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Master Musicians Series
Brahms
Celebrating its 100th anniversary, this extraordinary series continues to amaze and captivate its readers with detailed insight into the lives and work of music's geniuses. Unlike other composer biographies that focus narrowly on the music, this series explores the personal history of each composer and the social context surrounding the music. In a precise, engaging, and authoritative manner, each volume combines a vivid portrait of the master musicians' inspirations, influences, life experiences, even their weaknesses, with an accessible discussion of their work--all in roughly 300 pages. Further, each volume offers superb reference material, including a detailed life and times chronology, a complete list of works, a personalia glossary highlighting the important people in the composer's life, and a select bibliography. Under the supervision of music expert and series general editor Stanley Sadie, Master Musicians will certainly proceed to delight music scholars, serious
musicians, and all music lovers for another hundred years.
musicians, and all music lovers for another hundred years.
504 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 1990
About the author
Malcolm MacDonald
148 books13 followersAlso under the names:
Malcolm Ross-MacDonald
Malcolm Ross
M.R. O'Donnell
Malcolm Ross-MacDonald
Malcolm Ross
M.R. O'Donnell
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
January 18, 2024
MacDonald's Biography Of Brahms
A colleague of mine noticed the picture of the young Brahms on the cover of MacDonald's biography. She remarked with surprise on his handsome, vigorous appearance. Too often people tend to think of Brahms as an old, bearded, somewhat overweight composer of conservative romantic music. The text of MacDonald's ambitious study, together with the cover portrait, aims to dispel stereotypes held by many about Brahms. For MacDonald, Johannes Brahms (1833 --1897) was an unabashedly romantic composer (granting the difficulties of defining that notoriously difficult term, "romantic"), with strong ties to the musical past who looked forward to and helped create the linear, contrapuntal, and decidedly unromantic music of the twentieth century. MacDonald's interest in the relationship between Brahms and Schoenberg is understandable as he has written a companion volume on Schoenberg for the "Master Musicians" series.
The book is both a biography of Brahms and a musical study with heavy emphasis on the latter. In the biographical sections of his account, MacDonald covers briefly Brahms's childhood in the rough, seafaring districts of Hamburg,his early musical instruction, and his wide reading. He describes Brahms's relationship with the Schumann's and the ambiguities of his lifelong love for Clara Schumann. There is a great deal of emphasis on Brahms's inability to marry, despite several flames in his youth. MacDonald describes how love and passion inform Brahms's work throughout and how music helped Brahms give voice to feelings that, for whatever reason, he could not express in his life.
MacDonald also places Brahms in a musical context that includes his extensive study of his predecessors, from his contemporaries through Schubert, Beethoven, Mozart, and Haydn, to the baroque and earlier. Brahms was undoubtedly the most musically learned of the great composers and he was able to integrate his learning with his own romantic voice. MacDonald finds that Brahms remained throughout his life a romantic composer. This means, I think, that Brahms saw music as an essentially spiritual calling, somewhat of a substitute for the role revealed religion plays in the lives of many, which emphasizes romantic and physical love, the unity of man with nature, and the value of the past. Bach used the past in his devotion to early music and to folk songs of many types. Brahms's romanticism, and the manner in which he integrated it with counterpoint and variation, paved the way for the destruction of romanticism and for the creation of a more recognizably modern sensibility.
I found the most valuable part of MacDonald's book to be the detailed analyses he offers of virtually all Brahms' major works. The discussion is presented chronologically. The musical discussions generally follow the biographical sections of the book and deal with Brahms's compositions by categories: orchestral music, chamber music, choral music, piano, song. MacDonald offers numerous musical examples, discusses the history of each work, and integrates each work nicely into a discussion of the entirety of Brahms' output.
Reading this book impressed upon me the wide variety of masterpieces Brahms composed during his life. MacDonald's accounts can be followed by the nonspecialist and give an inspiring picture of Brahms and his music. While reading, I thought of the works of Brahms with which I am familiar and wanted to revisit them in light of MacDonald's discussion. I also thought of the many works of Brahms I don't know but would love to explore in light of what I learned from the book. Little more can be asked from a musical study.
