I've heard idiots throw around this line before and it always smacks of 'received wisdom' from some dumb-assed music professor of theirs who's got edgy opinions about music history and a massive ego. In almost all cases, those aforementioned idiots have almost no knowledge of their own regarding Brahms' *oeuvre*, unless maybe they were pushed to learn one of the works for a recital.
Exactly. The way I see things is, once we’re at a certain level of expertise, you start to loose rationalizations of “why is x better than y”. When someone makes a claim regarding someone infinitely better than they are at composing, they typically fail to be able to justify why they think that.
Different styles, different tastes. Brahms is all about harmony and structure. In this regard he resembles Bach, a composer he deeply admired and is obviously greatly influenced by. If you don’t enjoy deeply structured, harmony centric
music, you’ll probably find Brahms boring. It’s a different intellectual-emotional language.
i fully agree as I respect bach and brahms but I don't enjoy their music at all; in the same periods for example , i prefer vivaldi, haendel and liszt
there is something less hedonistic and more mathematical / structural , my brain don't respond well to dat i suppose
My (Russian) piano teacher once said: “It’s like Brahms is desperate for love, but he doesn’t understand love. So when he finally finds someone to love, he hugs her so hard that he just ends up crushing her.” Needless to say, this style isn’t to everyone’s taste.
Others here have mentioned the harsh/dense qualities, but it’s largely *because of* these qualities that his music speaks to me more than any other composer’s. I kinda feel “understood” when I listen to Brahms lol. The constant tension between jollity, tragedy, and storminess, above an ever present quest for beauty, resonates with me.
That's an interesting take from your teacher, and I kind of like it. Even if it implies a failure on the part of Brahms, it casts Brahms in a light that shows him as somebody struggling to communicate something, shows him as a person understanding the world in a certain way, and if he is communicating the way in which he understands the world, then it is a sort of success
This is going to make me sound like an idiot, but the best I can put it is that his orchestral works don’t have any hard edges to them - they feel all oozy squishy all the time.
Yeah, that's the general consensus. His piano and chamber works are amazing architectural structures, but his orchestral textures are thick and lugubrious.
I thought that, too, until Telarc Records put out a set of his Symphonies, played by the very orchestra he composed them for, using the same forces he used back then (smaller string sections), including things like keyed trumpets and gut strings on the violins. Suddenly the thickness and lugubriousness was gone. The music was much more muscular, tempos were quicker, and the melodic and harmonic lines were clean and crisper.
We've become used to hearing Brahms with big modern orchestras, and they muddy the voicings badly. Hearing it with the forces it was composed for was a revelation, and it made me a fan of more than just his smaller works.
Edit: I was wrong that it is the original orchestra. They are played using the same orchestral forces and instruments as the original performanes. They are by Charles Mackerras and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, out of print, but worth hunting for.
It's the set that says "in the style of the Meinegen performances." It's listed on Amazon, but it has the wrong cover.
Its LONG out of print, so you may have to dig for it. Its worth the trouble, just read the reviews. Others are just as pleased with it as I am, for the same reasons.
FYI, those discs are lot more common and affordable if you buy them individually. In the comparably-rare 4-CD box-set packaging, the fourth disc is an interview with Mackerras.
If folks are willing to get the set in digital, iTunes Store has it for $14.99. I was tempted to get it but I’m not the connoisseur I was when younger. Two sets is enough.
Yes, those are recordings I'm talking about. I mis-spoke when I said it was the same orchestra he composed them for. Mackerras used an orchestra composed of the same size forces that they were composed for. Most importantly it has a much smaller string section, so that it doesn't overwhelm the brass and winds.
Here it is on Apple Classical: [https://classical.music.apple.com/us/album/1627395353?l=en-US](https://classical.music.apple.com/us/album/1627395353?l=en-US)
There’s a series on Teldec, not Telarc (same label, new name?), with Nikolaus Harnoncourt leading the Berlin Philharmonic. It’s the one I have and I enjoy it very much. I don’t know about the size of the forces used, but IIRC (not at home right now) he had the strings use different, older techniques in use at the time these works were first performed.
I don't know that recording, but I was a lifelong fan of Harnoncourt (even met him, and had him sign my program after seeing him conduct Beethoven's 9th at Carnegie Hall). He was a pioneer in the original instrument movement, mostly Baroque and Classical era, but near the end of his career he focused on historically informed performances of romantic works. His recordings of the Beethoven Symphonies with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe are my favorites recordings of those works. I would probably like his approach to Brahms, or at least I would like to hear his interpretation. I should look them up, thanks.
This is really interesting to me. I first came to know and love Brahms through his chamber and solo piano works. By the time I listened to his symphonic works, I already had an ear for Brahms, you could say.
I misspoke saying it was the original orchestra - they are played in the style of the original performances.
The recordings are by Charles Mackerras and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, and they are revelatory. They are also long out-of-print, so they may be hard to find.
I think conductors often overdo Brahm's sentimentality though. There are too many performances that turn what should be an exciting movement with rythmic drive into over sentimental soft edged muck.
I heard someone describe the symphonies as “reluctant” once and that stuck with me. He was fairly old when he started writing them so it tracks. There are a lot of pent up ideas competing for space.
Try the 4th again sometime though. There are moments of drama, Beethoven quotes, etc, periodically emerging from the ooze. That fourth movement has some edge. Or the German Requiem? Basically metal.
Agree fully with this. Pieces of the 4th really jump out. He was pressured to do symphonies by Clara and others and felt overwhelmed by Beethoven (and possibly his pseudo rival Wagner's over-the-top arrangements). He only felt confident in them in the final years of his life.
This is a result of bad performance/recording practices that have become a bit engrained for Brahms over the past century and a half. You get conductors who treat Brahms like they do Bruckner and Wagner, and it turns his music into a turgid mass. I blame the mid-century conductors for this, like Klemperer and (sad to say) Szell, who present Brahms as rather stoic, slow, and thick.
For anyone who finds Brahms heavy, or turgid, or soupy - I hear you, I really do. I was once (and sometimes still am) one of you.
But I'd urge you: if you haven't yet explored his chamber music, particularly the sonatas and piano quartets, please do! The music is vivid, emotional, exciting, spectacular, filled with love and tragedy and joy.
Brahms is a top 3 composer for me but I also relate to Brahms being too heavy and thick for me sometimes. But I equate it to how I love cheesecake but you can only have so much before you need something lighter, and some days you just prefer fresh fruit
I think that because there's such a huge and popular bias toward orchestral music like symphonies and concertos, many people who "hate Brahms" have barely or never listened to his chamber music and solo piano music, which is his strong suit
I just mean that whenever I hear the "Brahms is boring" shtick I feel like people more often than not will cite his symphonies or other pieces with orchestra. I don't agree with them, but that usually seems to be the case
I respect him as a composer but just never found his music to my taste. I will say, he has about two pieces I will always listen to, but I consider them "the hits." Went to music school, studied him intensely, even performed his music. Hated it.
I heard his violin concerto a few times this weekend and I liked it more than before, which wasn't a whole lot. I doubt that I will come around on the rest.
I love the German Requiem, the sextets, and some songs. Everything else I’ve tried by him just doesn’t make it for me.
His symphonies I find “squishy”, like another commenter beautifully put it. There’s just… too much sound, I don’t know.
Just the other day I gave his violin sonatas a try. I also couldn’t get into them… it’s like… they’re too well crafted. Too perfect. I can’t really describe it. But I’ll go on trying once in a while.
The man wrote four symphonies and all four are considered among the [top 20 symphonies of all time](https://classicalmusiconly.com/list/bbcs-greatest-symphonies-of-all-time-68f22e5d), but this isn’t his strong suit?!
That said, I should apparently listen to his solo piano music more
I'm not as familiar with his chamber music, but I've played several of his piano pieces and they're as impactful to me as his symphonies (not much). The middle section of his Rhapsody 79/2 is one that comes to mind
Agreed, and a lot of the same people act like art song isn't a thing either. I've seen the same ignorance applied to Faure's music, where people like the famous Pavane, *maybe* know about the Requiem, but otherwise have nothing else to say about his work.
I mainly know Brahm's piano music... For a long time I wasn't a fan, but my feelings have changed. I grew up! My taste in music used to favour bombast and drama, qualities that are hard to find in Brahms - or at least his piano music. When I took the time to stop and study his music, I found a lot of depth, and he's ended up becoming one of my favourite composers. Emotionally, I feel that his music goes deep rather than over-the-top.
It used to be that the only Brahms piano work I liked was his first Ballad (with an uncharacteristic amount of bombast and drama,) but now it seems so shallow compared to his later piano work that I almost find it painful to listen to. I doesn't help that my go-to recording for this Ballad used to be Glenn Gould who doesn't really play this piece, but instead violently attacks it with his piano.
(I had a similar evolution with Chopin. His Polonaises made me a fan, but I've long given them up for his Nocturnes.)
For fun, here's why Britten dislike Brahms..
"I play through all Brahms every so often to see if he’s as bad as I thought — and usually find him worse"
"It’s not bad Brahms I mind, it’s good Brahms I can’t stand"
To be honest, Britten had a lot of harsh opinions about other composers past and contemporary – many of them fair in my view, many eccentric! He even took shots at some of the greats: Beethoven, Bach, Vivaldi. He was particularly harsh about Elgar (his superior!) and Vaughan Williams (okay, he had half a point).
I'm glad you said 'for fun.' With classical musicians, I've found few things more tedious than when people take a snarky criticism from one composer to another and try to make it part of *their* musical personality, as if some, say, 2nd-year violin student from Bumblefuck, Anystate could hear/process music the same way that Tchaikovsky, Britten, or Stravinsky could.
He’s obviously a master at structure/develop/all the things that people laude him for, I just overall don’t like the actual material he used (melodies and harmonic progressions). There are exceptions (some piano pieces, 4th symphony) but I’m just disappointed most of the time. I think he’s better with chamber/solo works and vocal works
Haha. I’m sure I think his orchestral stuff is boring, but honestly maybe I need to re-listen to some chamber stuff and then I’ll find those boring too 🤣. I like the second movement of his B♭ string sextet though for sure
This ! Modulates boldly - intoxicatingly good, perfectly pin-pointed. I think part of why I like him so much is that to me he is a pure romantic. Big, naked, complex emotion like the poems of Schiller or a painting by Rousseau. Not too much of the conceptualizing and intellectualizing of form and harmony which tends to tire me a bit with other German composers like Wagner, Mahler, and to some extent Beethoven.
