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COPYRIGHT 1998 University of Nebraska Press
Brahms's last symphony was written during the summer months of 1884 and 1885 in Murzzuschlag. The composer announced the work independently to two of his closest correspondents, characterizing it in both cases by means of the same metaphor. To Elisabeth von Herzogenberg he wrote on 29 August 1885: "May I perhaps send you a piece of a piece of mine, and would you have time to take a look at it, and say a word about it? In general my pieces are unfortunately more agreeable than I am, and one finds less in them to correct?! But in these parts the cherries do not become sweet and edible -- so if the thing doesn't taste good to you, don't bother yourself about it. I am not eager to write a bad No.4."(1) In a letter to Hans yon Billow, Brahms expressed doubts about whether the symphony would find a public. "I fear namely," Brahms wrote, "that it tastes of the climate here, cherries here don't become sweet, you would not eat them!"(2)
The Fourth Symphony challenged symphonic norms in a number of ways: by the complex working out of its themes, the novel structure of its passacaglia-like finale, and its overarching tragic character. Indeed, Brahms's Fourth -- his "neue traurige Symphonie," as he once described it -- stands as a direct challenge to the long-standing convention, established by Beethoven in his Fifth and Ninth Symphonies and virtually inviolable thereafter, that minor-key symphonies should end triumphantly in the major mode.(3) The composer's concern about the reception of his new piece might well have been sparked by his awareness that this work would challenge audience expectations and therefore need to establish for itself a novel if not indeed unique position in relation to the symphonic canon.(4)
This essay considers at some length a number of extracompositional references that figure prominently in the "traurige" expressive language of the symphony as a whole. The second movement and finale, in particular, contain significant allusions -- to works by Beethoven, Bach, and Schumann -- that have the force of an ironic utterance, and through these ironic allusions Brahms comments in an increasingly personal way on the symphony's essentially tragic character. But before turning to these later movements, we must first consider the opening measures of the work, from which its tragic character begins to grow.
I
Nearly from the start, the main theme of Brahms's opening Allegro -- with its characteristic chain of descending thirds and ascending sixths -- has sparked discussion of possible extracompositional references. In 1898 Hugo Riemann linked the theme to the aria "Schau hin und sieh" ("Behold and see") from Handel's Messiah, and ten years later Alfred Heuss observed a similarity to a passage from the slow movement of Beethoven's "Hammerklavier" Sonata. Max Kalbeck, writing in 1913, responded skeptically to both suggestions, noting that the scherzo of Brahms's own C-Major Piano Sonata, op.1, contains a similar passage of falling thirds using identical pitches (mm.48-50), and that it was therefore unnecessary to resort to other models to account for the theme of Brahms's symphony. At the same time, however, he proposed that the opening measures of Mozart's G-Minor Symphony might have served as a model instead (ex. 6.1), even drawing a parallel between the preparatory gesture in the lower strings in the earlier work and the introductory measures that Brahms had suppressed from the later one.(5)
Yet chains of falling thirds are a recurring stylistic feature of Brahms's music, and to the extent that the passages from Handel, Beethoven, and Mozart resemble the opening of the symphony simply in respect of this particular feature, adducing them as models is redundant, as Kalbeck observes. Moreover, in texted works composed after 1879 falling third-chains like the one that characterizes Brahms's symphony seem to have been consistently associated in the composer's mind with the idea of death, as Max Harrison and Peter Latham have variously remarked in regard to the songs "Feldeinsamkeit" (op.86, no.2), "Mit vierzig Jahren" (op.94, no.1), "Der Tod, das ist die kuhle Nacht" (op.96, no. 1), and "O Tod" (the third of the Vier ernste Gesange, op.121).(6) This particular use of the falling third-chain as a musical symbol for death obviously raises the possibility that the same symbolic association is operating in the Fourth Symphony. And this suggestion gains force when we note that the opening measures of the symphony even recall the "staggering" accompanimental device that characterizes a number of the songs in question.
"O Tod," op.121, no.3, seems especially relevant here. This late song contains the most prominent use in Brahms's Lieder of the falling third-chain, both in its purely structural and motivic role, as well as in the strength and nature of its association with the idea of death. In this song, Death is personified by being addressed directly no fewer than four times, each time supported by the falling third-chain. The relationship between word and motive is stark and direct. Significantly, the motive appears in both descending and inverted form, reflecting the contrasting aspects of the biblical writer's subjective response to the reality of death. In the verse that characterizes death as bitter, the motive appears in its usual descending form, but when the text speaks of death as welcome, the inverted form takes hold (ex. 6.2).
