Talk:Johannes Brahms

Semi-protected edit request on 24 February 2023

The date of death is before birth and clearly an error as well as his age of death is wrong. Please correct. 78.100.165.71 (talk) 10:27, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

Y thank you --Gerda Arendt (talk) 10:34, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

Editing request - Istruments or ensembles for which Brahms composed

The sentence: "Brahms composed for symphony orchestra, chamber ensembles, piano, organ, violin, voice, and chorus" should be edited to include cello. Brahms made a double concerto for violin and cello and two cello sonatas. He wrote also a solo part for cello in the slow movement of his 2nd piano concerto. All in all the pages that Brhams wrote for cello are true masterpieces. 2A0E:41B:7E11:0:3832:F32:5181:6270 (talk) 12:30, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

Concertos are works for symphony orchestra; chamber ensembles include any instruments that could be considered a normative part of chamber music (which include cellos, among other instruments). If a reader has additional questions, they can go to the link that lists all the works composed by Brahms. - kosboot (talk) 13:32, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply.

What you say applies also to violin, as there is no composition for violin solo. With cello, clarinet is also missing, for instance.

All in all, as it is, the sentence is badly stated, misleading and, ultimately, wrong.

So instead of stating arbitrarily some of the instruments and the ensembles it would be a better option to name the different types of compositions: symphonies and concertos, trios quartets and quintets, lieder and choral works and compositions for piano and organ solo.

Last but not least, the summary should represent a synthesis. A summary that is lacking information and gives a misleading view of what it tries to synthesise is a bad summary. 89.184.118.3 (talk) 09:13, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

I don't think it's helpful in a summary to list all the specific genres of chamber music so I eliminated the violin. "Chamber ensembles" now includes all the chamber music that Brahms wrote. - kosboot (talk) 13:02, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 6 May 2023

Just a short note. The word "Bram" is not German and it doesn't mean shrub broom, in German of any region. Please do remove that strange and highly inaccurate information because it is not only misleading but also quite ridiculous. Best regards Prof Dr Agarwal Mirendra 89.151.35.29 (talk) 00:01, 7 May 2023 (UTC)

 Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. Callmemirela 🍁 00:40, 7 May 2023 (UTC)

The topic is also already discussed above [1]:

"The family name, indifferently spelled Brahms or Brahmst or Brams, identified them as Lower Saxon, speakers of Plattdeutsch, the Low German drawl. Their name comes from the broom plant, Planta genista, called Bram"

73.93.5.246 (talk) 00:47, 7 May 2023 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 7 May 2023

This is a factual correction of an obvious error.

In the Johannes Brahms article his house in Lichtental, Austria is wrongly said to be part of Baden-Baden in Germany. The Wikipedia entry for Lichtental says "Lichtental is a part of the district of Alsergrund, Vienna. It was an independent municipality until 1850." There has probably been a confusion between the cities of Baden in Austria (about 20 miles to the south of Vienna) and Baden-Baden in Germany (hundreds of miles away). However, in any event the German language version of the article on Lichtental does not mention Baden. It is also possible that there has been a confusion between Brahms and Beethoven (who did live in Baden, Austria for a time)

ACTION

The mention and link to Baden-Baden should be removed. It could be replaced with a mention of Baden bei Wien, whose Wikipedia page is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baden_bei_Wien 90.89.76.18 (talk) 12:12, 7 May 2023 (UTC)

Removed. Nikkimaria (talk) 13:09, 7 May 2023 (UTC)

Age discrepancies

The article says he was born in 1833 and married in 1830 2603:6011:380A:1300:AC04:4601:7F9B:AC92 (talk) 14:14, 7 May 2023 (UTC)

No, it says his parents were married in 1830. Nikkimaria (talk) 15:48, 7 May 2023 (UTC)

Could someone help out?

Even after fixing many of the phrases and made them sound less argumentative, there's more that needs to be rephrased (especially under the Reception section), as well as citations (especially in the introduction and Music section). I can't do all this by myself, so could somebody lend out a helping hand? Thanks. Wikieditor662 (talk) 00:15, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

It's best to post such a query on the talkpage of a Wikiproject, so go to the one on Composers (see link at the top of this page), and also the one on Classical Music. That way you get a lot more eyes than simply those people watching this article. Softlavender (talk) 00:38, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

Hi, what is your objection to "dense in texture"? This is something of a commonplace about Brahms, right? I could see phrasing it more carefully according to one's concerns (one could qualify it, e.g., often, preferentially, contrapuntally, motivically ...), but I was surprised to see it simply stricken. MONTENSEM (talk) 05:15, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

While his music may be "dense in texture" in general, I think it's a vague adjective, and possibly opinionated.