MacDonald writes with a deep affection for Brahms which he conveys well to his readers. He writes that Brahms "has been my favorite composer ever since I was old enough to think about music" and it shows in the deep thought and work represented in this study. MacDonald's closing discussion of Brahms's output captures well his view of Brahms. He writes: "Aware of the tragedies, paradoxes, and imponderables of existence, Brahms wrote to provide sustenance for the here and now. His music seeks to give beauty, nobility, a sense of meaning to the brute fact of human transience."
This is an outstanding study which should inspire the reader to hear Brahms, or to rehear him with an awakened heart.
Robin Friedman
A colleague of mine noticed the picture of the young Brahms on the cover of MacDonald's biography. She remarked with surprise on his handsome, vigorous appearance. Too often people tend to think of Brahms as an old, bearded, somewhat overweight composer of conservative romantic music. The text of MacDonald's ambitious study, together with the cover portrait, aims to dispel stereotypes held by many about Brahms. For MacDonald, Johannes Brahms (1833 --1897) was an unabashedly romantic composer (granting the difficulties of defining that notoriously difficult term, "romantic"), with strong ties to the musical past who looked forward to and helped create the linear, contrapuntal, and decidedly unromantic music of the twentieth century. MacDonald's interest in the relationship between Brahms and Schoenberg is understandable as he has written a companion volume on Schoenberg for the "Master Musicians" series.
The book is both a biography of Brahms and a musical study with heavy emphasis on the latter. In the biographical sections of his account, MacDonald covers briefly Brahms's childhood in the rough, seafaring districts of Hamburg,his early musical instruction, and his wide reading. He describes Brahms's relationship with the Schumann's and the ambiguities of his lifelong love for Clara Schumann. There is a great deal of emphasis on Brahms's inability to marry, despite several flames in his youth. MacDonald describes how love and passion inform Brahms's work throughout and how music helped Brahms give voice to feelings that, for whatever reason, he could not express in his life.
MacDonald also places Brahms in a musical context that includes his extensive study of his predecessors, from his contemporaries through Schubert, Beethoven, Mozart, and Haydn, to the baroque and earlier. Brahms was undoubtedly the most musically learned of the great composers and he was able to integrate his learning with his own romantic voice. MacDonald finds that Brahms remained throughout his life a romantic composer. This means, I think, that Brahms saw music as an essentially spiritual calling, somewhat of a substitute for the role revealed religion plays in the lives of many, which emphasizes romantic and physical love, the unity of man with nature, and the value of the past. Bach used the past in his devotion to early music and to folk songs of many types. Brahms's romanticism, and the manner in which he integrated it with counterpoint and variation, paved the way for the destruction of romanticism and for the creation of a more recognizably modern sensibility.
I found the most valuable part of MacDonald's book to be the detailed analyses he offers of virtually all Brahms' major works. The discussion is presented chronologically. The musical discussions generally follow the biographical sections of the book and deal with Brahms's compositions by categories: orchestral music, chamber music, choral music, piano, song. MacDonald offers numerous musical examples, discusses the history of each work, and integrates each work nicely into a discussion of the entirety of Brahms' output.
Reading this book impressed upon me the wide variety of masterpieces Brahms composed during his life. MacDonald's accounts can be followed by the nonspecialist and give an inspiring picture of Brahms and his music. While reading, I thought of the works of Brahms with which I am familiar and wanted to revisit them in light of MacDonald's discussion. I also thought of the many works of Brahms I don't know but would love to explore in light of what I learned from the book. Little more can be asked from a musical study.
MacDonald writes with a deep affection for Brahms which he conveys well to his readers. He writes that Brahms "has been my favorite composer ever since I was old enough to think about music" and it shows in the deep thought and work represented in this study. MacDonald's closing discussion of Brahms's output captures well his view of Brahms. He writes: "Aware of the tragedies, paradoxes, and imponderables of existence, Brahms wrote to provide sustenance for the here and now. His music seeks to give beauty, nobility, a sense of meaning to the brute fact of human transience."
This is an outstanding study which should inspire the reader to hear Brahms, or to rehear him with an awakened heart.
