Expressive Intersections in Brahms: Essays in Analysis and Meaning

2. The Learned Self: Artifice in Brahms’s Late Intermezzi

2 The Learned Self: Artifice in Brahms’s Late Intermezzi Steven Rings An Example by Way of Introduction We begin by exploring aspects of Brahms’s Intermezzo in A Major, op. 118, no. 2, focusing on the passages shown in Examples 2.1a and b. Example 2.1a presents the opening theme, while 2.1b shows a later transformation in mm. 34–36. Examples 2.1c and d make the nature of the transformation clear: the melody of mm. 34–36 inverts that of mm. 0–2. The down-stemmed, parenthesized eighths in Example 2.1e show a canonic imitation of the inverted theme one octave lower, at a temporal interval of three eighth notes, which creates a subtle hocket effect. Example 2.1. The opening theme of the Intermezzo in A Major, op. 118, no. 2, and its later transformation in mm. 34–36. 20 Steven Rings This already suggests that Example 2.1b is a moment of quiet, composerly achievement. But there is more still to notice. First, observe that the inverted theme in 2.1d occupies the same registral band as does the recto statement in 2.1c: they have the same lower and upper pitch boundaries, B and A. Indeed, the operation that maps the recto theme onto its inversion is the diatonic pitch inversion that maps these outer pitches onto one another.1 B and A have a highly sensitive character in the opening theme itself. In Example 2.1a, B proves unable to descend to A, instead consistently leaping up across the bar line; these leaps are central to the gestural physiognomy of the piece.2 They are mirrored by leaps down in the bass. These mirroring outer-voice leaps lend a subtle dialectical energy to the intermezzo’s pervasive auftaktig gestures: while the bass agrees with the kinetic profile of such an Auftakt (up–DOWN), the melody gently contradicts it (down–UP), giving extra poignancy to the local melodic apexes of D (m. 1) and A (m. 2). The B–A leap across the bar line into m. 2 is especially striking, as it is at once an intervallic expansion of the previous B–D leap as well as a paradoxical “resolution”: B now proceeds to A, but it is the “wrong” A, one octave too high.3 As a result, the high A has a curiously unstable quality due to its register, despite its intervallic consonance with the bass.4 The arpeggiation in the right hand on the downbeat of m. 2 further marks the moment, giving the leap a vocal intensity, as Charles Rosen has noted, by slightly delaying the arrival of the high A in the manner of a singer ascending to that pitch (and belying the ease with which the leap might otherwise be played on the piano).5 All of these factors combine to make the B–A leap an expressive locus for the piece, a gesture to which the player will return again and again, its harmonic lighting often subtly varied. The space opened up by the B–A leap serves as the frame for the inversion of the subject in mm. 34–36; upward leaps become downward leaps, A now leaps down to B. The inversion has a striking effect on the motive—the change in direction across the bar lines now has a feeling of release, of easing back after the reach up to A, as opposed to the mild infusion of tension projected by the upward leaps of the recto statement. The inverted motives now land on downbeats that have a feeling of relative stability. This change in kinetic profile results not only from the change in intervallic direction but also from an inversion of the motives’ patterns of consonance and dissonance. As indicated above the top staff of Example 2.2a, the three notes of the initial motive project the sequence consonant-dissonant-dissonant. These values invert in mm. 34–36 to dissonantconsonant -consonant, as shown in 2.2b. The hearing of the melodic D on the downbeat of m. 1 as a dissonant fourth over the bass note A agrees with the harmonic reading below the staff of Example 2.2a, which treats the 6 4 harmony as an embellishing sonority to the opening 5 3. The Learned Self 21 Comparison with the harmonic reading in Example 2.2b reveals further manifestations of inversional logic. Note first the figured-bass...