If you wish to have his music described, I'd suggest quoting an expert. If you want, you can reword it (while still using the citation), and perhaps add examples too (and have the examples also cited). Wikieditor662 (talk) 14:28, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

I'll see what I can do over the next month or so. What follows here are some notes for myself as much as a reply ....

I would say "dense texture" is general, not vague, by which means it is able to do a lot of work in the lead concisely summarizing what is already present in the texture and other subsections.

And also what is not:

- Brahms's durchbrochene Arbeit (Swafford, Brahms, 382);

- the increasing motivic saturation;

- some of the cloudiness, ambiguity, or muddiness that Brahms is known for, particularly with the low bass melodies, e.g., in the piano music, "a number of performance practice scholars writing on Brahms's piano music have commented on the prominence of low-lying melodic lines, thickly-written accompaniments, and often dense saturation of the lower register" (Augustus Arnone);

- in the orchestral music, how it is intricate like chamber music (I think Dahlhaus talks about this also: Brahms was not writing in a declamatory or rhetorical operatic idiom ... this is also the basis on which Wagner and Bekker criticize Brahms ... and it's what Schoenberg et al. invert into a virtue) ...

any quick Google search for e.g. < "thick textures" Brahms > will doubtless summon many hits ...

More later, hopefully! Happy editing. MONTENSEM (talk) 16:37, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

for future work, Feisst's Schoenberg's New World useful cit for the arr. of op. 25 MONTENSEM (talk) 16:40, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

re: texture, what is not there, the hemiolas (some is present in the article on hemiolas) MONTENSEM (talk) 16:55, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

Re: "perhaps under the weight of high praise", is this not supported by P2 of The Schumanns and Leipzig? MONTENSEM (talk) 05:18, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

If the book that was cited is reliable and specifically stated that his high praise is potentially what led to him being self critical, then yes you can readd it and I apologize Wikieditor662 (talk) 14:32, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

No worries. It's not content I added, but there it was already, and I have also heard it many times (it's something of a Brahms truism, and the reasons given are manifold, e.g., Schumann, Wagner, polemics, shadow of Beethoven, the latter of which is something that I think most now emphasize...); so I'll take a deeper look at it sometime soon. (Not that I'm not particularly suspicious of it.)

My goal with edits so far has simply to begin work improving the article by filling in some summary gaps in the lead and elsewhere, trimming it slightly, and reorganizing/better organizing it for digestibility/standardization of format ...

One could probably argue that motifs are "deeply Romantic" as in the original phrasing I struck from the lead, but I think this requires some deep retrieve from Dahlhaus et al. in the article and maybe isn't very helpful without that as it applies to more folks than Brahms ... but it does get at the overall musical context ... MONTENSEM (talk) 16:46, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

not that I'm particularly suspicious of it* MONTENSEM (talk) 16:59, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

more to do:

- re: "deeply Romantic", retrieve from Dahlhaus on themes increasingly like motives rather than phrases/periods, might intersect with content on texture (irregular phrasing, density/intricacy/thickness)

- early works, more on influence of Schubert and as distinct from later works MONTENSEM (talk) 17:18, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

To do list

- Add citations to the introduction

- Add citations under the "Music" section

- Write the text under "Reflection" more objective

- Potentially make other corrections needed

Good to do list everyone? Wikieditor662 (talk) 14:54, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

I saw that the articles for Berlioz and Debussy don't have citations in the introductions either and they're featured, so many citations aren't needed in the intro. Wikieditor662 (talk) 14:58, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

Yes, as a rule, I don't think intro citations are preferred, as the lead should summarize content from the body. Technically there is a warning against tertiary sources, but then the composers project Wikipedia page recommends Grove/Oxford Music Online ... and to be sure, a lot of what is there is no different from a secondary source and is by leading scholars of secondary sources ... MONTENSEM (talk) 16:51, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

The actual policy regarding citations in the lead is MOS:LEADCITE, but often uncited assertions creep into the lead without being supported by the article body so just watch out for that. Ligaturama (talk) 16:54, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

On this note, need to cite cello works for Hausmann (sonata 2 and double concerto) and possibly for CS (?which) in the body ... MONTENSEM (talk) 17:13, 11 July 2024 (UTC)