Brahms Titanic (and truly unsinkable) Fourth Symphony: Finale

INTRODUCTION

The story of Johannes Brahms should be an inspiration for us all. There was nothing in his background that suggested the great role he was to play. He was born into poverty—an oppressive poverty. There were no great musicians in Hamburg to teach him. His father was an itinerant bass player, who only supported a musical career for Johannes if it would pay off financially, such as playing in ad-hoc orchestras. For that reason, he discouraged his son's piano lessons, and especially a career in composition. It didn't pay the bills!

His father, seeking to feed his family, sent him to play in brothels for sailors. The women tormented him and teased him. The sailors laughed at him, and poured beer down his throat! The then boy Johannes Brahms staggered home drunk at the age of 14!

How did he maintain his sanity? He memorized the polkas and reels he was obliged to play, and while he rattled them off, studied the poetry he had set upon the piano's music stand.

Something drove him, and it was not just a desire to become great, but a sense of responsibility for the future of music. Where did that come from? Was it divine inspiration? Perhaps, but bear in mind that divine inspiration can come from without and from within; that the word "enthusiasm" means "The God within you."

THE FOURTH SYMPHONY

Let us summarize what we have discovered so far:

1. Despite the late 19th-century effort to drive a wedge between art and science—claiming that one emphasizes wild and ungrounded emotion, and the other, dry forensic reason—the universe will not submit to such an artificial division. The spirit of joyful discovery is not different in art than it is in science! Emotion and reason are unified, in the act of discovery!

2. Great scientists delighted in passing unsolved problems on to future generations. Whatever tendency towards egoism they may have had, those tendencies were subordinated to their love of humanity, and of future generations. The solutions to such scientific problems would change the lives of future generations. But, so would the solutions to artistic problems.

3. Brahms was alarmed at the degree of arbitrariness and caprice in musical composition. He understood that music is not just about the composer's personal angst, but about shaping future history. Classical music had a responsibility to that future, which the unbridled passion of the Romantics did not.

4. In his Fourth Symphony, he set out to strip the principle of least-action down to its essentials, free of all decoration, of everything superfluous, and make that principle of least-action clear, by constructing themes of the most bare-bones origins. From such elemental themes, he would develop the most universal and all-encompassing polyphony.

5. I must caution that it is not a linear process. Perhaps it can be compared to embryology. Human beings start out with two cells, which become a zygote. From this, wonders of differentiation occur. Organs, membranes, nerve cells, and most importantly, a human brain, rather than an animal one. Yet, it all flows from the continued division and replication of cells. Nothing extraneous is introduced. It is embedded. But, it is not a linear process at all.

Such is the “motivfuhrung” in music.

6. Though Brahms took all of musical history into his heart, the bookends for this work are Beethoven and Bach. The first movement explores the “Motivfuhrung” (motive-leading) from the highest standpoint. Brahms takes a passage from the third movement of Beethoven's Hammerklavier sonata, where Beethoven abandons the key signature, and posits descending 3rds, against their inversions, ascending 6ths. Brahms makes those intervallic motions the main theme of the first movement. All potential distractions and embellishments are stripped away. The principle has to stand, or fall, on its own. (See example 1)

7. The principle of inversion, expanded: In the 2nd movement, Brahms creates new modalities by inverting entire scales, and the tetrachords within a scale, thus making it possible to play in minor and major at the same time.

8. The principle of least-action—nature will always follow the most efficient course. The most reasonable course exists in both science and art. This does not always mean simple, and it could easily be confused with Ockham's Razor—the idea that the simplest answer is usually the right one. That is a mistake. If this measly theme had to thrive based on purely linear extensions, it would fall flat, as would a zygote that never stopped being a zygote. The theme exists, not in itself, but in its relationship with the entire musical universe, and its ongoing development.

9. Let us take an example in physics. Take a wire cube, and dip it in soapy water. You might expect that the application of the principle of least action, might result in a soap film covering all six squares that form the cube's surface.

Not so.

The soap bubbles will take this shape.

(See example 2: soap bubble)

Notice the curved surfaces on the inner cube. The principle of least action does not confine itself to two-dimensional Euclidean space. We have passed from apparent linearity to higher dimensionalities, simply by following the principle of least action. This is actually the least possible surface area, and the least action taken to get there, although it looks more complex.