Robin Friedman
August 14, 2018
(Note: the author attribution here is wrong. This was written by Malcolm/Calum MacDonald the music critic (b. Nairn, 1948, d.2014), not the same as Malcolm Ross MacDonald b.1932 in Gloucestershire the author of The World from Rough Stones - whose works at this time I have not yet read...
I read this Brahms biography, as I recall, in the early 1990s in college or perhaps a few years later. I can't speak to how good a read it will be for a general reader who is not yet acquainted with Brahms' music, because I was no longer that person; instead, when MacDonald goes into "the weeds" to discuss Brahms' controversial, posthumously-published (and possibly not Brahms at all) A major piano trio, to make a case that it is his work, I found it compelling. (MacDonald, as I recall, asks, as part of his case - who, at the time, could write music as good even as this trio (admittedly probably a work of youth of whichever composer penned it...)- which, considering his advocacy for little-known composers of the 20th-century (composers of very great merit (and interest to me :) ), including Brian and Foulds, but little-known all the same...)- I now feel a little beneath MacDonald; Brahms had, as I recall, a higher regard for the talents of his contemporaries and slightly-younger associates- for example, Friedrich Gernsheim, Robert Fuchs, Albert Dietrich, all of whom contributed 2 or more piano trios to the repertoire (Gernsheim contributed at least 4, only 2 of which were published) - than -that-... not to mention the slightly older Friedrich Kiel's 7... )
Still, unlike some other Brahms biographies I've (tried to) read, this book is not a brief overview that leaves you feeling like the author was in a hurry. It's not quite -the- life-and-works-and-times-and-etc-etc-etc that captivates me the way Walker's Liszt trilogy published by Cornell University Press does, where every corner related to the composer is given time to breathe (every piece analyzed, every friend given at least a mini-biography, every related historical event explained for those of us for whom the 1848 year of revolutions have marched off into forgotten memories)- not quite that good- but as biographies for whom that one nears my ideal goes, this, iirc, headed in the direction and I intend to re-read it soon :) ... (and other biographies by him that I've read too, and some I haven't (without the re- of course.) Much recommended.
I read this Brahms biography, as I recall, in the early 1990s in college or perhaps a few years later. I can't speak to how good a read it will be for a general reader who is not yet acquainted with Brahms' music, because I was no longer that person; instead, when MacDonald goes into "the weeds" to discuss Brahms' controversial, posthumously-published (and possibly not Brahms at all) A major piano trio, to make a case that it is his work, I found it compelling. (MacDonald, as I recall, asks, as part of his case - who, at the time, could write music as good even as this trio (admittedly probably a work of youth of whichever composer penned it...)- which, considering his advocacy for little-known composers of the 20th-century (composers of very great merit (and interest to me :) ), including Brian and Foulds, but little-known all the same...)- I now feel a little beneath MacDonald; Brahms had, as I recall, a higher regard for the talents of his contemporaries and slightly-younger associates- for example, Friedrich Gernsheim, Robert Fuchs, Albert Dietrich, all of whom contributed 2 or more piano trios to the repertoire (Gernsheim contributed at least 4, only 2 of which were published) - than -that-... not to mention the slightly older Friedrich Kiel's 7... )
Still, unlike some other Brahms biographies I've (tried to) read, this book is not a brief overview that leaves you feeling like the author was in a hurry. It's not quite -the- life-and-works-and-times-and-etc-etc-etc that captivates me the way Walker's Liszt trilogy published by Cornell University Press does, where every corner related to the composer is given time to breathe (every piece analyzed, every friend given at least a mini-biography, every related historical event explained for those of us for whom the 1848 year of revolutions have marched off into forgotten memories)- not quite that good- but as biographies for whom that one nears my ideal goes, this, iirc, headed in the direction and I intend to re-read it soon :) ... (and other biographies by him that I've read too, and some I haven't (without the re- of course.) Much recommended.
November 4, 2024
A thorough study of Brahms makes him out to be a lonely figure, spurned by Schumann. Still, his music captures images rather than feelings. Like classical fed into a computer.
June 27, 2017
Loved it. Glad I was listening to the audio version. Bits of music were woven into the story in the proper chronological order. Really wonderful story-telling.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews