"This book is a substantial and timely contribution to Brahms studies. Its strategy is to focus on a single critical work, the C-Minor Piano Quartet, analyzing and interpreting it in great detail, but also using it as a stepping-stone to connect it to other central Brahms works in order to reach a new understanding of the composer's technical language and expressive intent. It is an original and worthy contribution on the music of a major composer." -Patrick McCreless

Expressive Forms in Brahms's Instrumental Music integrates a wide variety of analytical methods into a broader study of theoretical approaches, using a single work by Brahms as a case study. On the basis of his findings, Smith considers how Brahms's approach in this piano quartet informs analyses of similar works by Brahms as well as by Beethoven and Mozart.

Musical Meaning and Interpretation-Robert S. Hatten, editor

A groundbreaking consideration of Brahms's instrumental works.

About the Author

Peter H. Smith is Associate Professor of Music Theory at the University of Notre Dame.

Reviews

For its sincere committal to such an important message, brilliant use of dimensional noncongruence to lay bare the formal complexities of the Viennese tradition, and numerous insights into the structure and expression of one of Brahms's most tragic musical portrayals, Smith's book should be valued by music scholars and welcomed as a significant contribution to the study of meaning in Brahms's music.

* Music Theory Online *

For more than a decade Peter Smith has published extraordinarily insightful analyses of Brahms's instrumental music. In Expressive Forms in Brahms's Instrumental Music, he expands his focus to investigate the intersections of structure and expression, and in so doing he deftly explains the ways in which Brahms's Piano Quartet in C minor op. 60 'correlates with the agony of an individual about to commit suicide'.48.2 2004

* Journal of Music Theory *



Book Information
ISBN 9780253344830
Author Peter H. Smith
Format Hardback
Page Count 336
Imprint Indiana University Press
Publisher Indiana University Press
Weight(grams) 676g