The same is true for the symphony. Do not expect Brahms to make his case from mere linear extensions of the theme. That theme exists in an entire universe of musical motion, and draws upon it, but never in an arbitrary way.

THE OTHER BOOKEND: BACH

May I suggest an experiment you may try with friends who don't know the work. Play the first few minutes of the fourth movement, then stop! Ask them if it evolves lawfully, or jumps around from one thing to another. My friends all said:" It jumps around."

Next, familiarize them with Brahms’ 8-note Passacaglia theme:

E F# G A A# B B(8va) E.

Then have them listen to the same measures again, and if possible, sing the Passacaglia theme as it repeats. As soon as they hear it, the piece will seem well-ordered to them. Accessing the ordering principle, changes how they hear it. It is one of the most striking examples I know of.

Brahms sat down at the piano one day, before Hans von Bülow (German conductor) and Joseph Joachim (the great Jewish German violinist) He played the last movement of Bach's Cantata 150 (https://youtu.be/lC8UErdK_XE) for them, and asked what they would think about it as the foundation for the last movement of a symphony. Later, Joachim wrote that he did not respond at the time, because he knew that his friend had already made up his mind to do it.

In Bach’s Cantata, it proceeds: A A B B C C DEE(8va) A. It is an early work by Bach, and that "Ground Bass" changes key, whereas in his later works, it does not. (Hear the final movement, Ciaconna, of Bach's Cantata #150 ,https://youtu.be/fgZF896c6ZA click on the last section in description for “Ciaconna”)

Mozart revived much of Bach's genius, including fugal writing, after his studies at the salon of Baron van Swieten at age 26. Beethoven took it further. Neither of them composed a Passacaglia, or Chaconne. Perhaps even van Swieten did not know of this Platonic form. Brahms, who saw himself as the man who would receive and transmit classical rigor to the future, must have seen it as necessary. The Passacaglia, or Chaconne, is one of the great developers of the principle of least action, sometimes known as freedom-necessity. Let a student composer have free reign with a sonata, or worse, a tone poem, with no restrictions, and he or she may flail about wildly, like an architect who cares little for a foundation, or support: and act, like the men Jonathan Swift ridicules as "building a house from the top down." Freedom must be reigned in, and defined by necessity. Freedom comes from responding to demands of necessity.

Bach's mentor Buxtehude, composed a beautiful Chaconne (or Ciaccona) for organ, based on an 8-note bass theme. Notice how that bass line plays with the intervals of Bach's later “Musical Offering”.

C Ab G B C Eb D G

Here it is played on a well-nuanced Schnittger organ: https://youtu.be/8gu5r_SyWz4

What glories Buxtehude archives with such a repetitive bass line! What worlds the registration of this instrument opens!

Yet, it begs to be surpassed. This brings me to a great paradox.

One might compare the difference between Bach and his predecessors as the difference between polygons inscribed in a circle, and the circle itself. (See example 3)

At the end you will see a square inscribed in a circle. In terms of area, it is far from the circle. The remains after the square are huge. Next is a hexagon inscribed in a circle. (See example 4). Is it closer to, or further from a circle? The remaining area is less, but the singularities, as changes in direction are now 6, instead of 4. It is closer in a way, but further in another. The circle is continuous. It has no changes in its movement. Lastly, we see a multi-sided polygon inscribed in a circle. It seems definitely to be closer. The difference in area between the circle and the inscribed polygon is becoming minimal. Yet, the number of singularities, as changes in direction, is huge, and increasingly separated from circular rotation, which is a different, simple species of action.

In comparing Bach with his predecessors, I often feel the paradox. At times, he seems so close to them, that you could not imagine him without their accomplishments. At other times, I sense an unbridgeable gulf. Listen now to Bach's Passacaglia in C minor for Organ, BWV582. The bass line is now 15 notes, instead of 8. At one point, Bach marks it "fugued": not Passacaglia and Fugue, but the Passacaglia is now fugued, and the first 8 tones of the bass become the fugue subject.

The opening bass is: C G Eb F, G Ab F G, D Eb, B C, F G C.

https://youtu.be/FpZfvlWJbjg

Robert Schumann loved this work, but did not dare to take it further. That remained for Brahms. As you listen, do you get the same eerie sense as I, of how much Bach owes to his predecessors, but at the same time, how he eclipses them: how a single, seemingly simple discovery, changes everything?

..and we have not even yet heard what Brahms does with the Passacaglia!