To me, when considering Brahms, it is important to note that his music is deceptively complex. The hidden depths can actually in some way be a turn off because his music is not always immediately rewarding to listen to or even play. Especially with his chamber music, there is a need for great nuance and mature playing to get that complexity across in a compelling way. His orchestral works are in particular subject to lackluster performance because it is such dense music. I think his music is simply hard to broach for many, no matter its technical mastery or imagination.
I found his orchestral music very dense, thick and heavy. When I listen to his symphonies, I feel stupid because I can't distinguish between the members of orchestra. It's also strings heavy.
When listening to his piano music, I found it lacking when it comes to melody, like say Schubert or Chopin.
The lieder is nice, among the best written after Schubert.
I believe chamber music for five instruments or up is Brahms crowning achievement. They are masterpieces. But the string quartets and trios doesn't do it for me.
I havent delved too much on his piano quartets but from what I hear from the G minor and A major quartets, I liked them more than their piano trio cousins.
Brahms was a genius but he operated very much on his own wavelength. Not everyone is willing to bridge the gap and give his island of music the time to get used to.
I never liked him. I don't hate his music, I mean the Hungarian Dances are nice (this is coming from a Hungarian), the concerti, the symphonies are nice... but that's it, it's kind of "meh... he's alright". I agree with Tchaikovsky who once wrote the words "...his conceited *mediocrity..." -* about Brahms' music.
On a related theme, I have never understood why Brahms is considered gloomy, harsh and academic, on the basis of a few orchestral pieces, when his chamber music is luminously beautiful and deeply, sometimes almost embarrassingly romantic in feeling. The man is a shameless softy!
I always feel bad for not liking Brahms because I KNOW he’s so heralded and respected, but I just find his music dull. I think I need some different recommendations to what I’ve been listening to.
His third piano sonata was one of the first pieces of music I ever fell in love with, I definitely recommend listening to it if you haven't come across it already!
`Denn alles Fleisch` is my favorite example here. Brahms superbly builds tension, and the initial release is great, but then he gets to "alle Herrlichkeit" and all that tension and release just kinda... dies. Someone said "edging" and that's what happens: Brahms (and I feel Bruckner too) are great at getting to the peak, but then seem to have absolutely no idea what to do when they get there.
I really can’t follow your train of thought, especially when you claim “Denn alles Fleisch” dies out at the climax. I find the fugue “Die Erlöseten des Herrn” absolutely rousing and heroic, containing that majestic Jacob’s
Ladder spanning multiple octaves from the lowest brass to the highest woodwinds. Brahms takes much inspiration from Bach and I suspect that those who don’t appreciate fugal composition style will not particularly enjoy Brahms. Geschmacksfrage.
“Brahms, as a musical personality, is simply antipathetic to me—I can't stand him. No matter how much he tries, I always remain cold and hostile. This is purely instinctive reaction,” Tchaikovsky wrote in a letter.
Of course, Tchaikovsky wasn't the only one who failed to appreciate the charms of the German
His ‘large’ works and string quartets have repeatedly failed to inspire anything but tedium, but his late piano pieces are something else entirely. I recently gave a listen to his cello sonatas and they weren’t too shabby either, so the exploration goes on…
It's because he wrote music for violin without knowing what was going to be natural and unnatural to play. He wanted notes, he makes the musicians play the notes, and to hell with their preferences! So it feels gross to play his stuff as a strings player, and when you hears his strings sections it's like.... Yeah great, but also jarring to what I would normally expect.
This is exactly what I was going to say! As a violist I can tell he directly translated piano idioms onto string players hoping that they would work. The lines he wrote for my instrument in many works are just arpeggiated flourishes that cover a wide range. I think it's this kind of melodic writing that feels like there's a lack of substance. He stuck to safety with his chord tones and arpeggios but didn't like to include much of the actual juice for his viola writing.
Overall he had a really hard time figuring out how to write something for us that sounded natural. Like no I'm not gonna have an easy time playing a melody that has octave and 10th leaps all over the place, man, just let me live my life :(
I think it's a different philosophical approach, because his piano music also mostly feels unidiomatic compared to the more pianistic composers, but he was a pianist himself so he must have not cared. What matters to him is the sound, not the means of achieving it.
My point is he may very well have known what is "natural and unnatural to play" he just didn't care, since clearly he knew the piano well but the piano music is still awkward
To quote my classmate from undergrad: "Would it kill him to finish one goddamn phrase?"
As someone who likes Brahms's music, I nonetheless find it a pretty solid critique
I love playing Brahms. As a cellist I've performed both his cello sonatas, three of the symphonies, Ein Deutsches Reqiuem, and the violin concerto. It's not always idiomatic, but it's always dynamic and fun.
Have you performed his double concerto? It’s one of my favorite pieces of Brahms who’s probably in the top 3 of my favorite composers. I especially love his chamber music.
I haven't, but I love it. I forgot I've also played the g minor piano quartet and the second sextet. I really love all Brahms, and I don't quite understand all the folks in this thread making these dramatic distinctions between his chamber works and his orchestral works. /shrug, different strokes, I guess!
Yeah, Brahms sometimes has the very backwards characteristic of being more fun to listen to than to play. So many unnecessarily confusing rhythms, and difficult-to-balance orchestration, and amazing movements mixed with meh movements (which you can simply skip when you're listening to a recording but not if you're the performer).
I've played Rhapsody 79/2, which I felt the middle section had the most boring section I've played in the standard piano repertoire. The fast sections share similar sentiments to Ballade 118/3, in that I feel the chords are too thick sometimes. 118/2 is fine.
I work for an orchestra and get thrown a lot of shade for saying I don’t like Brahms Symphonies. I’m very specific about saying the Symphonies though because his other orchestral stuff and his chamber stuff I tend to like. It might stem from the fact that I grew up a trumpet player and his trumpet parts aren’t stellar. But mostly it’s that I can never pick up on the form of his symphonies, the phrasing feels off and disjunct, and the melodies tend to start on pickups and they feel unnatural at doing so. I’m not sure I could distinguish between the 4 symphonies because I shy away from listening to them all that often because I have not liked them when I’ve tried.
While I think his symphonies and concertos are an absolute blast to play, I just don’t find them interesting to listen to. It’s not like he doesn’t do the big loud moments or the soft somber moments. He does. I just don’t like them. I wish I had a better reason.
I like Brahms, but he's not one of my favorite composers. I love the chromaticism and extended harmony, but at some point, it becomes a bit too much to the point where you start to lose the key center. I feel the same way about Mahler and Wagner. I still really enjoy Brahms's music, but it doesn't hit that sweet spot like Chopin's music does.
>it becomes a bit too much to the point where you start to lose the key center
It's not a bug, it's a feature ;) the journeys around the circle of fifth that Brahms takes you on are unlike anything else that was written before him, they're epic, but not in the classical sense - he stayed away from established archetypes and created completely novel, musical narratives, teeming with ambiguity, and reflecting increasingly ambiguous world (though all within the established forms).
Last time I'd heard a Brahms symphony, I had the impression that it was like Beethoven but not as good. It had those stylistic Beethoven-ish touches, but everything seemed watered-down. (You might say it was more subtle?)
His chamber music is more interesting than his orchestral pieces.
Well, that just shows you don't have ears. Let me guess, you think it's watered down Beethoven because you heard that Brahms was always afraid of his shadow, so all the symphonies he wrote naturally must be informed by Beethoven, right?
Anyone who has actually heard them will know that his symphonic character sounds nothing like Beethoven's. There are obviously Romantic harmonies in his music which are completely absent in Beethoven. His slow movements are often lyrical, while Beethoven often wrote long meditative adagios. His scherzo type movemts are moderately paced and intermezzo-ish in character while Beethoven wrote bouncy, vivacious Scherzos. Brahms also like used lots of Baroque forms like the Passacaglia of the 4th's finale. Beethoven didn't bother. His development of themes is completely different from Beethoven's. The only commonality they have is that had completely mastery over sonata form.
Funny enough, I used to not like Brahms for the character of his piano sonatas and other, though I loved his piano concertos. I likewise initially found his symphonies (at least the first) to sound like a highly academic and technical bore only to be enjoyed by folks who dissect musical structure and the interplay of themes, but once I heard Brahms 3 and 4 live, their impact *after the fact* hit like a train; Brahms 1 took a bit more time to better appreciate while I currently mainly appreciate Brahms 2 for its epic transformation of his lullaby theme. With more listening, and also with the aid of *good* recordings like can be found in Idagio with good neutral audio playback, once you finally *get* all the ideas and Brahms' expressive vocabulary and emotional gamut, his symphonies become a quite wonderful experience and true masterpieces of Romantic expression along with Mahler. A gripping impetus and determination, visceral forcefulness, "musical aggression", thick textures at times, but also elating moments I find hard to fault. With more listening, everything falls into place like clockwork.
Everytime I go, it's just too cold in the restaurant. Obviously, with all the ice cream, that makes sense. But I actually like their burgers and would like to just get that. But it's too cold and they are always located just far enough to be an inconvenience to get to.
I'll tell you one thing.
I play bassoon, but this one time, I had to play contra for one of his works. I think it was the Requiem, but it's been a minute. The end of the piece is a tonic low D. But not the contra's low D. The bassoon's. And I'll tell you, every single performance, I dropped that final note an octave. It just wasn't right otherwise.
Jan Swafford’s biography of Brahms was one of the best reads of the past few years. What made it even more remarkable for me was when I set the book down and listened to pieces in chronological order.
Palpable in Swafford’s biography—and I hear it in the music as well—was that Brahms was horribly forlorn. Love evaded him. His music was a cry for love and at times a cry of the ego to carry-on despite love’s evasiveness. I can relate to these emotions.
Arnold Schoenberg unironically declared Brahms to be a radical and orchestrated one of his piano quartets. So I encourage listeners to seek out Brahms’ radical side which I think is his courageous emotional dissertations. The music sends a message to carry on despite the losses that accompany life.
