Originality

[adriano]

Alan, I am shocked. Brahms has so many sunny corners! Listen to his songs, Liebeslieder-Walzer and chamber music. Not to speak about his pastoral-like Second Symphony and his two Serenades!
Last year in June I was spending some time again on the shores of the lake of Thun and I heard Brahms's Violin Sonata in A, just resounding from the shimmering water and the beautiful sunny landscape all around! The piece was composed there, as were the Sonata for Cello in F, the Piano Trio in c minor and the Double Concerto!

[Alan Howe]

Oh, I agree - I was thinking mainly of the symphonies as points of comparison. So even the 2nd Symphony has dark moments, especially in the first and second movements, in a way that Bruch doesn't. No doubt it's the mark of the greater composer (Brahms) to hide doubt behind certainty, sadness behind happiness. My English teacher at school always taught us that the work of the greatest writers, especially poets, was characterised by ambiguity. I think that's true of Brahms.

[adriano]

Brahms had a strange sense of humour, since, after having enjoyed the success of his Second Symphony, he wrote to some of his friends that he was astonished that such "sad music" would be appreciated at all. He even warned some more before the première that it will be "unbearably melancholic", that never before he had written such a bleak thing "in the style of music in a minor key" and that the score must be printed with black rims. To others he wrote that it was a "joyful, fully innocent and tender affair". In a later letter he admitted that he was a "naturally melancholic person", but that he connects his new Symphony with his (at that same time) dark D minor Motette op. 74 Nr. 1 ("Why Light is Given to the Wretched?", a masterwork!) - just to cast a bit of shadow into his "heitere" (joyful) Symphony, by introducing some trombones and timpani (which at the beginning were unforseen).
You are right, Alan: you feel this - but I still consider this as Brahms's "Pastoral". About "originality": consider the highly elegant "elf's" or "gnome's" dance music alternating between Menuet, Gavotte and Galop in the Scherzo! A very original piece, elegantly constantly alternating between major and minor. Only geniuses could handle their artistry with such humoour, distance and virtuosity - and at the same time produce "serious" music.

[Paul Barasi]

Originality is an issue not always treated with sufficient respect or understanding, perhaps because we crave basking in the light of a creative individual personality while being held prisoner by the collective conformity. 'Derivative' always seems to be used as a disparaging term and yet the originality we now commend was often attacked when first played. Yes, originality has value but that isn't sufficient in itself nor does it guarantee quality or satisfaction. Indeed, some of the original noise-type modern "music" I've heard is the least enjoyable. Like Isaac Newton, composers stand on the shoulders of giants. What they write is heavily influenced by what was composed before them. And it has been possible for different composers to write the same or similar tune completely independently, just as two scientists can make the same discovery. We experience the same world but know that we see and hear it differently. So, we are bothered when paintings or music by different people look or sound the same (and yet, perversely, object when it is too different!). Pieces are mostly called unoriginal in relation to tunes, rather than structures, or instrumental combination and colour or the story-lines of a work. The tunes of other composers can be recycled deliberately for a variety of reasons, but the context of their setting and their orchestration may still be original. There is usually a natural pattern to completing the start of a phrase, like the way we can finish other people's sentences, which can produce similar sounding music almost by itself.

[Alan Howe]

Perhaps we can return to this issue of 'ambiguity'? Often originality is about multi-layers of meaning, it seems to me. Does anyone else sense this?

One unsung piece that has really struck me as embodying this ambiguity is the slow movement of Klughardt's 4th Symphony which, within 3 minutes or so, passes from calm to despair to triumph.

[Alan Howe]

That's my reaction too. The mistake is to make comparisons with Brahms. Just take the music on its own (wonderful) terms.

[matesic]

John - let's hope the concert-goers of Banbury share your taste! After the event I'll report how it went down (either from the platform or the audience)

[Double-A]

Perhaps we can return to this issue of 'ambiguity'? Often originality is about multi-layers of meaning, it seems to me. Does anyone else sense this?

One unsung piece that has really struck me as embodying this ambiguity is the slow movement of Klughardt's 4th Symphony which, within 3 minutes or so, passes from calm to despair to triumph.

I don't think this is ambiguity.  Don't we call this rapid changes in mood?  Ambiguity in music seems hard to nail down to me unless it is described in technical terms:  Harmonies that may be heard in one key or another or rhythms that may be heard/played as hemiolas or as straight 3/4.

[Alan Howe]

You're probably right. But the effect is to pose the question: What is this music really about - calm, despair or triumph?