Thomas Brahms Fourth Symphony Essay

445 Words1 Page

Brahms wrote his Symphony No. 4 in E Minor in 1884-1885 and conducted its premiere by the court orchestra in Meiningen, Germany. His Fourth Symphony was an instant success! Johannes Brahms took the orchestra on tour with his compositional work throughout western Germany and the Netherlands before publishing the piece in 1886. The work has the conventional four movements of a symphony in the normal arrangement of tempos: Allegro non troppo, Andante, Allegro giocoso, and Allegro energico e passionato. Brahms characterized the work as “sad,” and there is a certain daydreaming quality about some of the movements.
The first movement begins by setting out a chain of thirds in which all the notes of the E harmonic-minor scale are sounded before any is repeated. The first violins continue this theme with a similar series. This time rising from the tonic and it is to complete an eight-measure phrase. Another series of thirds accompanies the melodious second subject. At the start of the recapitulation, Brahms unfolds the initial series of thirds in augmentation. …show more content…

It is a set of variations on an ostinato bass. Brahms adapted the bass from the final chorus of Bach’s Cantata 150, Nach dir, Herr, verlanget mich. Brahms may have had other models in mind as well, such as Buxtehude’s Ciacona in E Minor. Ending the symphony with a set of variations recalls Beethoven’s Eroica and like Beethoven, Brahms first presents his bass line as a melody in the upper register and then works it into the bass only after several variations. All three variation finales are laid out in a three-part form with a contrasting middle

More about Thomas Brahms Fourth Symphony Essay

Open Document