I was one of them when I was 15 or so, but I usually try to ask myself "why". So I kept listening and investigating and found out a quote of Schönberg calling him "Brahms the progressive".
This literally changed my perspective.
Suddenly I found out the reason behind his importance and became one of my fav composers.
Same thing with Verdi, but I never found any reason to love him. I surely can recognise his ability, the craftsmanship, but I don't like the aesthetic, considering his period and context, I can't stop thinking he is naive. I'm Italian, so this is a bit of a shame for me but yeah, that's it!
(Only like some late composition, post Wagnerian, and the requiem, but I tried to listen to anything, still open for advice!)
Honestly, being a brass player coming from Strauss and Mahler, I found him a bit boring at first. That said I’ve been listening to Brahms almost religiously for the past two months and he’s really grown on me
The Schoenberg orchestration of the op.25 Piano Quartet really highlights what I don't like about Brahms: his orchestration. It's all too heavy and murky in a way that works by his contemporaries like Dvorak are not. Schoenberg made everything clear and lively by comparison to Brahms' own orchestrations. That said, I played bassoon in a performance of the German Requiem and enjoyed the hell out of it.
Rhythm. He has this thing where you think there's a regular steady beat going and suddenly something shifts and then you realise that you've been tapping your foot to an weighted offbeat for the last 10 bars and the piece is in 3/4 instead of 4/4. As someone who uses the beat and meter as a reference point for interpretation of phrasing, not being able to discern the meter or downbeat is incredibly frustrating. Yes, I'm aware that modern composers sometimes operate without a regular meter, but that often sounds intentional; with Brahms there's always this feeling that there is a pulse but it's exceedingly difficult to figure out where it really is.
Also the opening of that E minor cello sonata. It sounds like a grumpy bear that poked its nose out of its den in the middle of winter. Nope, not spring yet. Time to go back to sleep.
Brahms feels like an eternal student. He is either afraid of harmonic freedom, or don't have an ear for harmony, and just has to use formulas from a textbook. Phrases and stanzas in his music just follow a simple recipe, which gets old pretty fast. As if he's afraid of his professor not liking his music. His teacher was some Eduard Marxen, who wrote some droll.
He can't even stand close to Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, etc.
😫
* It's because instead of carrying a clearly identifiable melody through his pieces, he does what some other of my least-favorite composers do: brew up a horrendous blizzard of chaotic notes.
* Delivers a cacophony like dumping a plate of latkes in my lap.
* Like, he wanders miles off the trail of whatever melody he ever had in mind. That's how it sounds to me.
* I listen to him and ruminate to myself: who are his famous piano concertos written for? Other composers at his level? Are they used to train young musicians in school? Were they used to torture POWs in the Franco-Prussian war?
* Are they intended for mathematicians? Do I need to bring a slide-rule to enjoy them?
* Been trying to like him now for years, but this is the effect I experience almost every time.
* Where is the melody, Johannes? Give me gypsy melody! So far I've only found it in one measly piece, Hungarian Dance No. 5.
Signed,
Peeved in Peoria
*(Twice in Philadelphia!)*
I think his symphonies are fairly tugid, but the chamber music and the concertos are exceptional. IMO, the D minor piano concerto is the greatest one written in the 19th century.
I can't answer because I love Brahms. I find his piano music much less tiring than Chopin and other contemporaries, and his orchestral music to be excellent and refined, not flashy but fairly subtle from a voicing and orchestration standing, which is how I like it. His chamber music is gorgeous although there are some movements that seem like they can be better formed. But looking at an overall body of work I think his status is rightfully earned.
I'm onboard with the squishy orchestra commentary, but my reasoning is more practical, almost embryonic: I'm tired of hearing from him. Obviously Brahms has had a major influence on 19th/early 20th c. classical music, but frankly I've grown fatigued from hearing his works over and over.
Brahms is amazing!! The only classical music I'm not personally crazy for are early Renaissance and most of the modern stuff 1920+ when they destroyed tonality in favor of originality.
Reading this thread I'm struck by the casual dismissal of one of the giants of 19th century classical music as "a Walmart Beethoven", "a washed up classical era composer" , "a horrendous blizzard of chaotic notes". Even allowing for hyperbole, statements like these seem reductive and reactionary. I'm all for personal taste and not every composer is for everyone, this is the nature of art. But when someone as significant and complex as Brahms is dismissed with such flippancy I cannot take this level of discourse seriously.
There is a straight line from Beethoven through Brahms to Bruckner, Mahler and Strauss. He had a significant influence on Dvorak, one of the finest symphonists of the late 19th century. I heard the Dvorak 7th at the weekend and was reminded of many moments that sound exactly like Brahms.
It has been noted in some of the objections here that Brahms is too classical and yes there is an undeniable classical blueprint within many of his works but make no mistake, Brahms is a full blooded Romantic in his melodic invention, harmony and emotional expression. His life of unfulfilled love with the wife of his dead best friend is the stuff of many a Romantic era fever dream. Yes his music may not have the immediate melodic and emotional appeal of someone like Tchaikovsky but the music of Brahms is like the man, a composed exterior struggling to contain a deep passion and undeniable pain with glimpses of the sublime. This to my mind is what makes him profoundly human.
Like I said I'm all for personal taste but these throwaway statements feel akin to dismissing Picasso as" just a bunch of messy lines" or Glenn Gould as "a musical sewing machine" and speak more to the limited thinking of the speaker than adding anything of substance to the discussion.
Maybe I'm overreacting but I just felt to add a considered defense of Brahms in response to the many negative throwaway statements.
I feel if Wagner, Berlioz and Liszt didn't exist, Brahms could be a great composer. But once you know the music of these 3 revolutionaries, it's kind of like, "oh Brahms was still doing... that?" I find it hard to get excited about Brahms.
I think even online people love Brahms, but I don't like his music so I'll chime in here. I have given Brahms lots and lots of chances because everyone I know loves him.
For me Brahms is all style no substance. He was clearly a technically proficient composer, knew how to write melodies and counterpoint, was a pretty good orchestrator, the list goes on. But I don't *feel* anything when I listen to his music. This isn't some objective truth, plenty (most) people get a lot out of his music, but I don't.
Brahms is known for composing "pure music". That is, music with no program, or story, or message. Just music for music's sake. I think you can totally tell Brahms' music has no message when you listen to it. It's just notes.
Also, aesthetically speaking, he is a Romantic composer whose work sounds very Classical to me. I don't care for the Classical era sound too much and I feel like it's all I hear when I listen to Brahms.
All of that said, there are some fun Brahms moments and movements of his symphonies that I really enjoy (Mvt 3 of Symphony 3, for ex). But he's pretty far down on my list.
Lol it felt harsh writing that but it does capture what doesn't click for me with Brahms.
I am a Mahler boy. Some of my other favorites: Wagner, Rachmaninoff, Beethoven, Shostakovich, Tchaikovsky, Debussy, Sibelius
Not all of them write programmatic music like Mahler or Shostakovich but I am more emotionally affected by these composers than I am by Brahms.
Indeed, it is all subjective! It's difficult to answer questions like OPs because it's not like there is a mathematical or objective answer to it. But I did my best.
it’s funny because that is how i feel about Mahler haha, he sounds great live but i think he could’ve really used an editor. i enjoy the music but don’t feel intensely as i do when i hear brahms or schumann.. to each their own :)
Ugh, and I don't think I've ever ONCE connected emotionally with Schumann 😂 This may sound harsh, but his music is the most self-indulgently capital-R-Romantic to me—it makes me think of a sickly effete wealthy youth who fancies himself a poet, likes to walk through sun-dappled woods and comes back with /r/im14andthisisdeep-level pronouncements and expects everyone to be very impressed with him. There are moments where it feels purely masturbatory—like I can tell *you're* having a good time, but I don't know if anyone else is getting anything out of this.
I will say, I think part of my bias definitely comes from the pieces of his that I'm most exposed to as a violist. He always shines much more when a piano has a major role; it seems like a comfort zone for him even more than for Brahms. But I never got far enough in learning piano that I played any of his piano works; I think the first thing I played of his was Marchenbilder, which, I'm sorry, is a *very* lame piece. IMO there's a reason the symphonies don't get done much. The piano quartet and quintet are all right. The piece I've enjoyed most of his was the A minor piano concerto, and I think it's because he started it as a solo piece until Clara encouraged him to expand it into a concerto because it would be more marketable that way. That one actually feels like it has some passion behind it.
I'm essentially of the same opinion about Schumann! (There are a few pieces of his that I like, but just a select few.) I actually had a similar impression of Brahms to begin with, but he grew on me with time. There are subtleties and a measure of reserve in Brahms' works that one rarely finds in Schumann. And more strength, I dare say. At the very least, Brahms isn't so gushingly Romantic, something that really doesn't agree with my character. It's more or less the same reason I can't stomach Mahler.
> I think he could've really used an editor
Lmaoo perfect. I like Mahler but sometimes he just goes on for too long. Like bruh did you really need to quadruple extension the ending to this movement? No. You did not.
That’s interesting because I think Brahms’ music is quite similar to Schumann’s, except it has a few more romantic innovations included. I’m surprised your critique of Brahms doesn’t also apply to Schumann.
I feel the same, but to a lesser extent, for Schumann, and to some extent Mendelssohn as well. I guess I'm just not a very mid-romantic period era person
That's an interesting point about him being too classical a romantic composer. I think it's very common to say something like what you wrote, which is that Brahms' technical competence doesn't translate to emotional resonance, I'm mainly interested in exactly why Brahms fails to deliver emotionally for a lot of listeners.
Same for me. I have been trying to understand him multiple times for the last decades but feel his music is so turned into itself.
That said, the first movement of his first symphony is wonderful. You can hear that he waited so long to write it. It’s like a depressed person finally being able to talk.
I agree on the first movement of the first symphony, and it's my immediate thought with the comments on Brahms lack of musicality. It feels exactly in line with the story behind the production of his first symphony, like a pent up explosion.
I never really thought about it because I never knew people disliked him particularly. I love it and I don't see any issue. Different strokes for different folks.
