Discussion Questions for Burkholder “Brahms and Twentieth-Century Classical Music”
Please be prepared to respond in either seminar meeting or in "Comments" on the course blog. In all venues, you must be prepared to cite specific passages (by page, paragraph, line, and quotation) in support of your responses.
(1) Burkholder describes a “traditional” or “standard” profile for Brahms as a musical stylist, in which profile Brahms is regarded as displaying a certain relationship to the musical past and to prior composers. What are the specific traits and assumptions which shape this profile, and on the basis of what considerations has this “traditionalist” label been attached to this composer?
(2) Burkholder suggests that the “traditional” model of Brahms is erroneous because it is based upon excessive emphasis on certain of Brahms’ traits. That is, the traditional model is “wrong” because it puts too much weight on Brahms characteristics which do not in fact reveal his goals and priorities. What are these “wrongly-emphasized” characteristics and [very importantly] why might scholars, critics, and other composers have chosen to wrongly emphasize them? [Hint: think about analytical tools.]
(3) Burkholder proposes to focus upon a different set of Brahms characteristics. What are these characteristics, and how does Burkholder justify them as being more accurate and revealing of Brahms’s significance? PLEASE BE PREPARED TO CITE SPECIFIC PASSAGES IN SUPPORT OF YOUR OPINION.
(4) What is the “narrative” through which traditional musicology has “explained” (or at least described) the gradual shift in 19th-century style away from tonal/functional harmony and toward programmatic or descriptive harmony? What language is typically employed to tell this story? What flaws does Burkholder find in this standard explanation? CITE PASSAGES.
(5) How did Schoenberg make the claim that Brahms was a progressive? More to the point—why did he make this claim? What was Schoenberg’s own agenda in “claiming” Brahms?
(6) How, and using what specific language, does Burkholder define “musical modernism”? What are the implications of this specific definition? To cite language we employed in our Thursday discussion, what was modernism’s perspective on the “museum pieces”?
(7) Burkholder employs the Finale of Brahms’s 1885 Fourth Symphony to argue his thesis (and you should note this: Burkholder’s argument could serve as a very practical model for your own research presentation). On p78, Burkholder describes a wide range of prior composers and/or styles of the past which influence this Finale. How, then, can Burkholder claim that this is a modernist piece, when it is so heavily indebted to the music of the past? Explain this paradox.
(8) On 79, Burkholder uses the term “dialectic” (find a technical definition here). With or between whom was this debate enacted? What was being debated? To whom, or for what audience(s), are Brahms’s stylistic choices aimed? How does Burkholder use the analysis of Brahms’s goals to get at the Fourth’s meaning? In what way, then, is the Finale a kind of “music criticism”? CITE PASSAGES.
(9) What other composers of the period, both German and non-German, does Burkholder see as using similar strategies? Be prepared to add at least one more composer to this list, and to cite and discuss a specific piece by that composer which shows the same tendencies.
