Brahms s Instrumental Music. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.