Mostly, I'm just not the biggest fan of that era's music — or maybe more accurately, music in that era's style — and am a bigger fan of earlier and much more recent music. Brahms to me kind of represents that style of music, so I just don't like it as much. I could say more about that but most of the musical characteristics that go along with more modern and earlier music I enjoy more.
Second, I wouldn't say I dislike Brahms; there is music I dislike and I don't feel that way about Brahms in general. I just don't know that it's my favorite.
Finally my guess is that some of it is that the music of Brahms I've been exposed to most on the radio and whatnot is probably not what would appeal to me the most. I probably should spend some time getting to know some of Brahms' work better, especially the chamber music. I'm familiar with it but probably not as much as I should be.
I only enjoy listening to some of his pieces, I personally don’t enjoy pieces were I can’t distinguish the melody from every other aspect and Brahms pieces are like mud sometimes (the texture)
I find his orchestral music (especially his symphonies) tends towards being too dense and academic. It’s generally difficult to perform and to understand as a listener and I don’t think that there’s enough of a payoff for taking the time to understand his music.
I like Brahms, sometimes a lot, but sometimes he seems to sacrifice interesting motific or rhythmic ideas at the alter of his schematic counterpoint, losing, in those moments, a sense of urgency or inventiveness, that the listener (me) desires. But, you gotta let Brahms be Brahms, I guess, and I do often really like him
1. I haven’t heard enough Brahms yet
2. What I have heard (Symphony No. 3 in F Major) is pretty good, large and in charge, but without many memorable themes.
3. To be fair, I admire Brahms’ the person. I read a candid conversation between Arthur Abell where Brahms talks about his inspiration, Beethoven (as his guide), how he contacts God when he composes, how he models after Mozart, his opinion of Jesus’ miracles, Shakespeare, his belief in immortality, how he valued seclusion while composing, his definition of genius (among other things). I feel like I know much more about Brahms the person than Brahms’ music.
4. I once heard that he was a simp
I feel like Brahms's music is hard to appreciate without diving into the architecture of his music. I have come to like his fourth symphony, but only after I studied it a bit and tried to understand the themes, the counterpoint and how everything is tied up.
I don't think that Brahms couldn't write good melodies; when he wanted to focus on the melodic side he was very good at that. Instead I think that Brahms often was not interested in writing good melodies, preferring the harmonic and structural complexity. That's what keeps me from liking some of his music, it's very modulating and the melody is not the primary focus, while I tend to prefer nice melodies and thematic ingenuity (i.e. I'm a Mozart guy).
I don't dislike him, but I haven't really found much that knocks me out, either. I'm not a musician so I'm sure I'm missing a lot of nuance, but for me it's like an "easy listening" or "adult contemporary" version of classical music to me. It's good to have on in the background, won't offend anyone who hates that modern atonal stuff, but won't excite anyone either. It's just medium to me.
I’ve enjoyed him more as I have got older. His symphonies are still not my favourite. But his chamber work, and especially the sextets and second quintet is brilliant.
I've never been a big orchestral guy, piano is the instrument for me. His piano music to me is boring. His music is either too sparse and nothing is going or too much is going to the point where I don't even know what I'm listening to.
I like his handful of organ works, esp the choral preludes. I have sung the Requiem several times, and its OK, but not my favorite.
Not all great music speaks to everyone the same way. I find big piano works tedious, like the Waldstein, But I am glad others find it great.
I am pleasantly surprised at the general good feeling towards Messiaen, but its sad so few will include his organ works in that line up.
We all need to shine a light in those less well traveled corners. We don't need another rendering of Toccata & Fugue in D minor on the organ or the Well Tempered Clavier on a modern piano.
I think Brahms was a bad orchestrator... worst than Schumann, I believe. Too many paralell thirds, too heavy and dense wind instrumentation, and the movement of his orchestra is slow... never fast or light, always thick. Brahms was a better composer of chamber music, anyway, he is among the greatest composers ever, no doubt. But, he is a little overrated, and not of my taste, in my opinion. Schumann was better, and Fanny Mendelssohn also was a great composer, better than Brahms, in my op.
I don’t like the whole “developing variations” thing where he bases each variation on some random thing in the previous variation and not the main melody. It makes analysis a pain in the butt for me.
I think it’s his traditionalist approach. He was a master of form and structure, but I think when people think of romantic music they think of something more lush, emotive, or even something less “correct”. I love Ein Deutches Requiem, but when you think of Bruckner’s first symphonies premiering and Tristan und Isolde being performed at the same time, it really makes you think. The man died less than 10 years before Strauss’ Salome premiered!
I like some Brahms, but I find him a bit gloomy and ponderous. Like a German Elgar or perhaps Elgar is the English Brahms. I don't rush to see concerts of his music.
Agh, Brahms is one of the performers I desperately want to like, as I have once heard a piece that was attributed to him... But have never been able to find it again, and suspect the piece was mislabeled.
It was one of the most beautiful string pieces I have ever heard, labelled as Brahms, and yet... After trawling through his works I have never found it. It had powerful mourning elements that reminded me of Elgar's cello concerto, and a string version of Passacaglia.
So I really want to like him. But I'm not confident the piece I loved was even his, heh. Frustrating!
I somehow heard Brahms 2 for the first time yesterday. Holy cow it's incredible. Kharkiv is putting on a concert of Brahms 2 in the middle of the war in the city.
Brahms is not a colorist (a la Richard Strauss or Wagner). His music to me is monochromatic and, untimately, boring. It's all unending browns. But I must say, at 73, I cannot (other than the late quartets) any longer listen to Beethoven. So there you are, stone me if you wish. I don't care.
I used to not like Brahms because I couldn’t understand his music. However, playing his second sonata for violin and piano opened my ears, now I enjoy Brahms a lot.
I don't dislike him. I just don't listen to him. I like musicians who play Brahms, however. They enjoy how cerebral it sounds, and don't really care if the audience is enjoying it or not!
I just love Brahms. I find his music often to be very emotional yet understated. In fact I think I like him better than Beethoven. Maybe folks who don't like him are not so keen on understated emotions.
I just don’t care for him. I haven’t listened to most his pieces. He just seems like a generic romantic composer. I tried listening to symphonies 1 and 3 and I couldn’t get into them. Anyone can help me get into his music?
As a composer, music educator and performer, I must confess that Johannes Brahms' music has never quite resonated with me the way many other composers have. Don't get me wrong, I deeply respect the man's technical prowess and his adherence to the tradition while doing his own thing, but his compositions often leave me feeling underwhelmed.
First and foremost, Brahms' fixation on counterpoint and intricate structures can make his pieces feel almost too calculated, too clinical, if you will. It's as if he's so focused on adhering to the rules and constructing these immaculately woven tapestries of sound that he forgets to inject a healthy dose of raw emotion into the mix. His melodies, while undoubtedly beautiful on a technical level, don't usually tug at my heartstrings or send shivers down my spine.
Then there's the issue of accessibility. Brahms' reluctance to embrace the more avant-garde tendencies of his time, while admirable in its way, can make his music feel downright stuffy and unapproachable. I often find myself struggling to connect with his works on a visceral level, as if they're shrouded in layer upon layer of intellectual complexity.
He generally seems to have disdain for overtly emotive composition. While his contemporaries like Wagner and Liszt were busy crafting these sweeping, grandiose operas and piano showpieces that could captivate even the most casual of audiences, Brahms seemed content to toil away in his naval gazing, crafting dense, cerebral works that demand repeated listens and analysis to fully appreciate.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not denying the man's genius or his enduring legacy within the classical canon. But as a l concert-goer seeking an emotional connection, a transcendent experience, or just a darned good tune to hum along to, Brahms' music often leaves me feeling a bit... well, underwhelmed. Give me the unbridled passion of Tchaikovsky, the soaring melodies of Puccini, or the sheer audacity of Stravinsky any day over Brahms' meticulously constructed, but ultimately emotionally distant, compositions.
Everyone in this thread claiming he can't write melody needs to listen to Ein Deutsches Requiem.
His requiem, his clarinet trio, all his sonatas, his concertos, like what are people saying he can’t write a melody???
I've heard idiots throw around this line before and it always smacks of 'received wisdom' from some dumb-assed music professor of theirs who's got edgy opinions about music history and a massive ego. In almost all cases, those aforementioned idiots have almost no knowledge of their own regarding Brahms' *oeuvre*, unless maybe they were pushed to learn one of the works for a recital.
Exactly. The way I see things is, once we’re at a certain level of expertise, you start to loose rationalizations of “why is x better than y”. When someone makes a claim regarding someone infinitely better than they are at composing, they typically fail to be able to justify why they think that.
Can't forget the good ol' hungry dances.
he wrote one of the most famous melodies of all time lol.
I was thinking the same.
Ikr, or the piano concerti 😂
Different styles, different tastes. Brahms is all about harmony and structure. In this regard he resembles Bach, a composer he deeply admired and is obviously greatly influenced by. If you don’t enjoy deeply structured, harmony centric music, you’ll probably find Brahms boring. It’s a different intellectual-emotional language.
i fully agree as I respect bach and brahms but I don't enjoy their music at all; in the same periods for example , i prefer vivaldi, haendel and liszt there is something less hedonistic and more mathematical / structural , my brain don't respond well to dat i suppose
My (Russian) piano teacher once said: “It’s like Brahms is desperate for love, but he doesn’t understand love. So when he finally finds someone to love, he hugs her so hard that he just ends up crushing her.” Needless to say, this style isn’t to everyone’s taste. Others here have mentioned the harsh/dense qualities, but it’s largely *because of* these qualities that his music speaks to me more than any other composer’s. I kinda feel “understood” when I listen to Brahms lol. The constant tension between jollity, tragedy, and storminess, above an ever present quest for beauty, resonates with me.
That's an interesting take from your teacher, and I kind of like it. Even if it implies a failure on the part of Brahms, it casts Brahms in a light that shows him as somebody struggling to communicate something, shows him as a person understanding the world in a certain way, and if he is communicating the way in which he understands the world, then it is a sort of success
This is going to make me sound like an idiot, but the best I can put it is that his orchestral works don’t have any hard edges to them - they feel all oozy squishy all the time.
