Brahms in the Home and the Concert Hall
Between Private and Public Performance

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

Katy Hamilton (Edited by), Natasha Loges (Edited by)

9781107042704, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 11 September 2014

424 pages, 27 b/w illus. 6 tables 124 music examples
25.3 x 17.7 x 2.2 cm, 1 kg

Johannes Brahms was a consummate professional musician, and a successful pianist, conductor, music director, editor and composer. Yet he also faithfully championed the world of private music-making, creating many works and arrangements for enjoyment in the home by amateurs. This collection explores Brahms' public and private musical identities from various angles: the original works he wrote with amateurs in mind; his approach to creating piano arrangements of not only his own, but also other composers' works; his relationships with his arrangers; the deeper symbolism and lasting legacy of private music-making in his day; and a hitherto unpublished memoir which evokes his Viennese social world. Using Brahms as their focus point, the contributors trace the overlapping worlds of public and private music-making in the nineteenth century, discussing the boundaries between the composer's professional identity and his lifelong engagement with amateur music-making.

Foreword Michael Musgrave
1. Brahms in the home: an introduction Katy Hamilton and Natasha Loges
2. The Joachim quartet concerts at the Berlin Sing-Akademie: Mendelssohnian Geselligkeit in Wilhelmine Germany Robert Eshbach
3. Domesticity in Brahms's string sextets, Opp. 18 and 36 Marie Sumner Lott
4. Where was the home of Brahms's piano works? Katrin Eich
5. Main and shadowy existence(s): works and arrangements in the oeuvre of Johannes Brahms Michael Struck
6. Brahms arranges his symphonies Robert Pascall
7. At the piano with Joseph and Johannes: Joachim's overtures in Brahms's circle Valerie Woodring Goertzen
8. Brahms and his arrangers Helen Paskins, Katy Hamilton and Natasha Loges
9. Brahms in the Wittgenstein homes: a memoir and letters Styra Avins
10. The construction of gender and mores in Brahms's Mädchenlieder Heather Platt
11. Music inside the home and outside the box: Brahms's vocal quartets in context Katy Hamilton
12. The limits of the Lied: Brahms's Magelone-Romanzen Op. 33 Natasha Loges
13. Being (like) Brahms: emulation and ideology in late nineteenth-century Hausmusik Markus Böggemann
14. The cultural dialectics of chamber music: Adorno and the visual-acoustic imaginary of Bildung Richard Leppert.

Subject Areas: Biography: arts & entertainment [BGF], Classical music [c 1750 to c 1830 AVGC4], Music [AV]