The use of the motive in this song is related strongly enough to the opening of the Fourth Symphony to establish an allusive self-reference. In this sense, "O Tod" may be viewed as a kind of appendix to the symphony, developing and making more explicit the symbolic role of the topos in the earlier work. The two pieces share the key of E minor, and both use the chain as an unprepared opening gesture, with the notes rhythmically paired and the basic interval appearing in both descending and inverted form.
The appearance in "O Tod" of both forms of the motive to reflect contrasting attitudes toward death is especially suggestive when considered in light of the entire symphony. As Schoenberg first noted, in the last two variation statements of the finale the third-chains finally make their appearance in an exclusively descending form.(7) If we regard Brahms's use in the first movement of both descending thirds and ascending sixths as representing the same kind of ambivalent attitude toward death that it does in "O Tod," then the reappearance of the symphony's opening theme in exclusively descending form near the end of the finale stands as an expressive metaphor for the tragic outcome of the symphony. The return of the falling third idea, then, is not simply a cyclical element but a developmental and programmatic one as well. With the final unveiling of the descending third structure that underlies the opening theme, now in a starker, less melodically appealing guise, the ambivalence of the first movement is dispelled once and for all. The bitterness of death that is described in "O Tod" recalls Brahms's image of the sour cherries of Murzzuschlag: "I fear ... that [the symphony] tastes of the climate here, cherries here don't become sweet, you would not eat them." And this reappearance of the death motive in its pure form serves in turn to unleash the tragic fury of the coda.
II
Although I have skirted the issue of allusion in my discussion thus far, it would be well at this point, before turning our attention to the Andante moderato, to clarify how the term allusion is used here. For the purposes of this essay, allusion is understood to be a purposeful, extracompositional reference made by means of a resemblance, usually thematic and local in nature. It is a stylistic device employed by a composer to direct the attention of the listener to the passage that is alluded to, and to the larger context in which it appears. When the full potential of allusion is exploited, an allusion will suggest secondary resemblances or resonances that relate the two works in further meaningful ways.(8)
The resemblance between two passages is the means by which the allusion is made, not the allusion itself. Allusion is not really a species of borrowing, although the presence of resemblance, or even exact quotation, may superficially suggest as much. In borrowing, identification of the source material is irrelevant to our aesthetic appreciation of the work and is usually not desired by the composer. The flow of energy is from the earlier work to the later one. In allusion, on the other hand, recognition of the resemblance is essential, and our attention is directed away from the later work toward the earlier one.
Defining allusion as a consciously employed local stylistic device distinguishes it both from larger questions of influence, which tends to involve unconscious or irresistible forces acting on the composer, and from large-scale structural modeling. An allusion invites consideration of its significance within the historical and cultural context in which it was made, and in this way is also distinct from more extreme forms of intertextualist criticism, in which it is the experience of the listener (that is, the critic), not that of the composer or his contemporaries, which is of central importance.
Bearing all this in mind, let us examine one particularly salient allusion that occurs toward the end of the second movement (mm.106-10). Here, in a gentle passage for clarinets and oboe that unfolds over a sustained B in the lower strings and timpani, Brahms seems to call our attention to the striking passage in C major that is heard three times during the Andante con moto of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony (ex. 6.3). The two themes are quite similar rhythmically (allowing of course for the difference in meter), and the use of clarinets by both composers for the first few measures, and the change of instrumentation at equivalent points -- Beethoven to violins (m.26), Brahms to oboe (m.109) -- strengthens the sense of a structural resemblance. And notwithstanding significant pitch differences, which we shall consider below, the underlying structure of the melodies is fundamentally the same. Both outline triads -- major in Beethoven, diminished in Brahms -- and their use of repetition and stepwise movement through these scale degrees is identical.
Robert Bailey has described this allusion as a "parenthetical" reference because of the way in which Brahms uses it to suspend momentarily the normal flow of the movement.(9) This sense of disjunction is produced on a number of levels: harmonically, by the static diminished triad that undergirds the allusive measures; texturally, by the reduced instrumentation and solo wind writing and by the continuous thirty-second-note arpeggios in the upper strings; and dynamically, by the extreme indications of p to ppp. The allusion is flanked on one side by a brief lead-in (with a decrescendo and written-out ritardando) and on the other by a short transition back to the normal flow of the movement. The effect of disjunction is enhanced by one ritardando leading to a caesura at the end of the allusion and by another at the conclusion of the ensuing transition.(10)
With an allusion such as this one, whose meaning is expressed primarily in structural, purely musical terms rather than...
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