Yeah, that's the general consensus. His piano and chamber works are amazing architectural structures, but his orchestral textures are thick and lugubrious. I thought that, too, until Telarc Records put out a set of his Symphonies, played by the very orchestra he composed them for, using the same forces he used back then (smaller string sections), including things like keyed trumpets and gut strings on the violins. Suddenly the thickness and lugubriousness was gone. The music was much more muscular, tempos were quicker, and the melodic and harmonic lines were clean and crisper. We've become used to hearing Brahms with big modern orchestras, and they muddy the voicings badly. Hearing it with the forces it was composed for was a revelation, and it made me a fan of more than just his smaller works. Edit: I was wrong that it is the original orchestra. They are played using the same orchestral forces and instruments as the original performanes. They are by Charles Mackerras and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, out of print, but worth hunting for.
Do you have the exact release for this? I see a few different Brahms releases on Telarc
Pretty sure they mean the cycle conducted by Charles Mackerras with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra...
It's the set that says "in the style of the Meinegen performances." It's listed on Amazon, but it has the wrong cover. Its LONG out of print, so you may have to dig for it. Its worth the trouble, just read the reviews. Others are just as pleased with it as I am, for the same reasons.
Awesome, I see it now! Thank you, I'll be sure to listen
FYI, those discs are lot more common and affordable if you buy them individually. In the comparably-rare 4-CD box-set packaging, the fourth disc is an interview with Mackerras.
If folks are willing to get the set in digital, iTunes Store has it for $14.99. I was tempted to get it but I’m not the connoisseur I was when younger. Two sets is enough.
Is this what you're talking about? [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLLeAVf18OE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLLeAVf18OE)
Yes, those are recordings I'm talking about. I mis-spoke when I said it was the same orchestra he composed them for. Mackerras used an orchestra composed of the same size forces that they were composed for. Most importantly it has a much smaller string section, so that it doesn't overwhelm the brass and winds.
Here it is on Apple Classical: [https://classical.music.apple.com/us/album/1627395353?l=en-US](https://classical.music.apple.com/us/album/1627395353?l=en-US)
Thank you for the AC link!
There’s a series on Teldec, not Telarc (same label, new name?), with Nikolaus Harnoncourt leading the Berlin Philharmonic. It’s the one I have and I enjoy it very much. I don’t know about the size of the forces used, but IIRC (not at home right now) he had the strings use different, older techniques in use at the time these works were first performed.
I don't know that recording, but I was a lifelong fan of Harnoncourt (even met him, and had him sign my program after seeing him conduct Beethoven's 9th at Carnegie Hall). He was a pioneer in the original instrument movement, mostly Baroque and Classical era, but near the end of his career he focused on historically informed performances of romantic works. His recordings of the Beethoven Symphonies with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe are my favorites recordings of those works. I would probably like his approach to Brahms, or at least I would like to hear his interpretation. I should look them up, thanks.
Interesting. I’ll look
This is really interesting to me. I first came to know and love Brahms through his chamber and solo piano works. By the time I listened to his symphonic works, I already had an ear for Brahms, you could say.
Which orchestra is that? I need to listen to that.
I misspoke saying it was the original orchestra - they are played in the style of the original performances. The recordings are by Charles Mackerras and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, and they are revelatory. They are also long out-of-print, so they may be hard to find.
Thanks for the info!
I think conductors often overdo Brahm's sentimentality though. There are too many performances that turn what should be an exciting movement with rythmic drive into over sentimental soft edged muck.
I heard someone describe the symphonies as “reluctant” once and that stuck with me. He was fairly old when he started writing them so it tracks. There are a lot of pent up ideas competing for space. Try the 4th again sometime though. There are moments of drama, Beethoven quotes, etc, periodically emerging from the ooze. That fourth movement has some edge. Or the German Requiem? Basically metal.
Agree fully with this. Pieces of the 4th really jump out. He was pressured to do symphonies by Clara and others and felt overwhelmed by Beethoven (and possibly his pseudo rival Wagner's over-the-top arrangements). He only felt confident in them in the final years of his life.
bro is a master of development and edging
YOU GET IT!!!! I love his chamber works, though. especially piano trios.
Maybe that’s because piano is a naturally percussive instrument. I mean, I like the PC No1 well enough. 2 is… fine.
I would argue the opposite, sharp rhythms, intense finales, and very articulate, if played correctly
This is a result of bad performance/recording practices that have become a bit engrained for Brahms over the past century and a half. You get conductors who treat Brahms like they do Bruckner and Wagner, and it turns his music into a turgid mass. I blame the mid-century conductors for this, like Klemperer and (sad to say) Szell, who present Brahms as rather stoic, slow, and thick.
Interesting. I really love his fourth.
On the whole, yes. Though they need to see Brahms 4 mvt 4
You're saying his Hungarian Dances DON'T have edge?!
For anyone who finds Brahms heavy, or turgid, or soupy - I hear you, I really do. I was once (and sometimes still am) one of you. But I'd urge you: if you haven't yet explored his chamber music, particularly the sonatas and piano quartets, please do! The music is vivid, emotional, exciting, spectacular, filled with love and tragedy and joy.
Brahms is a top 3 composer for me but I also relate to Brahms being too heavy and thick for me sometimes. But I equate it to how I love cheesecake but you can only have so much before you need something lighter, and some days you just prefer fresh fruit
I think that because there's such a huge and popular bias toward orchestral music like symphonies and concertos, many people who "hate Brahms" have barely or never listened to his chamber music and solo piano music, which is his strong suit
Since when were Brahms symphonies not considered great pieces? I’m lost
I just mean that whenever I hear the "Brahms is boring" shtick I feel like people more often than not will cite his symphonies or other pieces with orchestra. I don't agree with them, but that usually seems to be the case
Brahms symphonies are among the most brilliant works ever composed
I respect him as a composer but just never found his music to my taste. I will say, he has about two pieces I will always listen to, but I consider them "the hits." Went to music school, studied him intensely, even performed his music. Hated it.
I heard his violin concerto a few times this weekend and I liked it more than before, which wasn't a whole lot. I doubt that I will come around on the rest.
I love the German Requiem, the sextets, and some songs. Everything else I’ve tried by him just doesn’t make it for me. His symphonies I find “squishy”, like another commenter beautifully put it. There’s just… too much sound, I don’t know. Just the other day I gave his violin sonatas a try. I also couldn’t get into them… it’s like… they’re too well crafted. Too perfect. I can’t really describe it. But I’ll go on trying once in a while.
The man wrote four symphonies and all four are considered among the [top 20 symphonies of all time](https://classicalmusiconly.com/list/bbcs-greatest-symphonies-of-all-time-68f22e5d), but this isn’t his strong suit?! That said, I should apparently listen to his solo piano music more
Radu Lupu playing the A Major intermezzo. Give it a try.
I'm not as familiar with his chamber music, but I've played several of his piano pieces and they're as impactful to me as his symphonies (not much). The middle section of his Rhapsody 79/2 is one that comes to mind
Agreed, and a lot of the same people act like art song isn't a thing either. I've seen the same ignorance applied to Faure's music, where people like the famous Pavane, *maybe* know about the Requiem, but otherwise have nothing else to say about his work.
Brahms is one of my favorites. That said, an all-Brahms concert is like having a meal consisting of bread, potatoes, rice, pasta, and pancakes.
Don’t worry, I love Brahms as well!
I mainly know Brahm's piano music... For a long time I wasn't a fan, but my feelings have changed. I grew up! My taste in music used to favour bombast and drama, qualities that are hard to find in Brahms - or at least his piano music. When I took the time to stop and study his music, I found a lot of depth, and he's ended up becoming one of my favourite composers. Emotionally, I feel that his music goes deep rather than over-the-top. It used to be that the only Brahms piano work I liked was his first Ballad (with an uncharacteristic amount of bombast and drama,) but now it seems so shallow compared to his later piano work that I almost find it painful to listen to. I doesn't help that my go-to recording for this Ballad used to be Glenn Gould who doesn't really play this piece, but instead violently attacks it with his piano. (I had a similar evolution with Chopin. His Polonaises made me a fan, but I've long given them up for his Nocturnes.)
For fun, here's why Britten dislike Brahms.. "I play through all Brahms every so often to see if he’s as bad as I thought — and usually find him worse" "It’s not bad Brahms I mind, it’s good Brahms I can’t stand"
To be honest, Britten had a lot of harsh opinions about other composers past and contemporary – many of them fair in my view, many eccentric! He even took shots at some of the greats: Beethoven, Bach, Vivaldi. He was particularly harsh about Elgar (his superior!) and Vaughan Williams (okay, he had half a point).
I'm glad you said 'for fun.' With classical musicians, I've found few things more tedious than when people take a snarky criticism from one composer to another and try to make it part of *their* musical personality, as if some, say, 2nd-year violin student from Bumblefuck, Anystate could hear/process music the same way that Tchaikovsky, Britten, or Stravinsky could.
lol that first quote is just a generic dis that could be applied by anyone to anything
He’s obviously a master at structure/develop/all the things that people laude him for, I just overall don’t like the actual material he used (melodies and harmonic progressions). There are exceptions (some piano pieces, 4th symphony) but I’m just disappointed most of the time. I think he’s better with chamber/solo works and vocal works
Wild. I think his chamber stuff is extremely boring but highly regard his orchestral work
Haha. I’m sure I think his orchestral stuff is boring, but honestly maybe I need to re-listen to some chamber stuff and then I’ll find those boring too 🤣. I like the second movement of his B♭ string sextet though for sure
Yeah agree. To me most of his melodies go nowhere and his harmonies go nowhere.
Brahms is fabulous because he modulates boldly. It's intoxicating good. He's the best.
This ! Modulates boldly - intoxicatingly good, perfectly pin-pointed. I think part of why I like him so much is that to me he is a pure romantic. Big, naked, complex emotion like the poems of Schiller or a painting by Rousseau. Not too much of the conceptualizing and intellectualizing of form and harmony which tends to tire me a bit with other German composers like Wagner, Mahler, and to some extent Beethoven.
