[Cue up 7:40-7:50 of Rhenish/Bernstein recording]

Hello everyone, and once again, welcome to the second USO concert of this
school year. Id like to begin by playing a short recording with which youll all
hopefully be familiar.

[Play Rhenish].

Now what was that?

[They most likely answer Brahms 3]

No, it wasnt the Third Symphony of Brahms. It was actually the Third of Brahms
longtime mentor and friend, Robert Schumann. Brahms and the Schumann
family were very closely intertwined in music history, and their music collectively
carves out essentially half of the standard Romantic orchestral repertoire. Robert
Schumann was many things: a pianist, composer, music critic, historian. What he
certainly wasnt was blind to young and upcoming talent. When Johannes
Brahms was merely 20 years old, Schumann had written an article in his famous
journal Neue Zeitschrift fr Musik detailing the young pianists prodigious
capabilities. Yes, Robert Schumann and Brahms would form quite the duo, and if
we add Clara Schumann, Roberts wife, into the mix, we have three people who
not only compose some of the most passionate and intense music ever been
written, we have three extremely talented musicians who care about each other a
great deal. After years of mutual admiration, Schumann and Brahms would
collaborate on the F-A-E Sonata for violin, composed for their mutual friend
Joseph Joachim. F-A-Ewhat is that?

It stands for Frei aber einsamand if we have any German speakers in the
audience today, you can confirm it means Free, but lonely. More on that in a bit.
Robert Schumann was infamously housed in a mental institution after, almost as
infamously, debilitating his hands from their prior pianistic glory in an attempt to
emancipate his fourth finger from his fifth. Quite the Faustian bargain.

Well, in July 1856, Clara received word that Robert was dying. For the first time
in almost two and a half years, Clara was able to see her husband again. Of
course, Brahms came along for the ride. And may I add, by this point, Brahms
had developed quite the crush on his mentors wife (who was 14 years older than
himself, may I add) *SCANDALOUS*. However, when Clara finally saw Robert,
he was a shell of his former self, unable to control his limbs or give any sense of
coherent speech. He did not live much longer: he died the following day and was
buried two days later. Well, following Robert Schumanns death two days later,
Clara and Brahms did what any two mourning friends would do. They took a
vacation together to Switzerland to iron out their potential post-Robert Schumann
love together. However, after that trip, Brahms said that he must be his own
person, and swore off marrying Clara. Sounds like a classical music soap opera,
doesnt it?

Well, the plot thickens, as, after this point, Brahms also reportedly takes up a
modified version of the motto of Joseph Joachim, Frei aber froh - Free but
happy. Now, we can discuss the historiographic context of this long-held
assertion, because it was present in the famous Kalbeck biography of Brahms,
but in recent decades, there have been some scholars claiming the Kalbeck
biography may have stretched the truth a bit. However, Frei aber froh" has stuck.

Skipping to three decades later, we finally arrive at the Third Symphony. Brahms
wrote it six years after his Second Symphony, the triumphant D Major. In that
time, he also composed, to name a few, the Violin Concerto, the Tragic Overture,
the Academic Festival Overture, and the Second Piano Concerto. So, Brahms is
riding on the coattails of some of the most important works he ever wrote. He
went off to Wiesbaden in the summer of 1883 and got to work. Unlike the ten
year process that went into his First Symphony, this was finished and premiered
only months later.

[Play opening of Brahms 3/mvt i/Gardiner]

The work begins with two chords in passing, not unlike the two bangs of
Beethovens own Third Symphony, the Eroica! The chords? F Major, Ab
diminished, and then back to F for the first theme to arrive. F-A-F. Frei aber froh.
Brahms had taken a lot of inspiration from Schumann, and one thing for certain
was a meticulous level of motivic growth. Hed take the germ of inspiration and
let it organically grow, something Schumann was well-known for. Unlike one of
Brahms piano intermezzi, the phrase lengths in the opening of the Third
movement are actually quite short, for the most part. We have slurs between two
isolated notes, and then again, and then again. What we have is Brahms
constantly dissolving the pulse and meter. Though written as a movement mainly
in 6/4 with flirtations in 9/4, it seldom feels that way for too long. We have the
standard Brahms hemiola, fighting against the barline. We have hidden meter
changes, isolating pairs of notes, rather than the trios wed expect. Essentially,
the first movement is a masterwork of combinatorics. How many different ways
can we distribute 6 beats, or 9 for that matter. Combine that with striking agitato
melodies, and viola syncopations ringing of Bohemia, and you have one of the
most profound openings to an orchestral work.

