Influenced by Robert and Clara Schumann and Joseph Joachim, Johannes Brahms not only learned to play the organ at the beginning of his career, but also wrote significant compositions for the instrument as a result of his early counterpoint study. He composed for the organ only sporadically or as part of larger choral and instrumental works in his subsequent career. During the final year of his life, however, he returned to pure organ composition with a set of chorale preludes--though many of these are thought to have been revisions of earlier works. Today, the organ works of Johannes Brahms are recognized as beautifully-crafted compositions by church and concert organists across the world and have become a much-cherished component of the repertoire. Until now, however, most scholarly accounts of Brahms's life and work treat his works for the organ as a minor footnote in his development as a composer. Precisely because the collection of organ works is not extensive, the pieces--composed at different times during Brahms's lifetime--help to map his path as a composer, pinpointing various stages in his artistic development. In this volume, Barbara Owen offers the first in-depth study of this corpus, considering Brahms's organ works in relation to his background, methods, and overall artistic development, his contacts with organs and organists, the influence of his predecessors and contemporaries, and analyses of each specific work and its place in Brahms's career. Her expert history and analysis of Brahms's individual organ works and their interpretation also investigates contemporary practices relative to the performance of these pieces. The book's three valuable appendices present a guide to editions of Brahms's organ works, a discussion of the organ in Brahms's world that highlights some organs the composer would have heard, and a listing of the organ transcriptions of Brahms's work. Blending unique insights into composition and performance practice, this book will be read eagerly by performers, students, and scholars of the organ, Brahms, and the music of the Nineteenth Century.

First published in 2011. Johannes Brahms: A Research and Information Guide is an annotated bibliography concerning both the nature of primary sources related to the composer and the scope and significance of the secondary sources which deal with him, his compositions, and his influence as a composer and performer. The second edition will include research published since the publication of the first edition and provide electronic resources.

As one of the most significant and widely performed composers of the nineteenth century, Brahms continues to command our attention. Rethinking Brahms counterbalances prevailing scholarly assumptions that position him as a conservative composer (whether musically or politically) with a wide-ranging exploration and re-evaluation of his significance today. Drawing on German- and English-language scholarship, it deploys original approaches to his music and pursues innovative methodologies to interrogate the historical, cultural, and artistic contexts of his creativity. Empowered by recent theoretical work on form and tonality, it offers fresh analytical insights into his music, including a number of corpus studies that interrogate the relationships between Brahms and other composers, past and present. The book brings into sharp focus the productive tension that exists between the perceived fixedness of musical texts and the ephemerality of performance by considering how historical and modern performers shape established understandings of Brahms and his music. Rethinking Brahms invites the reader to hear familiar pieces anew as they are refracted through historical, artistic, and philosophical prisms. Bringing us up to the present day, it also gives sustained attention to the resounding impact of Brahms's compositions on new music by exploring works by recent composers who have engaged deeply with his oeuvre. Combining awareness of overarching contexts with perceptive insights into Brahms's music, this book enlivens our understanding of Brahms, providing a dynamic, multifaceted, complex, and invigoratingly fresh portrait of the composer.

In this penetrating study, Russell Stinson considers how four of the greatest composers of the nineteenth century-Felix Mendelssohn, Robert Schumann, Franz Liszt, and Johannes Brahms-responded to the model of Bach's organ music. His book represents a major step forward in the literature on the so-called Bach revival.

This volume provides access to literature on Brahms and his works published between 1982 and 1996.

Examines in detail the contexts of Brahms's masterpiece and demonstrates that, contrary to recent consensus, it was performed and received as an inherently Christian work during the composer's life.

Russell Saunders, professor of organ at the Eastman School of Music, died suddenly and unexpectedly on December 6, 1992. He was generally acknowledged to be the foremost teacher of organ in the United States, if not the world, and a most important link between the worlds of scholar and performer. This volume, planned by his colleagues as a Festschrift in honor of his seventieth birthday, is now a memorial.

The eight essays in Brahms Studies 2 provide a rich sampling of contemporary Brahms research. In his examination of editions of Brahms?s music, George Bozarth questions the popular notion that most of the composer?s music already exists in reliable critical editions. Daniel Beller-McKenna reconsiders the younger Brahms?s involvement in musical politics at midcentury. The cantata Rinaldo is the centerpiece of Carol Hess?s consideration of Brahms?s music as autobiographical statement. Heather Platt?s exploration of the twentieth-century reception of Brahms?s Lieder reveals that advocates of Hugo Wolf?s aesthetics have shaped the discourse concerning the composer?s songs and calls for an approach more clearly based on Brahms?s aesthetics. In his examination of the rise of the ?great symphony? as a critical category that carried with it a nearly impossible standard to meet, Walter Frisch provides a rich context in which to understand Brahms?s well-known early struggle with the genre. Kenneth Hull suggests that Brahms used ironic allusions to Bach and Beethoven in the tragic Fourth Symphony in order to subvert the enduring assumption that a minor-key symphony will end triumphantly in the major mode. Peter H. Smith examines Brahms?s late style by concentrating on Neapolitan tonal relations in the Clarinet Sonata in F Minor. Finally, David Brodbeck delineates the complex evolution of Brahms?s reception of Mendels-sohn?s music.