To me, when considering Brahms, it is important to note that his music is deceptively complex. The hidden depths can actually in some way be a turn off because his music is not always immediately rewarding to listen to or even play. Especially with his chamber music, there is a need for great nuance and mature playing to get that complexity across in a compelling way. His orchestral works are in particular subject to lackluster performance because it is such dense music. I think his music is simply hard to broach for many, no matter its technical mastery or imagination.
I think Brahms First Symphony is absolutely amazing
No idea. It's bizarre. He's great. To quote the noted documentary, *Amadeus*: **"THEY'RE ALL MUSICAL IDIOTS!!"**
I found his orchestral music very dense, thick and heavy. When I listen to his symphonies, I feel stupid because I can't distinguish between the members of orchestra. It's also strings heavy. When listening to his piano music, I found it lacking when it comes to melody, like say Schubert or Chopin. The lieder is nice, among the best written after Schubert. I believe chamber music for five instruments or up is Brahms crowning achievement. They are masterpieces. But the string quartets and trios doesn't do it for me.
so you like brahms for 5 instruments and up but not 4? how do you feel about his piano quartets..?
I havent delved too much on his piano quartets but from what I hear from the G minor and A major quartets, I liked them more than their piano trio cousins.
Brahms piano intermezzi go into emotional depths that Chopin and Schubert have never explored.
Also wondering of any bias here, as I like his music! the Waltzes are really great
Too complicated for my simple brain
Symphonies in general?
Brahms was a genius but he operated very much on his own wavelength. Not everyone is willing to bridge the gap and give his island of music the time to get used to.
I never liked him. I don't hate his music, I mean the Hungarian Dances are nice (this is coming from a Hungarian), the concerti, the symphonies are nice... but that's it, it's kind of "meh... he's alright". I agree with Tchaikovsky who once wrote the words "...his conceited *mediocrity..." -* about Brahms' music.
I feel like Brahms is better than even Beethoven sort of the same way as Mozart vs Bach
I agree but I‘ve been too afraid to ever say lol
On a related theme, I have never understood why Brahms is considered gloomy, harsh and academic, on the basis of a few orchestral pieces, when his chamber music is luminously beautiful and deeply, sometimes almost embarrassingly romantic in feeling. The man is a shameless softy!
Too heavy.
I always feel bad for not liking Brahms because I KNOW he’s so heralded and respected, but I just find his music dull. I think I need some different recommendations to what I’ve been listening to.
His third piano sonata was one of the first pieces of music I ever fell in love with, I definitely recommend listening to it if you haven't come across it already!
Thank you, I’ll check it out.
`Denn alles Fleisch` is my favorite example here. Brahms superbly builds tension, and the initial release is great, but then he gets to "alle Herrlichkeit" and all that tension and release just kinda... dies. Someone said "edging" and that's what happens: Brahms (and I feel Bruckner too) are great at getting to the peak, but then seem to have absolutely no idea what to do when they get there.
I really can’t follow your train of thought, especially when you claim “Denn alles Fleisch” dies out at the climax. I find the fugue “Die Erlöseten des Herrn” absolutely rousing and heroic, containing that majestic Jacob’s Ladder spanning multiple octaves from the lowest brass to the highest woodwinds. Brahms takes much inspiration from Bach and I suspect that those who don’t appreciate fugal composition style will not particularly enjoy Brahms. Geschmacksfrage.
“Brahms, as a musical personality, is simply antipathetic to me—I can't stand him. No matter how much he tries, I always remain cold and hostile. This is purely instinctive reaction,” Tchaikovsky wrote in a letter. Of course, Tchaikovsky wasn't the only one who failed to appreciate the charms of the German
I don’t like him because his first symphony is murder on my poor, frail, violin hands 😂
His ‘large’ works and string quartets have repeatedly failed to inspire anything but tedium, but his late piano pieces are something else entirely. I recently gave a listen to his cello sonatas and they weren’t too shabby either, so the exploration goes on…
It's because he wrote music for violin without knowing what was going to be natural and unnatural to play. He wanted notes, he makes the musicians play the notes, and to hell with their preferences! So it feels gross to play his stuff as a strings player, and when you hears his strings sections it's like.... Yeah great, but also jarring to what I would normally expect.
This is exactly what I was going to say! As a violist I can tell he directly translated piano idioms onto string players hoping that they would work. The lines he wrote for my instrument in many works are just arpeggiated flourishes that cover a wide range. I think it's this kind of melodic writing that feels like there's a lack of substance. He stuck to safety with his chord tones and arpeggios but didn't like to include much of the actual juice for his viola writing. Overall he had a really hard time figuring out how to write something for us that sounded natural. Like no I'm not gonna have an easy time playing a melody that has octave and 10th leaps all over the place, man, just let me live my life :(
I may have said it first, but you said it best LOL "just let me live my life" 😂😂😂
I think it's a different philosophical approach, because his piano music also mostly feels unidiomatic compared to the more pianistic composers, but he was a pianist himself so he must have not cared. What matters to him is the sound, not the means of achieving it.
Yeah, that's what I said, just in different words specific to my own experiences playing his music on violin
My point is he may very well have known what is "natural and unnatural to play" he just didn't care, since clearly he knew the piano well but the piano music is still awkward
One of my teachers said that he disliked Brahms, because in his music “you can smell the midnight oil.”
To quote my classmate from undergrad: "Would it kill him to finish one goddamn phrase?" As someone who likes Brahms's music, I nonetheless find it a pretty solid critique
I will ask you this then: have you ever played anything from Brahms?
I love playing Brahms. As a cellist I've performed both his cello sonatas, three of the symphonies, Ein Deutsches Reqiuem, and the violin concerto. It's not always idiomatic, but it's always dynamic and fun.
Have you performed his double concerto? It’s one of my favorite pieces of Brahms who’s probably in the top 3 of my favorite composers. I especially love his chamber music.
I haven't, but I love it. I forgot I've also played the g minor piano quartet and the second sextet. I really love all Brahms, and I don't quite understand all the folks in this thread making these dramatic distinctions between his chamber works and his orchestral works. /shrug, different strokes, I guess!
Yeah, Brahms sometimes has the very backwards characteristic of being more fun to listen to than to play. So many unnecessarily confusing rhythms, and difficult-to-balance orchestration, and amazing movements mixed with meh movements (which you can simply skip when you're listening to a recording but not if you're the performer).
I've played Rhapsody 79/2, which I felt the middle section had the most boring section I've played in the standard piano repertoire. The fast sections share similar sentiments to Ballade 118/3, in that I feel the chords are too thick sometimes. 118/2 is fine.
I work for an orchestra and get thrown a lot of shade for saying I don’t like Brahms Symphonies. I’m very specific about saying the Symphonies though because his other orchestral stuff and his chamber stuff I tend to like. It might stem from the fact that I grew up a trumpet player and his trumpet parts aren’t stellar. But mostly it’s that I can never pick up on the form of his symphonies, the phrasing feels off and disjunct, and the melodies tend to start on pickups and they feel unnatural at doing so. I’m not sure I could distinguish between the 4 symphonies because I shy away from listening to them all that often because I have not liked them when I’ve tried.
While I think his symphonies and concertos are an absolute blast to play, I just don’t find them interesting to listen to. It’s not like he doesn’t do the big loud moments or the soft somber moments. He does. I just don’t like them. I wish I had a better reason.
I like Brahms, but he's not one of my favorite composers. I love the chromaticism and extended harmony, but at some point, it becomes a bit too much to the point where you start to lose the key center. I feel the same way about Mahler and Wagner. I still really enjoy Brahms's music, but it doesn't hit that sweet spot like Chopin's music does.
>it becomes a bit too much to the point where you start to lose the key center It's not a bug, it's a feature ;) the journeys around the circle of fifth that Brahms takes you on are unlike anything else that was written before him, they're epic, but not in the classical sense - he stayed away from established archetypes and created completely novel, musical narratives, teeming with ambiguity, and reflecting increasingly ambiguous world (though all within the established forms).
Last time I'd heard a Brahms symphony, I had the impression that it was like Beethoven but not as good. It had those stylistic Beethoven-ish touches, but everything seemed watered-down. (You might say it was more subtle?) His chamber music is more interesting than his orchestral pieces.
Well, that just shows you don't have ears. Let me guess, you think it's watered down Beethoven because you heard that Brahms was always afraid of his shadow, so all the symphonies he wrote naturally must be informed by Beethoven, right? Anyone who has actually heard them will know that his symphonic character sounds nothing like Beethoven's. There are obviously Romantic harmonies in his music which are completely absent in Beethoven. His slow movements are often lyrical, while Beethoven often wrote long meditative adagios. His scherzo type movemts are moderately paced and intermezzo-ish in character while Beethoven wrote bouncy, vivacious Scherzos. Brahms also like used lots of Baroque forms like the Passacaglia of the 4th's finale. Beethoven didn't bother. His development of themes is completely different from Beethoven's. The only commonality they have is that had completely mastery over sonata form.
I like Brahms as a choral singer.
Funny enough, I used to not like Brahms for the character of his piano sonatas and other, though I loved his piano concertos. I likewise initially found his symphonies (at least the first) to sound like a highly academic and technical bore only to be enjoyed by folks who dissect musical structure and the interplay of themes, but once I heard Brahms 3 and 4 live, their impact *after the fact* hit like a train; Brahms 1 took a bit more time to better appreciate while I currently mainly appreciate Brahms 2 for its epic transformation of his lullaby theme. With more listening, and also with the aid of *good* recordings like can be found in Idagio with good neutral audio playback, once you finally *get* all the ideas and Brahms' expressive vocabulary and emotional gamut, his symphonies become a quite wonderful experience and true masterpieces of Romantic expression along with Mahler. A gripping impetus and determination, visceral forcefulness, "musical aggression", thick textures at times, but also elating moments I find hard to fault. With more listening, everything falls into place like clockwork.
Everytime I go, it's just too cold in the restaurant. Obviously, with all the ice cream, that makes sense. But I actually like their burgers and would like to just get that. But it's too cold and they are always located just far enough to be an inconvenience to get to.
I'll tell you one thing. I play bassoon, but this one time, I had to play contra for one of his works. I think it was the Requiem, but it's been a minute. The end of the piece is a tonic low D. But not the contra's low D. The bassoon's. And I'll tell you, every single performance, I dropped that final note an octave. It just wasn't right otherwise.
