A Tale of Two Finales: "Correcting" the Ninth in the Finale of Brahms's First Symphony
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18533/journal.v7i10.1489Keywords:
Beethoven, Brahms, First Symphony, instrumental chorale, Ninth Symphony.Abstract
Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony earns its place as a seminal work in historical narratives because Beethoven had brought into question the aesthetic superiority of instrumental music over vocal music at a crucial historical juncture, when the former had recently established itself as a category of greater rank over the latter. In opening the Ninth to voices in the finale, Wagnerians assert that Beethoven declared that the symphony had “run its course” and had to be improved by the addition of voices, thus undermining the transcendental qualities of instrumental music. In the finale of his First Symphony, Brahms follows a similar trajectory to that of Beethoven’s choral finale but then “misreads” it by choosing to remain purely instrumental with the main theme. Some scholars have viewed this gesture as a divergence from the progressive idea of the symphony that Beethoven had initiated. Drawing on previous scholarship, I examine the contextual significance of Brahms’s finale and delineate how he deviates from the Ninth finale in additional ways. This study also addresses a minor gap in critical writing by exploring the topic of religion and pinning down the function of the instrumental chorale, which has hitherto received limited scholarly attention. Building upon the work of Matthew Gelbart, I discuss how the chorale operates on several symbolic levels, allowing Brahms to pay homage to Beethoven and other composers in music history while simultaneously reinvigorating the post-Beethovenian symphonic genre and inscribing himself into its lineage.
References
Abell, A. M. (1955). Talks with great composers: candid conversations with Brahms, Puccini, Strauss, and others. New York: Citadel Press.
Bach, J.S. (Composer). (1876). Actus tragicus, BWV 106. Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel. (Original work composed 1707-1708)
Beethoven, L.van (Composer). (1863). Symphony no. 9 in d minor, Op. 125. Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel. (Original work composed 1822-1824)
Beller-McKenna, D. (2004). Religion, language, and Lutheran’s Bible. In Brahms and the German spirit (pp. 31-64). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Group/Thomson Learning, 1984.
Bloom, H. (1973). The anxiety of influence: A theory of poetry. New York: Oxford University Press.
Bonds, M. E. (1996). After Beethoven: Imperatives of originality in the symphony. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Bonds, M.E. (1997). Idealism and the aesthetics of instrumental music at the turn of the nineteenth century. Journal of the American Musicological Society 50: 2-3, 387-420.
Bonds, M.E. (2006). Music as thought: Listening to the symphony in the age of Beethoven. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
Brahms, J (Composer). (1926-1927). Symphony no. 1 in c minor, op. 68. Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel. (Original work published 1876)
Brinkmann, R. (1995). Late idyll: The second symphony of Johannes Brahms, trans. Peter Palmer. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Brinkmann, R. (1999). Symphony No. 1 in C Minor, Opus 68. In The complete Brahms: A guide to the musical works of Johannes Brahms, ed. Leon Botstein (pp. 60-65). New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.
Brodbeck, D. (1997a). Brahms: Symphony no. 1. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Brodbeck, D. (1997b). Brahms. In The nineteenth-century symphony, ed. D. Kern Holoman (pp. 224-272). New York: Schirmer Books.
Buch, E. (2003). Beethoven’s ninth: A political history, trans. Richard Miller. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Chua, D. (1999). Absolute music and the construction of meaning. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Fink, R. (1993). Desire, repression & Brahms’s first symphony. repercussions 2:1, 75-103.
Frisch, W. (2003). Brahms: The four symphonies. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Gelbart, M. (2009). Nation, folk, and music history in the finale of Brahms’s first symphony. 19th-Century Studies 23, 57-85.
Hinton, S. (1998). Not which tones? The crux of Beethoven’s ninth. 19th-Century Music 12:1, 61-77.
Kinderman, W. (1985). Beethoven’s symbol for the deity in the Missa solemnis and the ninth symphony. 19th-Century Music 9:2, 102-118.
Knapp, R. (1997). Brahms and the challenge of the symphony. Stuyvesant, NY: Pendragon Press.
Kramer, L. (1998). The harem threshold: Turkish music and Greek love in Beethoven’s “ode to joy.” 19th-Century Music 22:1, 78-90.
Kramer, L. (2007). Why classical music still matters. Berkeley and Los Angeles, California: University of California Press.
Kramer, L. (2011). Interpreting music. Berkeley and Los Angeles, California: University of California Press.
Musgrave, M. (1983). Brahms’s first symphony: Thematic coherence and its secret origin. Music Analysis 2:2, 117-133.
Musgrave, M. (2000). A Brahms reader. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Parmer, D. (1995). Brahms, song quotation, and secret programs. 19th-Century Music 19:2, 161-190.
Reynolds, C. (1985). A Brahms choral symphony. 19th-Century Music 9:1, 3-25.
Rumph, S. (2004). Beethoven after Napoleon: Romanticism in the late works. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Schumann, R. (1856). Neue Bahnen. Reproduced in Music in the western world: A history in documents, ed. Piero Weiss and Richard Taruskin, trans. Leo Treiter, 362-363.
Stanley, G. (1987). Bach’s Erbe: The chorale in the German oratorio of the early nineteenth century. 19th-Century Music 11:2, 121-149.
Taruskin, R. (1989). Performers and instruments: Resisting the ninth. 19th-Century Music 12:3, 241-256.
Treitler, L. (1980). History, criticism, and Beethoven’s ninth symphony. 19th-Century Music 3:3, 193-210.
Wagner, R. (1849, 1998). The artwork of the future. Reproduced in Source readings in music history, ed. Oliver Strunk, trans. Leo Treitler (pp. 1094-1112). New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).