The second movement opens with a chorale in the woodwinds. Brahms, again
extremely meticulous, makes note of which instruments should be loudest in
balance with each other, as well as giving almost every single measure a unique
and specific direction for dynamics and phrasing.

[Play opening of Brahms 3/mvt ii/Gardiner]

The Andante chorale eventually gives way for a more flowing melodic line,
quickening the melodic rhythm, and allowing for the rest of the ensemble to join
in. However, were stopped in our tracks by a call-and-response between the
upper, middle, and lower voices of the orchestra. Just two notes at a time,
passed along between the players in a section Brahms himself described as icy
cool a far cry from the warm placidity of the opening of the movement. It should
also be mentioned that what we talked about in the first movement of Brahms
manipulating the meter without actually changing it makes this movement, in 4/4,
feel like its in a larger triple meter, just for a moment. The original theme sneaks
back in with the clarinet, as a chromatically descending pair of bassoons lead to
the original tonic triad, elaborated by the trombones and horns.

After the placidity returns, we end on a simple C major triad, and launch
ourselves into the third movement. Marked Poco Allegretto, the third movement
of this symphony is an outlier from the bulk of the symphonic literature, as it pulls
back the scherzo standard for a more moderate melody, this time in the minor
mode of the key of the previous movement. So, to summarize, weve begun the
symphony in F, had a slower second movement in C major (V of F), and then
moved onto a melody in C minor (minor V of F). However, simplicity is key in this
movement, as the nuance comes from the changes in emphasis on different
parts of the measure. The form? A simple 7-part rondo, with the central interlude
being a woodwind figure with long accents, making the listener interpret the third
beat of the bar as a downbeat. (3, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2) Eventually, this offset of the
strong beat results in a prolonged Brahmsian hemiola extending for 8 full bars,
leading into the horn solo bringing us back.

The fourth movement begins sotto voce, in a sort of monastic ostinato. Because
we only get pairs of notes in our response, the key is left ambiguous. However,
even after a chorale-like figure in Ab-major, the ambiguity remains: that is until
we have a fiery F minor marcato figure in the upper woodwinds and strings. Out
of the fire and brimstone of F minor comes a heroic C Major horn call, mirrored in
the celli. Tensions rise as the dotted rhythms combine with upward chromatic
steps. The call-and-response motif weve heard throughout the work thus far re-
emerges again, allowing Brahms to highlight the intermixed colors of the various
sections of the orchestra. Something to be aware of during this time period is that
Debussy was coming to prominence with his brand of impressionism in his
combinations. The blurred compositional palette providing only semblances of
compositional gestures as they go by was beginning to change the entire idiom
of composition, and you BET that Brahms noticed. Especially when we look at
Brahms Fourth Symphony, we have someone attempting to keep abreast of the
most progressive occurrences in the field while, at the same time, always
keeping his eye on the past century. Brahms as a composer and performer
looked to his lineage and forefathers. His greatest works offer new answers to
old questions, rather than pose new questions of his own (as would a Debussy,
or Mahler, or Schoenberg). And much in the same vein of a standard classical or
Romantic work struggling with its own mode and key, we have a work struggling
in its final bars between F Major and F Minor. After an agitato first movement,
almost holy second movement, passionate and wistful third movement, and
relentless fourth movement, we finally have our Frei aber froh re-enter. The
question is, is it long enough to stick?

[Play 7:01 of Brahms 3/mvt iv/Gardiner]

Or perhaps Brahmss seemingly tacked-on return to F Major is posing the true
question: one of ambiguity in the true sense of the word; i.e. having two distinct
possibilities. Agitato or sostenuto. Pious or playful. Monastic or maniacal. And
perhaps, the ambiguities of the works end may lead to even further profound
questions in your own musical life. Thank you, and we hope you enjoy the
concert.