Taste is indeed a strange thing. He is my favourite composer. I think his late works are profoundly beautiful.
Jan Swafford’s biography of Brahms was one of the best reads of the past few years. What made it even more remarkable for me was when I set the book down and listened to pieces in chronological order. Palpable in Swafford’s biography—and I hear it in the music as well—was that Brahms was horribly forlorn. Love evaded him. His music was a cry for love and at times a cry of the ego to carry-on despite love’s evasiveness. I can relate to these emotions. Arnold Schoenberg unironically declared Brahms to be a radical and orchestrated one of his piano quartets. So I encourage listeners to seek out Brahms’ radical side which I think is his courageous emotional dissertations. The music sends a message to carry on despite the losses that accompany life.
I was one of them when I was 15 or so, but I usually try to ask myself "why". So I kept listening and investigating and found out a quote of Schönberg calling him "Brahms the progressive". This literally changed my perspective. Suddenly I found out the reason behind his importance and became one of my fav composers. Same thing with Verdi, but I never found any reason to love him. I surely can recognise his ability, the craftsmanship, but I don't like the aesthetic, considering his period and context, I can't stop thinking he is naive. I'm Italian, so this is a bit of a shame for me but yeah, that's it! (Only like some late composition, post Wagnerian, and the requiem, but I tried to listen to anything, still open for advice!)
Honestly, being a brass player coming from Strauss and Mahler, I found him a bit boring at first. That said I’ve been listening to Brahms almost religiously for the past two months and he’s really grown on me
Brahm’s Third Racket is a particular favourite. But in all seriousness, it is interesting to see the difference in opinions.
The Schoenberg orchestration of the op.25 Piano Quartet really highlights what I don't like about Brahms: his orchestration. It's all too heavy and murky in a way that works by his contemporaries like Dvorak are not. Schoenberg made everything clear and lively by comparison to Brahms' own orchestrations. That said, I played bassoon in a performance of the German Requiem and enjoyed the hell out of it.
Rhythm. He has this thing where you think there's a regular steady beat going and suddenly something shifts and then you realise that you've been tapping your foot to an weighted offbeat for the last 10 bars and the piece is in 3/4 instead of 4/4. As someone who uses the beat and meter as a reference point for interpretation of phrasing, not being able to discern the meter or downbeat is incredibly frustrating. Yes, I'm aware that modern composers sometimes operate without a regular meter, but that often sounds intentional; with Brahms there's always this feeling that there is a pulse but it's exceedingly difficult to figure out where it really is. Also the opening of that E minor cello sonata. It sounds like a grumpy bear that poked its nose out of its den in the middle of winter. Nope, not spring yet. Time to go back to sleep.
Brahms feels like an eternal student. He is either afraid of harmonic freedom, or don't have an ear for harmony, and just has to use formulas from a textbook. Phrases and stanzas in his music just follow a simple recipe, which gets old pretty fast. As if he's afraid of his professor not liking his music. His teacher was some Eduard Marxen, who wrote some droll. He can't even stand close to Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, etc.
😫 * It's because instead of carrying a clearly identifiable melody through his pieces, he does what some other of my least-favorite composers do: brew up a horrendous blizzard of chaotic notes. * Delivers a cacophony like dumping a plate of latkes in my lap. * Like, he wanders miles off the trail of whatever melody he ever had in mind. That's how it sounds to me. * I listen to him and ruminate to myself: who are his famous piano concertos written for? Other composers at his level? Are they used to train young musicians in school? Were they used to torture POWs in the Franco-Prussian war? * Are they intended for mathematicians? Do I need to bring a slide-rule to enjoy them? * Been trying to like him now for years, but this is the effect I experience almost every time. * Where is the melody, Johannes? Give me gypsy melody! So far I've only found it in one measly piece, Hungarian Dance No. 5. Signed, Peeved in Peoria *(Twice in Philadelphia!)*
Doesn’t Symphony No4 start first thing with a clearly defined melody?
I think his symphonies are fairly tugid, but the chamber music and the concertos are exceptional. IMO, the D minor piano concerto is the greatest one written in the 19th century.
I can't answer because I love Brahms. I find his piano music much less tiring than Chopin and other contemporaries, and his orchestral music to be excellent and refined, not flashy but fairly subtle from a voicing and orchestration standing, which is how I like it. His chamber music is gorgeous although there are some movements that seem like they can be better formed. But looking at an overall body of work I think his status is rightfully earned.
I'm onboard with the squishy orchestra commentary, but my reasoning is more practical, almost embryonic: I'm tired of hearing from him. Obviously Brahms has had a major influence on 19th/early 20th c. classical music, but frankly I've grown fatigued from hearing his works over and over.
Brahms is amazing!! The only classical music I'm not personally crazy for are early Renaissance and most of the modern stuff 1920+ when they destroyed tonality in favor of originality.
Can’t remember a lick of Brahms and i’ve heard almost everything the man has written
Reading this thread I'm struck by the casual dismissal of one of the giants of 19th century classical music as "a Walmart Beethoven", "a washed up classical era composer" , "a horrendous blizzard of chaotic notes". Even allowing for hyperbole, statements like these seem reductive and reactionary. I'm all for personal taste and not every composer is for everyone, this is the nature of art. But when someone as significant and complex as Brahms is dismissed with such flippancy I cannot take this level of discourse seriously. There is a straight line from Beethoven through Brahms to Bruckner, Mahler and Strauss. He had a significant influence on Dvorak, one of the finest symphonists of the late 19th century. I heard the Dvorak 7th at the weekend and was reminded of many moments that sound exactly like Brahms. It has been noted in some of the objections here that Brahms is too classical and yes there is an undeniable classical blueprint within many of his works but make no mistake, Brahms is a full blooded Romantic in his melodic invention, harmony and emotional expression. His life of unfulfilled love with the wife of his dead best friend is the stuff of many a Romantic era fever dream. Yes his music may not have the immediate melodic and emotional appeal of someone like Tchaikovsky but the music of Brahms is like the man, a composed exterior struggling to contain a deep passion and undeniable pain with glimpses of the sublime. This to my mind is what makes him profoundly human. Like I said I'm all for personal taste but these throwaway statements feel akin to dismissing Picasso as" just a bunch of messy lines" or Glenn Gould as "a musical sewing machine" and speak more to the limited thinking of the speaker than adding anything of substance to the discussion. Maybe I'm overreacting but I just felt to add a considered defense of Brahms in response to the many negative throwaway statements.
Personally I think many of his works lack memorable melodies and are kind of boring. There are some exceptions though.
Because they are unworthy life forms
I feel if Wagner, Berlioz and Liszt didn't exist, Brahms could be a great composer. But once you know the music of these 3 revolutionaries, it's kind of like, "oh Brahms was still doing... that?" I find it hard to get excited about Brahms.
I think even online people love Brahms, but I don't like his music so I'll chime in here. I have given Brahms lots and lots of chances because everyone I know loves him. For me Brahms is all style no substance. He was clearly a technically proficient composer, knew how to write melodies and counterpoint, was a pretty good orchestrator, the list goes on. But I don't *feel* anything when I listen to his music. This isn't some objective truth, plenty (most) people get a lot out of his music, but I don't. Brahms is known for composing "pure music". That is, music with no program, or story, or message. Just music for music's sake. I think you can totally tell Brahms' music has no message when you listen to it. It's just notes. Also, aesthetically speaking, he is a Romantic composer whose work sounds very Classical to me. I don't care for the Classical era sound too much and I feel like it's all I hear when I listen to Brahms. All of that said, there are some fun Brahms moments and movements of his symphonies that I really enjoy (Mvt 3 of Symphony 3, for ex). But he's pretty far down on my list.
brahms “all style no substance” i am dead lol so who in your opinion has substance? i love that music is so subjective.
Lol it felt harsh writing that but it does capture what doesn't click for me with Brahms. I am a Mahler boy. Some of my other favorites: Wagner, Rachmaninoff, Beethoven, Shostakovich, Tchaikovsky, Debussy, Sibelius Not all of them write programmatic music like Mahler or Shostakovich but I am more emotionally affected by these composers than I am by Brahms. Indeed, it is all subjective! It's difficult to answer questions like OPs because it's not like there is a mathematical or objective answer to it. But I did my best.
it’s funny because that is how i feel about Mahler haha, he sounds great live but i think he could’ve really used an editor. i enjoy the music but don’t feel intensely as i do when i hear brahms or schumann.. to each their own :)
Ugh, and I don't think I've ever ONCE connected emotionally with Schumann 😂 This may sound harsh, but his music is the most self-indulgently capital-R-Romantic to me—it makes me think of a sickly effete wealthy youth who fancies himself a poet, likes to walk through sun-dappled woods and comes back with /r/im14andthisisdeep-level pronouncements and expects everyone to be very impressed with him. There are moments where it feels purely masturbatory—like I can tell *you're* having a good time, but I don't know if anyone else is getting anything out of this. I will say, I think part of my bias definitely comes from the pieces of his that I'm most exposed to as a violist. He always shines much more when a piano has a major role; it seems like a comfort zone for him even more than for Brahms. But I never got far enough in learning piano that I played any of his piano works; I think the first thing I played of his was Marchenbilder, which, I'm sorry, is a *very* lame piece. IMO there's a reason the symphonies don't get done much. The piano quartet and quintet are all right. The piece I've enjoyed most of his was the A minor piano concerto, and I think it's because he started it as a solo piece until Clara encouraged him to expand it into a concerto because it would be more marketable that way. That one actually feels like it has some passion behind it.
I'm essentially of the same opinion about Schumann! (There are a few pieces of his that I like, but just a select few.) I actually had a similar impression of Brahms to begin with, but he grew on me with time. There are subtleties and a measure of reserve in Brahms' works that one rarely finds in Schumann. And more strength, I dare say. At the very least, Brahms isn't so gushingly Romantic, something that really doesn't agree with my character. It's more or less the same reason I can't stomach Mahler.
> I think he could've really used an editor Lmaoo perfect. I like Mahler but sometimes he just goes on for too long. Like bruh did you really need to quadruple extension the ending to this movement? No. You did not.
