Monday, December 12, 2005
i wanted to continue with my online research on bach....but gave up. very perplexed with brahms. what's up with him? like ms chin said, there must be something up if he compose all his little piano works with a 4 time repetition in the A of binary form section.....but why? It sounds like a chinese pop song, the romanze. According to the Oxford Dictionary of Music,, a romanze is a title randomly given to any composition of the composer as he or she wants/wanted, and is often to the composer's most tender and intimate emotions, e.g. hate, angst, jealousy etc.
I just assumed Brahms' Romanze Opus 118 was a love song. Because of his love for Clara and the fact that in his biography, it was mentioned that Brahms considered love the greatest power in the world. Love-ly.
Anyway, while I was trying to figure out the whole first section, which contained that mysterious four lines, ms chin added that the 1st line was more masculine and the second more feminin.
and since the motif for the 1st and second line is almost the same and the 1st few bars of the 2nd line and 4th line are almost identical, it became a sort of conversational thing. men and women talking to each other.
So I pretended that A was Brahms and B was Clara.
coincidentally, the 3rd line of the conversation was the most vigorous and lyrical. so i decided that Brahms must be speaking of his great love to Clara. With his back ground, it's not hard to imagine. Clara was Scumann, his friend and sorta mentor's wife. Brahms loved her, but never tried anything even after Robert died. And they remained friends. Sounds like our generation stories. And Brahms never married or fell for another woman. Because Clara was Schumann's wife, Brahms probably never got around to say anything to her, so perhaps Romanze was a dedication to his own fantasy, or what he imagined things would be had he confessed to Clara. But throughout the 1st section, "Clara"'s part was always more subdued, so I suppose that really was a woman trying not to hurt anyone. And conceal her feelings. Poor Brahms.
What a fantasy, he's almost like a teenager.
But then again, none of the above is academically proven to be true. And I do have an overactive imagination. But still, it's easier to play the song of frustration and unrequited love with the pictures in my head. Clara and Brahms. Clara and Brahms. I put my heart into that.
Sometimes I really forget that It's Brahms, not me.
Not me.
I hope
posted @ 6:21 PM
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