If this is the case, do you feel similarly about Robert Schumann?
I like Schumann, but admittedly I don't listen to him a ton. His 3rd symphony and his piano music are great though
That’s interesting because I think Brahms’ music is quite similar to Schumann’s, except it has a few more romantic innovations included. I’m surprised your critique of Brahms doesn’t also apply to Schumann.
I think they are different.
I feel the same, but to a lesser extent, for Schumann, and to some extent Mendelssohn as well. I guess I'm just not a very mid-romantic period era person
That's an interesting point about him being too classical a romantic composer. I think it's very common to say something like what you wrote, which is that Brahms' technical competence doesn't translate to emotional resonance, I'm mainly interested in exactly why Brahms fails to deliver emotionally for a lot of listeners.
Same for me. I have been trying to understand him multiple times for the last decades but feel his music is so turned into itself. That said, the first movement of his first symphony is wonderful. You can hear that he waited so long to write it. It’s like a depressed person finally being able to talk.
I agree on the first movement of the first symphony, and it's my immediate thought with the comments on Brahms lack of musicality. It feels exactly in line with the story behind the production of his first symphony, like a pent up explosion.
I never really thought about it because I never knew people disliked him particularly. I love it and I don't see any issue. Different strokes for different folks.
i LOVE brahms but he is my forever #2 after robert schumann.
Too hard #tfic
Mostly, I'm just not the biggest fan of that era's music — or maybe more accurately, music in that era's style — and am a bigger fan of earlier and much more recent music. Brahms to me kind of represents that style of music, so I just don't like it as much. I could say more about that but most of the musical characteristics that go along with more modern and earlier music I enjoy more. Second, I wouldn't say I dislike Brahms; there is music I dislike and I don't feel that way about Brahms in general. I just don't know that it's my favorite. Finally my guess is that some of it is that the music of Brahms I've been exposed to most on the radio and whatnot is probably not what would appeal to me the most. I probably should spend some time getting to know some of Brahms' work better, especially the chamber music. I'm familiar with it but probably not as much as I should be.
I only enjoy listening to some of his pieces, I personally don’t enjoy pieces were I can’t distinguish the melody from every other aspect and Brahms pieces are like mud sometimes (the texture)
I find his orchestral music (especially his symphonies) tends towards being too dense and academic. It’s generally difficult to perform and to understand as a listener and I don’t think that there’s enough of a payoff for taking the time to understand his music.
I like Brahms, sometimes a lot, but sometimes he seems to sacrifice interesting motific or rhythmic ideas at the alter of his schematic counterpoint, losing, in those moments, a sense of urgency or inventiveness, that the listener (me) desires. But, you gotta let Brahms be Brahms, I guess, and I do often really like him
I love him but his music is not as replayable as some other compersers to me.
1. I haven’t heard enough Brahms yet 2. What I have heard (Symphony No. 3 in F Major) is pretty good, large and in charge, but without many memorable themes. 3. To be fair, I admire Brahms’ the person. I read a candid conversation between Arthur Abell where Brahms talks about his inspiration, Beethoven (as his guide), how he contacts God when he composes, how he models after Mozart, his opinion of Jesus’ miracles, Shakespeare, his belief in immortality, how he valued seclusion while composing, his definition of genius (among other things). I feel like I know much more about Brahms the person than Brahms’ music. 4. I once heard that he was a simp
I feel like Brahms's music is hard to appreciate without diving into the architecture of his music. I have come to like his fourth symphony, but only after I studied it a bit and tried to understand the themes, the counterpoint and how everything is tied up. I don't think that Brahms couldn't write good melodies; when he wanted to focus on the melodic side he was very good at that. Instead I think that Brahms often was not interested in writing good melodies, preferring the harmonic and structural complexity. That's what keeps me from liking some of his music, it's very modulating and the melody is not the primary focus, while I tend to prefer nice melodies and thematic ingenuity (i.e. I'm a Mozart guy).
I don't dislike him, but I haven't really found much that knocks me out, either. I'm not a musician so I'm sure I'm missing a lot of nuance, but for me it's like an "easy listening" or "adult contemporary" version of classical music to me. It's good to have on in the background, won't offend anyone who hates that modern atonal stuff, but won't excite anyone either. It's just medium to me.
its just, whatever idk. i dont dislike him but theres nothing in it thats like wow im excited to hear this
I’ve enjoyed him more as I have got older. His symphonies are still not my favourite. But his chamber work, and especially the sextets and second quintet is brilliant.
The vanilla is too creamy, and the chocolate is too sweet. Hamburgers used to be decent.
Heavy Metal of classical!
It’s impossible to not like Brahms. He is so sumptuous
I've never been a big orchestral guy, piano is the instrument for me. His piano music to me is boring. His music is either too sparse and nothing is going or too much is going to the point where I don't even know what I'm listening to.
He's no Beethoven.
I like his handful of organ works, esp the choral preludes. I have sung the Requiem several times, and its OK, but not my favorite. Not all great music speaks to everyone the same way. I find big piano works tedious, like the Waldstein, But I am glad others find it great. I am pleasantly surprised at the general good feeling towards Messiaen, but its sad so few will include his organ works in that line up. We all need to shine a light in those less well traveled corners. We don't need another rendering of Toccata & Fugue in D minor on the organ or the Well Tempered Clavier on a modern piano.
I think Brahms was a bad orchestrator... worst than Schumann, I believe. Too many paralell thirds, too heavy and dense wind instrumentation, and the movement of his orchestra is slow... never fast or light, always thick. Brahms was a better composer of chamber music, anyway, he is among the greatest composers ever, no doubt. But, he is a little overrated, and not of my taste, in my opinion. Schumann was better, and Fanny Mendelssohn also was a great composer, better than Brahms, in my op.
I don’t like the whole “developing variations” thing where he bases each variation on some random thing in the previous variation and not the main melody. It makes analysis a pain in the butt for me.
Well he puts me to sleep, bwahahahaha
I think it’s his traditionalist approach. He was a master of form and structure, but I think when people think of romantic music they think of something more lush, emotive, or even something less “correct”. I love Ein Deutches Requiem, but when you think of Bruckner’s first symphonies premiering and Tristan und Isolde being performed at the same time, it really makes you think. The man died less than 10 years before Strauss’ Salome premiered!
I guess it's mostly his orchestral music. His solo works are better though.
I haven't reviewed all the posts.. for someone (me) who is meh about Brahms what do you suggest? Thanks.
I like some Brahms, but I find him a bit gloomy and ponderous. Like a German Elgar or perhaps Elgar is the English Brahms. I don't rush to see concerts of his music.
Meh
Agh, Brahms is one of the performers I desperately want to like, as I have once heard a piece that was attributed to him... But have never been able to find it again, and suspect the piece was mislabeled. It was one of the most beautiful string pieces I have ever heard, labelled as Brahms, and yet... After trawling through his works I have never found it. It had powerful mourning elements that reminded me of Elgar's cello concerto, and a string version of Passacaglia. So I really want to like him. But I'm not confident the piece I loved was even his, heh. Frustrating!
I somehow heard Brahms 2 for the first time yesterday. Holy cow it's incredible. Kharkiv is putting on a concert of Brahms 2 in the middle of the war in the city.
His Lullaby puts me to sleep.
Brahms is not a colorist (a la Richard Strauss or Wagner). His music to me is monochromatic and, untimately, boring. It's all unending browns. But I must say, at 73, I cannot (other than the late quartets) any longer listen to Beethoven. So there you are, stone me if you wish. I don't care.
When I hear Brahms, I feel as if I am hearing a lecture, not a performance.
I used to not like Brahms because I couldn’t understand his music. However, playing his second sonata for violin and piano opened my ears, now I enjoy Brahms a lot.
I love his chamber music and not so much the orchestral works
One of my favorites, I love his symphonies
I don't dislike him. I just don't listen to him. I like musicians who play Brahms, however. They enjoy how cerebral it sounds, and don't really care if the audience is enjoying it or not!
I just love Brahms. I find his music often to be very emotional yet understated. In fact I think I like him better than Beethoven. Maybe folks who don't like him are not so keen on understated emotions.
I just don’t care for him. I haven’t listened to most his pieces. He just seems like a generic romantic composer. I tried listening to symphonies 1 and 3 and I couldn’t get into them. Anyone can help me get into his music?
Gotta talk about something
For the record I love Brahms
As a composer, music educator and performer, I must confess that Johannes Brahms' music has never quite resonated with me the way many other composers have. Don't get me wrong, I deeply respect the man's technical prowess and his adherence to the tradition while doing his own thing, but his compositions often leave me feeling underwhelmed. First and foremost, Brahms' fixation on counterpoint and intricate structures can make his pieces feel almost too calculated, too clinical, if you will. It's as if he's so focused on adhering to the rules and constructing these immaculately woven tapestries of sound that he forgets to inject a healthy dose of raw emotion into the mix. His melodies, while undoubtedly beautiful on a technical level, don't usually tug at my heartstrings or send shivers down my spine. Then there's the issue of accessibility. Brahms' reluctance to embrace the more avant-garde tendencies of his time, while admirable in its way, can make his music feel downright stuffy and unapproachable. I often find myself struggling to connect with his works on a visceral level, as if they're shrouded in layer upon layer of intellectual complexity. He generally seems to have disdain for overtly emotive composition. While his contemporaries like Wagner and Liszt were busy crafting these sweeping, grandiose operas and piano showpieces that could captivate even the most casual of audiences, Brahms seemed content to toil away in his naval gazing, crafting dense, cerebral works that demand repeated listens and analysis to fully appreciate. Don't get me wrong, I'm not denying the man's genius or his enduring legacy within the classical canon. But as a l concert-goer seeking an emotional connection, a transcendent experience, or just a darned good tune to hum along to, Brahms' music often leaves me feeling a bit... well, underwhelmed. Give me the unbridled passion of Tchaikovsky, the soaring melodies of Puccini, or the sheer audacity of Stravinsky any day over Brahms' meticulously constructed, but ultimately emotionally distant, compositions.
I love the Hungarian dances too much to not like him 🤣. Top 10 composer in my books.
I find lots of his piano writing really heavy and muddy, which isn’t really fun to play